"I don't know," the scientist replied. "I don't think they can be animals. But they might be rootless nitrogen-feeding plants of some kind. Look! Those branches are covered with long thorns!" The fantastic creatures were rolling swiftly down on the little group of humans, and Dynamon could see the sharp thorns around the end of each branch. He reached into the box at his hip. "Decuria, ready with voltage bombs," he commanded, and looking around saw that each man held one of the little glass bombs in his hand. The bushes were only fifty feet away now, rolling lightly over the gray sand on their spindly branches. "Ready?" warned Dynamon, "throw!" A shower of glistening glass balls flew through the air into the midst of the menacing apparitions. There was a series of blinding flashes and loud reports. Some jagged white lines appeared among the black branches of the monsters, but they kept right on rolling downwind. Dynamon felt a surge of dismay. Those voltage bombs had been, for years, Man's best weapon. "They're plants all right!" came Thamon's voice. "You can't kill them with electricity any more than you can kill a tree!" Dynamon looked at the men huddled about him and thought quickly. "All we can do, men, is to try and dodge them," he announced. "Spread out and as soon as one of those things passes you run upwind! Keltry! Thamon! Stay close to me." * * * * * The line of rolling bushes was almost upon them as the soldiers deployed in all directions. Seizing Keltry by the hand, Dynamon leapt to one side dragging her out of the path of one of the spiney monsters. Thamon gasped a warning, and Dynamon, turning his head, felt a thrill of horror as he saw another of the creatures almost on top of them. Acting instinctively, Dynamon snatched the metal staff from Thamon's hands and flailed frantically at the black, thorny branches. To his amazement, they shivered and snapped under the metal rod like matchwood. Hardly daring to believe his eyes, Dynamon struck again and again at the horrible creature, until in a few minutes it was nothing but a pile of scattered, broken faggots on the gray sand. But cries for help and screams of anguish sounded in Dynamon's ear phones, and he saw that five of the soldiers were on the ground impaled on the cruel thorns of others of the monsters. He ran toward them and beat them to pieces with the rod but too late to save the lives of the men. They lay pierced in a dozen places by long, black thorns. The rest of the Decuria had managed to dodge the whirling branches of the other bushes and now stood safely up wind of them. Dynamon summoned the survivors around him. "What do you think, Thamon?" he asked. "In your opinion are there likely to be more of these horrible things around?"