and flipped upward; the alien, squawking, reached for the headgear, just too late. It clanged on the sidewalk. Bill wrapped himself around the steel-tough torso. He knew nothing of brawling, but he was as slippery as an oiled eel. The green man groped for him and he was somewhere else. Terrible hands groped to tear his head from his body, and Bill was a human cummerbund, folded around the waist of the thing and punching desperately for a vulnerable spot. Then he had flattened up along its back and had a half-nelson on the thick throat.

The greenie drew his weapon. Bill did a contortionist trick and booted it out of his hand.

Trace climbed out of the pine tree, swearing bluely.

Slough appeared just before the alien, who tensed his arms to grip the tiny man. Slough was no more than three feet off, well within reach and full in the glare of the fallen helmet's lamp; yet the one-eyed marauder did not catch him. Bill had forced him to his knees. The huge round eye glared across at Slough, while the thing appeared to wait for something unguessable to happen. Slough swung his good arm and caught the brute a healthy crack on the jaw. With a bird's cry, high and ferocious, like the wail of an eagle who has sighted on a rabbit and seen it turn into a wolf, the greenie jerked his head back and staggered to his two-toed feet.

Trace came in like Joe Louis at Tony Galento. He put a fist into the rigid belly and it smashed in like so much well chewed bubble gum. Then he pasted the alien in the throat, pulling his punch just enough so as not to shove the spine through the nape of the neck. Last, as the alien was toppling over, he unleashed the left uppercut which had won him seventy bouts in two years. The greenie flipped up his face and stared sightlessly at the black sky for an instant, whereafter he crumpled into a heap that would never get up and walk away under its own power if it lay there till the crack of doom.

The three friends panted a little at each other.

"Swell captive you have there," said Bill at last. "A lot he'll tell you, Sarge. I heard eighteen distinct bones bust when you biffed him that last one."

"Have to catch another," said Trace irritably. "Damn!"

"And here it comes, at the double," said Slough.

A light bobbed a block away. Bill gestured at the fallen helmet. "Look at that, a regular searchlight." The beam was reaching up to flicker on low-hanging clouds. Its source of power must be 

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