rolled itself a few feet away. Atwood found that he was in the mouth of the cave. Ah-li shoved him, and he was outside.

"You jump—now!"

The huge, screaming, saffron ball lunged for them. With his hand gripping hers, they jumped, sailed together in a flat arc over the monster and landed fifty feet behind it. Atwood, who had fallen, picked himself up. At the mouth of the cave the huge round ball, with new tentacles growing upon it, stood seemingly confused by the escape of its prey. Then, growling with a low sullen murmur, suddenly it rolled itself back into the darkness of the recess. Lurking, with only the reflected light of it at the opening to show that it was there.

Panting, still with horror making him shudder, Atwood followed the girl. They skirted an edge of waving forest growth, descending a rocky declivity. Open rocky space was to the left of them now, with a little line of hillocks. Ahead, at a lower level, the glow of the purple Xarite-radiance was a big patch in the darkness. And now in the patch, Atwood could see what seemed a weird little human settlement. Clusters of low, mound-shaped dwellings of rocks and mud and grass. The semblance of crooked little streets. The purple glow bathed it—a half mile, irregular patch. And beyond it and to the sides, there was only blank darkness.

"That is Marla," Ah-li was saying. "We shall have to put the light-force up now for the season of the growing of genes. The time has come."

With his questions, she tried to make it clear. The radiance off there which enveloped the little settlement was inherent to the ground itself. Most of the Marlans of this little world lived here. And those others who were nearby, now at the season of the growing of the genes, would come flocking into the glow. A few days, a week or two; and then the genes would die away until the next cycle of their growth. But even this natural glow was not sufficient to hold them off, so that the Marlans set up around their settlement what Ah-li called a light-fence. A sort of barrage; a few hundred little braziers of Xarite, set at intervals on the ground, their spreading glow mingling one with the other, encircling the village. A barrage which no gene would dare pass.

"I see," Atwood murmured. "But Ah-li, where do you get that Xarite? Near here?"

"Oh, yes." She gestured toward the dark little line of hills off to the left. "It is there. Most of it, in grottos underground. You see, it is not far."

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