Dan had intended to hide a transceiver nearby on the outside and spend as little time in the storeroom as possible. But everything had happened so fast, and there were so many eyes watching him, that he had no chance to hide a mataform unit anywhere. There was a loud clang as the heavy door swung shut behind him. Then he was in a big dimly lighted room with a twelve-foot aisle running down the center, a narrower aisle along each wall, and high piles of wooden crates and wirebound heavy cardboard cartons spaced five feet apart to either side of the central aisle. There was a strong smell of damp dirty fur. On the floor partway up the aisle lay what looked like a clothed human arm. From the far end of the building came a series of low gruff barks. A humping motion ran along like a wave up the aisle and over the piles of crates toward Dan. He glanced briefly to either side at the solid concrete walls of the building, felt behind him. The door was locked. It flashed through his mind that up till now he had had good luck on this planet. Dan saw, in the nearest corner of the room, several pipes that ran up from the floor and were bent to travel along near the ceiling. He quickly slipped a mataform unit behind these pipes on the floor, then cut into a cardboard carton about fifteen feet away and put another unit inside. He tossed a third on top of the nearest pile of cartons, mentally said a key word, and was on the pile slashing open a carton to slide the unit inside. Then he was on the floor in the corner. In the dim light, the shadowy figures came toward him. Their long arms swung up and a barrage of rifle parts, bayonets, scabbards, and helmets smashed into the corner. Dan was fifteen feet away when they hit. An instant later, he was back, kicking the rubble out of the corner. There was a repeated gruff cough, then the aisles were jammed, and he had a brief view of bared teeth in fur-covered faces, and hairy arms that reached out to grasp him. There was a grisly laugh that started as a low chuckle and ended on a high-pitched wavering note. Dan mentally pronounced a key word and he was on the pile of cartons with a half a dozen apes. The short sword flicked out and back. Other apes sprang from the next pile of cartons. Dan dropped the weighted club, threw his last mataform unit toward the top of a pile across the aisle, and an instant later had recovered it, dropped to the floor, and raced up the aisle. * * * * *