"I'm not." She shook herself. "I'm--frightened. This--night up here--it's like a tomb, Martt." Tomblike, indeed. A dank, chill silence brooded over the night. And then, almost unheralded, it was not night, but day. A small, cold-red sun leaped up from the distant black horizon. A day of dull, flat light. It stained the snow with blood. . . . Blood everywhere. . . . Degg said somberly to Zee, "Always blood. It is an omen. . . . My land, doomed----" There was a quiver in Zee's voice as she repeated his words to Martt. They had come now not to mistrust Degg. He seemed a well-meaning youth. Simple-minded. He had told them something of his world--of Rokk, and the woman Mobah. Degg, in his heart, hated and feared Rokk. "Why?" demanded Zee. He turned his dark, solemn eyes upon her. "You are too gentle, little girl Zee, to understand. We have many--horrible things here in Arc. I would not talk of them with you." It had been Rokk's plan, Degg said, to take Leela and Frannie to the place where he lived. Degg was to join Rokk there. . . . It was not so very far. . . . Degg called it Rokk's mound. They were headed that way now. Soon it would be night again--Martt could do what he thought was best toward rescuing the two girl prisoners. And Martt promised he would protect Degg. Vaguely in Martt's mind had been the idea that he could use the drugs again now--make himself still larger--catch Rokk unawares. But the large drug would take no further effect. The maximum size had been reached. Degg did not know why; save that these drugs were for smallness--the large one merely an antidote to the other. Martt was left without tangible plan. But his first desire was to get near Rokk's mound--whatever sort of place that might be. And he would decide then what could be done. The blood-red sun came swiftly up in a low arc, and plunged as swiftly down again. To Martt, it had been some half an hour of daylight. Now came the brooding night--and in another half-hour the sun would again make its low sweep. Martt urged Degg forward. Eeff was leading--lurid, green-white against the black of the ground. Then it stopped. Its eye quivered; it screamed--a long, shuddering, half-human cry of fright. Degg stood frozen--a statue in the gloom. And then Martt--and Zee also, for she uttered a low, suppressed cry--saw what had frightened Eeff. It was about a hundred feet away--a dull, glowing red as though the blood of sunlight were upon it. A thing which might have been a long, blood-red vine. Not animal, but vegetable. It lay on the ground--a great, thick stem, with upflung leafy branches waving like tentacles. At intervals, upon long stalks, were round spots of green light. Gleaming, baleful eyes.