He was not quite unprepared, therefore, when the Graken came over the bricks on top of him. It was probably the largest and heaviest of all those whom the band had seen. It fell on Trace like the side of a collapsing barn, and Trace felt all his breath leave his lungs in one excruciating wheeze. He fought to bring the muzzle of the raygun against it, but could not move his arm, which was pinned under the creature's knee. Only the soldier's left arm was free. He flailed a blow that landed solidly, but the alien only squalled, and chopped at his face with its clubbed pistol. Trace felt skin and flesh give way along his cheekbone, blood gush from the slice of the metal. He heaved up as heartily as he could, at the same time aiming another left jab for the brute's face. His knuckles took it square in the eye. It shrieked, reeled back on its knees, and Trace fought tigerishly and was free. He delivered his finest right cross to the throat, and the Graken writhed on the frozen earth. Then Slough and Bill were there--the fight had taken only seconds--and the magician in a frenzy of rage booted the green head with the toe of his heavy shoe. That was that. Slough's voice said softly, "_Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lurmen ademptium._" He rolled the big head up to the dusky light, and the broad single eye gaped blankly. "Virgil said that about another Cyclops, luckily of a mythical breed. 'A horrible monster, misshapen, vast, whose only eye had been put out.'" He signed. "Trace, the only real work we had is done, for failure or success it's finished, and we can't do any more good here. Let us go back to the women. If so be it our plan succeeds, they'll need you to watch over them in the--ah, the post-war world, which may be a little wild for a time. And if we've lost our gamble, then you should be with your girl when the end comes. You can't do any good by fighting guerrilla-fashion down here." "My girl?" asked Trace, who had no idea of how he had been moon-calfing at Jane Kelly. Hafnagel laughed. It was a joyous sound, the expression of a troubled man who had found release. "Go on, Sarge," he said. "Go to the hill, all three of you. I'll cover your withdrawal from here." He hefted the raygun he carried. "Don't argue with me," he said before Trace could speak. "You know a retreat needs a rear guard--and I mean to have another Graken scalp or two before I quit. Go on." Trace argued in passionate whispers, but shortly found himself creeping on all fours across the razed town, without fully remembering how he had left the wall. There was no sound or sign of movement on all the wide plain; and as they came to the beginnings of the slope, he said, "I shouldn't have left him. He ought to have come with us." Then they saw in the distance the streaks of green fire, and a pair of orange spotlights which almost immediately went out. The ray pistols kept darting their beams along the ground, and Trace said again, "I shouldn't have left Hafnagel."