Fighting to free his arms, he realized they were not held below the elbows. By crossing over with his left hand, he could draw his snapper and shift its butt into his right. But he was descending into that obscenely working orifice, choking on its acrid stench, before he could manage it. The little needles went tseeu, tseeu, tseeu, down into the quivering pulp. They could be death for him at this range. Pritchard, dangling there in that moment of eternity, could only avert his face from the crisp blasts gusting back at him. Abruptly he was flying through the air, his arms free. The snapper arced off in one direction and Pritchard went into his own gyrating, twisting, writhing parabola. A frond slapped him. A branch snapped under his hip. He was falling into foliage. A thick stem slithered along his hand and he grabbed at it, to hang on through an insane pendulum swing that carried him whisperingly close to the ground. They found him crumpled at the foot of the tree against which he had been dashed. Yet, within five minutes, he was reporting back to the ship that the party was intact. The giant hydra-type plant, in its death throe, had flung only him. The others had been held adangle in mid-air while it chose to feed on Pritchard first and, although he had been sent sailing, the tentacles gripping the others had simply loosened. One man, dropped upside down from ten feet, had a fractured collarbone, but they were even now cementing a flexicast in place and he would continue with the rest. Majinski had had the flamer torn from his hand and they weren't able to find it. In fifteen minutes they were hacking steadily ahead again, more slowly now that they had no flamer, and having to stop to trace every creeper to its root before they chopped through it. Pritchard straightened up from a tangle he'd been attacking and eased his bruised and aching back. He peered ahead into light-flecked gloom, the matted mass of vine, creeper and branch that grew so chokingly high they were virtually tunneling through. They would find no game this way, he reflected, their chopping and hacking and swearing spreading the alarm well ahead. The birds, for instance, had stopped singing. He glanced briefly to his left at young McManus grunting and swinging. "Tom." Pritchard's tone was casual, but his eyes were alert and hard. The red-headed man held his stroke and peered ludicrously under his armpit. "Freeze," said Pritchard. The boy went rigid. "What is it?" "On the branch above you." Pritchard's voice cracked out above the ringing blades. "Hold it, everybody! Hold it!" Then, in a lower tone, he gave orders, and the three or four cadet hunters near McManus slowly began to ease out their snappers. The cam-rec clicked into action. "For the cripes sake, what is it?" whispered McManus, the red of exertion washing out of his face until it was a dripping ivory mask.