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stone floor. A thought was forming in his mind.
    Everything that lived, everything that had physical life, had to breathe. That was why the werewolf was coughing from the smoke.
    Keeping one eye on the lurking beast, Morlock stooped down and pulled the leather laces from his shoes. When he had made them he had leeched the phlogiston from them so that they wouldn't burn; he tested their strength now with his fingers, and he liked what he felt. He patiently spliced the laces together. It took a little time to do properly and his time was running out, but there was no point in trying this without doing it right. When the laces were one, he grabbed a stray length of nonburning wood from the floor and, being careful not to drip blood on it, broke it in half. He knotted one end of each lace to a piece of wood, and presently he had a serviceable garrote.
    Now to make a chance to use it. The beast was wounded in both eyes, but it could still smell and hear; he would have to distract it somehow so that he could attack it from behind.
    Morlock carefully placed the garrote on the floor far away from any fires. Then he loitered casually toward one of the burning cots-it was the other one, the one Morlock had not broken up. By now the fire had spread over the length of the thing and it was burning merrily.
    The werewolf was on the far side of the cell, distractedly and somewhat dismayedly swinging its loose eyeball on its nerve.
    Morlock picked up the burning cot and threw it at the wall above the werewolf. As soon as the cot struck the wall, he dodged across the cell to seize his garrote and then jumped upon the werewolf's back as it emerged snarling from the curtain of hot gleeds and bloody smoke. He wrapped the cord around the half-blind beast's neck and began to twist.
    Of course, it fought. But there was very little it could do: Morlock was out of reach of its teeth and claws. It strove to tear at the strangling cords with the claws of its back feet. Morlock waited until both back legs were fully extended, then stomped on the joints where the long bones of the leg joined together-the knees, for a man or a woman. He felt a certain savage satisfaction in hearing the knee joints crunch under his unlaced shoes.
    The werewolf yelped, or tried to: Morlock felt the surge in its chest and neck. But its throat was closed; not a sound emerged. Morlock twisted the handles of the garrote again and again, cutting deeply into the beast's flesh. Presently it stopped moving.
    He held on for a long time after that, counting the moments by his own pulses long after the werewolf's heart stopped. When he had counted a thousand heartbeats since the beast's last movement he relaxed the hold of the strangling cord slightly. The werewolf remained motionless. He relaxed it a little more.
    The wolvish chest expanded slightly. There was a slight tremor in its veins: a returning heartbeat.
    Morlock snarled and twisted the cord tight again, strangling off the werewolf's returning life.
    Frustration threatened to swamp his reason. He could keep the beast from living, but he could not actually kill it. He could hope that the return of the sun would change the beast back into the bestial man it had been ... but he couldn't be sure even of that: some werewolves could obviously maintain the beast form through the day.
    He took the frustration out by twisting the cord even tighter. It dug even more deeply into the wolvish neck. That was what gave him the idea.
    Maintaining his grip on the unliving but not-yet-dead beast, he dragged the body nearer some fragments of burning wood. Some of the wood was sharp and ragged. He took a chunk of that and started hacking away at the great muscles of the wolvish neck. Blood started to flow, a great deal of cold blood, black in the fiery light. But that was just as well: it extinguished the flames in the splintering wood and made it last longer. When one chunk became useless, he grabbed another. He twisted the unliving head back