He sat down to rest beneath the canopy of stars. He lay back and looked up at them, a feeling of frightful awe pressing down upon him. The night around him was colder now, and the sounds of the night had risen to a hungry song. And then he rolled over with a quick, terrible cry, leaped crouching to his feet. There were at least a dozen of them. Great shiny angular and cubed monsters sliding noiseless down the hill. A peculiar bluish radiance pushed out around them, bathing the surrounding night in a deadly-seeming pall. With a pathetic defiance, Jon picked up the heavy stone, stood with legs wide apart, holding the rock in front of him. Every nerve in him shrieked, pulling his muscles away. But he couldn't run. He couldn't run, nor crawl anymore. A kind of dark resigned courage replaced the first impulses of flight, and he hurled the rock. There was a futile thud, and the rock bounded from the great unruffled wall of metal. Then--for an instant he didn't think the thoughts, the voices, were anything but his own, strange, alien, terrifying, inspired by his own fears. And then he realized it was the _Mechs_! "_A grub!_" "_Yes. I thought they were all gone._" "_No. There are some remaining, deep in the soil. Central File says they are no longer of any danger. But File also retains orders to kill all organic things._" Jon moved toward them. He moved stiffly, a strange and intangible bulwark of purpose shielding him from the screaming horror. Something of the awful indignity of his position shook him, sent a hot rage throbbing blindly past his temples. He heard his breath coming hard from tightened throat. These great nameless things--machines, intelligent metal, it didn't matter what. They had no idea of what he was, that he had a brain, that he could think. And yet, their gigantic thoughts were plain to him. Some time, some time so very long ago, he--his kind--humans--had made these things. Had built them up from molten stuff, had put intricate interlocking machinery within them so that they could move, think for themselves, repair themselves. And then--humans had launched the Big War, had released seething seas of basic energy, and somehow these gigantic shiny silvery things had begun to--_live_. But to them, Jon, a human, a descendant of the humans that had made them and had given them life, was less than the dirt under their towering, invulnerable radiance. Less than the dust beneath their sweeping red-death eyes. They had no conception that he was anything but a pale, crawling, cave-worm. * * * * * Jon walked closer. He was not so much afraid for himself now. There was more of a sweeping terror of the whole situation, the terrible futility and irony. He wasn't afraid to die, and he knew that he had to die now, that there was no escape, no defiance.