“Ugh! Let’s get out of this. There’ll be things coming to feed on that carcass. They’ll smell it.”
Evelyn tried to stand, and succeeded. She clung to his hand.
“Do you think you can find the Tube again?”
Tommy was already thinking of that. He grimaced.
“Probably. Back-trail the damned thing. If the flashlight battery holds out. Its tail left plenty of sign for us to follow.”
They started. And Evelyn had literally been forgotten in its agony by the monster which had carried her. Its body, though scaled and warty, was flabby and soft. Pressed against its breast she had been half strangled, but had no injuries beyond huge, purple bruises which had not yet reached the point of stiffness. She followed Tommy gamely, and the need for action kept her from yielding to the reaction from her terror.
For a long, long time they back-trailed. Less than fifteen minutes after leaving the carcass of the thing Tommy had killed, they heard beast-roarings and the sound of fighting. But that noise died away as they traveled. Presently they reached the spot where Tommy had leaped upon a huge living thing. It was gone now, but the impress of a body the thickness of a barrel remained upon the rotted vegetation of the jungle floor. Evelyn shivered when Tommy pointed it out.
“It was large,” said Tommy ruefully. “I didn’t even get a good look it the thing. Probably just as well, though. I might have been—er—delayed. Good Lord! What’s that?”
A light had sprung into being somewhere. It was bright. It was blinding in its brilliance. Coming through the tangled jungle growth, it seemed as if spears of flame shot through the air, irradiating stray patches of scabrous tree-trunk with unbearable light. For an instant the illumination held. Then there was a distant, cracking detonation. The unmistakable explosion of gun-cotton split the air, and its echoes rolled and reverberated through the jungle. The light went out. Then came a thin, high yelling sound which, faint as it was, had something of the quality of hysterical glee. That crazy ululation kept up for several minutes. Evelyn shivered.