MECHANISTRIA by Eric Frank Russell

There we were, standing on the mezzanine of Terrastroport
Seven Administration Building. Not a darned one of us
knew why we had been summoned so unexpectedly or why
we weren't blasting as usual for Venus in the morning.
So we hung around, asking unanswerable questions of
Each other with our eyes and getting ourselves nowhere.
I had once seen thirty Venusian guppies gaping in adenoidal
dumbfoundment at an Aberdeen terrier named Fergus
and straining their peanut brains for the reason why one
end waggled. They looked pretty much as we were looking
right now.

Portly and bland as ever, Captain McNulty came along
just as the nail-gnawing contest was about to begin. He
was followed by half a dozen of the Upsydaisy's leading
technicians and a skinny little runt we'd never seen before.
In the rear came Jay Score walking lithely over floorboards
that squeaked under his three hundred or more
pounds. I never failed to be surprised by the casual ease
with which he bore his massive frame. His eyes were
aglow as they gave us that all-embracing look.

Gesturing to us to follow; McNulty led us into a room,
strutted onto its small platform and addressed us in the
manner of one about to tutor a newly-formed third grade.
"Gentlemen and vedras, I have with me this afternoon
the famous Professor Flettner."

He made a precise bow toward the runt who grinned and
did a bit of foot-twisting like a kid caught snitching the
fudge.

"The professor is seeking a crew for his extra-solarian
vessel, the Marathon. Jay Score and six of our technicians
have volunteered to go along with me. We have been
accepted and have received the necessary extra training
during the term of your leave."

"It was a pleasure," put in Flettner, anxious to placate us
for stealing the skipper.

"The Terrestrial Government," continued McNulty, flattered,
"has approved the entire complement of my former
command, the Venusian freighter Upskadaska City. Now
it's up to you fellows. Those who may wish to stay with
the Upskadaska City can leave this meeting and report for
duty. Will those who prefer to accompany me please
signify by raising a hand." Then his roving eye discovered
the Martians and he hastily added, "Or a tentacle."

Sam Hignett promptly stuck up his brown mitt. "Captain,
I'd rather stay with you."

He beat the rest of us by a fraction of a second. Funny
thing, not a single one of us really was bursting to shoot
around in Flettner's suicide-box. It was merely that we
were too weak to refuse. Or maybe we stuck out our necks
for the sake of seeing the look that came into McNulty's
features.

"Thank you, men," said McNulty in the solemn sort of
voice they use at burials. He swallowed hard, blew his
nose. His gaze roamed over us almost lovingly, became
suddenly abashed as it discovered one Martian figure
flopped in a corner, all its limp tentacles sprawling 
negligently around.

"Why, Sug Farn --- " he began.

Kli Yang, chief coach of the Red Planet bunch, chipped
in quickly with "I put up two tentacles, Captain. One for
myself and one for him. He is asleep. He deputed me to
act on his behalf, to say yes, or say no, or sing, `Pop Goes
The Weazel' as required."

Everyone laughed. Sug Farn's utter and complete laziness
had been a feature of life aboard the Upsydaisy. The
skipper alone was unaware that nothing short of an urgent
outside job or a game of chess could keep Sug Farn awake.
Our laughter ended and the sleeper immediately filled in
the silence with one of those eerie, high-pitched whistles
that is the Martian version of a snore.

"All right," said McNulty, striving to keep a smile away
from his mouth. " I want you to report aboard ship at
dawn. We blast at ten ack emma G.M.T. I'll leave Jay
Score to give you further information and answer any
Questions."

The Marathon was a real beauty, Flettner designed, government
built, with fine lines halfway between those of a
war cruiser and those of a light racing rocket. Indeed, she
had space-navy fittings that were luxurious by comparison
with what we'd had on the Upsydaisy. I liked her a lot. So
did the rest.

Standing at the top of the telescopic metal gangway, I
watched the last comers arrive. Jay Score went down,
returned lugging his enormous case. He was allowed more
weight in personal luggage than any three others. No
wonder, for only one item among his belongings was a
spare atomic engine, a lovely little piece of engineering
coming to eighty pounds. In a way, this was his standby
heart.

Four government experts came aboard in a bunch. I'd
no idea of who they were or why they were going with us,
but directed them to their private cabins. The last arrival
was young Wilson, a fair-haired, moody lad of about nineteen.
He'd had three boxes delivered in advance and now
was trying to drag three more aboard.

"What's in those?" I demanded.

"Plates." He surveyed the ship with unconcealed distaste.

"Repair, dinner or dental?" I inquired.

"Photographic," he snapped without a glimmer of a smile.

"You the official picture man?"

"Yes."

"All right. Dump those boxes in mid-hold."

He scowled. "They are never dumped, dropped, chucked
or slung. They are placed," he said. "Gently."

"You heard me!" I liked the kid's looks but not his surly
attitude.

Putting down the boxes at the top of the gangway, and
doing it with exaggerated care, he looked me over very
slowly, his gaze travelling from feet to head and all the
way down again. His lips were thin, his knuckles white.

Then he said, "And who might you be when you're outside
your shirt?"

"I'm the sergeant-at-arms," I informed in I'm-having-no-
nonsense-from-you tones. "Now go dump or place or lower
those crates someplace where they'll be safe, else I'll toss
them a hundred feet Earthward."

That got him right in his weak spot. I think that if I'd
threatened to throw him for a loop he'd have had a try at
giving me an orbit of my own. But he didn't intend to let
me or anyone else pick on his precious boxes.

Favouring me with a glance that promised battle, murder
and sudden death, he carried the boxes into mid-hold,
taking them one at a time, tenderly, as if they were babies.
That was the last I saw of him for a while. I had been hard
on the kid but didn't realize it at the time.

A couple of the passengers were arguing in their harness
just before we threw ourselves away. Part of my job is to
inspect the strappings of novices and they kept at it while
I was going over their belts and buckles.

"Say what you like," offered one, "but it works, doesn't
it?"

"I know damn well it does," snorted the other, showing
irritation. "That is the hell of it. I've been right through
Flettner's crazy mathematics a thousand times, until my
mind's dizzy with symbols. The logic is all right. It's
un-assailable. Nevertheless, the premise is completely cockeyed.

"So what? His first two ships reached the Jovian system
simply by going zip! and zip! They did the round trip in
less time that any ordinary rocketship takes to make up its
mind to boost. Is that crazy?"

"It's blatantly nuts!" swore the objector, his blood pres-
sure continuing to rise. "It's magic and it's nuts! Flettner
says all astronomical estimates of distances can be scrapped
and thrown into the ash-can because there's no such thing
as speed inside a cosmos which itself-plasma and ether
alike-is in a series of tremendous motions of infinite
variability. He says you can't have speed or measurable velocity
where there's nothing to which you can relate it except a
fixed point which is purely imaginary and cannot possibly
exist. He claims that we're obsessed by speeds and distances
because our minds are conditioned by established
relations inside our own one-cent solar system, but in the
greater cosmos there are no limitations to which our inadequate
yardstick can be applied."

"Me," I put in soothingly, "I've made my last will and testament."

He glared at me, then snapped to the other, " I still say
it's looney.",

"So's television and arguers," retorted his opponent, "but
they both work."

McNulty came by the door at that moment, paused, said,
"Seen to that lad Wilson yet? "

"No-I'll be there in one minute."

"Try and cool him down, will you. He looks as if he's
in a blue funk."

Reaching Wilson's cabin, I found him sitting there with
his harness on. He was dumb, glassy-eyed and worried stiff.

"Ever been on a spaceship before?"

"No," he growled.

"Well, don't let it bother you. I admit there are rare
occasions when people go up in one piece and come down
in several, but according to official statistics the roller
coasters killed more last year."

"Do you think I'm scared? " he demanded, standing up
so quickly that he startled me.

"Me? Oh, no I" I fumbled around for words I couldn't
find. His bothered expression had vanished and he was
looking rather hard. "See here," I said, speaking as man to
man, "tell me what's eating you and I'll see if I can help."

"You can't help." Sitting down; he relaxed, became as
moody as before. "I'm worrying about my plates."

"What plates?"

"Those photographic ones I brought on board, of
course."

"Heck, they'll be safe enough` Besides, what good will
worrying do?"

"Plenty," he said. "When at first I let 'em go on trust I
had them walloped to powder in two successive accidents.
Then I developed the habit of worrying about them. I was
doing a really good job of worrying just before that Century
Express smashup and I lost only two, both unexposed. I
worried all but six of my outfit through the big Naples
quake. So it pays me, see?"

"Hell on a bike!" I said.
"Leave me alone and let me get on with my job," he
invited. Upon which he leaned backward, tightened his
harness and calmly resumed his worrying.

Can you tie that? I was still stupefied by the queer
tricks of some professions when I arrived at the scene of
the uproar at the top of the starboard gangway. McNulty
was bawling out the Martians. The latter had emerged
from their especial quarters where air was kept down to
the three pounds pressure to which they were accustomed.
They were now outside in the alien and objectionable
atmosphere.

Somebody went solemnly down the gangway bearing
Earthward an enormous vase of violently clashing colours
and exceedingly repulsive shape. The Martian chorus of
protest arose crescendo. There were shrill chirrups and
much snaking of angry tentacles. I gathered that the porcelain
monstrosity was Kli Morg's chess trophy, the Martian
notion of a championship cup. It was in vile taste from
the Terrestrial viewpoint. Anyway, the skipper's orders
were orders and the abomination stayed on Earth.

Next instant the siren howled its thirty seconds warning
and all those still out of harness raced for safety. The way
those Martians ceased their oratory and beat it was something
worth seeing.

I got myself fixed in the nick of time. The air-locks
closed. Whooom! A giant hand tried to force my cranium
down into my boots and temporarily I passed out.

The world swelling rapidly before our bow was little
bigger than Terra. Its sunlit face had a mixture of blacks,
reds and silvers rather than the old familiar browns, blues
and greens. It was one of five planets circling a sun smaller
and whiter than our own. A small, insignificant group of
asteroids shared this grouping but we had no difficulty in
cutting through their orbits.

I don't know which star that sun was supposed to be.
Jay Score told me it was a minor luminary in the region of
Bootes. We had picked on it because it was the only one
in this area with a planetary family and we'd selected the
second planet because its present position stood in nice,
convenient relationship with our line of flight.

At that, we were going a devil of a lot too fast to circle
it and submit it to close inspection before landing in some
choice spot. We were striking its orbit at a tangent with
the planet immediately ahead. The landing was to be a
direct one, a hawklike dive with a muffled prayer and no
prancing around the mulberry bush.

The way Flettner's unorthodox notions went into action
was again something to bring one's heart into one's gullet
before it could be swallowed back. I believe that the vessel
could have done even better had its functioning not been
handicapped by the limits of human endurance. McNulty
must have gained the measure of those limits with astonishing 
accuracy, for the deceleration and drop brought me
down alive and kicking-but I had the deep impression of
my harness all over my abused carcass for a week.

Reports from the lab said the air was twelve pounds and
breathable. We drew lots for first out: McNulty and all
the government experts lost. That was a laugh! Kli Yang's
name came first out of the hat, then an engineer named
Brennand was lucky, followed by Jay Score, Sam Hignett
and me.

One hour was our limit. That meant we couldn't go
much more than a couple of miles from the Marathon.
Spacesuits weren't needed. Kli Yang could have used his
head-and-shoulder contraption to enjoy his customary three
pounds pressure but he decided that he could tolerate
twelve for a mere hour without becoming surly. Hanging
binoculars around our necks, we strapped on needle-ray
guns. Jay Score grabbed a tiny two-way radiophone to keep
us in touch with the vessel.

"No fooling, men," warned the skipper as we went
through the air-lock. "See all you can and be back within
the hour."

Kli Yang, last through the lock, ran his saucer eyes over
the envious ship's company, said, "Somebody had better
go wake Sug Farn and tell him the fleet's in port." Then
four of his ten tentacles released their hold and he dropped
to ground.

My, was that alien surface hard! Here it shone black
and glassy, there it was silvery and metallic with patches
of deep crimson appearing in odd places. I picked up a
small lump of silvery outcrop, found it amazingly heavy;
solid metal as far as I could tell.

