nemy, brows puzzledly drawn downward. The
sounds from the other side of the mound went on uninterrupted--a clangor
of metal, the prolonged shrilling of a cutting-torch, where evidently
they were at work breaking up the smashed spider-vehicle.

He said huskily, "Something's very queer about them.... Wait. I've _got_
to take a look."

Qanya glanced at him in quick alarm as he started wriggling to the crest
of the sandhill. Then she followed silently, and peered over the top
beside him.

Twilight was descending, but they could still see easily enough what
went on out there. Not a hundred yards away, the little machines swarmed
about the spider, bringing their various wrecking equipment into play to
dismantle it rapidly under the watchers' eyes. Torches flared, winches
tugged at fragments of the shattered monster. An aluminum cylinder with
a serrated alligator snout rolled triumphantly away, bearing aloft the
shank of a great steel leg....

But Dworn's attention was riveted by what was happening closer at hand.
Here, near the tunnel-entrance that opened just below their observation
point, lay the two crawlers which the runaway spider had disabled. One
of these, the one which had merely been overturned and severely dented,
was already being dragged away, wheels still helplessly in the air, by a
towing-machine. The other had been smashed beyond repair. Around it
several of the new arrivals were busy, callously and efficiently
beginning to take it apart.

Dworn watched them at it, and the dreadful suspicion that had budded in
his mind ripened into a monstrous certainty.

Aluminum skin was swiftly stripped away; frame members of the same metal
were clipped neatly asunder by a machine armed with great shearing jaws.
The engine came loose and was hoisted aloft carried dangling away by
another specialized machine. In an incredibly short time, little but a
bare chassis remained, and that too was being attacked by the salvagers.

And Dworn knew at last beyond all doubt, what manner of things these
were.

Beside him he heard a sharp gasp, and turned to put a warning finger on
Qanya's lips. He drew her gently back with him, out of view of the
activities on the farther side of the mound.

"You understand what _that_ means?"

The girl nodded soberly. "We have the tradition. I think that must be
one tradition that all the peoples have in common."

"Then you know what we have to do."

She nodded again.

Between them the w