edge of the square it vanished. Jan waited, but it didn't land on the other side. It had simply ceased to exist!

Jan looked thoughtful for a moment. He turned and went back to the patch of blackberry bushes. Taking his long slim blade from its deerskin scabbard he cut a long, tough stick, trimming the younger shoots away. With this he returned to the calmly glistening, mysterious slab.

Ready to drop his hold on the stick at the first sign of the unusual, he thrust it part way into the area where things vanished. The end of the stick disappeared. There was no sign of any force creeping along the stick to his hand. He waited, reassuring himself. Then he stuck the stick in a little farther and it vanished a little farther along toward his hand.

He held it that way, his nostrils flaring with tenseness. Then slowly he drew the stick back. The vanished part of it returned to sight. It came out and was not changed in the least.

He sniffed at it. It smelled no different than it should. He felt of it carefully. It felt normal.

Reassured, he thrust it into the area of vanishment again. He pulled it out again. It delighted him to watch it vanish and reappear. He laughed gleefully. The deer was forgotten in the excitement of this strange game in the shadow of the crumbling bridge.

Suddenly the vanished end of the stick jerked in his hand. In spontaneous alarm he pulled toward him. The stick came unwillingly. Something held it.

Terrified, Jan dug his heels in the turf and pulled. Slowly inch by inch, the stick reappeared. But with it appeared a fat, pale hand, followed by a sleeved arm.

Jan slapped at the hand and pulled harder. The hand hung on grimly. Another hand appeared, gripping the slowly emerging arm. It fingered its way up the sleeve until it too gripped the stick.

Jan let go and sprang back several feet. He hesitated, ready to flee.

When he let go of the stick the hands dropped to the ground. The fat fingers dug into the sod and hung on. A bloated face came into sight and drew back into nothing once more.

The face appeared again and stayed, flushed with exertion. Little by little the face was followed by a neck, shoulders, and a thick torso. The last to appear was two short legs.

The figure stood up shakily. It was covered by a brown uniform. Although Jan did not know it, this was the uniform of a field marshal.

The pig like eyes in the fat face blinked at him stupidly, then turned to survey the ruined city.

Jan recognized the newcomer for a man, though he had never seen one with such a shape. Vaguely he wondered how such a man could catch wild animals,—and if he couldn't, how he could eat enough to have grown up.

The man was even more of an enigma to Jan than the glistening square. And he might be dangerous.

Jan had wandered far in his brief lifetime. Nowhere had he found more than a handful of other wandering nomads, all like him in build; long of limb, lithe and powerful of shoulder, able to run swiftly all day without tiring.

This man, if man it was, came no higher than Jan's heart. He obviously wouldn't be able to run faster than the exceedingly rare, short-legged pig that became so fat when it grew up.

The man turned his fat face back toward Jan. The look in the small eyes made Jan's hand steal toward his sheathed knife. The eyes saw that movement. They narrowed cruelly. A sneer appeared on the bloated lips.

Suddenly a fat hand darted down to a lumpy object on the man's hip and drew out a squat blue object. It came up. Jan could see a dark hole in it. He stared curiously.

Unconsciously he had drawn his knife as the man drew the strange object. His keen nostrils brought him the smell of sweat that has the odor of a tense body. His hunting instinct told him this creature was going to charge.

Jan felt something hot touch his left shoulder. With it came the sound of a sharp report. The strange thing in the man's hand buckled queerly.