Rodney's sudden grip on Martin's wrist nearly shattered the bone. "Martin! It's all alive! It's moving!" Martin hesitated long enough for a coil to move sinuously up toward the opening. Then he spun the wheel and the hatch slammed down. He was shaking. * * * * * After a time he said, "Rodney, Wass, it's dust, down there. Remember the wind? Air currents are moving it." Rodney sat down on the metal flooring. For a long time he said nothing. Then--"It wasn't.... Why did you close the hatch then?" Martin did not say he thought the other two would have shot him, otherwise. He said merely, "At first I wasn't sure myself." Rodney stood up, backing away from the closed hatch. He held his gun loosely, and his hand shook. "Then prove it. Open it again." Martin went to the wheel. He noticed Wass was standing behind Rodney and he, too, had drawn his gun. The hatch rose again at Martin's direction. He stood beside it, outlined in the light of two torches. For a little while he was alone. Then--causing a gasp from Wass, a harsh expletive from Rodney--a tenuous, questing alien limb edged through the hatch, curling about Martin, sparkling in ten thousand separate particles in the torchlight, obscuring the dimly seen backdrop of geometrical processions of strange objects. Martin raised an arm, and the particles swirled in stately, shimmering spirals. Rodney leaned forward and looked over the edge of the hatch. He said nothing. He eyed the sparkling particles swirling about Martin, and now, himself. "How deep," Wass said, from his safe distance. "We'll have to lower a flashlight," Martin answered. Rodney, all eagerness to be of assistance now, lowered a rope with a torch swinging wildly on the end of it. The torch came to rest about thirty feet down. It shone on gently rolling mounds of fine, white stuff. Martin anchored the rope soundly, and paused, half across the lip of the hatch to stare coldly at Wass. "You'd rather monkey with the switches and blow yourself to smithereens?" Wass sighed and refused to meet Martin's gaze. Martin looked at him disgustedly, and then began to descend the rope, slowly, peering into the infinite, sparkling darkness pressing around him. At the bottom of the rope he sank to his knees in dust, and then was held even. He stamped his feet, and then, as well as he was able, did a standing jump. He sank no farther than his knees. He sighted a path parallel with the avenue above, toward the nearest edge of the city. "I think we'll be all right," he called out, "as long as we avoid the drifts." Rodney began the descent. Looking up, Martin saw Wass above Rodney. "All right, Wass," Martin said quietly, as Rodney released the rope and sank into the dust. "Not me," the answer came back quickly. "You two fools go your way, I'll go mine." "Wass!" There was no answer. The light faded swiftly away from the opening.