d less than ten minutes of light
left, until the next three-hour day should break over the eastern rim.
He placed the drums and the flexible hose of the Sco drill so that he
could begin operations with it as soon as the dawn broke, and started to
walk toward the precipitous outcropping of quartziferous stone
immediately behind the home-site he had picked. He would climb to the
top of this for a short look around, and then return to the Dart--in
which double-hulled, metal fortress he thought he would be safe from
anything.

* * * * *

He had almost reached the rock outcropping when the peculiarities of its
outline struck him anew. He'd already observed that the craggy mound
rather resembled a sleeping, formless giant. The closer he got to it the
more the resemblance was heightened and the greater grew his perplexity.

It sprang straight up from the carmine underbrush, like a separate heap
of stone cast there by some mighty hand. One end of it tapered down in a
thick ridge; and this ridge had a deep, horizontal cleft running along
it which made it appear as though it were divided into two leglike
members. In the center the mound swelled to resemble a paunchy trunk
with sagging shoulders. This was topped by a huge, nearly round ball
that looked for all the world like a head. There were even rudimentary
features. It was grotesque--one of those freak sculptures of nature,
Harley reflected, that made it seem as though the Old Girl had a mind
and artistic talent of her own.

He scrambled through the brush till he reached that part of the long
mound that looked like a head. There, as the sun began to stream the red
lines of its descent over the sky, he prepared to ascend for his view of
the surrounding landscape.

He'd got within twenty feet of the irregular ball, and had adjusted his
gravity regulator to enable him to leap to its top, when he stopped as
abruptly as though he had been suddenly paralyzed. Over the two deep
pits that resembled nostrils in the grotesque mask of a face he thought
he had observed a quiver. The illusion had occurred in just the proper
place for an eyelid. It was startling, to say the least.

"I'm getting imaginative," said Harley. He spoke aloud as a man tends to
do when he is alone and uneasy. "I'd better get a tighter grip on my
nerves, or--good God!"

Coincident with the sound of his voice in the thin, quiet air, the huge
stumps that looked like legs stirred