I tossed the lump through the open door of the air-lock
so that they could get busy analysing it, and at once Kli
Morg stuck out a furious head, goggled his eyes at the
inoffensive Kli Yang and remarked, "A blow on the cranium
is not funny. The fact that you are now with a bunch of
Terrestrials doesn't mean that you have to be equally
childish."

"Why, you amateur pawn-pusher," began Kli Yang,
speaking with considerable warmth. "I'd have you know ---"

"Shut up!" snapped Jay Score authoritatively. He
started off toward the setting sun, his long, agile legs 
working as though intent on circumnavigating the globe. The
radio swung easily from one powerful hand.

We followed in single file. In ten minutes he was half a
mile ahead and waiting for us to catch up.

"Remember, long brother, we're only flesh and blood,"
complained Brennand as we reached the emergency pilot's
huge, efficient figure.

"Not me," denied Kli Yang. "Thank Rava, my kind are
not made of so sickening a mess." He emitted a thin
whistle of disgust, made swimming motions with his
tentacles through air four times as thick as that of Mars.

"I could row a boat!"

Our progress was slightly slower after that. Down into
a deep, shadowy valley, up the other side and over the
crest. No trees, no shrubs, no birds, no other sign of life.
Nothing but the black, silver and red semimetallic ground,
a range of blue veiled mountains in the far distance and the
gleaming cylinder of the Marathon behind us.

A swiftly flowing river ran down the centre of the next
valley. Reaching it, we filled a flask to take back to the lab.
Sam Hignett risked a taste, said it was coppery but drinkable.
The rushing waters were faintly blue with darker
shades swirling in their depths. The banks were of ground
considerably softer than the surface we'd just traversed.
Sitting on the nearer bank, we contemplated the torrent
which was much too swift and deep to cross. After a while
a headless body came floating and bobbing along.

The mutilated corpse vaguely resembled that of an
enormous lobster. It had a hard, crimson, chitinous shell,
four crablike legs, two lobsterish pincers and was half as
big again as a man. Its neck was a raw, bloodless gash
from which white strings dangled. What the missing head
had looked like we could only imagine.

Full of mute menace, the cadaver turned and rolled past
while we sat in a fascinated row and watched it, our eyes
going from right to left and following it until it swept round
the distant bend. What filled our minds was not the question
of how the head looked, but who had removed it and
for what reason. Nobody said anything.

This gruesome sight had barely departed in the grip of
the rapid current when we got first evidence of life. Ten
yards to my right a hole showed in the soft bank. A creature
slithered out of it, went to the brink of the water, drank in
delicate sips.

Four-legged, with a long triangular tail, it resembled an
iguana more than anything else. Its skin was black with an
underlying sheen of silver like shot silk. Its pupils were
shiny black slots in silvery eyeballs. Length: about six
feet, including tail.

Having swallowed its fill, this thing turned round to go
back, saw us and stopped abruptly. I fingered my needleray
just in case it had combative ideas. It examined us
carefully, opened its jaws in a wide gape that revealed a
great, jet-black gullet and double rows of equally black
teeth. Several times it favoured us with this demonstration
of biting ability before it made up its mind what to do next.
Then, so help me, it crept up the bank, joined the end of
our row, sat down and stared at the river.

I have never seen a crazier spectacle than we must have
presented at that moment. There was jay Score, huge and
shining, his craggy features the colour of ancient leather.
Next, Sam Hignett, our Negro surgeon, his teeth gleaming
in bright contrast with his ebon features. Then Brennand,
an undersized white Terrestrial sitting beside Kli Yang, a
rubber-skinned ten-tentacled, goggle-eyed Martian. Next,
me, a middle-aged, greying Terrestrial and, finally, this
black and silver alien wottizit. All of us glumly contem-
plating the river.

Still nobody said anything. There didn't seem anything
adequate to say. We stared, the creature stared, all of us
as phlegmatic as could be. I thought of young Wilson and
how preciously he'd have mothered a plate with this scene
on it. Pity he wasn't there to record it for all time. Then
as we watched another body came floating down, one like
the first. No head.

"Somebody can't be popular," remarked Brennand, fed
up with the silence.

"They're independent," informed the iguana, solemnly.
"Like me."

"Eh?"

Five people never stood up with greater promptitude or
timed an ejaculation so perfectly.

"Stick around," advised the lizard. "Maybe you'll see
something." It blinked at Brennand, then slithered back
into its hole. Silver gleamed along its black tail as it went
down.

"Well," said Brennand, breathing heavily, "can you pin
your ears to that!" A dazed look in his eyes, he went to
the hole, squatted on his heels and bawled, "Hey!"

"He isn't in," responded the thing from somewhere in
the depths.

Licking his lips, Brennand gave us the piteous glance of
a hurt spaniel, then inquired somewhat insanely, "Who
isn't in? "

"Me," said the lizard.

"Did you hear what I heard?" demanded the flabbergasted 
Brennand, standing up and staring at us.

"You heard nothing," put in Jay Score before any of us
could reply. "It didn't speak. I was watching it closely
and its mouth never moved." His hard, brilliant eyes looked
into the hole. "It was thinking purely animal thoughts
which you received teIepathically and, of course, translated
into human terms. But because you are not normally receptive 
of telepathic thought-forms, and because you have not
previously encountered anything that broadcasts on the
human waveband, you thought you heard it talking."

"Stick around," repeated the lizard. "But not around my
burrow. I don't like the publicity. It's dangerous."

Moving away, Jay picked up the radiophone. "I'll tell
them about the bodies and ask if we can explore a mile or
two upstream."

He moved a switch. The instrument promptly emitted a
noise like Niagara in full flow. Nothing else could be
heard. Changing to transmission, he called repeatedly,
switched back and was rewarded only by the sound of a
mighty waterfall.

"Static," suggested Sam Hignett. "Try lower down the
band."

The radio had only a limited bandwidth but Jay turned
all the way across it. The waterfall faded out, was gradually 
replaced by an eerie, dithering sound like that of a
million grasshoppers yelling bitter-bitter-bitter. That gave
way to a high, piercing whistle followed by another waterfall.

"I don't like this," commented Jay, switching off. "There
is far too much on the air for what looks like an empty
worid. We are going back. Come on--let's move fast."

Lifting the radiophone he trudged rapidly up the bank
and over the crest. His mighty figure looked like that of
some old-time giant as it became silhouetted against the
evening sky.

He put on the pace, making it a gruelling task to keep
up with him, We needed no urging. Much of his uneasiness 
had communicated itself to us. Those decapitated bodies ---

McNulty heard us through, sent for Steve Gregory and
asked him to give the ether a whirl. Steve beat it to the
radio room, came back in a few minutes. His eyebrows
were tangled.

"Skipper, it's alive from two hundred metres right down
into the ultra-short waveband. There isn't room to get a
word in edgeways."

"Well," growled McNulty, "what sort of stuff is it?"

"Three kinds," replied Steve. "There are whistles of a
steady and sustained type that might be direction signals.
There are eight different waterfalls of considerable
intensity. I reckon they are power broadcasts. In between all
these is an orgy of gabbling which suggests this place is
fairly crawling with life." He did more acrobatics with his
eyebrows which were of the bushy sort suitable for such
performances. " Couldn't get any vision except for typical
interference patterns racing across the screen."

Looking apprehensively through the nearest port, one of
the government experts opined, "If this planet is well
populated we must have picked on the local Sahara."

"We'll use a lifeboat," decided McNulty. "We'll send
out three men, well armed, and give them half an hour to
look round. They should be able to cover best part of five
hundred miles and be back before dark."

Most of us would have liked another lucky dip in the hat,
but McNulty nominated the three. One of them was a
government biologist named Haines; the others were
engineers holding lifeboat coxwain's certificates.

It took no more than four minutes to swing out a lifeboat
on its automatic derricks and lower it to ground. The
three clambered in. All had needle-ray guns. In addition
there were half a dozen miniature atomic bombs on board,
while a multiple pom-pom stuck its menacing bunch of
barrels through a glassite turret in the tiny vessel's bow.

That little expedition was adequately armed all right!
It wasn't so much that we really expected trouble or were
going looking for it, but rather that we believed in doing
more than keeping our fingers crossed.

With an amusingly squeaky blast the twelve-ton cylinder
shot from the Marathon's mothering bulk and curved skyward.
It whined away to a pinpoint in no time, then it was gone.

Steve had reset the lifeboat's radiophone and now was
in touch with it on four-twenty metres. Biologist Haines
was at the vessel's observation window doing the reporting.

"Sixty miles out and six miles up. Mountains ahead.
We're climbing." Silence for a minute, then, "Over the top
at twelve miles altitude. There's a long, straight, artificial-
looking line cutting the foothills on the other side. We are
diving towards it, lower, lower . . . yes, it's a road!"

"Anything using it?" yelped Steve, his brow-bushes
snaking around.

"Nothing as far as we can see just yet. It's in excellent
condition. Not deserted, but seldom used. Ah, another road
over on the horizon, maybe forty miles away. We're making
for it now. Seems as if . . . as if . . . there are shapes
moving swiftly along it." Another pause while his listeners
danced with impatience. "By heavens, there are dozens ---"

The voice blanked out completely. Nothing more came
over the ether except a steady rustling noise like that of
dead leaves dancing in a random wind.

Frantically, Steve went over his receiver, adjusting,
retuning, doing all he knew to bring back the voice so
suddenly gone from the air. But there was nothing, nothing
except that persistent and eerie whispering on four-twenty
and the all-pervading uproar below two hundred.

The crew clamoured for the chance to take out a second
boat. We had four of the little vessels as well as the slightly
larger and much faster pinnace. McNulty refused to let
any more go.

"No, men," he said, his plump features unworried. "One
bunch at a time is enough. The rest of us will wait here.
We'll stay put until morning to give that boat a chance to
find us again. It may be safe enough. Perhaps its radio
has gone out of commission or some minor fault has
developed among its navigational instruments." A glint came
into his eyes. "But if it's not back by dawn we're going to
discover the reason why."

" You bet!" came a murmur of many voices.

Thrum-thrum-thrum! The sound had a chance to be
noticed during ensuing quietness. We now realized that it
had been drumming dully through the room for most of a
minute but only then did it register in our minds. A strange
yet familiar sound, that steady thrumming--and it wasn't
caused by the returning lifeboat.

A crew never poured through the airlock as quickly as
we did at that moment. Outside we stood with our backs
to the great curved shell of the Marathon and stared at the
sky. There they were, three, four, five of them: long,
black rocketships flying in arrowhead formation.

Young Wilson's face lit up, he yipped, " Oh, lordy! " and
produced a camera from nowhere. He sighted it at the
black things above.

None of us had been quick-witted enough to bring out
binoculars, but Jay Score didn't need any. He stood with
his long legs braced apart, his big chest protruding, his
head tilted back, his gleaming orbs focused on the
overhead spectacle.

"Five," he said. "Ten miles up, moving fast and still
ascending. Either they're painted dead black or made of
some very black metal. Don't resemble any design on
Terra. Their stern tubes are exposed instead of being sunk
in the tail, and they've even got fore and aft fins."

He continued to watch long after I had developed a
crick in the neck. Still thrumming faintly, the five
disappeared from sight. They had passed right over the
Marathon without noticing it, blasting at an altitude that
made our reposing vessel less conspicuous than a dropped
pin.

Kli Morg chirruped, "They're not so far behind us after
all. They've got rocketships, they decapitate lobsters, and
in all probability they're instinctively hostile towards
strangers. I can see them offering us a big tentacle, yes,
right in the masticatory orifice!"

"Hope for the best rather than expect the worst," advised
McNulty. He gazed around at his crew, then at the sleek
shape of the Marathon. "Besides, we're a darned lot faster
than anything limited to a mere solar system and we know
how to take care of ourselves."

He patted his needle-ray significantly. I'd never seen our
plump and amiable skipper look so tough. He had a most
disarming habit of understating his sentiments but, at the
right time and in the right place, he could be a very hard
egg.

