with swamp-rats in the slow, watery dawn. They were ranged in a solid mass along the edges of the moat, and the fort's guns were silent MacIan wondered why, until he saw that the dam that furnished power for the turbine had been broken down.

Thekla laughed silently. "My idea, MacIan. The Nahali would never have thought of it themselves. They can't drown, you know. I showed them how to sneak into the reservoir, right under the fort's guns, and stay under water, loosening the stones around the spillway. The pressure did the rest. Now there's no power for the big guns, nor the conductor rods in the moat."

He turned feral black eyes on MacIan. "You've made a fool of yourself. You can't stop those swamp-rats from tearing the fort apart. You can't stop me from getting away, after they're through. You can't stop Lehn from thinking what he does. You haven't changed anything by these damned heroics!"

"Heroics!" said MacIan hoarsely, and laughed. "Maybe." With sudden viciousness he threw the end of the linked belts over a low liha-branch, so that Thekla had to stand on tiptoe to keep from strangling. Then, staring blindly at the beleagured fort, he tried to beat sense out of his throbbing head.

"There was something," he whispered. "Something I was saying back in the swamp. Something my mind was trying to tell me, only I was delirious. What was it, Thekla?"

The Martian was silent, the bloody grin set on his dark face. MacIan took him by the shoulders and shook him. "What was it?"

Thekla choked and struggled as the metal halter tightened. "Nothing, you fool! Nothing but Nahali and liha-trees."

"Liha-trees!" MacIan's fever-bright eyes went to the great green pollen-pods hung among the broad leaves. He shivered, partly with chill, partly with exultation. And he began like a madman to strip Lehn and Thekla of their rubber coveralls.

Lehn's, because it was larger, he tented over two low branches. Thekla's he spread on the ground beneath. Then he tore down pod after pod from the liha-tree, breaking open the shells under the shelter of the improvised tent, pouring out the green powder on the groundcloth.

When he had a two-foot pile, he stood back and fired a bolt of electricity into the heart of it.

Thick, oily black smoke poured up, slowly at first, then faster and faster as the fire took hold. A 

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