"Hai, Disbro!" he trumpeted, as loudly as any Skygor. "Max! It's David Planter! Run while you have the chance, I'll pick those toads off!"

But neither of his friends offered to escape. They only stood and gazed at him.

"You idiots!" blazed Planter, and then saw that two of the Skygors on the inflated boat were aiming weapons at him. He sent a silver pen at their craft, and it melted abruptly as its air escaped from the puncture. A third shot took one of the Skygors splashing in the water. "Run, you two!" Planter bade his companions once more.

He felt a grip on his ankle, and glanced down. Mara had crouched low, was trying to pull him back from view. As soon as she had his eye, she let him go, and thrust both fingers into her ears in some sort of a sign he did not comprehend.

Understanding dawned suddenly, and too late.

The mist trembled and swirled at a sudden outburst of sound louder than even a Skygor chorus. Planter dropped his weapon, began to lift his hands to his ears in imitation of Mara. But he could not!

The noise possessed him, as a rush of electric current might course through a body, paralyzing and agonizing it. He swayed and floundered among the branches. His hair bristled, his ears rang, his blood coursed, every fiber of him vibrated. Yet something about it was vaguely familiar, as though it was something he had experienced, or a magnification of such a something.

Yes, of course ... the uneasiness that Mara called the "spell." Some device made a noise-vibration, normally sub-audible but unpleasant enough to warn aliens away. In a time like this, when attack came, it could be intensified to the point of striking the enemy stupid.

Meanwhile, he was falling, through branches and leafage, to splash clumsily into the water of the pool. Abruptly the noise ceased. The Skygors were around him, their flipper-hands fastening upon him, and he was too wrung out, too grateful for silence, to resist.

He may have fainted. Later on, he could not be sure. But his next clear memory was of lying in one of the inflated paddle-boats, in which sat Skygors with weapons. There also sat Disbro, watching him intently.

"Disbro!" muttered Planter. "They got you, too?"

"No, they didn't get me, too," mimicked Disbro. "I'm in the racket with them, 

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