He switched on his equalizer and Johnny's, and still holding the boy under one arm, he plunged across the rock. Something reached up and tripped him, and he sprawled out flat. He had fallen over a small out-cropping of rock--where no out-cropping had been before. He got up, and then he reached the Pacemaker. He pushed Johnny in front of him, and the boy stood with his sister. Marcia looked up: "How are we going to get inside, Burt?" "You just open the lock. Come on, now." She turned her back and went to work on the dials. Burt stood there, waiting for the stones that would come, hunching himself over, trying to cover the three of them-- No stones came. Instead, he heard an ominous cracking sound, a rumbling.... Off where the spongy ground joined the hard rock a crack appeared. It was small, but it grew. And it moved. It snaked along the ground, slowly, twisting, heading for the ship. Now it was half as wide as Johnny's body, and now it was wider. Burt pushed Marcia away and attacked the lock with clumsy fingers. His hand trembled, but Marcia huddled against the side of the hull, sobbing, and he knew she could not have handled the dials in time. _Three around and then four over: damn it, there's the blue light, but he still needed the white and red. Five around and one over--ah, the white! Two around and six over--red, white, and blue!_ He pushed Johnny and Joan in front of him, then he grabbed Marcia around the waist and hurled her inside. The crack was half as wide as the Pacemaker now, rumbling, churning--and growing. He ran to the controls and he kicked the engine over. He felt the ship poise on the brink, as he had seen the Havelock do before it had plunged within a similar hole. He felt the ship totter, and then he fired the studs for all the aft rockets at once. The ship roared once and he was shoved back hard in his seat. Then they hurtled furiously sky-ward. * * * * * Below them now, the planetoid was a writhing, twisting mass, shooting pulpy tentacles miles into space, groping for them, seeking. But they were out of reach. Burt circled a few times, watching the stone globe which now was a living entity. Behind him, Marcia watched too. "It's--alive," she said. "Yes. Sleeping when we arrived, but it's alive now. Twenty years ago it ate the people of that Havelock, and then it became sluggish. Evidently it does not need much food, for all its vast bulk. It became sluggish and it slept, and when we landed we stirred it and it finished the job on that Havelock. Then it wanted us...." "But _alive_?" "Why not?" Burt said. "Part plant, part animal, it's warm with its own life. It breathes slowly, holding the thin atmosphere to its body, growing plants for photosynthesis when it needs oxygen, a perfectly co-ordinated being." "So big, Burt. It's so big." "Sure. On Mars the native life is bigger than on earth. Why?" "Why? I don't know."