Nobody though could look half as tough as jay Score
who was standing at his side. There was something about
that guy's firm, solid, statuesque pose, his brief speeches
and rapid decisions, and the fiery eyes glowing in a rocklike
face, that gave him an appearance of serene power such as
you see on the phlegmatic features of those unknown gods
they dig out of strange and lonely places.

Jay rumbled, "All right, let's go in and wait for dawn."

"Sure," McNulty agreed. "Tomorrow we'll get some of
these mysteries sewed up, whether that boat returns or not."

He didn't know that tomorrow he'd be sewn up himself
along with the rest of us. Neither did any of us suspect it.
Young Wilson wouldn't have whistled half so shrilly and
happily as he developed his exposed plate had he guessed
that it would be lost forever within twenty-four hours.

One of the navigators on night watch first saw the
machines. They appeared suddenly and furtively about an
hour before the pale dawn, ghostly shapes skittering around
under dying stars and among the darkest shadows.

At first he thought they were animals of some kind,
probably nocturnal carnivores. But his doubts grew too
strong, he sounded the general alarm and we dashed to our
posts. An engineer trundled a portable searchlight to one
of the ports, let its powerful beam probe encompassing
gloom.

At the other end of the beam something big and glittering
promptly skedaddled out of the cone of light. Its
evasive action was so swift that nobody got more than a
glimpse of it, a vague, uncertain impression of a tentacled
globe encircled in the vertical plane by a rim like that of a
wheel. It seemed to roll on this rim, twisting and turning
with astounding agility.

The searchlight could not follow it since the beam was
pouring through the glassite pane and had no room to
sweep sidewise. We waited awhile, tense, expectant, but
nothing else trespassed into the bar of revealing brilliance,
though we could sense many things moving around just
beyond reach of the rays.

Digging out a couple more searchlights, we positioned
them behind two other ports, tried to catch our besiegers
napping by switching the beams on and off at erratic
intervals. This method was more effective. Again we caught a
momentary view of the dodging globe-thing as it shot away
from the sudden lance of the third light.

A minute later the second light illuminated a great, trellis-
patterned metal arm as it swung ponderously upward into
concealing darkness. There was something big and brutal
at the end of that arm; and it wasn't a hand. The thing
reminded me of a mechanical excavator or steam-shovel.

"See that? " bawled Steve. His face was shadowed behind
the searchlights but I knew where his eyebrows were
going. Rumour had it they'd once gone right over the top
and halfway down his back.

I could hear Brennand breathing heavily beside me, and
a faint, subtle hum coming from Jay Score farther up the
passage. The searchlights exuded a smell of warm air and
warmer metal.

Knockings and scrapings sounded from dead astern. That
was our blind spot, full of auxiliary driving-tubes, and it
wasn't possible to see from inside what was going on.
McNulty barked an order. Two engineers and a navigator
beat it up to that end. There was no way of determining
the capabilities of these things outside, but if they were
busily detaching our interchangeable tubes, well, we'd be
fastened to that spot for ever.

"Time we made up our minds," suggested Jay Score.

"Meaning what? " McNulty inquired.

"Whether we go outside and meet them or blast off and
leave them."

"Yes, yes, I know." McNulty was bothered and a little
testy. " But we still don't know whether they're friendly or
hostile. I can't assume that they are hostile and I daren't
assume that they're not. We've got to be cautious. The
Terrestrial authorities won't stand for any rough handling
of natives without adequate reason." He sniffed disgustedly.

"And that means if they are hostile we must run away or
else sit here until they make our reasons adequate."

"I propose," offered Kli Yang, brightly, "that we open the
starboard lock and whistle them a little tune. When one of
them comes up we'll jerk him inside and let him look us
over. If he displays understandable fondness for us we will
kiss him. If he does not we'll eject him, in pieces."

Pr-r-r-ang! The loud clang came from the stern, echoed
and re-echoed all over the vessel. McNulty winced as he
visualised one of his precious tubes springing from its patent
socket. He opened his mouth to say something, shut it as a
bellow of rage came from the engine-room. The next instant
a terrific crump burst in the rear and the whole ship shot
twenty yards forward in a belly-slide.

Helping the sprawling skipper to his feet, Jay Score said,
"Looks like Chief Andrews has settled the question.
Nobody's going to fool around with his pipes!"

An angry muttering continued to trickle out of the engine-
room, a steady, determined rumble like that of a small
volcano held in check. McNulty knew better than to try to
tackle the outraged chief in his present bellicose mood.

Looking out the nearest port just as its light shot through
once more, McNulty spotted a retreating mechanism almost
caught by the stabbing beam. Frowning, he spoke to Jay
Score rather than to the rest of us.

"We have a choice of two moves. Either we must blast
off or stop them meddling with the boat. The first may mean
losing the missing lifeboat for keeps. By the looks of things,
the second will mean trouble aplenty." His roving gaze
found Steve Gregory. "Steve, go and have one more try at
raising that lifeboat. If you can't get it we'll radio
instructions in the hope that they can receive them, after
which we'll open a lock."

"Right, skipper." Steve departed, one brow still more or
less on his forehead. He returned within five minutes. " Not
a squeak."

"Have your guns ready, men. Move one of those lights
into the starboard lock and aim it on the door-gap." He
stopped as the Marathon gave a sudden lurch, moving
through an arc of ten degrees, then sluggishly rolling back
onto an even keel." And mount a pom-pom beside the light"

His listeners scattered at top speed, leaving him with Jay
Score and the two engineers who were shifting the search-
light.

"Whew!" breathed McNulty. "I don't care to think of
the power that can roll our tonnage the way it's just been
rolled."

Clink-clink-clunk! The noise rang gonglike through the
Marathon's hull and sounded loudly in the armoury where
I was busy doling out lethal persuaders. Came a second
lurch, more violent this time. The arc was at least fifteen
degrees, but again the ship reacted by swinging upright.

Running out with an armload of belts far the pom-pom, I
found Jay Score waiting by the inner door of the lock. The
ship settled with a shudder. Jay didn't say anything, just
stood there with his rubber-soled feet braced firmly on the
steel checkerplates of the floor, his huge form erect, his
glowing orbs watching the gradually turning disc of the
outer door.

With everything ready, the weighty door wound inward
along its worm, came to the end, drew free like a great
metal plug. The control arm rolled the heavy mass aside
and simultaneously the searchlight filled the gap with an
eye-searing glare.

Many scufflings, clankings and scrapings sounded in the
dimness beyond but for a long time nothing appeared in
the opening. Probably they thought the new gap was nothing
but another observation-port. Hushed with expectancy;
we stood and waited, but still nothing showed itself.

Greatly daring, a Flettner computator named Drake
stepped into the column of light, walked slowly along the
treadless stepping-strip at the bottom of the circular
door gap, stood on the outer rim and looked down. The next
instant he let out a startled cry and was snatched from
sight.

A big, broad-shouldered, bandy-legged engineer had followed
behind Drake, and with apelike speed reached out a
thick, hairy arm to grab the disappearing man's harness
straps. He missed, for a moment stood defeated on the brink
before he in his turn gave a gruff bellow and was whisked
into darkness. By now Brennand had got to the middle of
the hole but stopped in his tracks when MeNulty gave a
warning shout.

Brennand wasn't taken. He contributed to the general
yelp as something outside tried to snatch him out of the
tunnel, yelped louder when a snaking Martian tentacle
wound round his waist and lugged him back. It must have
been an awful pull judging by the way Kli Yang's many
great suckers flattened for anchorage on the floor.

With grim calmness, McNulty asked, "What was it,
Brennand?"

Before the other could reply there came a tremendous
banging and clanking immediately outside. A huge, square-
ended and shining shape struggled into the airlock opening.
It faced the searchlight, being fully revealed in the glare. I
had a good view of its boxlike front with a coiled copper
antenna sticking out the top like a caricature of a curl, and
with a pair of big lenses staring at the light with cobra like
lack of emotion.

Without waiting for McNulty, the gunner at the pom-pom
decided this was no time to write to headquarters about the
matter. He let fly. The din was terrific as the weapon's eight
barrels pounded like pistons and a stream of midget
shells poured through the door-gap. The invading creature
appeared to dissolve before our very eyes, bits of rended
metal, splinters of glassy substance and empty shell-cases
flying in all directions.

The invader no sooner had gone than another was there,
peering into the inferno without a blink. Same square end,
same copper antenna, same cold, expressionless orbs. That,
too, flew to pieces. Another and another. The gunner was
wild with excitement and busily cursing one of his left-side
feeders for being slow at the loading-rack.

A brief silence followed the wrecking of the fourth alien,
a silence broken only by the rattle of fresh ammunition-belts
being draped around the pom-pom.

"Well, the authorities at home can't play hell about this,"
decided Captain McNulty. " Not after I've had two men
taken, not to mention the lifeboat." He seemed to derive
much comfort from the thought that his conscience was
clear.

Somebody pounded down the passage and into the lock,
said to him, "Number three light just showed Drake and
Minshull. They've been carried away."

"They aren't in the danger zone, then?" chipped in Jay
Score. "Good!" His eyes on the door-gap, he posed with
a casual air while his right hand jiggled one of those hell-
eggs known as a pocket A-bomb. Up and down, up and
down, with a horrible nonchalance that made me want to
scream and jump on my dental plates.

"For Pete's sake, quit doing that!" protested someone
who felt the same way I did.

Jay glanced around to see who was stroking a rabbit's
foot. His eyes were cold, cold. Then he thumbed the projecting
stud, tossed the egg through the gap into outer darkness.
Everyone immediately grovelled, tried to push his
own face through the floor and dig deep into bare earth,
McNulty included.

There came a flash of supernal brilliance followed by an
awful roar that rolled the ship sidewise onto its opposite
atmospheric fin. After that, several slow heaves as of an
earthquake.

A mutilated length of metal tentacle flew in from the dark,
going whoo-whoo with sheer speed, and cracked against the
wall. Something faintly resembling the big end of a nautical
telescope ricocheted off the pom-pom shield, zipped over
the crouching skipper's fat, uplifted beam, skinned one of
my earlobes, scored a long, yellowish mark along the steel
floor.

If we expected more and lengthier silence outside, we
were mistaken. The reverberations of the explosion had only
just died away when a noise of violently torn metal came
from the Marathon's stern, clanking feet and clattering
claws hammered inward. Way back past the engine-room
somebody yelled bloody murder, choked, gurgled.

Alien monstrosities surged full pelt into the airlock as
perforce we turned to face this assault from a new direction.
The pom-pom gunner stuck to his post and--ignoring what
was taking place behind his back-concentrated on shooting
a clear way through the outer door-gap. But via the
mutilated stern, the passages and catwalks, a metallic zoo
poured upon us.
The next two minutes fled like two seconds. I saw a
wheeled globe whirl into the room, followed by a nightmarish 
assortment of metal things, some with jointed legs
and pincer-armed front limbs; some with tentacles, some
with a grotesque assortment of outlandish tools.

A grabbing pincer glowed red-hot and seized-up at the
hinge when a well-aimed needle-ray found its weak spot.
But its coffin-shaped owner pressed on as if nothing had
happened, its projecting lenses staring glassily. In the hazy
throw-back from the searchlight I saw Wilson burn away a
lens-collar and deprive it of an eye before it snatched him
up and held him.

The pom-pom suddenly ceased its rabid yammering and
fell onto its side. Something cold, hard and slippery coiled
around my waist, lifted me bodily. I went over backward
through the lock, borne high in the unrelenting grip of my
captor. I saw a many-tooled object grab the skipper's
struggling form and bear him from the fray in like
manner.

My last view of the melee showed a wildly gesticulating
metal globe apparently floating toward the ceiling. It was
fighting at the end of a thick, sucker-surfaced rope that
would not let it go. McNulty and his captor blotted out the
rest, but I guessed that one of the Martians had stuck him-
self to the roof and was blandly fishing in the mob below.

At a fast jog-trot the thing holding me set off toward the
dimly glowing horizon. Dawn was breaking, with sunup
due in twenty minutes. The landscape cleared rapidly.
My bearer was holding me down upon the flat of his long,
level back, a taut cable around my chest, another around my
waist, a many-jointed arm holding my legs. My feet were
free to waggle around and my right hand still gripped a
heavy needle-ray, but I was held far too tightly to bring the
weapon to bear where it could do any good.

