The Atmosphere Analyzer nudged him aside with an inflated air pouch and, in its turn, the Radiometer Complex compounded the indignity by planting a motor appendage in his abdomen. Mortimer rose screaming, circled wide around the Micro-organism C&A and the Subordinate Mineral Specimen Collector and raced for the ship. "This," said Stewart, "may not be as simple as we thought. Evidently some basic inhibitions have faded." "We can't risk getting in range of one of those larger puppets, especially the OC," Randall agreed. Abruptly the master robot stabilized, swung sharply to face the horizon and adjusted its parabolic antenna. "Look!" Stewart pointed. "The thing's transmitting! But it's not properly oriented! _It's beaming in the wrong direction!_" "Where's it transmitting _to_?" Randall asked anxiously. "Can't tell without point-to-point astrographs. Anyway, what difference does it make? It's only a random misorientation." On the way back to the _Photon II_, Stewart lost himself in confusion. Random misorientation? Of course. What else? But why should he even consider the alternate possibility--that the misorientation was _not_ random, as suggested by the director's question? * * * * * Bigboss completed transmission and burst into an instant fury of thwarted purpose. He leveled his blaster and annihilated the ridge behind which the defiant mobiles had recently hidden. He swiveled his central section, redirecting the blaster at a boulder that lay between him and the needle and destroying it in a fiery eruption of light and heat and pulverizing forces. Fuming, he paced forward, stopped and paced back again. He had _seen_ the audacious creatures who were bold enough to invade His Realm! But He had been able to do nothing about them. For at that moment the irresistible compulsion of function had taken over and He could only orient and transmit all the data from his master tape. Surlily, he bled off excessive current in his reaction circuits and watched his workers going dutifully about their business. Inactivity was frustrating, of course, but it was not entirely unwelcome. For there was much now that demanded evaluation, even though his urge to pursue the contemptuous mobiles and blast them from their needle was almost overpowering. For one thing, there was the needle itself. Had He made it? (Oh, why couldn't he _remember_ these things?) Of course, He must have, although he couldn't recall the specific act of Creation. And he must have produced the arrogant mobiles too, even though they would probably claim _they_ had created _Him_. But the needle itself was _metal_! Even a precursory analysis with Minnie's high neutron flux tools had established this. It was _so_ much like the clan's Totem it must be Totemic. The evidence was undeniable. Every member of the clan was metal. The clan's Totem was metal. Therefore the new thing from the sky was to be revered as the traditional Totem was.