Jonnie looked at the crowd again. Nobody came forward. Nobody moved. Eerie! There they were across the park, about a hundred yards away. He could make out three Coordinators. They were also just standing there as though rooted.

They looked like people with a gun trained on them. An outdoorsman's instinct caused him to whirl and look back of the plane, back toward the tumbled ruin two hundred yards behind his ship.

Three running figures were racing toward him, blast rifles held low.

They were gray. There were about the size of men. They wore big faceplates.

Tolneps!

They were closing the distance fast. Only seventy-five yards away.

Jonnie started to grab for his belt gun and realized he was holding the AK 47.

He crouched, cocked the weapon, and sent a spray of fire at the figures.

They checked as though surprised. Then they began rushing at him in a crouching run.

The AK 47 slugs had not halted them.

Tolneps! What did he know about Tolneps? He had read the Psychlo manual only a few days ago. Eyes! They were half-blind and without faceplates couldn't see.

He fumbled with the single-shot lever.

They were strung out, the nearest was now only fifty yards, the furthest about sixty.

Jonnie dropped to one knee. He sighted. He squeezed off at the farthest one's faceplate. He shifted to the second. He sighted on the faceplate. He fired.

It had taken too long.

The leading one was almost upon him.

Fangs!

Faceplate!

No time to fire.

Jonnie leaped up and slammed the butt of the AK 47 into the Tolnep's face.

He completed the movement with a slash of the barrel.

The Tolnep didn't go down but he swerved.

Poison fangs. Mustn't get too close.

Jonnie leaped backward, shifting the rifle to his left hand, and drew his belt blast gun.

He fired and fired at point-blank range. The force shots pounded the Tolnep to the ground.

Jonnie walked nearer, still firing. The blast pistol was literally pounding the Tolnep into the ground. Geysers of dust blurred the view.

He hadn't had the handgun on “Flame.” But the sheer force of it had knocked the Tolnep out. The faceplate was shattered; the strange eyes were glazed and rolled up into the head. Obviously knocked out.

The others! Where were they? One was running off toward the high ruined palace, obviously unable to orient himself. The other one was making his way back to something in the tumbled wreck of a building. Jonnie could see the bright nose of a small craft jutting from its hiding place in a rubble cavity.

That one was trying to get back to a ship!

Jonnie leaped up to the cockpit and pulled a blast rifle out of its rack, throwing the AK 47 inside.

Back on the ground he knelt, steadied himself, and fired a single well-aimed shot at the Tolnep trying to get to his ship. No effect!

Jonnie threw the switches to “Flame” and “Maximum.” The Tolnep was inside the ruin, almost to his ship.

Jonnie sighted and squeezed the trigger.

The Tolnep erupted in a pillar of fire!

Swinging to the other one, Jonnie sighted in and squeezed off. A flash as the bolt struck and then a blast of fire as the Tolnep's own rifle exploded.

Jonnie peered at the ship. Nobody else in it apparently. He looked down at the Tolnep at his feet. From insignia he must be an officer.

Getting a safety line from the ship, Jonnie wound the Tolnep up in a tight series of loops and windings and tied the end behind his back. He had not carried a rifle, only a handgun. The shots Jonnie had fired had messed it up but he threw it far away. Then he dragged the Tolnep clear of the ship. Good lord, he was heavy! Jonnie tapped the Tolnep's “flesh.” Like iron.

He looked human but he was so dense no wonder the AK 47 had no effect. The slugs had just glanced off.

He felt the situation was in hand. It had happened too fast for the three escort planes to do anything and they were up there, circling now. He supposed they had been too far behind him to have seen the Tolneps begin their charge.

Jonnie looked around further. Then he was amazed. That crowd was still standing there, a hundred yards in front of the plane, unmoving. Nobody had come forward. He looked up at his own ship. The German copilot was just sitting there staring straight ahead.

Jonnie reached in and grabbed the local radio. “Don't come down here!” he told the other pilots.

That ship over there. Was it about to fire or blow up or something?

Jonnie hefted the blast rifle and, running in a wide detour, approached the ship.

They had certainly hidden it well. They had used a deep recess in the rubble and pushed the ship in until it was invisible from the air, maybe flown it in backward.

He approached it gingerly. It had blast cannon mounted on its nose. It was a bright silver color. It was shaped like a diamond. It had a canopy, now thrown back, that dropped over it to make an air seal. It had places for three and a sort of cargo space in the rear of it.

Jonnie keeping his distance, rocked it with the barrel of the blast rifle. It didn't blow up. It rocked very easily, surprisingly light to carry such heavy beings.

He put his hand on its side to climb into it. The ship was vibrating. Something on it was running.

He peered at the panel. Several lights were blinking. The controls were totally strange. He had no idea what alphabet those letters were part of. He didn't know what kind of power it had beyond the generality in the Psychlo manual that they were usually “solar powered.”

Better not touch those controls. It might take off.

He glanced out at the crowd about three hundred yards away.

They were just standing there, fixed in place.

For a moment he felt sort of fixed in place, too. But maybe that was just battle reaction.

Something in this ship was running! With his hand he traced the vibration. What he thought was a cannon was more than a cannon. It had two barrels, one over the other. The upper barrel had a flare at the “muzzle.”

The lethargy he felt was increasing.

Well, anything that ran had to have power one way or the other. Where was a power cable? He found a big thick one under the panel. It led down to an exposed accumulator.

There was a coil of line in the back of the craft and Jonnie tied it to the cable just above the accumulator connection. He got back, braced himself, and pulled hard.

The cable snapped off the accumulator.

There was a ferocious flash of sparks.

At once, three things happened. The craft stopped vibrating. The lethargy Jonnie had felt vanished. And the whole crowd out there collapsed. They fell to the ground and lay there.

Jonnie tied the cable away from the accumulator so it couldn't short again and then ran out toward the crowd.

As he passed his plane, the German copilot was fumbling his way out of the door. He called something but

Jonnie couldn't hear him.

Reaching the crowd, Jonnie found a Coordinator struggling to his knees. Others were stirring, sitting up groggily. The place was a litter of fallen banners, musical instruments, and odds and ends of what must have been a planned celebration.

The Coordinator's mouth was moving and Jonnie thought the Scot must have lost his voice. He couldn't hear anything the Coordinator was saying. Jonnie turned and saw an escort plane had landed. He hadn't heard that.

Suddenly he realized it was this confounded helmet of Ivan's. Jonnie unfastened the chin strap and got the huge, thick ear pads off his ears.

"... and how did you get here?” the Coordinator was saying.

“I flew in!” said Jonnie, a bit sharply.

“That's my ship right over there!”

“There's a creature on the ground!” said the Coordinator. He was pointing at the tied Tolnep. “How did he get there?”