inquiry.

"For power," he said "and maybe something more. We might be able to find out something. If there are inhabitants on this planet, for instance. There can't be, but there's that beast—

"Maybe it's somehow connected with whatever or whoever built that grid—that checkerboard arrangement I told you about. Something or somebody built that, but I can't believe anything can live in those sandstorms."

They'd followed the huge trail that had been visible on their first landing in the polar regions. The great, two-yard-across pads of the monster had made a clear trail for ten miles from the point of their discovery. At the end of the trail there was a great gap in a cliff of frozen sand. The Thing seemed to have devoured tons of ice-impacted stuff. Then it had gone back into the swirling sandy wastes. It carried away with it cubic yards—perhaps twenty or thirty tons—of water-filled frozen sand.

But reason insisted that there could be no animal life on a planet without plants, and no plants on a desert which was the scene of daily typhoons, hourly hurricanes, and with no water anywhere upon it save at the poles. And there was no vegetation there. A monster with dozens of six-foot feet, and able to consume tons of wetted sand for moisture, would need vast quantities of food for energy alone. And it was unthinkable that food was to be found in the strangling depths of perpetual sandstorms.

"There's another thing," Stan added. "With power to spare I could fuse sand into something like a solid. Make a house, maybe, and chairs to sit on, instead of having to wear our space suits all the time. Maybe we could even heat the inside of a house!"

Esther smiled at him.

"Darling," she said wryly, "you've no idea how glad I'd be of a solid floor to walk on instead of sand, and a chair to sit on, even if we didn't have a roof!"

They had been, in effect, in the position of earth-castaways marooned on a sand-cay which had not even seashells on it or fish around it. There was literally nothing they could do but talk.

"And," she added, "if we could make a tub to take a bath in—"

She brightened at the thought. Stan hadn't told her of his own reasons for having no hope. There was no point in causing her despair in advance.

"We'll see what we see," he 

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