marten just after you got back! Velladon's
supposed to deliver the Hlats' attendants to Yaco, so I let them have
Kinmarten." He paused. "They asked for the Hlat-talker, too."

Quillan grunted. "Did you give them that?"

"No."

"Well," Quillan said after a moment, "that doesn't necessarily mean
that we're in for trouble with the Star group. But it does mean, I
think, that we'd better stay ready for it!" He stood up. "I'll get
back down there and go on with the motions of getting the hunt for
the Hlat organized. Velladon would sooner see the thing get caught,
too, of course, so he shouldn't try to interfere with that. If I spot
anything that looks suspicious, I'll get the word to you."

* * * * *

"I never," said Orca, unconsciously echoing Baldy Perk, "saw anything
like it!" The commodore's chunky little gunman was ashen-faced. The
circle of Star men standing around him hardly looked happier. Most of
them were staring down at the empty lower section of a suit of space
armor which appeared to have been separated with a neat diagonal slice
from its upper part.

"Let's get it straight," Ryter said, a little unsteadily. "You say
this half of the suit was lying against the wall like _that_?"

"Not exactly," Quillan told him. "When we got up to the fifth level,
the suit was stuck against the wall--like that--about eight feet above
the floor. That was in the big room where the cubicles are. When
Kinmarten and Orca and I finally got the suit worked away from the
wall, I expected frankly that we'd find half the body of the guard
still inside. But he'd vanished."

Ryter cleared his throat. "Apparently," he said, "the creature drew
the upper section of the suit into the wall by whatever means it uses,
then stopped applying the transforming process to the metal, and
simply moved on with the upper part of the suit and the man."

Quillan nodded. "That's what it looks like."

"But he had _two grenades_!" Orca burst out. "He had sprayguns! How
could it get him that way?"

"Brother," Quillan said, "grenades won't help you much if you don't
spot what's moving up behind you!"

Orca glared speechlessly at him. Ryter said, "All right! We've lost
another man. We're not going to lose any more. We'll station no more
guards on the fifth level. Now, get everyone who isn't on essential
guard duty to the main room, and split 'em up into life-detector
units. Five men to each detail, one to handle the det