e another. Just as he, wearing one, had once
been trailed over miles of wilderness.

To him, all three of the invaders looked enough alike to have been
stamped out from one pattern. And their movements suggested that they
worked or went into action with drilled precision. They all faced
seaward, holding tubes aimed at the salkar-infested lagoon. There was no
sound of any explosion, but green spears of light struck at the scaled
bodies plunging in the water. And where those beams struck, flesh
seared. Methodically the trio raked the basin. But, Ross noted, those
beams which had been steady at his first sighting, were now interrupted
by flickers. One of the Baldies upended his tube, rapped its butt
against a rock as if trying to correct a jamming. When the alien went
into action once again his weapon flashed and failed. Within a matter of
moments the other two were also finished. The lighted rods pushed into
the sand, giving a glow to the scene, darkened as a fire might sink to
embers. Power fading?

An ungainly shape floundered out of the churned water, lumbered over the
shale of the beach, its supple neck outstretched, its horned nose down
for a gore-threatening charge. Ross had not realized that the salkars
could operate out of what he thought was their natural element, but this
wild-eyed dragon was plainly bent on reaching its tormentors.

For a moment or two the Baldies continued to front the creature, almost,
Ross thought, as if they could not believe that their weapons had failed
them. Then they broke and ran back to the fairing which they had taken
with such contemptuous ease. The salkar plowed along in their wake, but
its movements grew more labored the farther it advanced, until at last
it lay with only its head upraised, darting it back and forth, its
fanged jaws well agape, voicing a coughing howl.

Its plaint was answered from the water as a second of its kind wallowed
ashore. A terrible wound had torn skin and flesh just behind its neck;
yet still it came on, hissing and bubbling a battle challenge. It did
not attack its fellow; instead it dragged its bulk past the first comer,
on its way after the Baldies.

The salkars continued to come ashore, two more, a third, a fourth,
mangled and torn--pulling themselves as far as they could up the beach.
To lie, facing inland, their necks weaving, their horned heads bobbing,
their cries a frightful din. What had drawn them out of their
preoccupation of battle amo