men whom Perona had met were across the bowl near its opposite side.
I could see the group of them, five hundred feet from me, by a little
moonlight that was on them; also by the sheen from the spots of their
hand-lights. Four or five men, and Perona. I thought I distinguished the
aged Minister sitting on a rock, and before him a huge giant man's
figure striding up and down. Perona seemed talking vehemently: the men
were listening; the giant paused occasionally in his pacing to fling a
question.

All this I saw with my first swift glance. My attention was drawn from
the men to an object near them. The nose of a flyer showed between two
upstanding crags on the floor of the valley. Only its forward horizontal
propellers and the tip of its cabin and landing gear were visible, but I
could guess that it was a fair-sized ship.

The men were too far away for me to hear them. Could I get across the
floor of the bowl without discovery? It did not seem so. The accursed
moonlight became stronger every moment. Then I saw a guard--a dark
figure of a man showing just inside the archway, some seventy feet from
me. He was leaning against a rock, facing my way. In his hands was a
thick-barreled electronic projector.

I could not advance: that was obvious. The moonlight lay in a clear
clean patch beyond the archway. The guard stood at its edge.

* * * * *

A minute or two had passed. Perona was still talking vehemently. I was
losing it: not a word was audible. Yet I felt that if I could hear
Perona now, much that Hanley and I wanted to learn would be made clear
to us. My little microphone receiver could be adjusted for audible air
vibrations. I crouched and held it cautiously above my head with its
face, like a listening ear, turned toward the distant men. My
single-vacuum amplification brought up the sound until their voices
sounded like whispers murmured in my ear-grids.

"De Boer, listen to me--"

Perona's voice. They must have been chance words spoken loudly. It was
all I could hear, save tantalizing, unintelligible murmurs.

So this was De Boer, the bandit! The big fellow pacing before Perona. I
wanted infinitely more, now, to hear what was being said.

I thought of Hanley. There might be a way of handling this.

I had to murmur very softly. I was hidden in these shadows from the
guard's sight, but he was close enough to hear my normal voice. I
chanced it. A wind was sucking through the arch