might account for the lack of defense), must have
fallen victim to that. But the Throg was going to make very sure. The
second flyer halted, remaining poised long enough to unleash a second
bolt--dazzling any watching eyes and broadcasting a vibration to make
Shann's skin crawl when the last faint ripple reached his lookout post.

What happened then the overconfident Throg was not prepared to take.
Shann cried out, burying his face on his arm, as pinwheels of scarlet
light blotted out normal sight. There was an explosion, a deafening
blast. He cowered, blind, unable to hear. Then, rubbing at his eyes, he
tried to see what had happened.

Through watery blurs he made out the Throg ship, not swinging now in
serene indifference to Warlock's gravity, but whirling end over end
across the sky as might a leaf tossed in a gust of wind. Its rim caught
against a rust-red cliff, it rebounded and crumpled. Then it came down,
smashing perhaps half a mile away from the smoking crater in which lay
the mangled wreckage of the Terran ship. The disabled scout pilot must
have played a last desperate game, making of his ship bait for a trap.

The Terran had taken one Throg with him. Shann rubbed again at his eyes,
just barely able to catch a glimpse of the second ship flashing away
westward. Perhaps it was only his impaired sight, but it appeared to him
that the Throg followed an erratic path, either as if the pilot feared
to be caught by a second shot, or because that ship had also suffered
some injury.

Acid smoke wreathed up from the valley making Shann retch and cough.
There could be no survivor from the Terran scout, and he did not believe
that any Throg had lived to crawl free of the crumpled plate. But there
would be other beetles swarming here soon. They would not dare to leave
the scene unsearched. He wondered about that scout. Had the pilot been
aiming for the Survey camp, the absence of any rider beam from there
warning him off so that he made the detour which brought him here? Or
had the Throgs tried to blast the Terran ship in the upper atmosphere,
crippling it, making this a forced landing? But at least this battle had
cost the Throgs, settling a small portion of the Terran debt for the
lost camp.

The length of time between Shann's sighting of the grounded ship and the
attack by the Throgs had been so short that he had not really developed
any strong hope of rescue to be destroyed by the end of the crippled
ship. On the