ggling on the flat of his back, he squirmed between
the rear wheels, until he was able to sit up, behind the jeep. Then,
swinging the weighted coat, he flung it forward, over the nighthound
and the jeep itself, at the same time drawing his revolver.

Immediately, the nighthound, lured by the sudden movement of the
principal source of the scent, jumped out of the jeep and bounded after
the coat, and there was considerable noise in the brush on the lower
side of the railroad grade. At once, Verkan Vall swarmed into the jeep
and snapped on the lights.

His stratagem had succeeded beautifully. The stinking coat had landed
on the top of a small bush, about ten feet in front of the jeep and
ten feet from the ground. The nighthound, erect on its haunches, was
reaching out with its front paws to drag it down, and slashing angrily
at it with its single-clawed intermediary limbs. Its back was to
Verkan Vall.

His sights clearly defined by the lights in front of him, the paratimer
centered them on the base of the creature's spine, just above its
secondary shoulders, and carefully squeezed the trigger. The big .357
Magnum bucked in his hand and belched flame and sound--if only these
Fourth Level weapons weren't so confoundedly boisterous!--and the
nighthound screamed and fell. Recocking the revolver, Verkan Vall waited
for an instant, then nodded in satisfaction. The beast's spine had been
smashed, and its hind quarters, and even its intermediary fighting limbs
had been paralyzed. He aimed carefully for a second shot and fired into
the base of the thing's skull. It quivered and died.

* * * * *

Getting a flashlight, he found his rifle, sticking muzzle-down in the
mud a little behind and to the right of the jeep, and swore briefly in
the local Fourth Level idiom, for Verkan Vall was a man who loved good
weapons, be they sigma-ray needlers, neutron-disruption blasters, or
the solid-missile projectors of the lower levels. By this time, he
was feeling considerable pain from the claw-wounds he had received.
He peeled off his shirt and tossed it over the hood of the jeep.

Tortha Karf had advised him to carry a needler, or a blaster, or a
neurostat-gun, but Verkan Vall had been unwilling to take such arms onto
the Fourth Level. In event of mishap to himself, it would be all too
easy for such a weapon to fall into the hands of someone able to deduce
from it scientific principles too far in advance of