Rested, although no nearer a definite plan for resubjugation of the telepuppet team, Stewart cautiously watched the robots from behind an outcropping. To this concealed vantage point he had led Carol, Director Randall and McAllister while the automatons had been occupied with recharging. "You're going to try some more voice commands on the OC?" Carol's voice came softly through the earphones as she squirmed to find more comfort within the folds of her oversized sheath. "We're not doing _anything_," Stewart said firmly, "until that thing is well occupied with transmission." McAllister's boot came in contact with something hard and he bent down to inspect it. "Say, what's this?" Randall went over to see. "A burnt-out telepuppet, obviously." Stewart had a look too. "It's an Algae Detector. But, since there's no water around here, it hasn't had a chance to exercise its function. Electronic atrophy must have set in." "It's riddled with drill holes," McAllister noted. "Looks like one of those other puppets worked it over." Stewart examined the thing. The pilot was right. "At least _one_ of our robots seems to have overcome its inhibition against analyzing pure metal," Randall observed, prodding it. "Or maybe something else has been around here," McAllister said. The director looked up sharply. "Something else? Like what?" Carol laughed at the pilot's unreasonable concern. McAllister only hunched his bony shoulders. It was not difficult for Stewart to see that McAllister was afraid. Neither the pilot nor Mortimer was generally known in the Bureau for his courage. That their apprehension had grown to visible proportions out there on this Godforsaken edge of infinity was merely an expected extension of their characters. Rather, it was Randall's fear--Randall's and his own--that concerned Stewart. Both seemed incommunicable. Stewart's reticence was involuntary, stemming as it did from his inability to find words for his incomprehensible dread. And he wondered whether the director's fear, too, was that inexpressible. He picked up a clod of soil and crumbled it in his gloved hand, as though symbolizing his anxious desire to come to grips with whatever it was that hid behind a veil in his mind. Randall lowered himself on his haunches. "Don't we have any _emergency_ means of bringing that machine under control?" "Oh, there are a couple of tricks. Manhandling it is one." Carol hugged her knees and laughed skeptically. "_That_ thing?" "There's a recessed deactivation switch in its lower section. All I have to do is get my hand on it." "And all _it_ has to do," she retorted dubiously, "is get one of its fifty-pound vises on _you_." She seized his hand and, through two layers of rubberized material, he sensed the unsteadiness of her grip. "Do be careful, Dave." He was impressed. It wasn't often she allowed her more serious nature to show through candidly. She rose suddenly and turned to face a distant mountain range.