A dozen yards behind, McNulty was being lugged along
like a bag of meal. His carrier differed from mine, being
bigger, heavier, with eight multiple-jointed legs, no
tentacles, but a dozen arms of various lengths. Four of its
arms were holding down the writhing skipper, the two front
ones were extended in imitation of a praying mantis, the
rest were folded at its sides. I noticed that every now and
again the contraption's grotesque copper curl would flip out
straight, quiver questioningly; then abruptly coil like a
watch-spring.

We passed other machines. A large group of them hung
around the Marathon's damaged stern, big ones, small ones,
squat ones, tall ones. Among them loomed the monstrous
automaton with the steam-shovel hand. It squatted
imperturbably at the end of a deep channel scooped from the
ground below the ship's stern tubes. Half a dozen machines
were extracting the bottom tubes. The top ones already
were out and lying on the ground like so many drawn teeth.

"Well," I thought, with a deal of bitterness," so much
for Herr Flettner and his genius. If that bigbrain had never
been born I'd now be sitting pretty aboard the good old
Upsydaisy."

The thing on which I was having an unwanted ride began
to increase pace, building up to a lumbering gallop. I
couldn't twist round far enough to make an examination of
it. The grips upon me were firm, unyielding and painfully
tight. I could hear the metal pads of its feet clattering with
noisy energy on the semi-metallic ground, but all I could
glimpse was a rocking leg-socket that oozed a strong-
smelling mineral oil.

Behind, McNulty's mount also accelerated. The light
grew stronger. I raised my head as much as I could, saw a
veritable procession of burdened machines stretching back
to the ship. It was not possible to identify the various
victims from my point of disadvantage.

A thrumming in the hazy sky drew my attention. Night
had not sufficiently withdrawn her darkening hand and
I failed to see the rocketships though I could follow their
progress as steadily they blasted from north to south.
After more than an hour, my captor stopped and put me
down. We must have covered somewhere about thirty miles.
I ached all over. By this time the sun was up and we were
at the verge of a wide, smooth road surfaced with dull,
lead-coloured metal. A coffin-shaped object about seven
feet long-the fantastic horse I had ridden upon the flat
of my back-surveyed me through its horribly unemotional
lenses.

Still retaining its grip, it shoved me through the doorway
of a waiting vehicle. This was a big, boxlike affair mounted
on double tractors and had the inevitable copper antenna
protruding from its top. I had just time to note a dozen
similar tumbrils lined up behind when I was thrust into
darkness.

The skipper followed me half a minute later. Then Brennand,
Wilson, a computator and two engineers. The skipper
was wheezing deep down in his chest. The engineers were
using an amazing mixture of Terrestrial, Venusian and
Martian oaths.

The door banged and locked itself, apparently of its own
accord. The machine jerked as if prodded by an invisible
finger, trundled forward at fair speed. It stank of oil. 
Somebody sniffed and sniffed and did some vituperative
muttering in the gloom. I think it was Brennand.

Finding his automatic lighter, the skipper flicked it and
we had a look around. Our moving prison proved to be a
steel cell nine feet long by six wide. There wasn't so much
as a ventilator. The oil-smell grew to the unbearable
pungency of the cat house at the zoo.

Still sniffing and muttering, the offended Brennand raised
his needle-ray and started to cut a hole in the roof, so I got
mine going and speeded up the glowing circle. Metal
flowed easily. The severed plate dropped out in a couple
of minutes. If our carrier had any sentience, it remained
unaware of its own mutilation for it kept going straight
ahead without pause or falter.

The sky didn't show through the roof. No vision of fleecy
clouds greeted us, no welcome flood of light poured in.
Above the gap in the steel lay a thick coating of dark green
stuff impervious to our needle-rays. We concentrated all we
had upon it, without avail.

A try at the door and the walls brought no better result;
green stuff again. The floor turned out to be the weak spot.
As the machine roared onward, we cut a hole in the floor,
light immediately sprang through it, we found ourselves
staring down at a swiftly spinning shaft and a section of
running road.

With his gun pointed downward, Brennand said, " Mother,
see what I can do!" and cut the shaft.

The machine lost pace, stopped. We braced ourselves for
an almighty crash that did not come. One by one the
following machines swerved around us and kept going.
Brennand and I continued to study the hole in the floor
while the others kept an anticipatory watch upon the door.
McNulty and his computator had lost their weapons in the affray,
but one of the engineers had retained his while the other
engineer clung to a four-foot spanner with which -- it was
rumoured -- he frequently slept.

We had no way of telling whether our dogbox had a
driver or whether it functioned of its own volition or under
some form of remote control, but if a driver or anyone else
opened that door, we were all set to make a determined
break. Nothing happened. We waited five tense minutes
during which I wondered which of our crew were imprisoned
in the other overtaking machines and to what sort
of grim fate they were being rushed.

Finally we enlarged the gap in the floor and had almost
made it big enough for our purpose when something huge
and heavy churned along the road, hit our machine a gentle
bump. Came a loud, metallic click and the next instant we
moved forward, slowly, then faster. A breakdown dingus
had come on the job.

The portion of road visible through the hole soon streamed
past at a rate that put an end to any thoughts of escape via
that route. To drop through would be foolhardy in the
extreme; if we weren't chewed up by the speeding tractors
we'd certainly be minced by anything that might be running
close behind.

"This," remarked McNulty, "is most annoying."

"Annoying? " echoed Brennand, eyeing him peculiarly.
He kneeled, put his face to the hole and enjoyed a few
breaths of uncontaminated air. One of the engineers
snickered.

"I have lost a seven hundred dollars owl-eye camera,"
announced young Wilson, with some ire. His eyes tried to
stab the skipper to death. "That's a damnsight more than
annoying! I'll take it out of their metal hides first chance
I get!"

"Here's your blamed camera," announced Brennand. He
got to his feet, extracted it from his pocket, handed it over,
a thing little bigger than a cigarette pack. "You dropped
it as you were lugged out of the ship. I caught it a moment
before I was slung after you."

"Thanks-you're a pal!" Wilson fondled it with loving
fingers. "I've been worrying about it." He stared straight
at me, repeated, "Yes, I've been worrying about it."

One of the engineers glanced at the section of road
flicking past the hole. The broken shaft, of course,
was not rotating.

"We're being towed. If I were sure that nothing is
following close upon us ---." He let it hang a minute,
then finished, "Hey, sit on my legs while I get my head
through and have a look."

"No, you don't," snapped McNulty. "We're moving much
too fast to risk a drop. We stay together and face events
together."

So we sat on the floor wistfully watching the circle of
light, our backs to the cold, hard walls. Somebody dug out
an airtight can of cigarettes, opened it, handed it around.
We smoked in glum silence.

Eventually our vehicle stopped and a multitude of grindings
and clankings sounded all around. The entire machine
shuddered as an unseeable enormity lumbered by at one
side, shaking the ground with its tonnage. On the other
side, something purred like a dynamo as it approached our
door. We stood facing the door, alert, wide-eyed, those who
had ray guns holding them ready.

With surprising swiftness the door clicked and swung
wide. A big, multi-jointed arm reached through the opening,
felt blindly around. The way it did it reminded me of
a pet-store dealer groping in a box for white mice. I was
still gaping at that shiny limb, my needle lined on its
backmost joint, when one of the engineers ducked under it
and leaped out whooping defiance.

The fantastic searcher was just about to fasten upon the
skipper when the back joint seized as the ray hit dead on
and the whole arm lost its flexibility. It withdrew, stiff
and awkward, as the second engineer charged forth in the
wake of the first. This one was the guy with the four-foot
spanner. The silliest thoughts occur to one at the most
inappropriate times; I remembered as I followed the
computator and McNulty close upon this fellow's heels that
at no time had I seen him put down that spanner or let go
of it for a moment.

Outside the battle was short and sharp. We found ourselves
faced by forty machines of eight distinct types. Half
a dozen of them were no bigger than dogs and did nothing
but canter around observing everything that happened. The
biggest was a monstrosity twice the size of a Pullman coach
and had one great, telescopic arm terminating in a huge,
black disc.

Five yards from the door, struggling in the grasp of a
many-armed coffin, the engineer who'd got out first was
striving to burn away the contraption's near-side lens. The
one with the spanner had tangled with a wheeled globe and
battered ineffectually at the universal joints from which its
writhing tentacles. sprouted. He was cursing with great
vigour and admirable fluency.

On the left a tall, idiotic gadget faintly resembling a
drunken surrealist's notion of a sober giraffe, was running
away with McNulty. It had four arms that tightly embraced
the luckless skipper, four legs that moved in ungainly
swings, and a greatly elongated neck from the top of which
shone a single lens. Still full of life, the skipper was putting
up a futile struggle.

With its front limbs thrown out in mock affection a
glassily staring coffin thumped forward to clasp me to its
bosom. It moved with that dull, heavy dum-dum-dum you
hear in Africa when an enraged rhinoceros is making for
you. A belly-fluttering sound. It was so near that I sensed
its characteristic stink of warm machine oil.

I stepped backward beyond what I thought would be
the limit of its full reach and promptly it slid another twenty
inches of joint from its metal casing. That trick almost cost
me my unwary head. I tripped and went down in the nick
of time, felt its bear-trap hand swipe across my top
hairs.

There was something ghastly about the silence of this
battle. Our opponents made no sound in any way vocal.
Except for our own oaths and grunts nothing could be heard
but the smooth purring of hidden works, the swish of metal
tentacles, the clank of jointed arms, the thud of massive
metal feet.

My opponent snatched downward as I dropped, but I
rolled as never I'd rolled before, dodged both its grab and
its pounding legs. My needle-ray spiked at its flat under-
side and did no good whatsoever. Twisting clear, I sprang
to my feet, glanced rightward, saw the computator's body
lying in one place and his brains in another. I felt sick.
As I swung to watch the coffin, the Pullman thing-which
had taken no part up to then-aimed its disc at me and
bathed me from head to feet in a powerful beam of pale-
green light. Theoretically, as I discovered later on, that
beam should have jammed my radio animation and made
me stiffer than that stiff they call Rigor Mortis. But since I
had non-mechanical animation of my very own the device
remained nothing more than a pale-green light.

The globes were by far the speediest of all this crazy
assortment of super-gadgets and it was a globe that got me
in the end. My coffin-shaped opponent lumbered clumsily
around to have another go at me, another coffin galloped
toward me from the opposite side, and as I tried to divide
my attention between both, a globe nipped in from behind
and laid me out.

At one moment my ray was pouring its thin blade into
the body of the nearest oncomer while over its sights I had
a view of McNulty and the giraffe retreating far behind my
attacker's back, then - thunk! - the universe exploded in my
head, I let go my weapon and collapsed.

MeNulty called the roll. Tattered and weary, but his
plump little form still in one piece, he stood with his
shoulders squared back and looked us over. Jay Score posed.
beside him, big and solid as ever, his stallite chest sticking
out through the shreds of his uniform, but his eyes glittering
with the old, everlasting fires.
"Ambrose:�
"Here, sir."
"Armstrong."
"Here, sir."
"Bailey."

No reply. The skipper glanced up, frowning.

"Bailey. Does anyone know what has happened to Chief
Steward Bailey?"

Somebody said, "Haven't seen him since just before the
fight on the ship, sir." Nobody added to this information.

"Humph!" McNulty's frown deepened. He marked his
list and continued. I was puzzled as I looked over our
mauled but still tough gang. Something missing, something
missing. But either the skipper hadn't sensed it or else he
was ignoring it, for he proceeded methodically with his
task. "Barker, Bannister, Blaine, Brennand . . . ." Again
his eyes lifted as there came no response.

"Brennand was in our dogbox," I reminded. "I don't
know what happened to him:"

"You can't say definitely that he's dead?"

"No, sir.'

"Brennand never came out of that machine," offered a
voice. It was the gentleman with the spanner. He stood
beside the eyebrow-waggling Steve Gregory, and his face
looked like a half-eaten orange, but still he was attached
to his hunk of iron. Maybe the machines had let him keep
it because they'd mistaken it for part of his arm. He said,

"I was the last to go under in that free-for-all. Brennand
wasn't taking part. Neither was Wilson."

