“My God, I don't know!” he husked. “They had some reason for taking us alive.”

The quasi-human horde had seized on Linn Kyle. They were stripping all clothing off the Cloudman's body.

Throaty clamor like the applause of an infernal audience rose loudly as Linn Kyle was now borne forward. Rubbery creatures squatting on the ground beat it with their limbs in a drumming rhythm.

Linn Kyle, struggling wildly, was carried quickly on down the gorge. Then as the horde parted to permit his passage, Gordon glimpsed where they were bearing the Cloudman.

At the center of the gorge, ringed by faintly glowing radioactive rocks, lay a sunken pool twenty yards across. But it was not a pool of water, but of life!

A great, twitching, crawling mass of jelly-like life, heaving and sucking beneath the light of the flaring nebula-sky.

“What is it?” said Lianna. “It looks living!”

The final horror assaulted Gordon's reeling mind. For now he saw the things around the edges of the pool.

Little jelly-like things like miniature human bodies budded out of that mass of viscous life. Some were attached to the main mass by mere threads. One broke free in that moment and came walking uncertainly up the bank.

“God in Heaven!” he whispered. “These creatures come from the pool of life. They're born from it.”

Linn Kyle's screams ripped the din of throaty shouts and drumming rhythm. The rubbery creatures who held the Cloudman tossed his naked body out into the viscous pool.

The Cloudman screamed again, horribly. Gordon turned aside his gaze, retching.

When he looked again, Linn Kyle's body was engulfed by the viscous jelly that swirled hungrily over it. In a few moments the Cloudman was gone, absorbed into the pool of life.

“Lianna, don't look!” Gordon said hoarsely.

He made a mad attempt to free himself. He might as well have been a child in the grasp of those rubbery arms.

But his attempt drew attention to himself. The creatures began to tear away his clothing. He heard Lianna's smothered cry.

Crash of atom-pistols thundered through the infernal din of drumming and shouting. Pellets exploded in blinding fire amid the swarming horde. Rubbery creatures staggered, fell, melted into crawling jelly that promptly flowed back toward the, pool.

“Durk Undis!” yelled Gordon. He had glimpsed the young Cloud-captain's narrow face and blazing eyes, forcing through the horde at the head of his men.

“Get Zarth Arn and the woman, quick!” yelled Durk Undis to his men. “Then back to the wreck.”

Gordon almost admired the ruthless young fanatic, at that moment. Durk Undis had been ordered by Shorr Kan to bring Gordon back to the Cloud, and he'd carry out that order or die trying.

The monstrous horde swirled in crazy uproar, momentarily stunned by the unexpected attack. Gordon wrenched free from the two creatures who still held him. He reached Lianna's side.

It was a crazy chaos of whirling, quasihuman figures and exploding atom-pellets, of Durk Undis' yells and the throaty uproar of the horde.

As the bewildered horde fell back for a moment, Durk Undis and his men blasted the last creatures still around Lianna and Gordon. Next moment, with Gordon and the half-senseless woman in their midst, the Cloudmen hastily retreated back out of the gorge.

“They're coming after us!” yelled one of the men beside Gordon.

Gordon perceived that the ghastly horde had recovered presence of mind. With a hideous throaty clamor, the unhuman mob crashed into the jungle in pursuit.

They made half the distance back to the wreck of the Dendra, before the jungle ahead of them swarmed also with the creatures.

“They're all around us-have cut us off!” Durk Undis exclaimed. “Try to fight through.”

It was hopeless and he knew it, and Gordon knew it. A dozen atom-pistols couldn't hold off that mindless horde for long.

Gordon stood with Lianna behind him, using a clubbed branch he tore from a fallen tree as a bludgeon against the swarming, rubbery attackers. With it, he could at least kill Lianna before they dragged her back to that ghastly pool of life.

The whole nightmare fight was suddenly shadowed by a big black mass dropping down on them from the flaming nebula sky. “It's a ship!” screamed one of the Cloudmen. “One of our ships.”

A phantom-cruiser with the black, blot-like insignia of the Cloud on its bows thundered down upon them with krypton searchlights flaring to light the whole scene.

The rubbery horde retreated in sudden panic. As the cruiser crushed to a landing in the jungle close by, Cloud-soldiers with atom-guns sprang from it.

Gordon, raising Lianna's half-senseless form from the ground, found Durk Undis covering him with an atom-pistol. The newcomers were hastily approaching.

“Holl Vonn!” Durk Undis greeted the stocky, crop haired Cloud-captain who was foremost. “You got here just in time!”

“So it seems,” said Holl Vonn, staring horrifiedly at the viscous living jelly still creeping away from the scene of battle. “What in God's name were those things that were attacking you?”

“They're creatures of this crazy planet,” Durk Undis panted. “I think they were human once-human colonists who mutated under radioactive influence. They've got a strange new reproduction-cycle, being born from a pool of life and going back to it when hurt to be born again.”

He continued swiftly. “That can be told later. The thing now is to get away from here at once. There must already be Empire squadrons searching the whole area west of the nebula.”

Holl Vonn nodded quickly. “Shorr Kan said to bring Zarth Arn and Lianna back to the Cloud at once. We'd better run eastward through the nebula and then beat back southward along the Rim.”

Gordon had revived Manna. She was looking wonderingly at the towering ship and the armed Cloudmen.

“Zarth, what happened? Does this mean-”

“It means that we're going back to the Cloud, to Shorr Kan,” he said hoarsely.

Durk Undis motioned curtly to the new Cloud-ship. “Into the Meric, both of you.”

Holl Vonn suddenly stiffened. “Listen-by Heaven!”

His square face was suddenly livid as he pointed wildly upward.

Four massive shapes were rushing down on them from the nebula-sky. Not phantoms these, but big cruisers with heavy batteries of atom-guns along their sides and with the flaring comet-emblem of the Mid-Galactic Empire on their bows.

“An Empire squadron!” yelled Holl Vonn wildly. “We're trapped here. They've already spotted us.”

Gordon felt sudden wild hope. His desperate expedient had succeeded, had brought one of the searching Empire squadrons to this world!

Chapter XX. Doom Off the Pleiades

DURK UNDIS uttered a raging exclamation as the Empire cruisers swooped from the sky.

“To the ship. We'll cut our way back through them to space.”

“We've not a chance!” cried Holl Vonn, his face deathly as he started to run toward his ship. “They've caught us flat.”

Durk Undis froze for a second, then whipped out his atom-pistol again. He whirled around toward Gordon and Lianna.

The young fanatic's eyes were flaming. “Then we'll finish Zarth Arn and Lianna right here. Shorr Kan's orders-no matter what happens to us, these two must not get back to Throon!”

Gordon lunged at him as he spoke. In the few seconds since the Empire cruisers had appeared, Gordon had realized that in this desperate emergency the Cloudmen would kill himself and Lianna rather than let them escape.

He had bunched himself an instant before Durk Undis swung around with the weapon. He hit the Cloudman like a human projectile. Durk Undis was hurled violently backward.

Holl Vonn was running into his ships shouting orders. As Durk Undis sprawled, Gordon seized Lianna's hand and darted with her into the concealment of the nebula-lit jungle.