her breath sharply and gripped his arm. "Look--there!"

Still far away across the sloping floor of the great bowl, but rapidly
approaching from its center, moved a dust cloud. Beneath it, the
expiring sunlight glinted on the aluminum shells of at least a score of
the ground machines.

Dworn said grimly, "Might have expected it; they'll be coming to look
over the scene of action and pick up the pieces. We've one chance; keep
out of sight behind this little hill, and maybe they won't investigate
too closely."

Qanya nodded, biting her lip. She could reckon as well as he how much
that chance was worth.

* * * * *

The buzzing motors came nearer. The two cowering in the lee of the
mound, almost without daring to breathe, heard them halt, slow to idling
speed one by one a little way off, where the wrecked spider lay. From
that spot obscure sounds began rising, thuds and gratings and a shrill
hissing noise.

But then--the whine of a single high-speed engine rose again, clear to
their hearing. One of the enemy was approaching around the flank of the
sandhill.

They crouched motionless, frozen. No hope in either flight or fight; on
the open ground, they would be run down in no time, and they had no
weapons--even the notion of a weapon, as something apart from the
fighting machine that carried it, was alien to their thinking.

The enemy vehicle rolled into full view and nosed slowly along the base
of the mound; its motor whining questingly, only a few yards of gentle
slope between it and the huddled pair. Its vision-ports glinted redly in
the sunset glow, and Dworn could almost feel the raking of murderous
eyes from behind them.... Like the other machines of this kind he had
seen it was small and without armor--it couldn't weigh more than a
couple of thousand pounds, and it carried no guns. From the vantage of
his armed and armored beetle, he had regarded its like as flimsy and
harmless-looking.... But now he realized for the first time how helpless
a mere human was against such a thing, and, with an irrepressible
shudder, how easily the grappling and cutting-tools this one was
equipped with might be employed for--dismantling--flesh and blood.

The machine paused momentarily. Then its engine revved up again. It
rolled on past, giving no sign of excitement, and vanished beyond the
hillside.

"Dworn, Dworn, it didn't see us!" Qanya was sobbing with relief.

Dworn was staring after the e