"Behind me? What?"
"Why--why--" Jim could only gasp. The girl was staring at us blankly.
Jim was stupified into incoherency. "Why--why--a little thing--it
ran--" And then he raised his left wrist with another muttered gasp.
"What in the devil?" I demanded. "Are you crazy too?"
"Electro-eavesdropper on us! Look--" An eavesdropper detector was on
his wrist, connected with his watch. Part of his S.S. equipment and he
always wore it. The underplate was glowing now, its warmth against his
flesh attracting his attention.
An eavesdropper being used against us! I knew it was illegal for anyone
but a Federal Man to have one; but criminals had them, and most of the
other S.S. devices and weapons, of course. Some criminal was near here,
listening to us now!
"Someone not far away!" Jim gasped. "Look at that dial!"
His little detector-needle was swaying violently, in the range of one
to two hundred feet. Then it swung back to normal as the ray evidently
was shut off.
I snatched out my flash-gun. Jim and I crouched with the numbed,
terrified girl between us.
"Oh--" she muttered. "They have come, and they will kill us."
"There it is again!" Jim's hand gripped my arm. "My God--that little
thing!"
* * * * *
The purple shadows of night were deepening in the forest now. But in
the gloom I saw it. On the bole of a tree no more than six or eight
feet from us a tiny figure stood peering at us. The glistening,
brown-bronze figure of a man; a broad-shouldered, stocky little
figure no more than a foot high! I had an instant glimpse of a
powerfully-muscled body, a tiny hairless round head, then the creature
leaped to the ground, recovered its balance and ran. In another second
it was lost in the gloom.
The girl too, had seen it. "A Midge! Here? Why--then Curtmann's men are
here, too!"
She stopped abruptly. From the leafy darkness something hurtled into a
tree beside us. There was the faint tinkling of fragile glass, then a
sickening sweet smell assailed us, and sticky liquid splattered on us.
"Anesthesia-bomb!" Jim gasped. "Get away from here--grab the girl!"
My head was reeling, with senses fading so that the dim scene was
blurring around me. Jim and I dragged the girl through the thickets.
Then came a shot at us, the sizzling flash just missing us, shriveling
the foliage over our heads. Jim's shot answered it. I saw a skulking
figure by a nearby tree, and fired quickly. My shot caught him full; he
went down.
In front of me, Jim had dropped prone into the brush. His voice warned:
"They're here. Get down."
We had no chance to fight them off. I drilled a shape that appeared in
front of me; but another pounced on my shoulders as I crouched. Blurred
by the drug, I squirmed, reached up and grabbed him by the throat. But
another man was on us. Jim's shot sounded again; and then as I fought,
I saw several dark shapes leaping on him. His panting oaths mingled
with the girl's scream.
In the melee glass hit my face, breaking with the sticky drug oozing
out on me. A man's fist followed it, with a crack that made my head
burst into roaring light before I drifted off into an abyss of
nothingness....