away to register.

"Great Jupiter!" bellowed Joe Silver, pointing. "What now?"

CHAPTER VIII

O. O. Jerry Jones crept along the last ramp. Why the devil was he skulking like this? Habit, he grinned ruefully to himself; the habit of primitive man who crouched and slunk in the presence of danger, no matter what kind.

And the old preservation instinct was also giving him all sorts of reasons to knock this silly business off, and go back to the protection, however illusory, of the control room. For instance, said the sly instinct, if this alien is telepathic, as you so neatly proved to yourself, then doesn't he know all that you and your pals know about a spaceship?

Shut up, Jerry told himself. I was wrong. He can't be telepathic, or he wouldn't bother to keep us alive after he's combed our brains.

"Couldn't he have some physical use for you all?" said the instinct.

Get thee behind me, Satan, he growled in his mind.

He opened the door of the room he was seeking.

Where to start? One wall was banked with books; never mind them. Another wall was covered with strange-looking projections, tubes and spouts and wheels and levers, behind a long table of plastikoid. There? Good enough.

He had a momentary pang as he picked up a spanner from the rack of tools by the door....

Then he was across the room and smashing wildly at levers, spouts, wall tanks, faucets; beating metal into scrap, crushing shining aluminum to scarred uselessness; he did not rest his arm until the whole wall was a ruin of beaten metal and broken glass. Then he turned his attention to the third wall.

Here was a giant turntable, rack on rack of shellacked alloy discs, mysterious-appearing charts and cabalistic signs. These he wrecked as methodically and ruthlessly as he had the first, but now there were tears glistening in his eyes. He ended the destruction with a moan of sorrow.

He paused to snap on the intercom. Pink's worry-lined face appeared. "How'm I doing?" Jerry asked his captain.

"Great so far. Calico is crying like a child."

"I have news for you," Jerry said. "So am I." Then he turned 

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