He screamed. I could feel the poison from the thing eating into him. I got to my knees and he cursed me and raised something out of the mud. It was Melak's blaster. He fired, between his feet. The puffball shrivelled to a little stinking wire and dropped away. Bucky said evenly, "That pays me off. Now it's all your party, Jig." He fainted. His legs were already swelling. Gow bent over him. "He's gotta have the croaker, quick." "You take him to the ship, Gow. If you can get there." "Me? I'm the zoo-man. I oughta...." "Do I look like Superman, to carry that big lug?" I didn't know why it was so hard to talk. "Get him there. Then round up everybody left at the ship. Get guns and ropes and torches and come back, quick!" He nodded and got Bucky across his shoulders. I gave him the blaster. Then I turned back. I knew where most of the circus gang would be--spread out among the bars. It was a lot darker, because now all the doors were closed, except two or three where the people hadn't lived to close them. It was quieter, too, because there's a limit to the noise a human throat can make. There was just the hot rain, and the soft jungle undertone of things padding and slithering in the mud, hunting. Up the street somewhere the _cansins_ screamed, and another shack split open. Instantly the brute clamor went up from the dark alleys, answering. Animal legions from five different planets, led by a tiny creature in a cloak of green fire. And man was the common enemy. A pair of Martian sand-tigers shot out into the street ahead of me. They were frolicking like kittens, playing with something dark and tattered. Then they saw me and dropped it, and came sliding on their bellies, their six powerful legs sucking in the mud. There was no place to go. I don't remember being particularly scared, but that wasn't because I was brave. It was sheer exhaustion. A guy can only take so much. Now I was just walking around, seeing and hearing, but not feeling anything inside. Like a guy that's coked to the ears, or punchy from a beating. I picked up a double handful of mud and slung it in their snarling pusses, and threw my head back and yelled. "Ha-a-y _Rube_!" A door at my left opened three inches, daggering the rain with yellow light. A voice said, "For gossakes get in here!" I picked up another handful of mud. The Martian cats were pawing the last load out of their eyes. I gave them more to play with. I guess they weren't very hungry, just then. I said, "I'm going to get the _cansins_." Just like that. I told you I was out on my feet. Clean nuts. The guy in the doorway thought so too. "Will you come in before you're too dead?" "And wait around for those big apes to crack the house open over my head? The hell with that." More mud sploshed in the cats' faces. They were beginning to get sore. "The rest of the critters are just following the _cansins_. Sort of a mopping-up brigade. Stop the _cansins_, and we can round up the others easy."