trace of its thousand-foot carcass
outside. Restraining a desire to leap out and cork up that bottle, Pink
waited. The movement of this alien had caught the red eyes of others;
they advanced, some hurrying and some cautious, till two more had
scented or sensed the alcohol and poured into bottles. Pink kept his
eyes on the little containers. Beside him, Circe gazed with horrified
fascination at the coming gargantuas....

* * * * *

A trio of them were misting now; this was the test. One empty bottle
remained. What would happen, Pink wondered; was one giant per bottle the
maximum content? The three streaked down, like smoke sucked into a
vacuum cleaner. They jetted into the bottles, and again nothing was left
outside. Pink said "Good," in a mutter, and forced himself to wait
longer. The more the merrier. How long would it take them to soak up the
alcohol? His captive had said the process was slow. How slow? How long
did he dare wait?

He caught eight more, then the next hesitated, looking around for the
source of light. Either he was capable of more resistance to the
seductive element, or the bottles were now full of churning, lapping
aliens. There were more of them approaching, but he didn't dare wait any
longer. He jumped forward, potting at the foremost.

It went down thrashing, and he shot over it into the yellow of them.
Emptying the Colt, he reloaded hastily and plugged or nicked another
half dozen. By then he was standing over the bottles. Nothing had
emerged yet. He stooped to slam on the caps.

With horrible speed two giants pounced for him; he saw them out of the
corner of his eye. Then they slammed full length to the rock, and he
knew that Circe's automatic was in action. He corked the last bottle and
slung it on his belt, put down the two remaining containers. Then he
turned and made a mighty jump away from them, dragging Circe with him.
The aliens came on.

Some of them could withstand the pull of the liquor, and some could not.
There was a phalanx of them coming, for a good third of the growth's
population had seen the disturbance by now. Any who appeared to be
passing by the bottles, he and Circe shot; those who hesitated by them
and were drawn in exchanged their liberty for their lives, because in
two minutes Pinkham had feverishly capped them into the leaden prisons.
He hooked them onto his belt and said into the mouthpiece before his
lips, "Go for the entrance, baby