After feeling through the darkness along this street for perhaps a thousand yards, my greatest worry being to avoid the creatures who emerged suddenly now and then from the doors along it, I was aware of a still narrower street that branched from it. I took this way, and soon realized that in this narrower way were few of the darkness creatures, they taking the broader streets that crossed the city. I met but one or two of the things in several thousand feet of progress along the street, and though it was harder to elude them in the narrower way I began to feel more confidence. It was that confidence that undid me, for as I passed the door of a building without my usual precautions there emerged suddenly from it one of the great creatures who collided squarely with me.
For an instant the thing must have been even more surprised than I was, and before it could realize what had happened I had flung myself upon it, for well I realized that flight would not serve me now.
My hands sought in vain for a hold upon the smooth, cold body, even as its own great flap-like arms wrapped themselves around me. The thing seemed to have no head or neck whatever, and was almost featureless also. But by the merest chance my hands in that first instant fell upon a narrow aperture in the cold flesh of the upper part of the body. Instantly I closed my hand over it, and as a strangled flute-cry came from it I realized that I had found the monster's mouth. Holding tightly to it and encircling its great body with my other arm I wrestled wildly with it there in the darkness of the narrow street as it sought to shake me off.
The strength of its flap-arms was tremendous, but they were impeded by the fact that I had partly pinned them against its body. Yet it was whirling me this way and that with tremendous force, against the walls and paving of the street.
Nothing but choking sounds came from it, though, and I realized that the creature was air-breathing even as I was and that my hold upon its mouth-aperture was throttling it. Desperately I clung to retain the hold, and with a strength as desperate the great thing tried to tear me loose. I knew that a single cry would bring a swarm of the things to the aid of this one, and the knowledge steeled my muscles. The wild threshing of the creature seemed rapidly lessening, and in moments more my strangling hold had done its work and with a few convulsive jerks the monster went limp and dead.
I straightened from it, panting, then froze with renewed terror. Along the narrow street other steps were approaching me, somewhat lighter steps that were moving carefully as though in investigation, halting now and then. As they came level with me they halted again, and I held my breath. But in the next instant came the sound of the steps coming straight toward me!
With something like a cry of despair on my lips I threw myself forward at the approaching one through the darkness. I knew myself discovered, expected, even as I leaped, the flute-like cry that would bring the hordes in the neighboring streets upon me. But to my utter amazement, my hands grasped not another cold and bulky-bodied creature of darkness but a tall, erect man-like form that was making no resistance to me! I felt short, flat bat-like wings behind that body, felt a man-like head with big-beaked countenance, and then felt two muscular arms grasping my shoulders while a voice whispered tensely in my ear in the tongue of the galaxy.
"Quiet!" it whispered. "Another sound will bring them here from the other street!"
"You-" I stammered. "You're from the galaxy outside-you speak its tongue-but how in this darkness-"
"Not now!" the other warned. "I'll explain in a moment, but now we've got to get out of this street and get this dead thing out before it's discovered. Here-this way-"