The bright cone rested motionless on the ridge, two of its three arms lying motionless. They couldn’t see the third, but supposed that it, too, was at rest. Unwinking, the huge eyes stared apparently upward. But off in another direction what looked like a cloud was approaching. It drifted easily, dropping to the surface now and then and lazing along for a while, then rising up again. The size of it made them gasp. It seemed to be larger than the _Columbia_. Now the cone-thing was aware of its approach and the bright arms was in play again. Like a fisherman casting after trout, the arms threw out. The cloud came on until it hovered over the cone-creature, then suddenly it dropped down enveloping it. An instant later it rose and the cone-creature was gone; the whitish cloud started to drift away. But something was wrong. It didn’t move as easily as it had done before; it lurched in a distressed manner. “What’s wrong with it?” murmured Nick. “Look, it’s changing color,” cried Dorothy. A rusty stain had suddenly appeared in the cloud. Before their eyes it grew rapidly, the core of it an angry red, the spreading stain rust. The cloud-thing rose up slowly, but the red spot grew. And as they watched, a bulge appeared in the red, grew like a blister and finally burst. From the cavity the brilliant arms of the cone-thing appeared, followed by the rest of the creature. It lingered in the opening as the stricken cloud sank slowly to the surface of the planetoid. Now the red stain had almost completely blotted out the normal white of the cloud and they saw that the thing was beginning to crumble where the cone-creature had emerged. It dissolved into a sort of dust leaving the cone-thing in much the same position it had been in before, with the single great eye staring up at the stars. “I’ll be damned,” murmured Nick. “It must have poisoned the cloud. But why did the cloud try to eat it, then?” “These creatures haven’t any intelligence at all, apparently,” explained Hartnett. “I’ve seen that happen any number of times. I’d say offhand that the cloud-mass is attracted by something in the cone-creature—perhaps that scorpion-thing it just ate, because the clouds can envelope them without danger. But the cone-creature is rather well developed as you saw.” * * * * * The light on the control board winked. Timbie picked up the phone. “It’s Marquis,” he said. “They’ve got the patch on the puncture and we’ll be able to go ahead shortly.” “Okay,” said Nick. “Tell them to wink when all’s ready.” He turned to the others. “It doesn’t look as if we’ll make the equator.” Hartnett smiled grimly. “Well, if we can’t get off, we can at least gather some valuable data here on such things as the Doppler effect, the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction effect, the Einstein effect——” “Hey!” burst in Dorothy, “did you say Einstein?”