But Queex knew what it was doing all right, Ali’s fingers closed on Dane’s arm in a pincher grip as painful as if he had been equipped with the horny armament of the Hoobat.

Something, a flitting shadow, had rounded one vat and was that much closer to the industrious fiddler on the floor.  By some weird magic of its own the Hoobat was calling its prey to it.

Scrape, scrape—­the unmusical performance continued with monotonous regularity.  Again the shadow flashed—­one vat closer.  The Hoobat now presented the appearance of one charmed by its own art—­sunk in a lethargy of weird music making.

At last the enchanted came into full view, though lingering at the round side of a container, very apparently longing to flee again, but under some compulsion to approach its enchanter.  Dane blinked, not quite sure that his eyes were not playing tricks on him.  He had seen the almost transparent globe “bogies” of Limbo, had been fascinated by the weird and ugly pictures in Captain Jellico’s collection of tri-dee prints.  But this creature was as impossible in its way as the horrific blue thing dragging it out of concealment.

It walked erect on two threads of legs, with four knobby joints easily detected.  A bulging abdomen sheathed in the horny substance of a beetle’s shell ended in a sharp point.  Two pairs of small legs, folded close to the much smaller upper portion of its body, were equipped with thorn shack terminations.  The head, which constantly turned back and forth on the armor plated shoulders, was long and narrow and split for half its length by a mouth above which were deep pits which must harbor eyes, though actual organs were not visible to the watching men.  It was a palish gray in color—­which surprised Dane a little.  His memory of the few seconds he had seen it on the Captain’s desk had suggested that it was much darker.  And erect as it was, it stood about eighteen inches high.

With head turning rapidly, it still hesitated by the side of the vat, so nearly the color of the metal that unless it moved it was difficult to distinguish.  As far as Dane could see the Hoobat was paying it no attention.  Queex might be lost in a happy dream, the result of its own fiddling.  Nor did the rhythm of that scraping vary.

The nightmare thing made the last foot in a rush of speed which reduced it to a blur, coming to a halt before the Hoobat.  Its front legs whipped out to strike at its enemy.  But Queex was no longer dreaming.  This was the moment the Hoobat had been awaiting.  One of the sawing claws opened and closed, separating the head of the lurker from its body.  And before either of the men could interfere Queex had dismembered the prey with dispatch.

“Look there!” Dane pointed.

The Hoobat held close the body of the stranger and where the ashy corpse came into contact with Queex’s blue feathered skin it was slowly changing hue—­as if some of the color of its hunter had rubbed off it.