But the size was still there! Five to ten feet in wing-spread—and behind, the thin, deadly, whip-like tails.
Rays! The queer creatures that fly bat-like under water—now thundering like giant bats through the air!
There were flying fish wheeling round them like queer rigid birds. They had grown legs like little dragons, and long tails.
A pair of huge eels slid over the rough earth, pulled down a man and fought over the body. Policemen began to appear, and there was a popping of guns. The sirens made a mad skirling above the din.
Some of the rays swooped to the crowded beach. Others came on, scenting human food.
Guns began to crack from the cliff-tops, from the windows of apartment houses. Fallon caught the chatter of sub-machine guns. One of the rays was struck almost overhead.
It went out of control like a fantastic plane and crashed into the hillside, just behind Fallon and the girl. Men died shrieking under its twenty-foot, triangular bulk.
It made a convulsive leap.
The girl slipped in the loose rubble, and lost her hold on Fallon. The broad tentacles on the ray's head closed in like the horns of a half moon, folding the girl in a narrowing circle of death.