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it’s an unearthly monster, with an unearthly disposition, judging by the face, wandering around with a split skull and brains oozing out.” Norris and McReady appeared in the doorway, a doorway filling with other shivering men. “Has anybody seen it coming over here?” Norris asked innocently. “About four feet tall—three red eyes—brains oozing out—Hey, has anybody checked to make sure this isn’t a cracked idea of humor? If it is, I think we’ll unite in tying Blair’s pet around Connant’s neck like the Ancient Mariner’s albatross.”
    “It’s no humor,” Connant shivered. “Lord, I wish it were. I’d rather wear—” He stopped. A wild, weird howl shrieked through the corridors. The men stiffened abruptly, and half turned.
    “I think it’s been located,” Connant finished. His dark eyes shifted with a queer unease. He darted back to his bunk in Paradise House, to return almost immediately with a heavy .45 revolver and an ice-ax. He hefted both gently as he started for the corridor toward Dogtown.
    “It blundered down the wrong corridor—and landed among the huskies. Listen—the dogs have broken their chains—”
    The half-terrorized howl of the dog pack had changed to a wild hunting melee. The voices of the dogs thundered in the narrow corridors, and through them came a low rippling snarl of distilled hate. A shrill of pain, a dozen snarling yelps.
    Connant broke for the door. Close behind him came McReady, then Barclay and Commander Garry. Other men broke for the Ad Building, and weapons—the sledge house. Pomroy, in charge of Big Magnet’s five cows started down the corridor in the opposite direction—he had a six-foot-handled, long-tined pitchfork in mind.
    Barclay slid to a halt, as McReady’s giant bulk turned abruptly away from the tunnel leading to Dogtown and vanished off at an angle. Uncertainly the mechanician wavered a moment, the fire extinguisher in his hands, hesitating from one side to the other. Then he was racing after Connant’s broad back. Whatever McReady had in mind, he could be trusted to make it work.
    Connant stopped at the bend in the corridor. His breath hissed suddenly through his throat. “Great God—” The revolver exploded thunderously; three numbing, palpable waves of sound crashed through the confined corridors. Two more. The revolver dropped to the hard-packed snow of the trail, and Barclay saw the ice-ax shift into defensive position. Connant’s powerful body blocked his vision, but beyond he heard something mewing, and, insanely, chuckling. The dogs were quieter; there was a deadly seriousness in their low snarls. Taloned feet scratched at hard-packed snow, broken chains were clinking and tangling.
    Connant shifted abruptly, and Barclay could see what lay beyond. For a second he stood frozen, then his breath went out in a gusty curse. The thing launched itself at Connant and the powerful arms of the man swung the ice-ax flat-side first at what might have been a head. It scrunched horribly, and the tattered flesh, ripped by a half-dozen savage huskies, leaped to its feet again. The red eyes blazed with an unearthly hatred, an unearthly, unkillable vitality.
    Barclay turned the fire extinguisher on it. The blinding, blistering stream of chemical spray confused it, baffled it, together with the savage attacks of the huskies, not for long afraid of anything that did, or could live, and held it at bay.
    McReady wedged men out of his way and drove down the narrow corridor packed with men unable to reach the scene. There was a sure fore-planned drive to McReady’s attack. One of the giant blow-torches used in warming the plane’s engines was in his bronzed hands. It roared gustily as he turned the corner and opened the valve. The mad mewing hissed louder. The dogs scrambled back from the three-foot lance of blue-hot flame.
    “Bar, get a power cable, run it in somehow. And a handle. We can electrocute this—monster, if I don’t incinerate it.” McReady