His nose curled, and he choked with the stench of the beast's vermin-infested fur. Then, still gripping the coarse hair with one hand, he raised his knife with the other. A quick long slash brought a fearsome scream hissing in his face. He slashed again and again until the probing blade found the beast's heart.

Gore spilled over him as he clung to the now wet hair. It got too slippery to hold. He grabbed the flailing claws as the gasping, thrashing creature plummeted seaward. The bat's body flopped into the water not far from the raft. It beat futilely with one foot, spinning in weakening frothing circles. Suddenly it was dead.

Moljar worked frantically against time. The blood would attract every kind and condition of sea monster. He hacked and strained at the joint where the huge wing joined the body. The stench almost overpowered him as he floundered about. But finally the great ribbed wing came free. Moljar's breath was coming in deep gusts as he dragged himself up onto the raft and pulled part of the wing up after him. He sat on it to anchor it while he rested.

He looked at the girl. She nodded. "You're pretty brave, for a half-breed."

He grunted breathlessly.

She came closer and handed him his blaster. "I burned it away. I burned its ganglia first, which it used for a brain. Then I severed the tendons which fastened it to its float. Anything else?"

Moljar was up again now, hacking at the thick tough surface of one end of the raft. "Yes. Watch that bat wing. Don't let it slide away. It is what we must have to reach Anghore."

"What are you doing now? And what's the wing for?"

He answered carelessly, "I'm going to make us a sail from the wing. It is almost a perfect sail of its kind. I figure the gyro brought us halfway across the sea. Maybe we have a third of the way to go. I have a compass and I saw what direction we were following before we crashed. With a fair wind, and luck, we should reach shore within a day."

She stared with no attempt, now, to conceal her admiration for the barbarian. "For a half-breed," she said, "you've got a brain."

Moljar said nothing. He had finished digging the hole in the surface of the raft. He next cut long strips of leather from his tunic for rigging. The twenty-foot-high leading edge of the bat's wing, a high curving spar, he stepped deeply in the hole, like a mast. Soon 

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