With a rush of horror, Nixon realized that these little figures up by his neck were Orite surgeons. Their paraphernalia was mounted there at the base of his throat. The orange light gleamed on their instruments. One who was goggled held a tiny circular blade. It whirled with a faint humming; a revolving knife, electronically heated. Nixon could feel its radiating heat on the skin of his throat as the surgeon held it poised. Vivisection! Nona and Loto had been right. Tork at last had persuaded the Orite leaders to order this. "Wait!" Nixon muttered. He was still dazed, bathed with the sweat of weakness. "Where is Frane? Get Frane!" This damnable roaring in his head made everything seem so blurred and far away. Nixon's eyelids drooped, but he opened them, fighting the drowsiness. And it seemed that his head was clearing. The shock of the violet bolt had knocked him into temporary unconsciousness. But now the poison, or the drug, was wearing off. If he could stall this for a time-- It was a vague, formless thought that he knew was hopeless. "Frane," he said again. "Get Frane." "He is not needed," Tork's suave voice said. From the ground beside Nixon, Frane's voice sounded. He was talking in his own language, angrily expostulating. Then he called, in English, "I tell them this is not necessary." "But your success with the drug is postponed too long," one of the Orite leaders said. "Tork says you are doing your best, but--" "I will succeed within another night," Frane desperately promised. "One more experiment--" Surely the aged scientist was doing what he could to stall this. But they had lost confidence in him. He should have used the panther, and then this giant man long ago. Frane was a brilliant chemist, but he had no qualities of dominating leadership. "Only this can help you," the leader said. His voice carried finality. He gestured, added a command in the Orite language to the surgeons. Nixon could feel the figures on his neck moving to begin their gruesome work on the prone, half-conscious giant. But Nixon was more conscious, stronger now than they realized. He strained at the cables, but found that he could move far less than when he had been bound on the Spaceship. His head could shift a little so that he could glance sidewise, but that was all. "Stop it!" he gasped suddenly. "You damn little butchers--" He'd frighten them with his voice. Roaring, bellowing and twisting his head. That was all he could think of to do.... The end of Allen Nixon.... A vision of the rippleless Florida bayou, his brother Ralph, their cabin under the grey oaks and cedars came to him.... Then suddenly, out in the moonlit distance of the rock-slope between the pyramid-cities, cries were sounding. The surgeons on Nixon's neck stood tense, peering, listening. A turmoil of wild cries sounded off there. It spread to the cities. Cries, then Orites screaming. And in another moment a huge tawny shape came leaping from the shadows. The panther!