"Good ... God!" came Sturgis's voice shakily at Pritchard's elbow. The Chief Hunter was still too appalled to speak. He stared as the worm's rope-like body came curving down out of the sky, down to the cruisers again. Seeing how that red length alternately thinned to a one-foot thickness and swelled again to three feet and more as it oozed around the cruiser that had remained on the ground, he had a vision of how it had entered the _Apollo_, shrinking itself to a mere six-inch thread that poured through the intake port, seeping along the duct, swelling, bulging at McManus's air-grill ... and coming out of the ground, probably close to the ship, it had evaded the radar field. Cornelia's agonized face swam before his eyes. He felt his body shaking in the grip of her slender hands. Words-- "--fool, run! _Listen to me!_ It's busy smashing your ships. We have a chance. Run--to the mountain! Oh, dear God...." At first he was like a sleep-walker. They turned him around and pushed him into a stumbling run, but his head turned back, his eyes large and almost vacant on that scene by the river. Then he was running. It was a good two hundred yards to the mountain, but the grass was mashed to a springy tangle under their feet and they had only to skirt the thickly-strewn bodies. The girl took the lead, the men not far in the rear, the nozzles of their flamers flapping out behind them. A crash, followed by a dull roar, came to them. They shot quick glances over their shoulders. The fuel tanks of one of the cruisers had let go and fire was blooming from the now distant beetle. The worm was arching wildly away, and then sinking in a curve to the ground. "How fast--can it go--on the--surface?" panted Pritchard. "Much faster--than under--ground!" Cornelia muttered. VI She was leading the way to the thin, rough ridge that marched up the mountain between two of its smooth planes of fracture. She sprang to the ridge and began running lightly up it. At twenty feet she stopped. The men were slower. The ridge was nothing but saw-toothed points of raw rock, hard and glassy and glittering. They had not had the girl's practice with it. She motioned Kemp past her and called down to Pritchard. "This is our only hope. I've never seen The One on any of these mountains. I'm sure It can't climb the smooth sides--" "And we can hold It back with our flamers. Good girl." "But hadn't we better get a little higher?" queried Sturgis. "Higher!" echoed the girl. "We've got to get to the top!" Frantically, they climbed, taking insane chances, fantastically insecure holds, scrambling, cutting their hands on the raw rock edges, living a nightmare.... At last Kemp and Cornelia, weak with exhaustion, sank against the ridge, gasping and heaving. Sturgis, next in line, had no breath with which to berate them. He could only crouch there and stare helplessly at them both.