McNulty registered a touch of woe; Jay Score showed a
little interest, The skipper made two marks on his list and
carried on. It wasn't until he reached the letter K that I
discovered the missing factor nagging my subconscious.

" Kli Dreen; Kli Morg, Kli . . . where's Kli Dreen? "

We stared around, the whole bunch of us. Not a Martian
among those present. Not one. Kli Yang, Sug Farn and the
rest-nine in all-were missing. Neither could anyone
remember seeing them after the struggle in the Marathon.
The last man out of the vessel had been Murdoch, a
government expert, and he swore that when he got snatched
the Martians were still aboard and still fighting. Leastways,
none of them had been tossed into his vehicle, the last of
the line.

We could think up no satisfactory explanation of Martian
escape from durance vile, nor hazard a guess at their
present state. Perhaps their enormous strength had pre-
vailed against the metal monstrosities, though that didn't
seem likely. My private notion, which I kept strictly to
myself, was that they'd managed to get the foe crazy about
chess and right now both sides were waiting breathlessly
for someone to jump a bishop two squares. The Martians
were fully capable of a stunt as lopsided as that.

Marking all the Red Planet names, MeNulty continued to
the bottom of his list, omitting Sixth Engineer Zeigler in
the same way that he'd omitted Chief Andrews, and for
the same season. Those two were known to be dead.

They'd succumbed to that first onslaught through the stern.
Summing up, McNulty found seven dead, five missing,
not counting the Martians. The missing consisted of Haines
and his two men in the lifeboat, also Brennand and Wilson.
This was a serious loss to our small company and our only
comfort lay in the thought that the missing ones
nevertheless might be alive.

I took stock of our prison while the skipper mooned sadly
at the roll. We were in a metal barn, a great, bare place a
hundred feet long by sixty wide by forty high. Its walls
were smooth, drab-coloured, windowless. The deeply
curved roof, equally drab, was devoid of any opening, but
from its apex hung three large spheres of translucent plastic
that glowed with orange light. Closely as I examined the
walls I could not find upon their dead flat surface a single
line or solitary flaw suggestive of a butt weld or any other
kind of joint.

"Well, men--" began McNulty.

He got no further. Thinly, eerily, a long-drawn scream
trickled through the thin cracks around the building's only
door: It was a high-pitched sound thrust up to the very
peak of agony and it had many reverberations as if escaping
through a long, metal corridor. Above all, it was a
human voice-or the voice of what was left of something
human.

The men milled around, their foreheads glossy with
perspiration. Murdoch looked sheet-white. Sam Hignett's
black fingers opened and closed as they itched to go to the
aid of the sufferer. The engineer with the spanner had
rolled up his sleeves and revealed a tattooed nautch dancer
on the muscle of his lower left arm. The dancer shimmied
as he changed and tightened his grip on the spanner. His
face still looked like hell, but his eyes were hard.
Slowly, Jay Score expressed the general feeling by saying,

"If we had the handling of one of these automatons we'd
pull it to pieces to see what makes its cuckoo call the
hours." He stared at nobody in particular. "In that respect,
they may resemble us, much as I hate to admit it. Any
man who doesn't fancy being picked to bits to satisfy alien
curiosity had better take care that they never get him out
of here alive!"

Again the terrible scream. It broke off abruptly the
moment it reached its top note and ensuing silence seemed
as horrible as the noise. I could imagine them now,
clickcould bear his six. I could see no point in trying for the
roof, anyway. All the same, this futile effort served to
occupy our hands and minds for a short while.

Blaine tried his needle-ray on the wall with the obvious
idea of cutting a series of foot-holds, but this stuff proved
much different from that with which the vehicles were
built. It heated up quite normally, turning primrose colour
at maximum temperature, but flatly refused to melt or be
cut.

This attempt with the ray gave the skipper the notion
of making an inventory of available weapons. Between the
lot of us there were seven ray guns, one ancient vest-pocket
automatic pistol the owner of which claimed that it had
been used by his father in the Final War, one four-foot
spanner, two tear-gas pencils.

Events had shown the ray guns to be a fat lot of use
against our armour-plated enemies. The rest of the stuff
was mere lumber. But the inventory served to reveal one
interesting angle of the foe's psychology in that anyone
who'd clung grimly to his weapon had been permitted to
keep it. This suggested that they didn't know weapons
when they saw them!

We'd just finished inspecting this inadequate armament
when the door shot open with suddenness that caught us
napping and two lobsterlike things were thrust into our
prison. The door shut with a vicious clash, giving us not
the slightest glimpse of what lay beyond it. Skidding
helplessly across a corner of the metal floor, the
lobsters brought up against the wall in a manner that
laid them flat. For a moment they reposed there while
we stared at them fascinatedly and they gaped back at us.
Recovering, they came to their legs. It could now be seen
that their heads more resembled those of insects than of
lobsters, for they had multiple-lensed eyes and butterfly
antennae.

Getting over their surprise, these creatures talked to us,
not vocally, but with quasi-telepathic speech that seemed
to pop up inside our brains. Their weird mouths never
opened, their palps did not move, but so efficient was their
projection of thought-forms that it was difficult to believe
they weren't addressing us in our own language. It was
a feat very much like the iguana's.

One of them-I couldn't decide which one-said, "You
are strangers from some other place. You are soft-bodied
things, quite unlike the hard-shelled things of our solar
system. Can you understand us?"

"Yes," replied MeNulty, bugging his eyes at them. "We
understand you."

"Sound waves!" The strange pair stared at each other
in mutual dumbfoundment, their delicate antennae
quivering. I could almost hear the ejaculation-mark at
the end of their comment. "They communicate by means of
modulated sound waves!" For some reason best known to
themselves, this verged on the incredible. They gazed at
us as though we outraged a basic law of nature, then, "You
are difficult to talk with. You do not assist with your
minds. We have to push in our thoughts and pull out
yours."

"I'm sorry," apologized McNulty. He gulped, composed
himself. "Mental communication is not our specialty."

"It is of no consequence. We are managing." Each of
them made identically the same vague gesture with the
same claw. "Despite our differences in shape and form,
it is apparent that we are brothers in misfortune."

"At the moment," agreed McNulty, refusing to see
anything permanent about this status. He was now beginning
to regard himself as something of a universal contact-man
.
"Have you any idea of what they intend to do with us?"

"They'll dissect you"

"Dissect us? Cut us up?"

"Yes."

McNulty scowled and asked, "Why?"

"They dissect all the individualistic. They've been doing
it for years, centuries, trying to discover the cause of
personal independence. They are intelligent machines, but
their intelligence is completely communal." The lobster or
whatever it was, mused and went on, "Upon our own
world of Varga there are tiny aquatics of similar type in
that they're nothing remarkable as individuals but display
high intelligence when functioning in organized groups.
They share a racial mind."

"Like certain termites," suggested the skipper.

"Yes, like termites," confirmed whichever of the two was
doing the mental talking-or was it both? I couldn't see
how he-or they-could agree about termites of which they
knew nothing until I remembered that what was in the
skipper's mind had been impressed on their minds, too.

"For many, many circumsolar revolutions they have been
trying to conquer the neighbouring water-world of Varga,
which is our home planet. Our people have resisted with
some success but occasionally some of us are captured,
brought here and dissected."

"They are only machines, though?"

"They are machines of a large number of functional
types, all kinds of warriors, all kinds of workers, even
experts and specialists. . But they are machines." He
stopped, shocked us to the marrow by suddenly pointing
an accusative claw at the silently watching Jay Score. "Just
as he is a machine ! He is made of metal and his mind
remains closed to us! We do not like him!"

"Jay's a hell of a lot more than a mere machine," declared
McNulty in open indignation. "He's got something no
stinking gadget ever had. I can't explain what it is, but ...
well ... he's a person.!
A low murmur showed that he had expressed the irrational
but nonetheless convinced opinion of his crew.

"What I've got is no more than the general complaint,"
suggested Jay, unsmiling. "I've got independence. That
makes me a candidate for the butchers along with the rest."
He sighed, added, " I suppose I'll go the way of all flesh."

Grinning at this pessimistic sally, McNulty said to the
abashed lobster-things, "If you are sensitive to the thoughts
of our kind you might be able to tell us whether you can
detect any human emanations from elsewhere. A few of
my men are missing and I'd like to know whether they're
still alive."
The pair of strange creatures from Varga went quiet
while their antennae trembled as if delicately searching a
portion of the ether beyond our range and comprehension.
Something rumbled noisily along the corridor and passed
our door without stopping, but they took no notice of this
diversion.

After a while one of them-or both-said, "Our range
is short, exceedingly short. We can tell you that a mind
like yours has just gone away, gone forever. It petered out
even as we were conversing. There are no other minds of
your type within receptive distance."

"Oh," said McNulty, disappointed.

They pointed claws toward the roof and went on, "But
up there, there are other minds far stranger than yours, far
different from ours. They are unique. We would not have
thought them possible. Unbelievable as it may be, they
can concentrate upon two subjects at one and the same
time."

"Eh? " said McNulty, scratching his head. He could
make nothing of this information.
"Two subjects at once! Most remarkable! They are
high up in the air but descending toward the roof. One of
them is thinking of an array of little gods on a square
composed of coloured squares and is also thinking of ...
you!"

"What? " McNulty shouted.

I saw Steve Gregory's scalp swallow his eyebrows as he
followed the skipper's example and stared wildly upward.
We all looked pop-eyed at the roof. Next instant came a
tremendous thump that shook the place from end to end
and a huge dent appeared in the curve of the roof.
Some-thing hammered violently on the metal plates, other
things created an uproar in the corridors beyond the door.
The combined noises were awful; I felt like a bug in a
boiler with half a dozen riveters at work on the seams.

Our unofficial spanner-bearer was one guy with observation
and initiative. He'd noticed that the door opened inward.
With his hefty four-foot instrument still in one fist,
he crammed his other hand into a back pocket, felt around,
proved himself tough enough to think nothing of sitting on
two short, thick screwdrivers and a small lump of metal
shaped like an axe-head. These items he walloped into the
base of the door, performing the task with some difficulty,
but finally managing to wedge the thing good and tight.
He'd barely finished when the row in the corridor increased
and a great weight made the door groan.

It looked as though our time had come, delayed a few
precious minutes by the fastened door. Those clanking
enormities outside were thirsty for samples to slice apart.
Our much-prized individualism was to be our downfall.
On this basis it struck me that the spanner-holder and Sam
Hignett might be chosen for first carving if the carvers had
any preferences, because they'd be curious about why the
former possessed a half-metal, double-length arm and why
the latter had a black skin in contrast with everyone else's
white. I also wondered what would be their reaction when
they got the measure of Jay Score.

The door shook to a terrific blow, did not turn on its
hinges but did begin to bulge in the middle. Brilliant light
streamed through the gap between its bent top edge and
the wall. Caterpillar treads rattled past outside while the
mechanism thrusting at the door maintained its powerful
pressure.

"Don't shoot until you see the green of their teeth,"
grinned the door-wedger. He spat on the floor, leaned on
his spanner like a waiting knight leaning on his mace. The
pose made his tattooed nautch dancer look incongruous.
Came a loud tearing sound from the roof as a great
section of it was pulled away bodily. Sunlight poured over
our upturned faces. A large, leathery, bulbous body with
many huge, sucker-surfaced arms tumbled over the ragged
rim, clung with three of its snaking limbs and hung
grotesquely in mid-air. It was Sug Farn.

Adding three more tentacles to those maintaining his
overhead hold, he extended the remaining four downward.
His full spread was thirty-two feet, now reduced by five
or six feet of sucker-hold upon the roof. His tentacle tips
dangled and curled enticingly a good fourteen feet from the
floor. The door made an alarming bend inward while Sug
Farn hung there and we looked up at him with various
degrees of hope. The lobster creatures surveyed him
aghast.

