civilization. He itched to examine them, but he needed certain bars of allotropic graphite he suspected would be here. They were. The motors which ran the leg movements were motors like those which turned the great slabs. They consisted of slabs of graphite and the metal which slid past them. That was all. Only one special allotrope of graphite makes a motor of such simplicity. Only—

He burdened himself with black, flaky bars, cutting ruthlessly through machinery to which an engineer would have devoted months of study. He had an even dozen of the bars in his arms when a sudden blast rocked him. He whirled, and saw a small cloud of still incandescent vapor and Something which was separating horribly into many steaming pieces. Other Things seemed to leap to smother him under their weight. He could not see them save as vague shapes, but he knew they were there.

Another exploded as Esther, in the Erebus and watching with the infrared scanner, desperately used the weapon which had never existed before and could not be used anywhere save on this one planet.

Stan ran clumsily for the ship over the drifting, powdery sand. Inhumanly resolute unhuman things leaped after him. He saw the flares as Esther destroyed them. He knew that she was wide eyed and trembling and sick with horror at what she had to do.

But he stumbled into the air-lock and dogged it shut behind him. And Esther came running to greet him, not shaking and not trembling and not horrified, but with burning eyes and the fiery anger of a Valkyrie. She was not wearing her space suit.

"They tried to kill you!" she cried fiercely. "They were hiding! They'd have murdered you—"

He put down his bars of allotropic graphite. He reached out to take her in his arms. But—

"Damn these space suits!" he said furiously. "You'll have to wait to be kissed until this job's finished!"

He tore up the flooring hatch above the little ship's drive. He jerked off the housing.

"Keep watch!" he called to the control room. "At least one of the machines must be waiting behind the dunes, hoping for a break!"

He worked with frantic haste, shedding his space suit by convulsive movements. This should have been the most finicky of fine-fitting jobs. To repair a Bowdoin-Hall drive unit by replacing its graphite bars for maximum efficiency is a matter 

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