All around on the soil bordering the flowing water was a forest, a forest with the weirdest vegetation Robin had ever seen. Plants growing in clumps and clusters, plants whose large treelike stalks resembled a whitish-blue bamboo, and which burst into globular blue bulbs which seemed to serve as leaves. Among these tree-sized growths was a rich undergrowth of tight balls of varying yellow and green and purple, growing like thick, squat mushrooms. And everywhere else a thick, lush carpet of green, not grasslike but rather like some oversize moss. In this forest there were no sounds of birds or animals, but only that of plants swaying in the river breeze, the rushing of the waters, and from somewhere distant in the unseen end of the cavern a strange, steady hissing sound. The rocket, or what was left of it, lay wedged against a section of the bank, its nose up and its tail swaying in the current. Robin looked at it, amazed to find it so small. All that was left of the rocket was the cargo nose, which was the only part sent off after the last of the rocket sections had discharged their forces and been dropped off. The whole affair was not more than about ten feet long, from the battered, blunted red nose, from which several long, straggling orange cords hung--all that was left of the parachute and its attachments--down to the scraped and battered white cylinder that was the cargo compartment. The compartment ended in a flat plate which bore only a few wires that had once connected it with the break-away mechanism of the last of the atomic blasting chambers. This alone was the load of the eight-story tower of energy which had been the Red Sands experimental rocket. Robin, without further delay, bent down to the cylinder and began to haul and push it entirely out of the water to the dry ground. He knew he could not afford to risk its loss. To his surprise, moving the rocket head was an easy task. It was extremely light and he found himself possessed of tremendous strength, tired and bruised and sore as he was. It was, he thought, as he pulled the rocket along, the Moon and its weak gravity. He would only weigh a sixth of his Earth weight here, so would the cargo head, yet he would have the muscles necessary for much more than that weight. He would literally be a superman here--if he could survive. Survival, he knew, would be the question. He didn't know whether even now he might be inhaling poison from the strange, thin sublunar air. He didn't know what mysterious radioactive rays might be bathing him with their baleful influence. He didn't know whether any of the vegetation in this cavern world would be edible. Having brought the cargo cylinder to a safe spot many feet from the water, Robin looked for the door that would open the animal compartment. He found it, forced it open. Inside were the two cages. Gently he reached in, unscrewed them from their holdings, and lifted them out.