his whole body.

Outside the ship, through the glass, not three feet away, two eyes as big as his head were gazing down into the lighted cabin. Red-pupiled, glowing like neon, they rolled slowly in their great sockets and came to focus directly upon him.

Flint didn't move. He couldn't. Around the eyes was a six-foot mass of black hair. Between them, two gaping holes in a black rubber-like mound was a nose. Above this lay the furrowed folds of a mouth with teeth like elephant tusks. The hairy face was upsidedown; the thing was above the ship, peering in at its occupants.

Slowly, as Flint stared at the face, gray droplets like fog formed on the glass and obscured the thing. For a second, it was gone from sight. Then, as quickly as it had disappeared, the fog melted in the wind outside and the face began to reappear. The thing was breathing; the fog was the moisture of its breath. But in that second of obliteration—an eternity it seemed, though the woman's scream still echoed in Flint's ears—one thought seared itself on his numb brain.

Space bat.

The plane bucked, plunged straight down, away from the bat. But the bat, like its much smaller brothers, was not to be eluded on the wing. Like a black cloud with its hundred-foot wingspread, it fell off on one wing, dived after them.

It was upon the plane again with two sweeps of its mighty wings. Its teeth clashed like a rock crusher—Flint heard it through the ship's two-foot thick walls—and as it missed, it overshot the plane, swept past them. Instantly it whirled around, hurtled back.

"Radio for help!" The lawyer's voice was shrill. He sat there wringing his hands. Sweat glistened on the fur expert's bald head. The woman clutched the arms of her seat, eyes huge. Then the bat was on them again.

Flint did the only thing possible. He dived again. But that was a mistake. The bat had learned that trick. It also dived. At the same instant.

Flint threw his weight on the control lever.

The bony claw on one wing caught the plane a glancing blow midway its length, sent it spinning end over end. And, when Flint's darting hands leveled it off again, it cut around in a wild circle, out of control. The bulge on the port wall of the cabin said the port fuel pump was smashed.

And the bat circled to come at them again.

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