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impossible. Fortunately, the final knot was over the shin bone where the vine cut in less deeply than elsewhere. He was able, after an effort, to untie the knot.
    A look under the pad of leaves showed him the worst: infection and blood poisoning. Without drugs, without even water, there wasn’t a thing he could do about it, except die when the poison spread through his system.
    He knew it was hopeless, then, and that he’d lost, and with him, humanity. When he died here, out there in the universe he knew, all his friends, everybody, would die too. Earth and the colonized planets would become the home of the red, rolling, alien Outsiders.
    It was that thought which gave him courage to start crawling, almost blindly, towards the barrier again, pulling himself along by his arms and hands.
    There was a chance in a million that he’d have strength left when he got there to throw his harpoon-spear just once , and with deadly effect, if the Roller would come up to the barrier, or if the barrier was gone.
    It took him years, it seemed, to get there. The barrier wasn’t gone. It was as impassable as when he’d first felt it.
    The Roller wasn’t at the barrier. By raising himself up on his elbows, he could see it at the back of its part of the arena, working on a wooden framework that was a half-completed duplicate of the catapult he’d destroyed.
    It was moving slowly now. Undoubtedly it had weakened, too.
    Carson doubted that it would ever need that second catapult. He’d be dead, he thought, before it was finished.
    * * * *
    His mind must have slipped for a moment, for he found himself beating his fists against the barrier in futile rage, and made himself stop. He closed his eyes, tried to make himself calm.
    “Hello,” said a voice.
    It was a small, thin voice. He opened his eyes and turned his head. It was a lizard.
    “Go away,” Carson wanted to say. “Go away; you’re not really there, or you’re there but not really talking. I’m imagining things again.”
    But he couldn’t talk; his throat and tongue were past all speech with the dryness. He closed his eyes again.
    “Hurt,” said the voice. “Kill. Hurt—kill. Come.”
    He opened his eyes again. The blue ten-legged lizard was still there. It ran a little way along the barrier, came back, started off again, and came back.
    “Hurt,” it said. “Kill. Come.”
    Again it started off, and came back. Obviously it wanted Carson to follow it along the barrier.
    He closed his eyes again. The voice kept on. The same three meaningless words. Each time he opened his eyes, it ran off and came back.
    “Hurt. Kill. Come.”
    Carson groaned. Since there would be no peace unless he followed the thing, he crawled after it. Another sound, a high-pitched squealing, came to his ears. There was something lying in the sand, writhing, squealing. Something small, blue, that looked like a lizard.
    He saw it was the lizard whose legs the Roller had pulled off, so long ago. It wasn’t dead; it had come back to life and was wriggling and screaming in agony.
    “Hurt,” said the other lizard. “Hurt. Kill. Kill.”
    Carson understood. He took the flint knife from his belt and killed the tortured creature. The live lizard scurried off.
    Carson turned back to the barrier. He leaned his hands and head against it and watched the Roller, far back, working on the new catapult.
    “I could get that far,” he thought, “if I could get through. If I could get through, I might win yet. It looks weak, too. I might—”
    And then there was another reaction of hopelessness, when pain sapped his will and he wished that he were dead, envying the lizard he’d just killed. It didn’t have to live on and suffer.
    He was pushing on the barrier with the flat of his hands when he noticed his arms, how thin and scrawny they were. He must really have been here a long time, for days, to get as thin as that.
    For a while he was almost hysterical again, and then came a time of deep calm and