The carnivorous flower's first warning that all was not well was received when Stevens' steel-shod feet landed squarely upon its base and one sweeping cut of his sword lopped off the malignant blossom and severed the two tendrils that still held the unconscious Nadia. With a quick heave of his shoulder, he tossed her lightly backward into the smooth-beaten track the creature had made and tried to leap away--but the instant he had consumed in rescuing the girl had been enough for the thing to seize him, and he found himself battling for his very life. No soft-leaved infant this, but a full-grown monster, well equipped with mighty weapons of offense and defense. Well it was for the struggling man that he was encased in armor steel as those saw-edged, hard-spiked leaves drove against him with crushing force; well it was for him that he had his own independent air supply, so that that deadly perfume eddied ineffective about his helmeted head! Hard and fiercely driven as those terrible thorns were, they could do no more than dent his heavy armor. His powerful left arm, driving the double-razor-edged dirk in short, resistless arcs, managed to keep the snaky tendrils from coiling about his right arm, which was wielding the heavy, trenchant sword. Every time that mighty blade descended it cleaved its length through snapping spikes and impotently grinding leaves; but more than once a flailing tendril coiled about his neck armor and held his helmet immovable as though in a vise, while those frightful, grinding saws sought to rip their way through the glass to the living creature inside the peculiar metal housing. Dirk and saber and magnificent physique finally triumphed, but it was not until each leaf was literally severed from every other leaf that the outlandish organism gave up the ghost. * * * * *