snapped shut his
face-plate under their assault. Sometimes there came different, more
powerful wings, and he would duck in mechanical reaction, sensing the
wings sweep past, often feeling them as, with sharp pecks and quick
thudding blows, they sought to stun him. But the suit was stout; the
repulsed attackers could only follow a little, glaring at him with
fire-green malevolent eyes, then leave to seek smaller prey.

The watch-beacon began to wink more often through the ranks of
intervening trees as he neared the ranch. Carse was gliding so low
that often branches raked and twisted him in his course. His low
transit allowed one tree to loose great peril upon him.

The tree loomed a black giant in his path. Fifty feet away, he was
swerving to wind around it when he noticed its dark upper branches
a-tremble. He had only this for warning when, with chilling surprise,
what appeared to be the entire top of the tree rose, severed itself
completely from the rest and soared right out to meet him.

A shape from a nightmare, it slid over the adventurer. He saw two
green-glowing saucer-sized eyes; heard the wings rattling bonily as
they spread to full thirty feet; heard the monster's life-thirsty
scream is it plunged. The stars were blotted out. It was upon him.

* * * * *

But even in the sudden confusion of the attack, Carse knew the
creature for what it was: a full-grown specimen of the giant
carnivorous lemak, a seldom-seen, dying species, too clumsy, too slow,
too huge to survive. His ray-gun came around, but he was caught in a
feathered maelstrom and knocked too violently around to use it.
Without pause the lemak's claws raked his suit. Unable to rend the
tough fabric, it resorted to another method. With a strength so
enormous that it could overcome the force of the gravity-plates and
his forward momentum, the creature tossed him free. Dizzy, he hurtled
upward. But he knew that the bird's purpose was to impale him on the
long steely spike of its beak as he came twisting down.

The lemak poised below, snout and spear-like beak raised. But it
waited in vain, for Carse did not come dropping down. A touch of the
control switch and he stayed at the new level, collecting himself. The
lemak, puzzled and angry, wheeled up to see what had become of the
victim that did not descend, and found instead a searing needle of
heat which burnt through its broad right wing. Then, screaming with
pain and