nd savage jungle in whose breast it lay. Here and there several
space-ships reared their sunset-gilded flanks, glittering high-lights
in the final glorious burst of Jupiter-light....

The planet's rim vanished abruptly, and Porno returned to true
character.

For a moment it appeared what it was: a blotched, disordered huddle,
ugly, raw, fit companion of the swamp and jungle. Then beads of light
appeared, some still, some winking, one crooked line of flaring
illumination marking the Street of the Sailors, along which the
notorious kantrans flourished, now ready for their nightly brood of
men who sought forgetfulness in revelry. Soon, Carse knew, the faint
man-noises he heard would grow into a broad fabric of sound, stitched
across by shrieks and roars as the isuan and alkite flowed free. And
all around the lone watcher in the sakari tree the night-monsters were
crawling out in jungle and swamp on the dark routine of their lives
as, in the town, two-legged creatures even lower in their degradation
went abroad after the dope and liquor which gave them their vicious
recreation.

The night flowed thicker around him.

* * * * *

From somewhere behind, the Hawk heard a suck of half-fluid mud as a
giant body stretched in its sleeping place. A tree close to his
suddenly fluttered with the unseen life it harbored. A hungry gantor
raised its long deep bellow to the night, and another answered, and
another.

It grew pitch black. Only a sprinkling of pin-points of light marked
Porno to the eye. The sky beyond the town matched the sky to the rear.
Jupiter's light now had fled the higher air levels. The time had come.

Cautiously Carse brushed the branches aside, rose upright and pressed
the mitten switch over to repulsion. In instant response his giant's
bulk lifted lightly. He sped upward, straight and fast; and at two
thousand feet, still untouched by the sinking planet's rays, he
brought himself to an approximate halt and peered below.

Port o' Porno lay spread out beneath, one thin line of light-pricks
off which angled fainter lines, extending only a short distance and
then dying widely off. There were perhaps two thousand men in the
town--men from all the countries of the three planets inhabited by
creatures that could be called human--and of these at least three
quarters knew Hawk Carse as an enemy, because of his intolerance for
their dope-trade. His approach to the house Number 574 had