ther could remold. Nothingness, darkness, all that was opposed
to life and warmth and reality, arose in the night, gathered together
against them.

Yet still Tau fronted that invisible wave, his head high. And between
his sturdily planted feet the knife gleamed bright with a radiance of
its own.

"Ahhh--" Tau's voice curled out, to pierce that creeping menace. Then he
was singing again, the cadence of his unknown words rising a little
above the pattern wrought by the drum.

Dane forced his heavy hands to continue the beat, his wrists to rise and
fall in defiance of that which crept to eat their strength and make them
less then men.

"Lumbrilo! I, Tau, of another star, another sky, another world, bid you
come forth and range your power against mine!" Now there was a sharper
note in that demand, the snap of an order.

He was answered by another wave of the black negation--stronger, rolling
up to smash them down, as a wave in the heavy surf of a wild ocean
pounds its force against the beach. This time Dane thought he could see
that dark mass. He tore his eyes away before it took on substance,
concentrating on the movements of his hands against the drum head,
refusing to believe that hammer of power was rising to flatten them all.
He had heard Tau describe such things in the past. But told in familiar
quarters on board the _Queen_, such experiences were only stories. Here
was danger unleashed. Yet the medic stood unbowed as the wave broke upon
him in full.

And, advancing under the crest of that lick of destruction, came its
controller. This was no ghost drawn from the materials of the swamp;
this was a man, walking quietly, his hands as empty as Tau's, yet
grasping weapons none of them could see.

In the firelight, as the wave receded sullenly, men moaned, lay face
down upon the ground, beat their hands feebly against the earth. But, as
Lumbrilo came on from the shadows, one of them got to his hands and
knees, moving with small tortured jerks. He crawled toward Tau, his head
lolling on his shoulders as the head of the dead rock ape had done. Dane
patted the drum with one hand while, with the other, he groped for his
fire ray. He tried to shout in warning and found that he could not utter
a sound.

Tau's arm moved, raised from his side, made a circling motion.

The creeping man, his eyes rolled up in his head until only the whites
gleamed blindly in the limited light, followed that gesture. He drew
level with th