A soft blue glow lit the narrow stairway and they went downward into a steel-walled room in the center of which stood a shining machine. Though inanimate, the bright metal monster seemed to possess a life force. Electrical impulses chuckled and muttered behind the glowing bulbs and dials that created mysterious profiles on its surface. "Well I'll be damned!" Frank Brooks muttered. "You figured it was here. We looked for it--and found it! Now what I want to know is--" "We've got to make a report. Let's just hope we get out of here alive." Brooks felt no great concern on this score. He was sure they had not been seen. He closed the trap and followed Tom Brazier out the back door. And stopped short. They were all there--the inhabitants of Mesa Flat--the young, the old, the men and the women. They stood in a quiet semicircle around the rear of the building. There was no indignation upon their faces, no anger in the group, no fury in the desert town. Only a silence that chilled Frank Brooks; quiet, set faces; bodies that began moving slowly forward tightening the semicircle. Frank Brooks saw Tom Brazier's hand go under his coat and Brooks still couldn't believe it. _Not shoot them down._ Brazier fired point blank at the nearest man. In a seeming daze, Frank Brooks stared. Two slugs, dead center in the chest, but the man came on. Shuddered slightly from the impact. But came on. Then Brazier was bellowing, "For crisake! Don't stand there! Defend yourself!" and Frank Brooks came out of his daze and was also firing--at people who kept coming on until it was all nothing but a nightmare. Brazier's target was now reaching forth a pair of steady arms, reaching with hands that would grip and kill. Brazier fired desperately. "They've got to be vulnerable somewhere!" he yelled. "Somewhere you wouldn't expect." He found the spot by chance. A desert rat's hands were upon him when his gun exploded for what would have had to be the last time. The slug went downward. The desert rat stopped, then crumpled slowly to the ground. "The left thigh," Brazier cried. "That's where the control is. Shoot for their left thighs!" Brooks stopped the fat woman from the restaurant as her hands tightened on his throat. He shook his head to clear his brain and found Brazier had blasted a path through the solid mass in front. "Run!" Brazier shouted. "The hell with the jeep! Just run!" They ran.... * * * * * They dissected one of the bodies at the camp; standing around in a silent group; stunned by the complete reality of the thing. "It even has a kind of blood." The Commanding Officer said. "The analysis will be interesting." Frank Brooks pointed at the body. "That's not actually flesh? Not skin or bones?" "Yes, and no," the Commanding officer said. "They're synthetics but possibly as good as our own." "Putting the control unit in the leg was a master touch," Tom Brazier said.