"But the ship!" Sofi wailed over her radiophone.

"Might as well try to get past a tank as R-3," he panted. He saw four of the robots break from the laboratory, turn to intercept them. "Faster," he cried. "If we don't get back to the igloo we're done for! These suits haven't but a seven hours oxygen supply!"

"Faster," he cried. "If we don't get back to the igloo we're done for!"

He swung sharply to the right, traveling in sixty-foot leaps like an ungainly grasshopper, to jump completely over the head of the closest robot.

He over-estimated the last jump, smashed into the tough plastic wall of the igloo. He slithered to the ground, half dazed, as Sofi whipped inside, started to close the lock. Hen got his foot in the crack just in time.

"What the hell are you trying to do?" he roared wrathfully. "Lock me out?"

He yanked the door open, flung himself into the compartment. He got it barred just as the robots reached the igloo.

They milled around outside a moment, then trooped back to the laboratory, leaving one of their number, R-6, on guard.

"We're prisoners!" Sofi breathed through the radiophone.

Hen decided it was childish not to speak. He growled, "Yes," in a voice which he hoped conveyed the depth of contempt, but Sofi didn't seem to notice it. Hell, she was probably too frightened to even realize that she had tried to lock him out.

As soon as the pressure reached normal, they left the lock, trooped dejectedly up the incline to the sun deck, and pulled off their oxygen suits.

"Keep them handy," said Hen ominously when Sofi started to put them away. "We'd better get extra oxygen containers, too."

The girl bit her lip. Her cheeks were flushed, her large blue eyes starry with fright. "Then—then you think they'll try to break in here?"

"Of course they will! We're a menace to their continued existence. If we could just get hold of an atom gun, though. R-3 sounded frightened!"

"Frightened?" asked Sofi. She was still breathing heavily, but she had begun to quiet down. "Now who's reading emotion into the robots?"

He said with a puzzled expression, "It wasn't so much the nuance as his 

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