handle, as well.

Gingerly, Gop set the tharn down beyond the outcropping. At the same time he picked up several instruments that lay nearby—an electron-wrench, a snurling-iron, a plotz-meter, several pencil-rays. He placed them on the ground beside the tharn.

Pud had curled twelve tentacles around the space-warp generator—it was as big as a city block, and heavy, even in light gravity. He puffed a thought at Gop: "Give me a tentacle."

Gop helped his Master place the generator safely on the other side of the ridge.

Johnny Gorman banged off a handful of rock, and shoved it into the vac-container at his belt.

"Okay, hon," he said. "Let's go."

They stood once more moment atop the ridge, looking out over the barren, rusty-gray plain that the ridge had until now concealed from their gaze.

"Looks just as dead as the rest," Johnny observed. "I guess we were just jumpy over nothing." He turned to start down the slope. "Come on."

In three long light-gravity steps he had reached the bottom, and turned to steady Helen.

She wasn't there.

She had tripped and tumbled off the other side of the ridge. He could hear her screaming.

"Putrefied proteins!" Pud roared. "Help me get it out of the tharn!"

The two Vegans leaned over the ridge. While Gop forced the writhing folds of the tharn-field apart with two reconstituted tentacles, Pud reached in, plucked the little alien out and set it upright.

It immediately scrabbled up the side of the ridge as fast as it could and joined its mate, which had bounded up the other side.

"Now look at what you've done!" Pud raged. "What about the rules on Contact! The Examiners will get this out of us when we report on our Projects ... mountains of bites, we've revealed ourselves!"

"Not really, Master," Gop said, rushing his thoughts. "All the creature will know is that it tumbled into the field, and then was somehow ejected by it ... a trick of gravity, perhaps ... a magnetic vortex ... it won't know what really happened—"

"That—field—was—supposed—to—be—turned—off," Pud said, every one of his faces green with rage.

"I—"

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