Pritchard braced his feet and dared to look down. The One was a straight red line across the meadow, a gleam of highlight from Its wet side where the afternoon sun struck It. (Unconsciously he thought of It now as Cornelia did, as a person.) It was heading for the foot of the ridge. They all stared down, sucking in their tortured breaths. Waiting for It to reach the ridge and start climbing, Pritchard found himself studying It detachedly. He realized his courage and reason were somehow reviving. It was, after all, a worm. It differed from a six-inch Terran night-crawler only in that It measured about a hundred and fifty feet in length, and was proportionately much thinner, like a snake. It also differed in those snail-like tips that probed out into slim, delicate points or contracted into thick stubs scarce six feet long. Those tips were investigating the jagged rock of the ridge now. And he saw that there were tips at the other end, too. But one was missing. Only a round stump accompanied the other long trailing feeler. It was a fair index of The One's terrible strength, Pritchard thought--realizing where the rest of that tip was now--that, in trying to wrench Itself clear, It had knocked over a hundred-foot, five-thousand-ton space ship. "It's coming," said Kemp in a shrill, brittle voice. The hunter shot a glance at the stocky youth and saw he was fighting hysteria. The One was rippling slowly up the ridge. Pritchard guessed Its speed was greater than it seemed at that distance. Like a scarlet river, It poured steadily up. "After I've used this," said Cornelia in an even, conversational voice, "you gentlemen can have it if you don't mind having to pull it out of me." She held up her long knife, and there was no expression on her face. Kemp and Sturgis could only stare at her. Pritchard couldn't warn her by asking them to take it away from her, and anyway this was no place for a wrestle. "And why do you think we would want that?" he asked in as pleasant a tone as he could manage. "So much better than a flamer or jumping," she replied. "Take my advice and--" "I wish you would pull yourself together," said Pritchard. "You're frightening Kemp up there." Startled, Kemp stared back down at his chief, and then he closed his mouth in a firm line. Pritchard congratulated himself that the remark was a stone that had slain two birds. "You don't honestly think there's a way out of this," exclaimed Cornelia, "with--with--" "What I wouldn't give for my snapper!" breathed Kemp. "Or one of those five-inchers," and Sturgis jerked his head at the little tumbled beetles over at the river. "There isn't a rocket-tube down there I'd trust now," said Pritchard. "They're all bunged out of alignment. Some of the snappers might still be in shape to use...." His voice trailed off. Something was taking shape in his thoughts, something revolving about a word Cornelia had uttered--the word "jump."