jungles of Io. Tsith hound or no, he had an unerring instinct for direction. He was sure the foothills couldn't be far ahead. But he must have a weapon!

  silent dark shadow floated down. He glimpsed a razor-clawed reptilian body, ten feet from wing to wing, its serpentine neck darting wickedly. Latham threw himself aside as the tremendous whirr of wings beat the air above his head. Close upon it came three others, and Latham hit the mud. Looking back, he saw that one of the creatures in its mad rush had hurtled into a giant fern, impaling itself upon a four-foot thorn where it hung, screaming raucously as its life-fluid ebbed away.

Latham crawled from the spot. Reaching another fern, he managed to climb high enough to tear away one of the thorns. It was crude, but it would serve as a weapon!

He was realizing his error now. He should have gone by the outer route. He would never reach the gweel village ahead of Kueelo and the Jovian, if indeed he reached it at all! Danger and death lay everywhere about him. Time and again those serpentine shapes winged down, silent and unwarning. He fended them off. Twice he speared them, saw ocherous blood spill from their shiny integument. Other times he wasn't so lucky, as sharp claws left a row of furrows in his back. The miasmic yellow fog bit deep into his wounds.

Hours resolved into a nightmare of mud and heat and battle. Other creatures crossed his path or curved at him from out of the tangled fronds. He was becoming awfully weak, but a terrible madness lay across Latham's mind like a patina, driving him on. Through feverish turmoil, through waves of heat and pain and nausea that encompassed the universe, Joel Latham pursued his course.

He never remembered the end. He never remembered coming out of that deadly jungle. He pressed with his palms against moist earth, and thought he must have been lying there for some time. His left arm was shredded. His back was shredded. Inside his clothes he felt the warm stickiness of his own blood. Outside his clothes was other substance which he knew wasn't his blood.

Something long and shiny lay beneath his hands. The thorn! He clutched at it frantically.

He felt if he could just lie there a moment, strength would come back to him. But he didn't lie there. He tottered to his feet, and just a few yards ahead the foothills sheered up and away from the jungle.

Every step was an agony. He followed along the foothills, trying to find the gweel village. He had to find it! That much he remembered. A tiny Martian and a brute of a Jovian were there, and they had something that belonged to him. He had quite forgotten now what it was, but it meant something to him, he knew, it meant a great deal.

He came upon the village, a cluster of clay huts high upon an escarpment. Latham began climbing. He had to be careful now, something pounded that warning into his brain. He saw groups of frail, pallid-faced gweels moving about. They were harmless enough, Latham knew that; but if those other two were here—

He reached the level of the village and moved nearer, staying behind rocks and clumps of growth. Then he saw Kueelo! The Martian huddled beside an open fire, stirring some substance in a huge gourd. As Latham watched, Kueelo opened a leather pouch at his waist and took something out. The Josmian! He held it up to the flickering firelight, and the purple sheen of the gem was no more brilliant than the gleeful look that appeared in Kueelo's yellowish eyes.

In that instant Latham almost leaped forward, but a tightness in his temples stopped him. The distance was too great. And the Jovian must be somewhere about! Quick surprise was his only chance. His gaze roved up to the steepening cliff behind the village, and he saw the way.

Still clutching the thorn-weapon, he followed a little ravine up to a rocky