beast from the lot. When the others had been tossed through, he hauled back his tentacle, wound up, and pegged the offending beast with all his might. It streaked through the doorway like a projectile, legs and eyestalks rigid.

Pud plucked a machine from the two-foot claws of the very last beast, and tossed the beast through. Then he examined the machine—it was beyond repair. He slammed that through the doorway too.

In ten seconds, the two Vegan Scientists had slapped and mauled all their rioting experiments into inaction.

Silence descended over the battle-ground. Silence, more nerve-shattering than the noise had been.

Pud looked around at the remains of the laboratory, every face forest-green with rage.

Machines lay broken, tilted, flickering, whining, wheezing, like the bodies of the wounded. Delicate instruments were smashed to bits. The involuted field that Pud had flung through the vortex had evidently burst, as he had feared—for the vortex had vanished. So, probably, had the universe the field had burst in. The two fields that had interlocked were ruined, each having contaminated the other beyond use. Other energy-fields, having absorbed an excess of energy from the tharn, were bloated monstrosities or burned-out husks.

It would take weeks to get the place straightened up ... even longer to replace the smashed equipment and restore the ruined fields.

Many experiments in which time had been a factor would take months—and in some cases years—to duplicate.

All that was bad enough.

But worst of all ... the little aliens had been Contacted.

Like it or not, the aliens knew that something was very much up on this planetoid.

Like it or not, they'd report that, and more of their kind would come scurrying back to investigate.

Pud groaned, and studied the little creatures, who sat huddled together on the nose of the ship.

"Well," he thought sourly to Gop, "here we are."

"I—yes, Master."

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