"That's the best lead yet," Doc said. "If we could find anything other than dust piles, no matter how embryonic--Lieutenant, your boys must have been looking in the wrong places. How soon can you get a detail out over the hills?" The lieutenant looked at his watch. "If I've got this screwy rotation figured out, dawn's about half an hour off. That soon enough?" "It'll have to do." "What about Raggedy Andy here?" Ernest asked. "Do we keep him intact?" "Don't touch a hair of his precious head," Doc said. "He's earned a stay of dissection." The creature, still quiet in the chair, its eyes vacant now, hummed almost inaudibly. Ernest bent to listen. "Well?" Doc said. "Strictly a non-sequitur," Ernest told him: "_Here we go, lass, through the heather; Naught to daunt us save the tether._" "It makes me sad," Doc said. He yawned. "Maybe it's just the hour." * * * * * Cook had accomplished his usual legerdemain with the space rations but the breakfast table was less appreciative than usual. "The detail's been gone a long time," Doc Braddon said, toying with an omelet. "Do you think it's a wild goose chase?" "Reminds me of a time off Venus," the skipper said. "Before any of you were born, probably...." His juniors listened politely until the familiar narrative was interrupted by the 'com on the bulkhead. They recognized the voice of Sergeant Maraffi, the non-com in charge of the crew in the scout craft. "We found something. Looks like bodies. Well preserved but incomplete. Humanoid." "Bring 'em back," the skipper said. "As many as you've got room for in the sling." He added as an afterthought: "Do they smell?" "Who knows?" Maraffi said. "I sure don't aim to take off my helmet to find out. They're not decomposed, though." The skipper grumbled to Doc: "I thought you checked the atmosphere." "There isn't any," Doc said, annoyed. "Didn't you read my report?" "All right," the skipper said, not looking at him. "I can't do everything. I naturally assumed these people breathed." "If they did, it wasn't air," Doc said. "Bring back all you can, Maraffi," the skipper said. "But leave them outside the ship. Everybody on the detail takes double decontamination. And we'll put you down for hazard pay." "Aye, aye, sir. We're on our way." * * * * * "They're androids," Doc said. He'd gone out in a protective suit to the grisly pile. "These must be the false starts." The other technicians watched him on a closed-circuit hook-up from inside the ship. "Are they like us?" Ernest asked. "They look it from here--what there is of them." "Damn near," Doc said. "Smaller and darker, though. Rosco, you were right about the communication. There's a tiny transceiver built into their skulls. Those that have heads, that is." "If that's the case," Rosco said, "then why weren't these--stillbirths, whatever you want to call them--turned to dust like the others?"