But his muscles were all at once like water, his movements as inadequate and slow as only the responses in a dream can be. Desperately, he tried to move faster ... faster.... The face rushed in. He screamed aloud. Then he was falling. Head over heels, he pitched down into depths at once black as night and shining white and shimmering with weird iridescence. The third monster rose out of the mists beneath him. It was a thing of horror beyond the telling, with a body Boone sensed more than he saw. But from that body rose a long and sinuously slender eyestalk, surmounted with a huge human eye. It was the eye that held Boone; for as he stared into it in mute, numb fascination, he knew that it would draw him ever closer till at last the slime-mass that was the body could swirl out and suck him in. A black wave of despair engulfed him. Of a sudden his palms, his whole body, were drenched with sweat. The feeling that he was falling faded. Vaguely, he became aware of roughnesses beneath him. A breeze washed over him and he chilled. Slowly, painfully, he opened his eyes ... stared up into the murk of night. But it was a night that was already dying. Far off to one side, a dim glow marked the coming of the day. Cords of tension fell away. Once again, at last, he lived in a world of reality, not nightmare. He hugged it to him; drew in the chill security of it with gusty, lung-expanding breaths. The grey glow in the distance spread. Weakly, he sat up to look about him--and stared instead into the pale malevolence of a great, baleful, swaying eye! He froze, not daring to move or speak. For the thing before him was the monster of his fever-madness--the eyestalked horror from the dream. Yet he knew--_he knew!_--that he had left delirium's valley. This was reality! Without question, the fever had waned and gone. Then what--? He had no answer. Not here; not now. He could only wait, and hope, and perhaps pray. But while he watched, not daring to so much as flick an eye or move a muscle, the thing before him began to eddy slowly closer. New sweat rilled down Boone's spine. A knot of tension drew tight within his belly. Sinuously, the monster's eyestalk swayed. The huge orb atop stared at Boone unblinking. Stiff-fingered, too fear-straught to even look away, he slid his hands out in arcs along the ground. But they touched no stick, no stone, no clod, no debris. He remained as he had been, a warrior sore beset, without a weapon. And still the monster eddied closer.... He could not even break and run. Weak as he was, he dared not even trust his muscles. Spasmodically, his nails scraped at the dirt. The dirt--! He dug his fingers deep into it ... sucked a ragged breath to ease his hammering heart. Like a serpent poising to strike, the monster paused. The horror that was its body drew together. With a wild shout, Boone hurled the dirt square into the glaring eye. * * * * *