“Give it to him!” That was Rip shouting encouragement from his own place farther along the reef.

Dane pressed the firing stud again and again.  The claws waved as the monstrosity slavered from a gaping frog’s mouth, a mouth which was fanged with a shark’s vicious teeth.  It was almost wholly out of the water, creeping on a crab’s many legs, with a clawed upper limb reaching for him, when suddenly it stopped, its huge head turning from side to side in the sheltering carapace of scaled natural armor.  It settled back as if crouching for a final spring—­a spring which would push Dane into the ocean.

But that attack never came.  Instead the gorp drew in upon itself until it resembled an unwieldy ball of indestructible armor and there it remained.

The Salariki on either side of Dane let out cries of triumph and edged closer.  One of them twirled his net suggestively, seeing that the Terran lacked what was to him an essential piece of hunting equipment.  Dane nodded vigorously in agreement and the tough strands swung out in a skillful cast which engulfed the motionless creature on the reef.  But it was so protected by its scales that there was no opening for the claw knife.  They had made a capture but they could not make a kill.

However, the Salariki were highly delighted.  And several abandoned their posts to help the boys drag the monster ashore where it was pinned down to the beach by stakes driven through the edges of the net.

But the hunting party was given little time to gloat over this stroke of fortune.  The gorp killed by Groft and the one stunned by Dane were only the van of an army and within moments the hunters on the reef were confronted by trouble armed with slashing claws and diabolic fighting ability.

The battle was anything but one-sided.  Dane whirled, as the air was rent by a shriek of agony, just in time to see one of the Salariki, already torn by the claws of a gorp, being drawn under the water.  It was too late to save the hunter, though Dane, balanced on the very edge of the reef, aimed a beam into the bloody waves.  If the gorp was affected by this attack he could not tell, for both attacker and victim could no longer be seen.

But Ali had better luck in rescuing the Salarik who shared his particular section of reef, and the native, gashed and spurting blood from a wound in his thigh, was hauled to safety.  While the gorp, coiling too slowly under the Terran ray, was literally hewn to pieces by the revengeful knives of the hunter’s kin.

The fight broke into a series of individual duels carried on now by the light of the torches as the evening closed in.  The last of the purple patches had burned away to nothing.  Dane crouched by his standard torch, his eyes fastened on the sea, watching for an ominous vee of ripples betraying another gorp on its way to launch against the rock barrier.

There was such wild confusion along that line of water sprayed rocks that he had no idea of how the engagement was going.  But so far the gorp showed no signs of having had enough.