THE ULTIMATE IMAGE By P. SCHUYLER MILLER _The Magnificent Defense Unit of Dampier._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Comet December 40. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] "Mike!" It was Bill Porter's voice. I put one hand on the balustrade and vaulted into the garden. From behind a mass of shrubbery came sounds of a struggle, and Bill's voice rose again. "Mike, you ape! Step on it!" I plowed through where someone had gone before. Bill, his shirtfront awry, his coat-tails torn and muddy, was grappling with a snarling, kicking little man about half his size. As I burst out of the shrubbery, Bill kicked his legs from under him and they went down in the newly spaded earth, Bill on top. Bill Porter weighs a good two hundred pounds. The struggle ended then and there. Bill sat up, one fist clenched in the little man's shirt front. He glared at me out of a rapidly closing eye. "Where in blue blazes have you been?" he demanded. "D'you think I _like_ wrestling with wildcats?" I looked him over. "Didn't make out so well, did you? Lucky he wasn't any bigger, or I _would_ have had to help you. Why pick on a little guy like that? What's he done that you don't like?" He pointed. Light from the reception hall fell through the bushes in irregular patches. In one of them, half buried in the scuffed-up dirt, I caught the glint of polished metal. "Pick it up," Bill said. It was a gun, bigger than the largest six-shooter ever toted by a Hollywood buckaroo. It had a massive stock and the thickest barrel I had ever seen. The whole look of the thing was crazy, like something out of another world. Bill had been scrambling around in the dirt. I saw that blood was oozing from a gash in his neck. Before I could speak he held up a piece of gleaming metal. "Take a look at that," he said grimly. "That's what he wanted to pump into the Ambassador. Only I got it instead--in the neck. Now will you give me a hand with this he-cat before he comes to and starts trying to skin me alive?" I took the thing. It was a steel bolt or arrow of the kind once used in cross-bows, sharpened to a needle point with six razor-edged vanes running back to the hilt. I slipped it into the chubby muzzle of the gun. It was a perfect fit. "That," Bill told me, "is a solenoid-gun--one that works. You've seen a metal core pop out of an electric coil when the juice is snapped on. It's a common laboratory stunt. Well, it's grown up and had pups, and this is one of the nastiest of them. No noise at all--and does that dart travel! It would go through a man like cheese even if he's as thick as His Magnificence yonder."