pless before me.

* * * * *

For a moment he stood as though confused. As he turned to gaze after
Tina, Larry flung another rock. But this time Tugh did not fire. He
started back toward where, by the wreckage of his cage, Mary was now
sitting up in a daze; then he changed his mind, whirled and fired
directly at my doorway. I was just beyond the effective range of his
beam, but it was truly aimed: I felt the horrible nauseous impact of
it, a shuddering, indescribable sickening of all my being. I staggered
back into the room and recovered my strength. A side window porte was
open; I leaped through it and landed upon the rocks, with the cage
between Tugh and me.

He fired again at the doorway. Tina had disappeared. Larry was now out
of range, standing on the ridge, shouting and hurling rocks.

But Tugh did not heed him. He was shambling for my doorway. He would
pass within twenty feet of me as I crouched outside the cage at its
opposite corner. I could take him by surprise.

And then he saw me. He was less than a hundred feet away. He changed
his direction and fired again, full at me. But I had had enough
warning, and, as the beam struck the cage corner, I ran back along the
outer wall of the cage and appeared at the other corner. Tugh came
still closer, his weapon pointed downward as he ran. Fifty feet away.
Not close enough!

I think, there at the last, that Tugh was wholly confused. Larry had
come much closer. He was shouting: and from the ridge behind me Tina
was shouting. Tugh ran, not for where I was lurking now, but for the
corner where a moment before he had seen me.

Now he was thirty feet from me.... Twenty.... Then nearer than that.
Wholly without caution he came forward.... I leaned around the edge of
the cage and fired. For one breathless instant the voices of Tina and
Larry abruptly hushed.

My beam struck Tugh in the chest. It caught him and clung to him,
bathing him in its spreading, intense white glare. He stopped in his
tracks; stood transfixed for one breathless, horrible instant! He was
so close that I could see the stupid surprise on his hideous features.
His wide slit of mouth gaped with astonishment.

* * * * *

My beam clung to him, but he did not fall! He stood astonished; then
turned and came at me! For just a moment I was stricken helpless there
before him. What manner of man was this? _He did not fall!_ My ray,
which had