He avoided looking at the local population as much as he could while he ate. However, the occasional glimpses he got suggested that the Nameless System had made a half-hearted and badly botched attempt at developing its own type of humanoid inhabitant. They had extremely capable looking jaws, at any rate, and their wide, lipless mouths were wreathed in perpetual idiot grins. The most completely disagreeable parts of them, Channok decided, were the enormous, red-nailed hands and feet. Like fat, white gargoyles, they sat perched around the tops of the rocks in a wide circle and just stared. "Sloppy-looking things," he remarked, noticing Peer's observant eyes on him. "But at least they're not trying to strike up a conversation!" "They never say anything until you hit them in the stomach with a stunner," she informed him. "Then they just grunt and run." "Sure they mightn't get mean about that? The smallest of this lot looks plenty big enough to take us both apart." Peer laughed. "All of them together wouldn't try it! They're real yellow. Wilf got mad at a couple of 'em once and ran 'em halfway over to the Mound before mother caught up with him and stopped him. Wilf had his blood up, that time!" "Maybe the ghouls built the Mound," Channok suggested. "Their great-great-ancestors, anyway." "They won't go near it now," Peer said, following-his gaze. "They're scared of that, too!" They studied the rugged, ungainly slopes of the huge artifact for a moment. There was something fascinating about it, Channok thought. Perhaps just its size. "Santis said the plain was the bottom of a sea a while ago," Peer offered. "So it could have been some sort of sea-things that built it." "Any entrances into it?" he asked casually. "Just one, right at the top." "You know," he said, "I think I'd like to go over and have a look at that thing before we leave." "No!" said Peer, alarmed. "You'd better not. Santis said it was dangerous--and there is something there! We saw a light one night." "What kind of a light?" "Like someone walking around the top of it, near that entrance, with a big lamp in his hand," Peer remembered. "Like he might have been looking for something." "Sounds a bit like your old friend, the Space Ghost," Channok murmured suspiciously. "No," Peer grinned. "This was a _real_ light--and we took off the next evening. Santis said it might be as well if we moved somewhere else for a while." Channok considered a moment. "Look," he said finally, "we can do it like this. I'll jet myself over there and stroll around it a bit in daylight; and if you're worried, you could hang overhead in the _Asteroid_ with a couple of turrets out. Just in case someone gets tough." "I could, maybe," said Peer, in a tight voice, "but I'm not going to. If you're going to go walking around there, after all Santis said, I'm going to be walking right behind you!" "Oh, no, you're not," Channok said. "Oh, yes, I am!" said Peer. "You can't make me stay here!"