Then suddenly he came down another ten feet, grabbed
four of the crew, swung them up to the hole in the roof.
They went like mahouts lifted in elephants' trunks. Eyeing
the hole, I could see that Sug Farn no longer had any direct
hold of his own, his upper tentacles being closely entwined
with the equally ropey limbs of another Martian anchored
out of view on the roof-top. Sug Farn raised the four to
within a few feet of the hole whereupon other tentacles
writhed through from above, took them from him. Then
four more and four more.

What with trying to keep my attention divided between
this circus act and the dangerously creaking door, I hadn't
taken overmuch notice of the Vargans, but now I discovered
they were having a bitter argument with McNulty.

"No," declared the skipper, firmly. "We do not give in.
We do not face the inevitable. We do not die with aplomb,
as you put it " He sniffed his disgust. "We had a tribe on
Earth that looked at things your way. They celebrated
their miseries with nonchalant belly-slitting. It never got
them anywhere."

"But escape simply isn't done," the Vargans persisted, as
though talking about a war atrocity. "It is dastardly. It is
contrary to convention. It is outrageous defiance of the
accepted rules of war. Even a child knows that a prisoner
must maintain honour by uncomplainingly accepting his
fate."

"Bunk!" snorted McNulty. "Balderdash! We're not on
parole. We've made no promises and don't intend to make
any." He watched another four sail upward to freedom.

"It is wrong, utterly wrong. It is disgraceful. A captive
is lost forever. Why, our own people would kill us from
sheer shame were we to go away. Have you no conscience?"

"But, damn it," swore McNulty, "your rules are idiotic.
We aren't bound by them. We don't subscribe to them. No
matter what you say, it's perfectly legitimate for us to ---"

"Listen!" interjected Jay Score. His glowing eyes shifted
from the expostulating skipper to the partially wrecked door
which now threatened to give way at any moment. "Isn't
this a hell of a time to debate different codes of ethics?"

"Sure, Jay, but these hard-shelled dunderheads-ouch!"

His surprised expression was comical as the imperturbable
Sug Farn fished for him, got him and lugged him clean out
of the argument.

The door gave way at last, bursting with a sound that
tore the ears. Not counting the defeatist Vargans, there
were seven of us remaining on the floor when the door fell
in and a thing like a fifty ton tank rumbled headlong into
the busted jail.

A clicking, whirring mass of coffins, globes and other
nightmarish contraptions crowded hard behind it. The
leading invader was so big it filled the large doorway with
only a couple of inches to spare on either side. Fascinatedly,
too fearful to move, I watched its great caterpillar treads
streaming downward over the front cog-drives as it lumbered
toward me, an alien juggernaut.

His black features curiously alight, Sam Hignett yelled
at Sug Farn, "Me last! "

Our Negro surgeon might have got his self-sacrificing
wish, but he counted without the tentacled individual
dangling overhead. A speedy globe got through the door-
way, beat the juggernaut along the floor and grabbed at
Sam. It was about two seconds too late. Silently, without
comment or visible excitement, Sug Farn released three of
his clinging arms from the roof, garnered all seven of us 
and with a mighty effort heaved us beyond reach.

As I slowly soared to the hole I could feel a subtle 
trembling in the limb lifting me while Sug Farn strained 
his utmost to raise the big burden. Another limb reached
down, coiled around me, took some of the weight. Up through
the hole I caught a glimpse of another Martian figure 
crawling along the underside of the dented roof toward the 
top of the nearer wall, then I was in the sunlight and on 
my feet.

Sitting in its handy roof-dent like a mud-hen on its nest
was the pinnace. There the powerful little vessel rested,
its tubes ready for action, its smooth, streamlined shape a
thing of delight. No vision could have done more to boost
the spirits of weary men.

Metal buildings towered all around us, most of them
with roofs higher than the one on which we were standing.
Square or oblong in plan, without windows or decorations
of any sort, all were severely and depressingly utilitarian.
No smoke or steam arose from any point within view, but
puffs of coloured vapour came from several invisible
sources.

Many of the buildings bore great latticework radio masts;
a few had complicated aerial arrays resembling directional
antennae. The entire place was a metal metropolis.

Down below, wide, straight, evenly-spaced streets were
filled with scurrying machines of at least a hundred types.
Most of them looked like nothing we'd formerly seen; one
in particular, a long, semi-flexible contraption, reminded me
of a monster centipede. It had a triple row of revolving
cutters projecting from its front and evidently functioned as
some sort of tube borer or subterranean excavator.

A small proportion of coffins and globes were visible
among the crowd, with a couple of giraffes and several of
those inquisitive, seemingly useless gadgets that had got
under our feet during the earlier affray. Observing this
medley of alien forms, I developed the notion that the
globes and coffins were different kinds of warriors, the
giraffes were civil police and that the nosey little machines
were reporters or war correspondents who kept constant
watch and transmitted continual reports either to some
co-ordinating centre or maybe to the community as a whole.
But I didn't feel too sure about the giraffes.

While two-thirds of the rescued crew clambered into the
pinnace, giving it a full load, I stood with Jay Score at the
ragged edge of the roof-hole and looked into our recent
prison. It was an amazing sight. The pair of lobster-things
had gone, presumably to their anticipated fate. Immediately
beneath us, squatting like an enormous iron toad in the
middle of the floor, was the fifty tonner that had burst in
through the door.

Around it glassy-eyed globes whirled hither and thither,
occasionally waving tentacles at us in what could have been
fury-if an automaton is capable of fury. Several coffins
had folded their jointed rear legs, sat and stared up at us
in fantastic imitation of a pack of baulked hounds, their
forward lenses having gained enough tilt to bear on the
roof and reveal their escaped prey. Despite their total lack
of facial animation I could almost see their jaws open and
tongues hanging out. Most of the moving machines made
a continual clicking and clanking. Their pungent oil smelled
to high heaven.

Thirty feet above this mob, Sug Farn and Kli Yang had
stuck themselves securely to the tops of opposite walls and
now fished for the enemy. Sug Farn snaked out a tentacle
that looked as though it could have anchored a battleship,
spread the end suckers on the flat, smooth back of a
squatting coffin which-to judge from its posture-was
patiently waiting for us to drop like over-ripe grapes.
Sug Farn lifted the coffin which immediately clanked with
alarm and waved its jointed legs. An alert globe whirled to
its rescue.

Kli Yang at once chipped in and took the globe with all
the blank-faced nonchalance of a chameleon tongue-
swatting a fat fly. The coffin soared twenty-five feet, the
suckers let go, it dropped on the back of the fifty tonner,
crashed thence to the floor with a rattle of busted internal
works and lay motionless. The globe, which was lighter,
went up fighting madly in the sucker-grasp of Kli Yang,
then was flung on top of another globe. The flung one went
dead. The struck one suffered some sort of injury to its
steering circuits and proceeded to race round and round in
a tight circle.

Looking longingly at the biggest monstrosity which continued
to sit unmoving beneath us with all the indifference
of a dumped flivver, Kli Yang remarked, "This is how we
won the fight in the ship. We sat on the ceilings where they
couldn't get at us. We picked them up, dropped them and
left the rest to nature. They can't climb. Neither could
they get into the Marathon a machine big enough to reach
us.

With one saucer eye on me and Jay, he rolled the other
downward for another look at the foe. This independent
swivelling of Martian eyes always did give me the creeps
and always will. To Sug Farn, he added, as if it were a
logical afterthought on the same subject, "Kli Morg ought
to have sacrificed his bishop."

"Yes, I had just reached that solution," agreed Sug Farn
using a globe to crack the pate of a giraffe. "Morg tends to
err on the side of economy in his games. That makes him
somewhat slow to see that the loss of a bishop now is well
worth the gain of two rooks ten moves later. "He sighed,
Said, "Watch this!" made a swift snatch at a gesticulating
object that seemed to be a mass of weird tools, got it by a
big knobbed projection on its front, hurled it against the
base of Kli Yang's wall.

Whoom! Heat bathed my legs as the pinnace blew free
and drummed into the sky. That left eleven of us on the
roof plus the double-minded Martians amusing themselves
by converting our prison into a junk-yard. Turning, I saw
the pinnace zooming northward on a stream of thunder
and fire.

"They'll be back for us shortly-if we're still here." Jay
Score's brilliant optics studied the Martians and the metal
horde below. "Kli is wrong in suggesting that they have no
climbers. How did they erect these buildings?"

"None of those can climb," I argued uneasily, pointing
to the crowd down there.

"No-but I bet they have some kind of building machines
stowed away, some kind of mechanical steeplejack. Ten to
one they will haul them out as soon as they get over the
confusion we've caused by defying their rules of war." He
indicated surrounding streets in which no great excitement
was yet evident. "It is taking a long time to sink in. I doubt
whether a prisoner has ever broken free within living
memory, if they have memories. Temporarily they are
stumped by a situation they can hardly comprehend."

"Yes, we certainly are dealing with a totally different kind
of mentality," I agreed. "It looks as if they're too
conditioned to meet the abnormal and cope with it promptly."

I didn't mention it because Jay was too much of a definite
personality, but I felt that he had some advantage over the
rest of us in being able to look at things from the viewpoint
of our mechanical opponents.

Kli Yang crawled up through the hole, followed by Sug
Farn. The latter stared around, settled himself in the dent
made by the pinnace, wrapped himself up in his own
tentacles and went to sleep. From him came high, soft and
long-drawn whistles.

"Slumbering!" complained Kli Yang. "He cannot do
anything without grabbing himself a sleep on the strength
of it." Keeping one disgusted eye fixed on the snoring
Martian, he swivelled the other toward Steve Gregory. What
with his off-centre eyes and Steve's jiggling eyebrows, I
began to wonder what hidden talents I might possess. "I
suppose," said Kli Yang, gloomily, "it didn't occur to
anyone in the pinnace to leave a chess-board behind? "

"No, it didn't," Steve admitted, secretly thankful for the
omission.

"It wouldn't," grumbled Kli Yang. Edging away from
us, he dug out a tiny bottle of hooloo scent, sniffed at it
pointedly. I suppose the twelve pounds pressure was
beginning to get him down. I never did believe those
indecent Martian descriptions of the human odour.

"How did you know which building we were in?" Jay
Score inquired.

"We came drumming over," Kli Yang told him, "with
poor hope of finding you in this jumble of edifices. We
circled around several times and were much surprised that
the mob of things in the streets took not the slightest notice
of us. Eventually we saw that line of parked vehicles with
Brennand and Wilson standing on top of one signalling
frantically. So we picked them up and landed on this, the
nearest roof. Our drop was slightly clumsy because the
pinnace is hard to handle with controls made for human
limbs."

"Brennand and Wilson are safe then? "I put in.

"Yes. KIi Dreen yanked them into the boat. They said
they'd got out of their vehicle through the hole in its floor
instead of the door, after which they were completely
ignored. They were amazed by the way in which they'd
been left alone and they couldn't understand it"

Glancing at me, Jay said, "See-escapees! The abnormal
factor! Nobody knew what to do about them. They were
in blatant denial of local ethics, a problem that required
time to solve solely because new and previously unknown:"
He strolled to the edge of the roof, his crepe-rubber soles
carrying his weight silently on the smooth surface. Another
roof adjoined ours, but on a lower level. He stared down at
it, his eyes aglow.

"Those screams came from somewhere under there.
Come on, let's see whether we can tear up a corner and
have a look at what's beneath."

He dropped four feet onto the lower roof, followed by
Armstrong, me and the others. Together we heaved and
strained at a lapping metal corner. It gave way, coming up
with unexpected ease. That metal was darned peculiar
stuff, fairly hard, impervious to heat, yet bendable along
the line of a hidden grain. No wonder the Martians had
been able to rip a hole in the roof.

Peering through the gap, we found a long, narrow room
that might have been either a laboratory or an operating
theatre. Apparatus of all kinds littered it, including radiant
lamps, sterilising chests, trays of peculiar instruments,
wheeled tables, and an assortment of junk we couldn't
recognise.

Half a dozen highly polished and superbly finished
machines were busy in this room, their shiney, unemotional
lenses intent on their tasks. They had dexterous digits.
What they were doing gave me the willies.

