with the Garros of the cone city of Rhilg.

"We must leave these trees, Besan," Nard Rost shouted, his voice jolting the Earthman back to reality.

The tree was jolting and swaying as the mighty press of saurian juggernauts lumbered madly beneath. Inevitably it would be torn from its roots if the stampede continued. Nor was there any apparent end to the green-crested flood that rolled out of the northern purplish horizon.

"Think you can climb now, Relsa?"

The blonde-striped head of the girl nodded. Her deep blue eyes smiled into his own purple-tattooed ones.

"Forest widens out that way." Nard Rost's muscular arm pointed out the north-western loom of hills and the belt of vine-festooned trees linking them with it. "That's our road."

"Hills of Cratur, aren't they?" Besan's voice was tense. He had seen some of the reddish-haired bearlike brutes captured there by Rhilg hunters. They were unlovely elephantine creatures.

"Yes." Nard Rost's answer was short. He had knotted a slender rubbery liana around his waist and now he passed its pliant length to Besan and the girl.

A moment later they were creeping carefully out along a pitching branch's narrowing path, their bodies linked by the slim rope of vine.

Two trees—three trees—they had reached a clump of three interlocking giants when the trees they had first climbed went grinding over and were swallowed up. A moment later another tree toppled drunkenly and the dark avalanche of saurian flesh flowed over it.

Underneath their feet the broken bodies of denars heaped higher and higher until a temporary island of mauled bloody flesh fended off the stampeding herd's all-but resistless current.

"Do we stay here?" gasped the girl.

Besan shook his head. "We aren't safe until we reach the hills," he told her. "The pressure is increasing as their broken bodies heap up and these node trees are brittle."

Already Nard Rost was leading off. The girl was between them and Besan saw her shudder as she glanced downward into the roaring death. Her shoulders stiffened and she smiled faintly back at him.

"Come along," she said, shouting the words, "or must we drag 

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