It was slithering rapidly at them now, no more than fifty feet away. Its green-swaying eye-beams clung to them. For that instant they were standing stricken with terror. To one side of them there was the brink of an abyss a few yards away, and to the other, and behind them, a ragged little cliff.
"Got to try and climb those rocks!" Mack gasped. "Can't get past that snake thing—we're trapped—"
But Blaine swept him aside. The cylinder was in Blaine's hand now. "This will stop it!" he muttered. "You two—get behind me!"
The monstrous thirty-foot thing was only half its own length away from them now. Then, as its head reared over a projection of the uneven, rocky ground, Blaine carefully aimed the cylinder and fired. But the monster didn't stop! There was no conscious, thinking brain in that ghastly, pulsating crimson head! Just motor-ganglia reacting to the impulses of instinct!
Blaine fired again. But the monster kept on coming and in another second was upon them!
IV
Back in our cave-cell, Shorty and I stared blankly after the figure of the Lei woman, Tahn, as she motioned to the Radak guards who slid our door-panel closed. Again we were alone.
"Well," Shorty murmured. "What do you make of that? The wife of some Lei named Taro, she said."
And that she would come back and try to get us out of here. That her husband had some plan—