Two lobster-things were spread all over the room, part
of one on a near table, two heads on another, a mass of
innards on a third. Whether they had been the same pair
with which we had talked or whether they were two others,
it was impossible to tell. The machines were fooling around
with the bits, putting sections under odd-looking
microscopes, sticking pieces into various kinds of apparatus.

The lobsters had nothing recognisable as blood but their
mutilated parts exuded an oily, colourless juice. All the
same, there were significant daubs of crimson on one of the
unoccupied tables, spots of crimson on the floor, spatters
of crimson on a couple of the mechanical vivisectionists. In
a wire basket, carelessly tossed aside, lay a pair of human
hands. The left one, white and flaccid, still bore a gold
signet ring. It had belonged to Haines!

Armstrong cursed violently and said, "God, what wouldn't
I give to be able to blow this place to shreds."

"There's nothing we can do-yet," commented Jay Score
not visibly moved. " We're too late to save anyone." He
eyed the next roof which lay on the same level and about
twenty-five feet away. Like the outpiece on which we were
standing, it projected from a bigger and higher building
surmounted by a tall radio mast. Twin antennae ran from
this mast to another on a matching edifice a hundred yards
off. "I think I can jump that gap," Jay murmured.

"Now take it easy," advised Armstrong, looking over the
edge at the big drop under that twenty-five feet chasm.
"Wait until the pinnace comes back. If you try a leap of
this description and fail to make it by a couple of inches,
you'll go down fast and far. You'll be converted into a
thousand souvenirs scattered over the street."

Returning to the hole in our roof, Jay glanced down
through it. "They are still waiting," he reported, "but
they won't wait for ever. They're likely to go into action
before long." He came back, the tattered rags of his
uniform flapping around his great stallite legs. "So I'd
better have a little action on my own account"

Before any of us could make a move to prevent him, he'd
measured his pace and started. There was no stopping him
once he was on his way : his solid and powerful three-
hundred or more pounds made too much mass for mere
human muscles to oppose. Kli Yang, perhaps, might have
done it, but he didn't try.

With a superswift and well-timed run, Jay shot off the
rim of our roof, arced over the intervening street, landed
with a good yard to spare. A second and easier jump
carried him to the higher level. Reaching the lattice-mast,
he went up it like a monkey and tore away its antenna.
Then he returned; the same spectacular leap performed with
the same margin.

"Some day," suggested Kli Yang, comfortingly, "you will
get yourself electrocuted-if you don't first break your neck."
He gestured to the street. "It may be coincidence or it
may not, but some of those machines have quit moving."

It was true. Amid the hurly-burly below a number of
automatons had become lifeless as statues. They were all
of the same kind. Other types were unaffected and jostled
around as of yore. Coffins, globes, wormlike things and
large, lumbering mock-bulldozers went about their business
as though nothing had occurred, but the few specimens of
this one particular type-an egg-bodied, spindle-legged
device-posed like ones petrified in their tracks.

"I'd say they have radio-animation," ventured Jay. "Each
kind has its own waveband and its own station from which
it draws power." He pointed to other masts sticking up all
over the city. "If we could put those out of action, I think
we'd stiffen the lot into temporary immobility."
"Why temporary?" I asked. "To deprive them of power
would be rather permanent, wouldn't it?"

"Not necessarily. There's such a large variety of machines
designed for every imaginable function that ten to one
they've also got an independently-powered radio repair
squad which would come to life the moment everyone else
went dead."

Someone interjected, "If their radio mechanics look
anything like an ambling lighthouse, there's one on his way
here already." He jerked an indicative thumb northward.

We looked that way. The object coming down the north
road was fantastic in the extreme. It consisted of a long
metal platform running on-huge wheels ten to twelve feet
in diameter. From the centre of the platform rose a
gradually tapering tubular body terminating in a many-lensed,
many-armed top piece more than sixty feet above ground level.
The thing seemed taller than a fire-tower, dominating
the street and some of the buildings.

"Clap hands-here comes Charlie!" said the gentleman
who owned the ancient pistol. He gripped the out-of-date
weapon with much determination. Compared with the oncoming
colossus, the pistol was absurd. One might as well
hope to bring down a rogue elephant with spit-balls.

"An automatic erector, I think." Jay watched it coolly,
calmly. "Probably it has been summoned to pick us off."

The little gang of humans seemed damnably unconcerned
about the matter. Maybe they were trying to conceal
feelings like those bubbling in my own insides. As the
tremendous menace rumbled slowly and inevitably nearer, my
stomach shrank to a small, hard ball.

Down in the street the mechanical horde still went to and
fro, while beneath the hole in the roof waited another
hungry pack. Jay might be able to get away by means of
his mighty leaps from rooftop to rooftop, but the rest of
us could do nothing but wait like steers in a slaughterhouse.

Then a dot appeared in the sky and a high-pitched whine
told us that the pinnace was coming back. A swift little
bullet, it dived toward us at full pelt. As nearly as I could
judge it was likely to reach our precarious perch slightly
ahead of the threatening tower-contraption, but I doubted
whether it could land, open its airlock, take us aboard and
blow free before trouble started. Our pulses working
overtime, we watched the swift onrush of the pinnace, the
weighty forward trundle of the super-sized foe, and
anxiously compared the progress of both.

Just as I'd decided that half of us might make it at the
expense of the other half, those in the pinnace saw the
advancing tower. The vessel made no attempt to land.
Describing a tight half-turn that rocked it laterally, it shot
over us with a screaming rush of air, cut across the head
of the tower now a mere fifty yards away. A midget atomic
bomb must have dropped, though I didn't see it go down.

"Drop!" rasped Jay Score, urgently.

We flopped on our faces. Something whooped sky-high,
our building swayed, a rare assortment of hardware
fountained up from the street. For a few seconds there was
an eerie silence broken only by the composite clankings of
survivors of the metal population and the receding howl of
the pinnace. Then came a great crash as the towerlike
mechanism fell headlong. The building shuddered again.

I clambered to my feet. The tower reposed full length
in the street, its platform wrecked, its long, tubular body
twisted and distorted, its lensed and many-armed head
battered out of recognition and devoid of animation. The
fallen giant had put an end to a dozen smaller machines
with its collapse.

"Damme," chirruped Sug Farn, violently awakened.
"What's all the row about? Are they at it again? " He
stretched his tentacles, yawned.

"Get out of that dent," ordered Kli Yang, looking at him
with disfavour. "Make room for the pinnace."

Without haste and with poor grace, Sug Farn moved
over to a corner of the roof where we formed a tiny, hopeful
group. Zooming round in a shallow sweep, the pinnace
came in, settled down, landed. Under its weight, the dent
in the roof became slightly deeper, more pronounced. But
for immense supports beneath the roof, and the expertness
of the vessel's landing, the little ship might have burst clean
through the plates and thrown the lot of us into the enemy's
power.

Thankfully we piled into the boat. The skipper wasn't
aboard and neither was Brennand. Second Navigator Quirk
held the controls and had a crew of five Terrestrials and
one Martian, the minimum for a vessel of this size. The
Martian was Kli Dreen. He didn't say a word to his snaky-
armed fellows as they squirmed through the lock, merely
stared at them and sniffed.

"I will bet twelve interplanetary dollars," Kli Yang told
him, acidly, "that your underworked brain never thought of
bringing our low-pressure helmets so that we could find
relief from this infernal stink."

"Hear him!" appealed Kli Dreen, swivelling one eye
toward me. "He explores the universe and then complains
about a little pressure." The eye rolled back to Kli Yang as
he added triumphantly," Kli Morg would have won if he
hadn't insisted on saving his bishop."

"Ha-ha!" Kli Yang laughed with artificial violence. He
tried to wink knowingly at Sug Farn, and failed. The Martians
frequently tried to imitate the Terrestrial habit of
significantly closing one eye; they kept on trying despite the
dismal fact that it can't be done without eyelids. "A week
late in seeing the solution, as usual!"

I found young Wilson standing by the forward observation
port, near Pilot Quirk. The camera lay ready in his
hands and he fairly drooled. Two more cameras sat in
holding-straps on the wall, one of them an instrument with
a lens the size of a saucer.

"Oh, sarge," he yammered at me. "Shots, shots, shots-
dozens of them." His face was magenta with professional
glory. "And I got that tower-thing the moment we bopped
it. Watch me get these two as well."

Peering over his shoulder I had a look through the port.
Sure enough two more of the lofty erections were coming
down the street, swaying like drunken sailors as they
progressed. Back. of me I could hear our airlock door
being wound home.

Wilson's camera went click-click. The pinnace stirred,
swept away from the roof, boosted speed under Quirk's
expert hands. No Martian could handle a boat with quite
the same touch as a well-trained Terrestrial.

I went in search of Jay Score, found him prone by the
little bomb hatch in the belly. He was holding a banger
and released it just as I got there. Putting my face to the
nearest port, I saw the building adjoining our former prison
bulge at the walls and throw its roof at the clouds. The
inside must have been a shambles.

"So much for their operating-theatre," growled Jay. His
eyes were like coals. "That one took them. apart for a
change!"

I could sympathise with his feelings but, darn it, a robot
isn't supposed to experience so human an emotion as a thirst
for revenge. Still, nobody cared to show surprise at his
rare moments of unrobotic sentiment. By all the laws he
wasn't supposed to have any more feelings than a dummy-
but the fact remained that he did have them, in a cold,
phlegmatic sort of way.

"McNulty won't like that," I pointed out. "He'll say that
despite our losses the Terrestrial authorities will call it
unnecessary destruction. He'll let his conscience nag him
all the way home."

"Of course," agreed Jay, with suspicious alacrity. "I did
not think of that. What a pity!" His voice hadn't altered
its inflection in the slightest degree while his face, of course,
remained completely without expression. His thoughts were
as easy to read as those of a stone joss.

He went forward to see Quirk. Soon afterwards we made
a series of swoops as steadily we drummed northward.
Each time the boat ducked down there came a resounding
twang from outside, so I had another go at the port, found
we were busting a few antennae on our route. I didn't
need extra-sensory perception to know that Jay had
a hand in that performance, whether McNulty approved
or not.

Quickly the great metropolis rolled away beneath us, its
roads dotted with hurrying machines plus a good number
that were stalled, unmoving. Back in the distance I could
just make out the pair of towers which by now had reached
our recent sanctuary. One track minds; they had been
ordered to do a job and were still trying to obey a full
minute after we'd gone.

That city covered twenty square miles and all of it
metal. I've never seen so much metal in one place, nor
think I'll ever do so again.

Out here in the suburbs the egg-bodied machines remained
in sweet repose along with three other kinds, and
I could see various individuals hors-de-combat on the wide
arterial roads running north and south.

Whang! went another antenna, then we soared to twenty
thousand feet. On the southern horizon a second city now
revealed faint outlines of high buildings and tall masts.

Like a beautiful golden spindle the Marathon lay on the
black and crimson surface. Most of the crew were busy
around her stern. Diving to her starboard side, the pinnace
landed and we poured out. It wasn't until that moment I
remembered that my belly had been empty for hours.

We heard the other part of the story over a quick and
more than welcome meal. It appeared that the Martians
had coped with all attacks until the globes and coffins
withdrew. These had posted themselves at short distance
from the ship and waited for nobody knew what; perhaps for
the Martians to come out and be flattened in the open or,
more probably, for the arrival of some other kind of machine
better able to deal with them.

The Martians had seized this opportunity to blow free
in the pinnace and had seen their besiegers swarm into the
abandoned vessel the moment they left. But except for
wrecked specimens lying around, the hostile horde had
gone by the time we returned.

"You know," pondered Jay Score, "it looks rather as if
mere motion is their definition of sentient life. It moves,
therefore it lives. The Marathon has no animation of its
own, so they considered it as being no menace in itself.
They were after the crew. When the crew were all gone,
they bothered no more about the ship." His eyes examined
us speculatively. "Nobody's thought of trying it, but it's
possible that if you're cornered and stand perfectly
motionless, they might leave you alone. Yes, they might at
that!  But if you move, they're after you forthwith!"

"I wouldn't care to try that no-motion stunt," said a
voice, dryly. "Give me my feet every time. And, mister, let
'em be fast feet ! "

"Wonder if they'll attack again, before we've completed
repairs," I ventured.

