Wocha hit it with all the furious momentum he had. He rammed its spearlike tail down the open jaws and blood spurted. "Ho, Donovan!" he shouted. As the thing screamed and snapped at him, he caught its jaws in his hands. "Wocha!" yelled Donovan. "Wocha!" He ran wildly toward the fight. The Donarrian's great back arched with strain. It was as if they could hear his muscles crack. Slowly, slowly, he forced the jaws wider. The monster lashed its body, pulling him to his knees, dragging him over the ground, and still he fought. "Damn you," he roared in the whirling dust and snow, "hold still!" The jaws broke. And the monster screamed once more, and then it wasn't there. Wocha tumbled over. Donovan fell across him, sobbing, laughing, cursing. Wocha picked him up. "You all right, boss?" he asked. "You well?" "Yes--yes--oh, you blind bloody fool! You stupid, blundering ass!" Donovan hugged him. "Gone," said Helena. "It vanished." They picked up their dead and wounded and returned to the fires. The cold bit deep. Something else hooted out in the night. It was a long time before Takahashi spoke. "You might expect it," he said. "These parapsychical powers don't come from nowhere. The intelligent race, our enemies of Drogobych, simply have them highly developed; the animals do to a lesser extent. I think it's a matter of life being linked to the primary atomic probabilities, the psi functions which give the continuous-field distribution of matter-energy in space-time. In a word, control of external matter and energy by conscious will acting through the unified field which is space-time. Telekinesis." "Uh-huh," said Dass wearily. "Even some humans have a slight para power. Control dice or electron beams or what have you. But why aren't the--what did you call them?--Arzunians overrunning the Galaxy?" "They can only operate over a certain range, which happens to be about the distance to the fringe stars," said Donovan. "Beyond that distance, dispersion limits them, plus the fact that differences of potential energy must be made up from their own metabolism. The animals, of course, have very limited range, a few kilometers perhaps. The Arzunians use telekinesis to control matter and energy, and the same subspatial principles as our ships to go faster than light. Only since they aren't lugging around a lot of hull and passengers and assorted machinery--just themselves and a little air and maybe an armful of sacrificial goods from a fringe planet. They don't need atomic engines. "They aren't interested in conquering the Galaxy. Why should they be? They can get all their needs and luxuries from the peoples to whom they are gods. An old race, very old, decadent if you will. But they don't like interference." Takahashi looked at him sharply. "I glimpsed one of them on the ship," he said. "He carried a spear."