ed among the ramifications of what had
happened so long ago that time itself had forgotten, refusing to
recognize the fate that was upon himself. He knew a tingle of respect
for the ages-dead wizard who had dared command a being like this to his
services--this vast, blind, hovering thing, ravenous for human flesh,
indistinguishable even now save in those terrible outlines that sent
panic leaping through him with every motion of the Tree's fearful
symmetry.

* * * * *

All this flashed through his dazed mind in the one blinding instant of
understanding. Then the priestess' luminous whiteness swam up before his
hypnotized stare. Her hands were upon him, gently guiding his mechanical
footsteps, very gently leading him forward into--into----

* * * * *

The writhing branches struck downward, straight for his face. And in one
flashing leap the moment's infinite horror galvanized him out of his
paralysis. Why, he could not have said. It is not given to many men to
know the ultimate essentials of all horror, concentrated into one
fundamental unit. To most men it would have had that same paralyzing
effect up to the very instant of destruction. But in Smith there must
have been a bed-rock of subtle violence, an unyielding, inflexible
vehemence upon which the structure of his whole life was reared. Few men
have it. And when that ultimate intensity of terror struck the basic
flint of him, reaching down through mind and soul into the deepest
depths of his being, it struck a spark from that inflexible barbarian
buried at the roots of him which had force enough to shock him out of
his stupor.

* * * * *

In the instant of release his hand swept like an unloosed spring, of its
own volition, straight for the butt of his power-gun. He was dragging it
free as the Tree's branches snatched him from its priestess' hands. The
fire-colored blossoms burnt his flesh as they closed round him, the hot
branches gripping like the touch of ravenous fingers. The whole Tree was
hot and throbbing with a dreadful travesty of fleshly life as it whipped
him aloft into the hovering bulk of incarnate horror above.

In the instantaneous upward leap of the flower-tipped limbs Smith fought
like a demon to free his gun-hand from the gripping coils. For the first
time Thag knew rebellion in his very clutches, and the ecstasy of that
music which had dinned in Smit