t
all her life in the jungle. She wore a leopard skin draped becomingly
to show the greater part of her charms. They were in semiprofile so
that the artist could depict the terror on their faces. And full in
the center of the drawing was an immense web stretched between the
boles of two jungle giants. Descending the web was a gigantic bug, or
spider, the artist had not detailed it too well.

"I thought you said you were finding it hard to do?" Zmilch asked.
"Why you've just about finished it."

Gangreneyellow, not to be outdone by his friend, walked over to the
other's desk and read aloud from the author's manuscript:

"'... Tom Brighteyes knew he hadn't the smallest chance of escaping.
The hordes of Micro Ambrosia were but a short way off. Ahead the Great
Swamp blocked any chances of escape for him and the Leopard Girl.
Their doom was sealed. He turned to her and said:

"Leopard Girl, I love you. I know. I'm from another world, a world
where men and women are not the same as this. Oh, I don't mean the
outward man and woman, but the inward. This is a savage world, a world
where both men and women have to struggle to exist against terrifying
odds. Horrible beasts, terrible insects, and natural phenomena make
this place a nightmare of existence. But here I found love and perhaps
death. I am not sorry I came."

"Tom Brighteyes," the girl turned to him and drew close. "I love you
too. I think I felt love from the first instant I saw you, backed
against a tree, with your puny weapons facing Hogo the Mogo, king of
all the swampland. Hogo the Mogo used to eat guys like you for
breakfast. Yet you drew a cigarette from a silver, enamel case upon
whose shining face a small chaste crest revealed your excellent taste
in such things, and while Hogo the Mogo slavered his hate in your
face, you drew a king's size, Exhilirato from the case and lit it with
a nonchalance that took my breath away...."

"What the heck are you complaining about?" Gangreneyellow asked.
"You're not doing so badly yourself."

"Yeah," said a strange voice. "Neither of you are doing badly.
Everything is just horrible, isn't it? The B. E. M's. march across
your pages and drawing boards with assembly-line facility. But have
either of you two had any feelings for us?"

The two men turned startled and terrified faces in the direction of
the mysterious voice. They could see nothing. Yet they could feel the
impalpable presence of some strange being in this v