The monster toppled, and flung out its prehensile lizard claws in an instinctive effort to catch itself. Evelyn was thrown clear. And Tommy, standing alone in the blackness of a carboniferous jungle upon an alien planet, sent bullet after bullet into the shaking, obscenely flabby body of the thing. The bullets penetrated, and exploded. Great masses of flesh upheaved and fell away. Great gouts of awful smelling fluid were flung out and blown to mist by the explosions. The thing did not so much die as disintegrate under the storm of detonating missiles. Then Tommy went to Evelyn. He was wild with grief. He had no faintest hope that she could still be living. But as he picked her up she moaned softly, and when he cried her name she clung to him, pressing close in an agony of thankfulness almost as devastating as her fear had been. It was minutes before either of them could think of anything other than her safety and the fact that they were together again. But then Tommy said, in a shaken effort to be himself again: "I--I'd have done better if--if I'd had roller skates, maybe." His grin was wholly unconvincing. "Why'd you get out of the Tube?" "Its eyes!" Evelyn shuddered, her own eyes hidden against Tommy's shoulder. "I saw them suddenly, looking at me. And I--hadn't any will. I felt myself getting out of the Tube and walking toward it. It was like the way a snake fascinates--hypnotizes--a bird...." A vagrant wind-eddy submerged them in the foul reek of the dead thing's flesh. Tommy stirred. "Ugh! Let's get out of this. There'll be things coming to feed on that carcass. They'll smell it." Evelyn tried to stand, and succeeded. She clung to his hand. "Do you think you can find the Tube again?" Tommy was already thinking of that. He grimaced. "Probably. Back-trail the damned thing. If the flashlight battery holds out. Its tail left plenty of sign for us to follow." * * * * * They started. And Evelyn had literally been forgotten in its agony by the monster which had carried her. Its body, though scaled and warty, was flabby and soft. Pressed against its breast she had been half strangled, but had no injuries beyond huge, purple bruises which had not yet reached the point of stiffness. She followed Tommy gamely, and the need for action kept her from yielding to the reaction from her terror. For a long, long time they back-trailed. Less than fifteen minutes after leaving the carcass of the thing Tommy had killed, they heard beast-roarings and the sound of fighting. But that noise died away as they traveled. Presently they reached the spot where Tommy had leaped upon a huge living thing. It was gone now, but the impress of a body the thickness of a barrel remained upon the rotted vegetation of the jungle floor. Evelyn shivered when Tommy pointed it out.