* * * * * Nixon gasped. Then his roar held his mingled horror and a queer sort of triumph. "So now you've got something else to worry about!" he shouted. "There it is--mean and hungry. Take a look at that critter, you damn butchers, and see what you're going to do about it!" The panther was loose. Nixon remembered now, how Loto had said it was in a cave with a purple barrage barring the entrance. Loto and Nixon had never thought of it--that when Loto pulled the barrage-switch, for that moment the panther's barrage had blacked out the same as Nixon's! Tork was stammering, "Why I--I sent men to verify that it was still there! The darkness of the cave--the barrage was only off for a moment--they must have thought--" "Well, it isn't there, it's here!" Nixon roared. "Go ahead--carve me up, if that panther gives you time!" It was the supreme catastrophe, that raging tawny beast loose among the scurrying, tiny human figures. The screams were horrible as it pounced on a group of them who were trying to reach the shelter of one of the pyramids. With sunken sides showing its ribs and madly lashing tail, the panther gobbled up the tiny figures. Orite humans, each of them hardly a mouth. Then with another leap, the great amber-eyed cat was pouncing again. A line of Gorts with suicidal willingness to attack, stood their ground as it came at them. A sweep of its huge paw knocked them away. Around Nixon, for those few horrible seconds, the Orites stood stricken. "Go ahead," Nixon said. "Kill it. Why don't you folks kill it? If you don't it sure as shooting will kill you." Now the beast seemed to see the giant figure lying here in the orange glare. It stood with bared fangs and red-rimmed eyes. Then a rush of Gorts distracted it, so that it turned and leaped over them. Down on the ground beside Nixon, the crowd of Orites were milling around in terror. The surgeons and their assistants were trying to get down the little ladder at his side. "You can't kill it!" Nixon roared. "But _I_ can. Turn me loose, you little fools!" He strained at his bonds. Life or death now, for himself as well as hundreds of them. Nixon knew it. That panther would be here any minute, ripping him apart. "You can kill it?" Frane gasped from the ground beside him. "I'll damn sure try!" Frane shouted at the panic-stricken Orite leaders. And suddenly in their emergency they trusted him. Gorts came rushing, casting loose the chains so that in a moment Nixon was staggering up. The chains fell from him with a thin clatter. For a moment dizziness swept him, but then it passed. He was free. And to Nixon of the bayous freedom was strength. Off across the moonlit slope, strewn with dead and dying Orites, the panther was crouching. Its purring snarl mingled with the lashing of its tail as it saw Nixon rise up. Then with a roar it leaped at him.