God knew what was loose in that town. Bucky Shannon spoke beside me. We were still running, slipping and floundering in the mud, making toward the ship from sheer instinct. He gasped, "We got to get those babies rounded up. Gow! Gow, you hear me? We got to get 'em back!" Gow's voice came sullenly. "I hear you, boss." We slowed down. It was suddenly important to hear what more Gow had to say. "Don't you get it?" he asked slowly. "Gertrude let 'em out. She wanted 'em--to help her. They know it. They ain't going back." Somewhere behind us a plastic shack cracked open like an eggshell. Human cries were drowned in a whistling screech. Off to the right the Mercurian cave-cat began to laugh like a crazy woman. Slow, patient, animal hate, walled around them, waiting. The feel and smell of hate in the brute tank. I could feel and smell it now, in Nahru, only it wasn't patient and waiting any more. The time it had waited for was here. Gertrude had set it free. Shannon said, very softly, "Mother o' God, what are we going to do?" "Get back to the ship. Get back and get out of here!" I jumped. It was Melak's voice, sounding hard and ugly. Light spilling out of a sagging door made a faint silhouette of him in the rain. He held a blaster in his hand. Shannon snarled, "Take off with half my gang stranded here? You go to hell!" Rockets blasted suddenly out on the landing field. Somebody had made it to Beamish's yacht and gone. The runabout followed it. The circus ship was still there, and the only one in Nahru. I said, "We can't go. Not with a couple hundred credits' worth of animals running loose in the town." "Get on to the ship," said Melak. "Cripes, if I knew how to fly I'd leave you here! Now move!" Shannon was almost crying. He started to rush Melak. I caught him and said, "Sure. Sure we'll move. All of us. Look behind you!" "I was weaned on that one. Move!" Well, it was his funeral. * * * * * It was almost ours, too. Ganymedian puffballs move fast. They had come out from between two shacks, skimming over the mud on their long white cilia. There were three of them, rolled up in balls about the size of my head. They didn't make any noise. They came up behind Melak. Two of them unrolled suddenly, whipping out into lean, fuzzy ropes about five feet long. They went around the Martian 'breed. The third one came straight at me. Melak made a noise that wasn't human and went down. The puffballs tightened around him, pulsing a little with the pleasure of digestion. Gow was on the other side of Melak, too far away, and unarmed. I jumped, and the mud tripped me. Shannon fell the other way. The puffball, strung out now like a fuzzy snake, paused a moment, not three inches from my face. I lay still on my belly, choking on my heart. Shannon moved, and it whipped down across his legs.