Ghor broke off suddenly. His head turned toward a grove of the enemy stalks directly below. Two of the stalks had bent close to the ground, placing their bulbs beneath the roots of a third. Suddenly the bent stalks straightened, catapulting the third stalk into the air, like an arrow toward the three floating men.
Mick's gun blasted the stalk and it withered in flame in mid-air.
But other stalks were shooting toward them now.
Ghor was struggling desperately.
"Let me go!" he whispered. "Turn loose of my arm. Remember, the gravity here will not let me fall faster than you."
Ghor suddenly wrenched loose. From a pocket of his spacesuit flashed a knife.
"Stop!" It was Alf who first sensed Ghor's intention, but his action was too slow to stop what followed.
The knife slashed through the fabroid spacesuit, deep into the neck of the asteroid man. A spray of red blood shot into the airless sky.
A curious sort of tremor seemed to shake the stalks below. The reddish spray seemed to strike fear into the waving buds. The living forest pushed back away from the spray of human blood.
When the men dropped to the ground the Ngyes were retreating.