abolic mirrors of a solar-power plant, a
sun-energized tractor, and onward almost to the mountain wall, imbedded
in the dust of the mare. There Frank noticed a circular, glassy area.

Strips of magnesium were laid like bridging planks across chunks of
lava, and in the dust all around were countless curious scrabbled marks.

Rodan stood carefully on a magnesium strip, and looked back at Nelsen
and Lester, his brows crinkling as if he was suspicious that he had
already told them too much. Frank Nelsen became more aware of the heavy
automatic pistol at Rodan's hip, and felt a tingling urge to get away
from here and from this man--as if a vast mistake had been made.

"It is necessary for you to be informed about _some_ matters," Rodan
said slowly. "For instance, unless it is otherwise disturbed, a
footprint, or the like, will endure for millions of years on the
Moon--as surely as if impressed in granite--because there is no weather
left to rub it out. You will be working here. I am preserving some of
these markings. So please walk on these strips, which Dutch and I have
laid down."

Rodan indicated a large, Archer-clad man, who also carried an automatic.
He had the face of a playful but dangerous mastiff. He was hunkered down
in a shallow pit, scanning the ground with a watch-sized device probably
intended for locating objects hidden just beneath the surface,
electronically. Beside him was a screen-bottomed container, no doubt
meant for sifting dust.

"Greetings, Novices!" he gruffed with genial contempt. But his pale
eyes, beyond the curve of his helmet, had a masked puzzlement, as if
something from the lunar desolation had gotten into his brain, leaving
the realization of where he was, permanently not altogether clear to
him.

Rodan pulled a shiny object from his thigh pouch, and held it out in a
gloved palm for his new employees to peer at.

"One of the things we found," he remarked. "Incomplete. If we could, for
instance, locate the other parts..."

Frank saw a little cylinder, with grey coils wrapped inside it--a power
chamber, perhaps, to be lined with magnetic force, the only thing that
could contain what amounted to a tiny twenty-million degree piece of a
star's hot heart. It was a familiar principle for releasing and managing
nuclear power. But the device, perhaps part of a small weapon, was
subtly marked by the differences of another technology.

"I believe I have said enough," Rodan stated with a thin s