There's no knowing. In my opinion, they've a most
curious mentality, if you can call it that," Jay went on.
"They accept the familiar, are instinctively and immediately
hostile towards the unfamiliar. The vessel was assaulted
solely because it was an unknown interloper. By this time
it's probably recorded in their communal mind as a known
wreck of no particular consequence. It won't be until some
passing machine reports unrecorded activity here that the
communal mind may connect it with our escape, ponder
what should be done about it, then order that it be done."
He glanced through a port toward dusty hills half shrouding
the setting sun. "We'd better move fast"

Beating it outside we lent a hand at the tough job of
resocketing the stern tubes. It was one heck of a task,
using an inadequate derrick and manhandling the great
pipes into position. Meanwhile, the Martians repaired the
torn stern, their welding machines flashing brilliant blue.
Engineers went over the combustion-chambers, checking
efficiency. Three more made good the damage done in the
nearby airlock, mostly by the pom-pom.

Quirk took the pinnace over to the far road while we
were engaged in these tasks. The skipper didn't want him
to risk it, but he hung high in the clouds until the road was
temporarily free of traffic, shot down and found the missing
lifeboat. Three of his crew brought it back together with
the bodies of Haines' two companions.

As far as we could tell from the available evidence, the
lifeboat had landed openly and in friendly fashion with
Haines unaware that a waiting Pullman-thing had blanked
out his radio channel. Haines had been captured. The
other two had gone down fighting and been left motionless.
We buried them in the evening along with Chief Andrews
and the others.

Long after dark the blue flashes of Martian welders cut
through the night and steady hammerings sounded in various
parts of the vessel. We were doing plenty to advertise
ourselves and no doubt about it, but risks have to be
taken.

All this time McNulty alternated between ill-concealed
gloominess and high spirits. I reckon the former was due
to anticipation of another attack before we had finished.
The latter might have been because we were making ready
to blow free, or perhaps because we'd gained a cargo of
astonishing specimens in the shape of three wrecked globes
and two smashed coffins. Our attackers had taken away all
the remaining junk or, to put it another way, had removed
the rest of their wounded from the battlefield.

At two o'clock the following afternoon the tedious task
was finished with a few loud hurrahs and a few more
sulphurous versions of the same. We blasted off. Down in
the cargo-hold the government experts gloated over our
load. Soaring miles above the scene of recent troubles, we
reached the second city in the south, touched ground near
its outskirts.

"Here we should be a new factor." remarked Jay Score.
"Let's see how they take it."

I timed it by my watch. The attack came in exactly
thirty-seven minutes.

The local technique was different. First of all the
reporters came along, carefully inspected us with many
skitterings around then hastened back to the city. Next, a
dozen Pullman-sized gadgets waddled up, aimed their discs
at us and bathed the entire vessel in their rays. Steve
Gregory immediately shot out of his room complaining that
his radio had gone haywire. He illustrated the trouble by
violently oscillating his brows.

Outside, more forces joined the futile disc-manipulators.
Things with enormous hands, things with a multitude of
built-in tools, all made for our stern. The inevitable array
of coffins and globes scouted warily around.

Two giraffes turned up and unknowingly posed for young
Wilson. By now the skipper decided. that we had waited
long enough and had better not give the opposition any
time to meddle with the stern-pipes. With a terrific whoosh!
that misted the landscape we shot skyward, leaving them
flustered and defeated.

Twenty minutes afterward we plunked down within easy
reach of a wide but little used road and waited for something
to come along on its ownsome. The first arrival proved
to be a galloping coffin with eight steadily thumping legs,
four folded arms, two tentacles in front, its idiotic copper
curl unwound and sticking straight up like a solitary hair.
Half a dozen of us barred its way, our ray guns aimed more
as a gesture than anything else. They weren't much of a
threat to these metal things, as we knew only too well.

It was all Jay's idea to which McNulty had consented
with much reluctance. The skipper agreed to the ambush
only on condition that we arranged it near enough to be
covered by one of the Marathon's pom-poms. I could see
the fast-firing weapon's eight barrels peering from the
nearest lock as the coffin slowed its pace, then stopped.

Six more of the crew got into the road behind our victim,
another four covered the side opposite the Marathon. The
coffin looked us over, its lenses hard, shiny and without
expression, its copper antenna quivering questioningly. I
had a strange notion that somehow its horde already knew
about its predicament and were summoning the riot squad.
I also knew that if it chose to charge blindly ahead, we
could do nothing to stop it. That metal mass could go
through our ranks like a knife through cheese.

For a few breathless moments the alien entity stared at
us and we stared back. Then it lumbered around preparatory
to beating a retreat, found itself cut off, turned to
face its original direction. We looked at each other until
the silence and the tension became unbearable. Still the
thing did not stir a limb.

"As I thought, just a metal hick," said Jay, blandly ignoring
the fact that he wasn't skin and bone himself. Boldly
he walked to within three or four feet of the coffin, gestured
toward the Marathon, beckoned and walked away.

A beckon is unmistakable in any language, on any world.
I certainly didn't expect that grotesque thing to obey the
gesture. But, so help me, it did!

With his broad back turned to the coffin, Jay marched
toward the ship and the coffin came to life and followed
him with the slow, meek gait of a dejected horse. That was
the only time I've seen the spanner-holder gape and let go
his tool.

Meeting a pop-eyed McNulty at the lock, Jay said, "See,
it has crazy ethics. It believes it is my prisoner and
therefore must face its fate." Leading it inside, he
conducted it to the hold, parked it in a corner where
it stood obediently, without overt move. "Chances are
it will become lifeless the moment we get beyond the sphere
of power-radiation from which it draws its vim. We had
better let Steve play with it: maybe he'll be able to
restore its animation with some sort of portable power-pack."

"Humph!" said McNulty, staring owlishly at the coffin.
He turned to Blaine. "Tell Steve to come down here."

This surrender of a potentially tough specimen occupied
our minds as we fastened the locks and prepared to take off
for keeps. Apparently the things would give battle in
squads but not as individuals. One could not look into that
coffin's mind-if it had a mind other than its share of the
communal consciousness-but we wondered whether, like
the lobsters, it was now fated to meet death at the hands
of its fellows if ever it returned.

Their way of looking at things was crazy and craziest of
all was their intolerance of initiative such as we possessed.
Or was it really so lunatic by comparison with the ethics
of humans? Maybe it all depends on what is meant by
`human'. I'm no profound scholar, no expert in history,
but I seemed to recall a long-gone war far, far back in the
dark ages, when the Japanese refused to admit they had
any men missing and callously declared them dead.

But it wasn't long before we learned that corporate
mentalities have advantages as well as disadvantages. We
blew free from the black and crimson ground, shot skyward
for the last time on this cockeyed world, burst though the
clouds and promptly encountered four long, black rocketships.
They were vessels such as we'd seen previously and
they squirted along in perfect line.

There was no question of the leader spotting us and
issuing orders to the others. They saw us simultaneously,
reacted simultaneously, moving in remarkable and impressive
unison. It made me think of a major scientific mystery,
namely, that of how a flock of birds often alter course,
change formation, wheel, form and turn like creatures
governed by one mutually shared mind. These ships duplicated
the bird trick. They switched course together, cut into our
path in echelon formation, bathed us in the same useless
rays that had failed to affect us before but again got Steve
Gregory mad. I had never witnessed such perfect teamwork.

It did them no good, did us no harm. Had their rays
functioned as they were expected to do we'd soon have
been a smoking heap on the ground beneath. Diving
through the aura, we zoomed on toward free space. They
followed, changing to line-abreast with mathematical precision,
nosing upward at identical angles as though one man
were handling all four by remote control. Together they
blew their auxiliaries, spurted along our trail, narrowed the
margin between us.

"Pretty fast," commented Jay. "About as fast as we are
when running in normal drive. I'd certainly like to have a
look at their engines and pilots."

"I've no desire to see them," grunted McNulty. "I've
had enough of them for one trip:' He bawled into the
engine-room phone, the Marathon heeled over, plunged
sickeningly, shot upward again. Glassware broke in the
galley and somebody offered loud and vulgar opinions
about ships that dipped and captains who made them dip.
The pursuing quartet heeled, plunged and rose behind us
in unison.

Greenish rays reached out for us once more, flickered
without avail, then four streaks of fire flashed by on one
side. They even missed by precisely the same margin!

"That's enough to be going on with," declared McNulty,
not inclined to tempt fate. He gave the Marathon an S-turn,
said curtly, "Straps!"

We'd barely time to jump into harness before he threw
her in Flettner drive. I couldn't see them because you can't
use the observation-ports while prostrate, but the quartet
behind must have shrunk to vague dots in the space of one
heartbeat. At uncatchable velocity we went out of that
solar system, skimming by the water-world of Varga so
fast that nobody saw it. That lump of cosmic plasma and
its amphibious inhabitants would have to wait until some
other trip.

All the way home the Martians kept to the starboard
lock enjoying its three pounds pressure and their everlasting
chess. Jay spent much of his time down in the cargohold
along with Steve-presumably nursing the dumb
coffin-but the Martians did chivy him into having seventeen
games of which he won three. They gloated and
published the figures all over the ship.

Wilson remained in his cabin brooding. I wasn't foolish
enough to ask any questions or try to comfort him. The
clumsy warriors of Mechanistria had converted his first few
plates to splinters while cavorting around the ship, but his
subsequent shots were large in number and beautiful in
execution. He was determined to worry them safely home.

Two cruisers met us outside Terrestrial atmosphere,
escorted us down. The old, familiar browns, blues and
greens of Earth made the loveliest sight I've seen, though
the Martians still preferred dirty pink and said so. They
were arguing with some heat over a lost pawn when we
landed with the whole world watching and listening via
the international network.

McNulty made the speech expected of him. "We have
had a somewhat difficult time ... unquestioning hostility
that is much to be deplored ... this uncomfortable
episode:' And so on and so on.

Flettner was duly exhibited in front of us, blushed like a
kid at McNulty's frequent references to the efficiency of the
ship in which, for once, he didn't resort to understatement.

Back of the crowd of greeters I saw old Knud Johannsen,
the robot master, struggling to get through and anxiously
looking for Jay. Sometimes I wonder whether I have
precognition for-although I didn't know what was coming-
the sight of that white-haired, old wizard wanting to meet
his last and greatest creation made me think of a fond
father seeking his son.

The rah-rahs ended and we began to unload. Cans of
coppery water, flasks of compressed alien air, hundreds of
samples of earths and metals were lugged out. We produced
the busted automatons and the government experts
rushed away with them as if they were transferring the
jewels of Asia. Wilson departed even faster, bearing his
plates and several cans of film.

Old Knud extracted himself from the onlooking mob, said
to me, "Hello, sergeant-where's Jay?" He had no hat
and his silvery locks gleamed in the sun.

Jay emerged from the lock at that moment. His shining
eyes found the white-haired figure waiting for him. You
know, robots can't make wisecracks, they just can't-and
Jay had never made one in his existence, leastways, not a
recognisable one. But this time he made one of the best
I've ever heard and it brought a slight lump into my
sentimental gullet.

Taking Knud's thin, veined hand in his huge metal paw,
he said, "Hello-Dad!" I couldn't see Knud's fond face,
but I heard Jay add, "I've brought you an interesting
souvenir."

He gestured toward the lock from which came a loud
clanking and a whiff of pungent oil. The captive coffin
emerged, its copper curl coiled up and attached by a wire
to a black box on its back. Steve Gregory walked behind
it, his eyebrows lopsided with gratification.

Arm in arm, Jay and Knud strolled away, the alien automaton
following close behind, Steve trailing in the rear. I
lost sight of them when two special-delivery toughies started
to haul up the gangway an enormous vase of horrible shape
and revolting colours.

Reaching the top, one of them produced a paper, surveyed
it with distaste and informed, "This super-gobboon
is for a Snake-arms named Kli Morg."

"I'll go tell him:' As a precautionary afterthought, I said,
"Meanwhile, you'd better return it to ground-level-the
skipper won't have it on board."

They broke it on the way down.