His low incautious movement had betrayed him. From behind him there was a low whistling. A signal! An eager whining snarl instantly resounded to it. Jan had no more than time to whirl and face the sounds when a great bounding grey-green shape was on him!
Jan's shot missed it, and the next second the lunging oblong body struck him. The impact knocked him backward. His gun clattered away. Then the huge, hairless dog-like thing sprawled upon him, its slavering jaws snapping. They found his shoulder as he lunged and the fang-like teeth sank in....
A miracle that Jan could have kept his wits so that he fumbled for his knife as he fell. But suddenly he got it out, stabbed and slashed wildly with it as he rolled and twisted on the ground with the snarling creature on top of him.... And suddenly he was aware that the thing had burst into flame!
It could have been only a few seconds during which Jan fought that weird living fire. It was a wild chaos of horror.... Licking, oozing flames exuding like an aura from the sticky viscous flesh that horribly sprawled upon him. Monstrous ghastly adversary, with flesh that seemed now like burning bubbling rubber, stenching with acrid gas-fumes....
Just a few seconds, then Jan realized that somehow he had broken loose from the jaws that gripped his shoulder. He tried to scramble to his feet. The flames searing his face made him close his eyes. He was holding his breath, choking. His clothes were on fire....
Then the sprawling, lunging body knocked him down again. He was still wildly, blindly slashing with his knife. Vaguely he was aware, over the chaos of snapping snarls, that a human voice nearby with guttural shouts was urging the animal to dispatch its victim. But suddenly—as Jan's knife-blade ripped into its throat—the snarls went into a ghastly, eerie animal scream of agony—a long scream that died into a gurgle of gluey, choking blood-fluid....
Jan was aware that the creature had fallen from him with its flames dying. On the rocks he rolled away from it, with his scorched hands wildly brushing his clothes to extinguish them. Then he was on his feet, staggering, choking, coughing. But his knife, its blade dripping with an oozing flame, still wildly waved.
And then he was aware that twenty feet away, a heavy, grotesque man-like shape was standing with a club and arrow-sling. But with his flame-creature dead and the sight of the staggering, triumphant Jan waving his flaming knife-blade—the watching savage suddenly dropped his club and let out a cry of dismay and fear. And then he ran.
For a moment Jan, wildly, hysterically laughing, went in pursuit. But in the rocky darkness the fleeing savage already had vanished....