Maw Barstow, referred to by DuChane as a dipsomaniac, was probably not as old as she looked. Her unsavory appearance seemed due more to disfigurement than to disposition. A rather sentimental but plain-spoken person, she was unquestionably devoted to Pearl. Slinky Link, with his ingratiating yet repellent manner, was a parasitic type of petty criminal--not particularly dangerous--not particularly anything. DuChane, as Marlin sensed him, was a man at war with himself. "In a way," reflected Marlin, "He's too much like me." The thought occurred that if he were looking at himself through other eyes, he would not be more favorably impressed than by the others. "I'd see a poker-faced lug with a cauliflower ear and the body of a stevedore," he reflected. "It'd be pretty hard to guess that a hard-looking egg like me ever dabbled in science and still has a yen to find out what fascinating stuff is hidden in the covers of every book--even if that book is only a human face." It was difficult to account for the oldster, Elias Thornboldt. Danish, Marlin judged him to be. Apparently he was providing food and shelter for the gathering, much as he despised them all. He sat at the head of the table, coldly aloof, consuming food in enormous mouthfuls. When his appetite was appeased, Thornboldt stalked from the cookshack, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. A few moments later, Marlin found him standing on the ledge, moodily staring down at the huge ball of clay. "Still it moves!" he muttered. "It moves and rolls and grows." "What moves?" demanded Marlin sharply. "That thing down there? And what is it?" The older man turned as if to speak. But he only glared at the group surrounding him and abruptly walked away. "It's a fact," DuChane commented. "If you watch patiently you can see it. The ball seems to be resting in a bed of ooze--a sort of tarry substance. As the sun rises, it softens under the heat, and when the heat is withdrawn, it hardens. The alternate expansion and contraction seems to impart a rotation to the ball. It's more than a hundred feet across, yet in the time I've been here, I'll swear it's turned half way over. And that isn't all. Care to take a trip down?" Presently they stood on a precarious scaffolding close to the huge sphere. The bed of ooze could be discerned engulfing its base. Already, under the heat of the sun, a steaming effluvium was rising from the surface. The outside of the ball was caked with a grayish crust of the stuff. "Feel it," urged DuChane. "Hard?" "Yes, it's hard," admitted Marlin. "Like stone." "Now look." DuChane caught up a crowbar and drove it into the bulging wall. It pierced the crust and sank a short distance into the interior. "Push on it," he directed. * * * * * Marlin tested the resistance to the bar. Under pressure it sank deeper. He could even twist it slowly. "Seems kind of--rubbery--inside," he commented. "Pull it out."