ank sounded frightened.

"Sorry." The usually silent meshing bank sounded abashed. "We weren't
prepared for that. Some sort of thought wave is issuing from the opening
and it disrupted the group mesh till we were able to take it into
calculation and rebuild the mesh around it."

"Thought wave? Then there _are_ Rell in that thing."

"Do not compute before the mesh is set," the interpretive bank
cautioned. "The presence of Rell, while extremely probable, is not yet
entirely certain."

Without waiting for a suggestion from elsewhere the disciplinary group
ordered the entire mind forward.

Perhaps, in time of stress, dormant qualities tend to emerge,
Raeillo/ee13 mused. Certainly everyone, himself included, appeared to be
exercising speculative qualities. Not that specialization isn't a
marvelous blessing, he hastily added, in case the disciplinary corps
might be scanning his bank. But the disciplinary corps itself was as
fascinated by the phenomenon ahead as Raeillo/ee13.

Emerging from the infinitely huge upright thing was a mobile being, also
infinitely huge. Not that they were the same size. The mobile one was
small enough to fit easily through the opening in the lower portion of
the larger. But beyond a certain point words lose meaning and infinitely
huge was the closest measurement the tiny Rell could find for either the
upright pointed thing or the knobby one which had emerged and was
quickly identified as the source of the disrupting thought patterns.

* * * * *

Leonard Brown was enjoying himself thoroughly. The inside of a space
suit can scarcely be termed comfortable but at least you can move around
in it and Brown was making the most of this sensation after two months
cramped in his tiny cell. He was, in fact, comporting himself much as a
three-year-old might have done after a similar release.

But before long he settled down to the serious business of observing and
mentally recording everything in sight.

There were none of the mysterious 'canals' in view, which was
disappointing; one piece of glamour the publicity boys would necessarily
forego until the next trip. The ice cap itself, if such it could be
called, was almost equally disappointing. On Earth it would have been
dismissed as a mere frost patch, if this section was typical. For a
radius of many yards the ground was blasted bare by the action of the
exhaust and nowhere in sight did there appear to be more than