I stumbled toward the nearest port. Outside, in the dim red distance, I could make out great square black columns soaring upward--columns vast as mountains. Beyond them was a wall. Mile upon mile above was a domed black roof, pierced with a vast round orifice through which the dusky sky was visible like a dull-red, malignant sun. In the immensity of that edifice I sensed the overwhelming might of the robots--this dread, mind-crushing power, born of man but now risen ruthlessly to destroy him. "Power, Rogo," Jeron begged again. "Can't you give me power?" The gaunt gigantic Saturnian still struggled vainly with the dead controls. Faintly, from the phone, I heard the nasal voice of Rogo Nug: "By the steel skull of Malgarth, Jeron, I thought I'd had a stroke! One instant--" Converters and generators throbbed suddenly to vibrant life. Jeron flung his weight on the power bar. The engines raced and coils hammered against a terrific overload. A tremendous river of energy, I knew, was running into the space-contractor coils. But the Barihorn moved not one inch! The tall pilot turned from the controls, bewildered. "It's still holding us, Kel," he gasped. "Whatever dragged us down!" The Earthman pushed long fingers decisively back through the thick tangle of his yellow hair. "Then," he said, "we'll leave the ship, and go out on foot to seek the Stone." "We may as well." The girl's whisper was thick with dread. "Before _they_ take us out." She pointed to the ports. A white wing flashed past. A company of the New Robots, I saw, were wheeling through the blood-red gloom, close about the ship. Gleaming in stream-lined grace, they were beautiful as a flock of silver birds. But every one of them held, in slender argent tentacles, a massive cathode gun. However beautiful, they were deadly! Testing his two thin-tubed disruptor guns, Kel Aran looked anxiously at the pale girl. "The Stone?" he asked. "Where is it?" "I don't know." Verel shook her haggard head. "We can only try to search. Unless the Shadow comes--" "Search?" The fat flesh of Zerek Oom was a livid color beneath his bright tattooing. His thick white hands fumbled a disruptor gun as if it were something utterly strange. "We can't go out, Kel!" he protested hoarsely. "Not against those winged things." "That's what we came to do," said the Earthman. * * * * * And he led the way back toward the valve. I don't know why I had not looked _down_. I had seen the titanic walls that leapt above us, and the wheeling host of robots. But I had not looked down. And now, when I came to step from the valve in the side of the helpless ship, something caught my breath. Something filled me with a sickness of infinite alarm.