d. "When they ceased fearing
the Jezbro, they found the courage to come up here."

* * * * *

The babble grew stronger. Running feet moved along the corridor. Retch
shouted somewhere, but the words were lost.

Rising above the other sounds was the cry of a woman--Effra.

Parker cursed beneath his breath as he ran. At the side entrance to the
big room where the pool of mercury turned, he stopped, appalled.

The room seemed full of men. Some of them he recognized as coming from
the village, others he had never seen before. From their appearance he
judged they had come in the boat. Retch was coming through the door that
led into the main corridor. The gun in his hands was centered on Effra,
who crouched at the key board of the vast machine. There was a smile on
Retch's face.

"Parker!" Retch's voice lifted in a yell. "Parker! I've got your girl.
Come on out and give yourself up or I'll let her have it."

This was his moment of triumph, this was the moment when he won his
victory. Parker, peering around the edge of the doorway, knew now that
he had no way to go. If he moved into the room, and tried to shoot
Retch, the man would certainly kill Effra in one wild burst of slugs as
he turned the gun on the pilot.

"Parker!" Retch yelled again. A smile on his face, he waited for an
answer.

Effra's fingers moved on the control panel. Mercedes got slowly to her
feet. The men in the room were silent, waiting for an answer to Retch's
command. Parker stood just outside the door, hesitant. No matter what he
did, it seemed to him that there was only one answer.

Behind Retch, coming from the corridor, something moved. At the sight of
it, Parker felt a flood of biting cold surge through him.

It was a puma--a gigantic puma. In its jaws, as it swung its head from
side to side, dangled the body of a man it had killed in the corridor.

It was a Jezbro puma.

Once it had been a little image in a niche beside the machine from the
old time. Then life had flowed into it, its own kind of life, now it
walked as a huge ravening beast through the room where once it had been
a tiny image.

The first man who saw it went dead white and slumped downward in a
faint. The others saw it in almost the same instant. Pandemonium swept
through the room. No man's nerves were proof against such a sight as
this. Screaming men were suddenly trying to fight their way out of a
place that had suddenly become haunted.