It was almost as though the auroral curtain represented a mental veil that hid a horror-filled recess of his mind. The content of that fissure--was it something he didn't want to face? Something he had _intentionally_ hidden? Was it actually that Randall could, if he desired, draw back the curtain? Why Randall? He brought his cup to his lips and almost gagged on an icy bitterness. Carol chided him for his abstraction, dumped the coffee into a disposal slot and gave him a refill. Randall slapped his thigh. "Well, we still have a telepuppet problem on our hands." Mortimer sat up sharply. "You're not going to fool around with those damned things any more, are you?" "Don't see how we can avoid it. We've got several days' repair work on that subspace drive coil--_outside_ the ship. That's the only way we can either get out of here or recover use of our long-range transmitter. But I wouldn't want to turn my back on those puppets while they're out of control." "You won't catch _me_ out there again," McAllister vowed. Randall went over to the external view screen and spent several minutes scanning the sky, bright now with the dawning light of Aldebaran. "You won't find the puppets up there," Stewart said, finally intolerant of whatever phobia Randall might be pampering. The director turned guiltily away from the screen. "Anybody have any ideas on what we can do about those robots?" Stewart went over to a second screen. "After having slept on the problem, I think I might be able to contribute something." He focused on the telepuppets, attending to their various exploratory chores out on the plain. "Carol gave me an idea with something she said yesterday. We may be able to solve our telepuppet worries within five minutes' time." "Bring the OC back under control?" The director arched his thick brows. "How?" "We might succeed in immobilizing it. That'll deprive the other puppets of their source of power. Within a few hours their batteries will drain and we'll be able to go to work on the OC without any possible interference." He indicated his hostile-atmosphere sheath slumped in a corner of the compartment. "Won't need that. But I will have to have a deep-space suit--heavily shielded against solar storm exposure. You have one aboard, McAllister?" The pilot nodded. "Standard equipment. But you'll think it weighs a ton. It's designed for null-G use." Carol's puzzlement drained away. "The suit's _metal_! Which means, as far as the puppets are concerned, that it's _totemic_!" "That's what I figure," Stewart said. "Wearing it may give me status as one of the boys." * * * * * McAllister had been right. Against the relentless tug of gravity, the armored suit felt as though it weighed not much less than a ton. Laboriously, Stewart planted one thick-soled boot ahead of the other and moved at a snail's pace across the difficult terrain.