There was a crashing clank and the cry of twisted steel as the machine grabbed the small rocket ship up and crushed it in its jaws. The ship vanished into the bulging bin that followed the mouth on swiftly spinning wheels. The digger growled over the other horizon, leaving in its wake a shallow, wide furrow.

"I'll get the other ship to safety!" Alpha cried and ran towards it.

"What are the Diggers doing on the surface?" Miss Kanton asked Beta. "They're supposed to be underground."

"Something is all wrong," Beta said. "The Controls are obviously scrambled. Radio guides the diggers, keeps them underground until they're full, then lets them come up to empty."

"Do you think you can fix it?" Miss Kanton's dupe asked.

"If it's external trouble, yes," Beta said. "But if it's inside the seals, we'd never be able to get at it. Everything is sealed against tampering. The controls are in vaults. How they ever got scrambled, I can't imagine."

"No wonder there weren't any radio reports," Miss Kanton said. "This place is a madhouse! Look, here comes another one!"

Another Digger appeared on the horizon but it was far to one side, a moving shape against the stars.

"We'd better get into the control tower," Beta said. "It's probably the only safe place on this rock."

They were illuminated momentarily by the blasting jet of the ship as it arced upwards from the uneven ground. As they hurried towards the tower, the ship blasted past them and whistled to a halt near the door of the tower.

The quartet gathered together near the door and watched with amazement as six more of the huge diggers appeared, grunting and rooting at the soil like mammoth pigs. Two crashed together with a terrific clank of metal and their wheels dug up the ground as they hung locked together, whirring thunderously.

The four went into the tower, down the metal corridors to the elevator which took them to the floor with the control boards. Beta pressed a combination on the buttons of the door which shut off the room with the central boards. The door whined slowly open.

"The door's warped," Alpha observed. "There must have been an explosion inside."

They entered the room and at first 

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