He hadn't expected that. He had planned for It to back laboriously down the way It came, giving him a decent margin of time. But it had crossed him up. Now he had seconds instead of minutes. He put his head down and dug in, pumping his tired, aching legs furiously. This was the worst gamble of his career, against the longest odds. He had no idea how fast the worm could go on level ground. Suddenly, he was racing a shadow. In the slanting light of Piramus, setting through the afternoon, something like an elongated caricature of a snail's head crept across the grass beside him--two long slivers of tapering purple shadow. Then he saw his flamer, lying almost dead ahead where it had landed after being catapulted off the ridge. Sobs rasping his throat, he slanted toward it, dove and rolled, to come up clutching it. There was a spattering sound close by, a spatter that changed to an angry fizzing. Pritchard swung the nozzle up in the very face of the glistening red column swaying toward him. He squeezed the handle-grip. Through the booming flame, he saw the shape twisting aside and followed it with fire. It went down to the ground, backing away into a swelling body. The worm writhed desperately away from that searing plume of licking flames. Pritchard wheeled and ran toward the cruiser that had not burned. Evil-smelling juice slashed across the upturned belly of the ship as he savagely wrenched open the buckled door and tumbled in, dragging the flamer in after him. He stumbled across the roof-struts and lunged for the upside-down radio panel. The cruisers' radios were on their own battery-powered circuits. He snapped the power on and heard the slow hum and sputter of the warming tubes. He poked in the button labeled AUT. EM. SIG. a standard repeating distress call on a tight beam. Then he was flung against the opposite wall. As he struggled back to his feet, pressure against them told him the cruiser was rising, and he knew very well it was not doing so under its own power. A glistening red wall bulged against the door-frame through which he had come. Pritchard realized that once again the cruiser was being hoisted aloft in the worm's coil. It was going to drop him, to kill him quickly, rather than poke inside and face his flamer. Pritchard snatched the flamer and staggered toward the opening. Jabbing the nozzle into that scarlet slime, he gripped the handles. * * * * * Roaring heat beat back at him. He braced himself, ignoring his own singeing flesh and crisping hair. The cruiser struck ground with a crash. He was flung sideways, threw up an arm, and heard it snap. He dragged himself to the door which now was turned to the ground. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Pritchard hung his head through the opening and peered out.