It was too bad. She would have liked to see the tall hunter once more before she.... His eyes had been so piercing! She had forgotten what a man could be like. If only she had not been so balky yesterday! But it was not to be. He had come, in one of those two jet cruisers, thundering across the killer-infested meadow, and he had gone. He had seen and not understood. Battles between alien beasts were of no concern to him. He might even return, to make cam-rec footage from aloft of this amazing battle. Hope flashed. She could signal him! What could she use? How could she catch a roving eye in a ten-mile-a-minute jet? She tossed up her head, eyes suddenly narrowed. Something came screaming around the mountain above her, followed by a second screaming something. Then hell erupted beyond the battle line. Blast followed concussive blast, causing the big gorillas to cower and the other ones to charge about in helpless panic. Between the jarring blasts sounded the rippling crackle of dual-mounted automatic snappers. The screams faded off into the sky. A stunned silence reigned along the battle perimeter. An acrid smoke drifted over the ground. Then, just as groups were sporadically renewing their death-grips here and there, the twin screams sounded beyond the mountain again. V "Two laps around the track and then to the showers!" yelled Greene, his fingers dancing over the rocket release and snapper buttons. Leaning back against the rudder bar, Pritchard grinned. "You forget the passes along the river banks. They make it four laps." Then he threw a quick glance over his shoulder, but he couldn't make much through the welter of rising dirt columns. They came around the mountain in a tight curve. As they flattened for a run on the meadow they could see things scurrying for the water. The meadow itself was a churned and pitted mess. Bodies were thickly strewn everywhere. "There she is!" yelled Sturgis. "You were right, chief. See her--over by the mountain?" A tiny figure, mounted on a six-legged equine, was riding furiously back and forth. The defense arc was swelling outward, as her "people" rose to the offensive and began charging the demoralized attackers. Then the two cruisers were racing through their run on the as yet unstrafed portion of the meadow furthest from the mountain. Sturgis's craft bucked as it rode the shock-waves from Greene's rocket blasts. As they shot in a wide curve around the other side of the mountain Pritchard said, "We'd better skip our last pass. Let's just sit down and work in close. I don't want her to get away."