After a seeming eternity he saw motion, saw the rifle muzzle swing up. The shot was deafening in his ear, but it was an immeasurable relief. As it echoed the _currupira's_ voice was abruptly silent. In the bushes ahead there was a rending of branches, a frantic slithering movement of a huge body. They followed the noises in a sort of frenzy, plunging toward them heedless of thorns and whipping branches. The flashlight stabbed and revealed nothing. Out of the shadows a bass croaking came again, and Thwaite fired twice at the sound and there was silence save for a renewed flurry of cracking twigs. Along the water's edge, obscured by the trees between, moved something black and huge, that shone wetly. Thwaite dropped to one knee and began firing at it, emptying the magazine. They pressed forward to the margin of the slough, feet squishing in the deep muck. Dalton played his flashlight on the water's surface and the still-moving ripples seemed to reflect redly. Thwaite was first to break the silence. He said grimly, "Damned lucky for me you got here when you did. It--_had_ me." Dalton nodded without speaking. "But how did you know what to do?" Thwaite asked. "It wasn't my discovery," said the linguist soberly. "Our remote ancestors met this threat and invented a weapon against it. Otherwise man might not have survived. I learned the details from the Martian records when I succeeded in translating them. Fortunately the Martians also preserved a specimen of the weapon our ancestors invented." He held up the little reed flute and the archeologist's eyes widened with recognition. Dalton looked out across the dark swamp-water, where the ripples were fading out. "In the beginning there was the voice of evil--but there was also the music of good, created to combat it. Thank God that in mankind's makeup there's more than one fundamental note!" End of Project Gutenberg's The Record of Currupira, by Robert Abernathy