Missiles rained down from above; beetle-bombs, green snakes made worm-size by starvation. The men were swarming up from the compound now, but the few seconds of delay almost proved fatal. The aerial attackers were plain in the thinning mist--lightly-built men mounted on huge things that were half bird, half lizard. The rusty netting jerked, catching the heavy bodies of man and lizard shot down by the guns. Tex held his breath. That net was all that protected them from a concerted dive attack that would give the natives a foot-hold inside the walls. A gun in A Battery choked into silence. Rust, somewhere in the mechanism. No amount of grease could keep it out. Breska swore sulphurously and stamped a small green thing flat. Red beetles crawled along the stones--thank God the things didn't fly. Men fought and died with the snakes. Another gun suddenly cut out. Tex fired steadily at fierce white heads thrust above the parapet. The man next to him stumbled against the infested stones. The voracious scarlet flood surged over him, and in forty seconds his uniform sagged on naked bones. Breska's shout warned Tex aside as a lizard fell on the catwalk. Its rider pitched into the stream of beetles and began to die. Wings beat close overhead, and Tex crouched, aiming upward. His freckled face relaxed in a stare of utter unbelief. * * * * * She was beautiful. Pearl-white thighs circling the gray-green barrel of her mount, silver hair streaming from under a snake-skin diadem set with the horns of a swamp-rhino, a slim body clad in girdle and breast-plates of irridescent scales. Her face was beautiful, too, like a mask cut from pearl. But her eyes were like pale-green flames, and the silver brows above them were drawn into a straight bar of anger. Tex had never seen such cold, fierce hate in any living creature, even a rattler coiled to strike. His gun was aimed, yet somehow he couldn't pull the trigger. When he had collected his wits, she was gone, swooping like a stunting flyer through the fire of the guns. She bore no weapons, only what looked like an ancient hunting-horn. Tex swore, very softly. He knew what that horned diadem meant. This was the war chief! The men had reached the parapet just in time. Tex blasted the head from a miniature Tyrannosaurus, dodged the backlash of the spiked tail, and threw down another ladder. Guns snarled steadily, and corpses were piling up at the foot of the wall. Tex saw the woman urge her flying mount over the pit of the compound, saw her searching out the plan of the place--the living quarters, the water tanks, the kitchen, the radio room. Impelled by some inner warning that made him forget all reluctance to war against a woman, Tex fired. The bullet clipped a tress of her silver hair. Eyes like pale green flames burned into his for a split second, and her lips drew back from reptilian teeth, white, small, and pointed.