m out like sparks of a scattered
fire.

Dalton groped with one hand for his pocket but his hand kept slipping
away into a matterless void as his vision threatened to slip into
blindness. Dimly he saw Thwaite, a stone's throw ahead of him, start
to lift his weapon and then stand frozen, swaying a little on his feet
as if buffeted by waves of sound.

Already the second theme was coming in--the insidious obbligato of
invitation to death, wheedling that _this way ... this way ..._ was
the path from the torment and terror that the monstrous voice flooded
over them.

Thwaite took a stiff step, then another and another, toward the black
wall of the _mato_ that rose beyond the clearing. With an
indescribable shudder Dalton realized that he too had moved an
involuntary step forward. The _currupira's_ voice rose triumphantly.

With a mighty effort of will Dalton closed fingers he could not feel
on the object in his pocket. Like a man lifting a mountain he lifted
it to his lips.

A high sweet note cut like a knife through the roll of nightmare
drums. With terrible concentration Dalton shifted his fingers and blew
and blew....

Piercing and lingering, the tones of the pipes flowed into his veins,
tingling, warring with the numbing poison of the _currupira's_ song.

Dalton was no musician but it seemed to him then that an ancestral
instinct was with him, guiding his breath and his fingers. The powers
of the monster were darkness and cold and weariness of living, the
death-urge recoiling from life into nothingness.

But the powers of the pipes were life and light and warmth, life
returning when the winter is gone, greenness and laughter and love.
Life was in them, life of men dead these thousand generations, life
even of the craftsmen on an alien planet who had preserved their form
and their meaning for this moment.

Dalton advanced of his own will until he stood beside Thwaite--but the
other remained unstirring and Dalton did not dare pause for a moment,
while the monster yet bellowed in the blackness before them. The light
of the flare was reddening, dying....

After a seeming eternity he saw motion, saw the rifle muzzle swing up.
The shot was deafening in his ear, but it was an immeasurable relief.
As it echoed the _currupira's_ voice was abruptly silent. In the
bushes ahead there was a rending of branches, a frantic slithering
movement of a huge body.

They followed the noises in a sort of frenzy, plunging toward t