"You may be right, at that," said Stan. "We'll see. Try another place."

Five minutes later they landed on a second huge slab of black metal, miles away. Without a word, Stan ensconced Esther on the small platform formed by crossing girders. He took out the torch again. The tiny, blue-white flame. Smoke at its first touch. Metal flowed.

With a vast cachinnation of squeakings, a mile-square section shifted like the first....

"Something," said Stan grimly, "doesn't want us to have power. Maybe they can stop us, and maybe not."

The swelling which was the motor-housing was just within reach from the immovable girder crossing on which Esther waited. Stan reached out now. The torch burned with a quiet fierce flame. A great section of metal fell away, exposing a motor exactly like the one he'd first examined—slabs of allotropic graphite and all. He thrust in and cut the cables. He reached in with the charging clips—

There was a crackling report in the space skid's body. Smoke came out.

Stan examined the damage with grimly set features.

"Blew another fuse," he told Esther. "We're licked. When I took power the first time, I ruined a motor. It's been found out. So the plates turned, today, to—scare me away, perhaps, as soon as I cut into another. When I didn't scare and severed the cables, high-voltage current was shot into them to kill me or ruin whatever I was using the power for. Whether there's life here or not, there's intelligence—and a very unpleasant kind, too!"

He re-fused the skid, scowling.

"No attempt to communicate with us!" he said savagely. "They'd know somebody civilized cut into that motor-housing! They'd know it was an emergency! You'd think—"

He stopped. A faint, faint humming sound became audible. It seemed to come from nowhere in particular—or from everywhere. But it was not the formless humming of a rising wind. This sound was a humming punctuated by hurried, rhythmic clankings. It was oddly like the sound of cars traveling over an old-fashioned railway—one with unwelded rail joints. Then Esther jerked her head about.

"Stan! Look there!"

Something hurtled toward them in the gray dawn light. It was a machine. Even in the first instant of amazement, Stan could see what it was and what it was designed to do. It was a huge, bulbous 

 Prev. P 22/41 next