The return along the hacked-out trail was easier and quicker than their coming, and soon they saw the tip of the _Apollo's_ bow in the sky beyond the shoulder of the hill. As they toiled back up the slope through the clogging grass, they became aware that the animals were not following them further, but backward glances could still make out some vague shapes in the foliage. Pritchard became aware, also, of McManus's silence. The redhead, usually garrulous, had been silent from the start of their retreat, his square jaw clamped hard shut. The Chief Hunter slapped the young man's broad back. "Relax, Tom. Men have backed down from women before. It's not considered bad form at all. Now and then they outmaneuver us, and that's all there is to it." A couple of the others chuckled, but McManus continued his stolid slogging up the hill without a sign. Pritchard shrugged. They all trudged across the burn, and the great grasshopper-leg let down the platform for them. Waiting for it to settle, Pritchard braced with one hand at the base of a towering fin and began slapping dust from his breeches. He heard Sturgis say, "Hey, watch that!" and the tseeu of a snapper. He jerked erect in time to see McManus lower his weapon, and hear a distant explosion. Down over the hill, in the tall grass, what appeared to be a huge boar or pygmy rhino was writhing and kicking. Somberly, Pritchard watched its six twitching legs quiet down and stiffen. "That was a good shot, Tom," he said. McManus came toward him, grinning with relief. "I'd had about all I could take--" he started to say, and then Pritchard's fist slammed into his jaw. His feet left the ground and he fell heavily onto the hard ground under the tubes. Pritchard was picking him up again when he heard Sturgis's voice again. "You'd better make it snappy, chief. I think they're working up to something." Shapes were moving up through the distant grass. Wings were flapping or tilted in soaring across the jungle not far beyond. There came to the ship a dim, vast babble of cries, grunts, squeals, howls and barks. They carried the inert McManus over to the platform in a hurry. But Pritchard let his finger rest on the buzzer-button while he looked over the array of animals now gathering in plain sight, fanning out around the perimeter of the scorched ground. There were the slate-gray ones, like that which McManus had downed--six-legged, suber-snouted, long-tusked. There were hulking, scaly-hided ones, resembling ant-eating bears--also six-legged. In fact, the six-legged skeleton seemed to prevail among the fauna of Thisbe II. The canine-like ones running this way and that were six-legged, and so were certain slinking, feline types. On the other hand, the maned gorillas had but four appendages, and so had the ungainly-looking, leaping ones, that looked like hairless kangaroos except for their wicked, underslung jaws.