From Kreiss, Chet took the pistol with its seven precious shells. "All quiet," Kreiss told him as he prepared to take Chet's place on the soft leaves; "strange, flying things have I seen, but they do not come near. And of your mysterious pursuer we have seen nothing. You imagined it, perhaps." "I might have imagined it," Chet answered, "but don't try to tell me that the plants did. I'll give this vegetation credit for some damned uncanny powers but not for imagination--I draw the line there." He looked toward the highest point of rock and shook his head. "Too plain a target if I'm up there," he argued, and took up his position in the shadows instead. Once he moved cautiously toward the place they had prepared for Diane. She was breathing softly and regularly. And on the rock at her side, with only his jacket for a bed, lay Harkness. Their hands were clasped, and Chet knew that the girl slept peacefully in the assurance of that touch. "They don't make 'em any finer!" he was telling himself, and at the same moment he stiffened abruptly to attention. Something was moving! Through and above the hushed noises of the night had come a gliding sound. It was an indescribable sound, too elusive for identification; and Chet, in the next instant, could not be sure of its reality. He did not call, but swung alertly back on guard and slipped from shadow to shadow as he made his way across the welter of rocks. * * * * * He stopped at last in strained listening to the silent night. One hand upon a great stone block at his side steadied his body in tense, poised concentration. From afar came a whistling note whose thin keenness was mingled with a squeal of fright: some marauder of the night had found its prey. From the leafy canopy above him voices whispered as the night wind set a myriad leaves in motion. The thousand tiny sounds that blend to make the silence of the dark! These he heard, and nothing more, while he forced himself to listen beyond them. He followed with his eyes the creeping flood of Earth-light that came slantingly now through the opening above to half-illumine this rocky world; and then, in the far margin of that light he found something on which his eyes focused sharply--something that moved! Walt!--Kreiss--he must arouse them! A shout of alarm was in his throat--a shout that was never uttered. For, from the darkness at his back--not where this moving thing had been disclosed by the friendly Earth-light, but from the place he had just left--came a scream of pure terror. It was the shocking scream of a person roused from sleep in utter fright, and the voice was that of Diane. "Walter!" she cried! "Walt!" There were other words that ended in a strangling, choking sound, while a hoarse shout from Harkness merged into a discord that rang horribly through the still night. * * * * *