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and dropping to one knee. "I'll hold them off. They can outflank us all here."
    "May I suggest, Captain, that three phasers—"
    "Get moving, Mr. Spock!" The first officer hesitated, then turned and ran with McCoy for the cave. His phaser still set to stun, Kirk fired at the nearest of the loathsome apparitions. It yelped once before folding up on the ground.
    That was the signal for the rest of the pack to split up. Sinister rustlings and cracklings began to sound on both sides. Kirk fired again, dropping one lean shape that showed against the green on his right. He couldn't hope to get them all—they would come too often from too many directions.
    He saw movement out of the corner of an eye and whirled to find Spock and McCoy racing back toward him.
    "I thought I told you two to set up your defense in the cave!" he said angrily.
    Spock's phaser beam shot past him to knock the legs out from under one of the creatures that had crawled to within jumping distance of the captain. The animal quivered and was still.
    "There is a small problem," he explained smoothly.
    "A large problem," corrected McCoy, turning to point back the way they had come and simultaneously firing at a low shape.
    With Spock and the doctor covering, Kirk was able to divert his attention long enough to peer back down the path through the jungle. From here the cave entrance was barely visible, a dark shadow beneath the looming, fern-studded cliff.
    Something was coming out of that cave.
    It slid sinuously along the soft soil, emerging from the recesses of the cave like a worm from an apple. It was massive, reptilian, and two-headed. Further description called for extreme adjectives Kirk had no time to dwell on.
    "Stay together—and keep backing up toward it," he ordered tightly.
    "Jim . . .!" McCoy started to protest.
    "No time to argue, Bones—do it!"
    McCoy looked anxious but took up a position alongside the captain. Spock was already firing from his other side. As the pack started to emerge from the forest, the officers kept retreating toward the cave—and toward the horror that was coming out to meet them . . .

II
    It reached the point where McCoy decided he would rather turn his phaser on himself. "Jim . . . we can't keep . . ."
    He didn't even have time to argue any more, so tight had the pack closed in. Not only that, but it turned out that the resistance of the doglike creatures to the phaser beams was considerable. The beams knocked them out, but those first stunned were back on their feet again and once more closing in for the kill.
    "When I yell," Kirk ordered, "cut your phasers and dive for that thick copse over there."
    McCoy looked in the indicated direction, but saw only a large clump of high grass too thin to keep out a determined mouse, much less a mass of bloodthirsty beasts.
    And Spock nodded, apparently concurring in this madness!
    The pack was nearly on them now. It had become so bad that McCoy almost beamed Kirk in taking one of the monsters before it could sink scimitarlike fangs into the captain's right shoulder.
    At that point, Kirk shouted, " Now! " and plunged headfirst toward the high brush. Spock sprayed the pack with a last sustained burst of phaser fire and joined him. Both were a step behind McCoy.
    The pack leaders sprang ahead. That concerted action drew the undivided attention of the oncoming leviathan. Its foremost segments expanded. The driving head opened to seize the nearest pack member in one set of jaws.
    The quasi-canine screamed, twisted, snapping uselessly at the armored skull. Its fellows, their memories extending only to the immediate prey, forgot their smaller quarry to attack the flanks of the snake-thing.
    Two sets of long fangs cut and stabbed at the iridescent yellow and green body. Pained, the Janus-snake twitched convulsively, pure muscle sending the two attackers flying into oblivion among the surrounding trees.
    Less-bloodied eyes watched from the safety of the neutral grass.
    "Stay low and slow,"