The thing lay there like a blotch of spilled ink, grotesque and horrible. It was using horny claws on the tips of its wings to slam Greeno's space-ship house back and forth like a nut. Greeno and Karen must be inside. Flint streaked down, thumbs trembling on the triggers of the police plane's guns. He held his screaming dive till he was within yards of the thing. Then into its back he poured his stream of liquid fire. Kicking the controls, he zoomed away, head craned back to watch the result. The bat came up like a volcano erupting. There was a wide furrow burned along its black hairy back. Trees bent hundreds of yards away under the beat of its wings. Rising high in the greenish twilight, it sailed over the planetoid, searching for its attacker. Flint circled higher still. Far below he saw two small figures crawl out of the house, stare upward. Karen and Greeno were safe, so far. Banking over, looking down at them, Flint's eyes left the bat for a second. In that second the bat's eyes found him. It was upon him with the speed of a glance. It came on, unmindful of the jet blast in its face, its hair singeing like a grass fire. And though Flint threw the ship into every contortion he knew--full throttle five, bullet roll, reverse jet dodge, everything--the bat stayed on his tail, following his every maneuver as if it knew what he was going to do in advance. Its wings worked in a dark blur, trying to gain the few yards to close its pile-driver jaws upon the plane. Slowly, inexorably, the space between the beast and the plane narrowed. Then Flint played his final card, the same trick he'd used with the bat before. He dived for the planetoid, straight down, holding it till his nerves screamed with the wind, the bat right behind him. Then, almost in the tree tops, he pulled out. He stared back over his shoulder. If the bat plunged on into the jungle, if it floundered there for one minute, the plane's guns might be able to burn a wing off. He watched the bat twisting out of its dive, tree tops splaying. Then it happened. * * * * * A wisp in the view-plate, a hair-line growing, rushing at the nose of the plane. Before Flint turned in time to see it, the cable that stretched between the twin planetoids had been struck by the plane's nose, had screeched along its side in a shower of sparks. Then it caught. A solid jolt. The little hooks along the hull, the device for boarding another ship, had caught the cable, jerked it free from one of the planetoids and torn out by the roots the tree to which the other end was anchored. When Flint again got the plane under control, it mushed along, weighed down by a ton of steel cable that had a full-grown tree dangling on its far end.