Through a separation between two boulders he could see the telepuppet team. The machines were hard at work, with the Operations Co-ordinator majestically surveying its charges. Stewart's legs strained under the great weight as he struggled over a rise and stepped out upon the plain. Pausing, he stared at the mike recessed in the inner curvature of his helmet. It was dead and his resulting loss of voice contact made him feel lonely and inadequate. But the suit was not equipped with radio, since its wearer would normally be plugged into the ship's intercom system through an anchor line. Inching across the plain, he closed in on the puppet team. Thus far he had not been noticed. Cautiously, he skirted the knoll on which sat the Solar Plasma Detector. Even now its boom-and-ball sensor was swinging around to point toward a rising Aldebaran. He was certain he had passed in the SPD's direct line of local sight. But it only ignored him. Twenty paces farther he gave a wide berth to the Atmosphere Analyzer. Here, too, he had to go directly in front of the thing's video sensor. But the AA obliged by making no move toward him. So far, so good. But he had approached only those robots which would ordinarily show no interest in him, since he was neither celestial nor gaseous. A minute later, however, when he was cleared through without incident by an indifferent Mineral Analyzer, he was certain his totemic qualifications would bring him to his objective without picking up a challenge along the way. He crested a rise, trudged between the Astronomical Data Collector and the Seismometer and, more certain of his immunity, stepped over the crablike Micro-organism Collector and Analyzer. Then he stood hesitatingly before the master robot. Ports ablaze with luminous evidence of faultless power generation, the huge automaton ignored him. Shorn of its laser intensifier, it appeared somewhat pathetic. But Stewart was inclined to waste no sympathy. It stood swinging its upper command section, first right, then left, to compensate for loss of two video sensors. But he was more interested in the underslung, recessed compartment whose outline he could now see. He had only to flip open the lid and throw the switch in order to deactivate the OC. Suddenly the thing reacted to his presence. One of its lenses swept over him, stopped, swung back, overcorrected, then steadied. And he couldn't guess what analytical criteria were being applied in the general assessment. The robot raised its vise-equipped appendage. A hostile gesture? Defensive move? Or merely one of the symbols of communication it had devised during its independent reign? There was swift movement in the periphery of Stewart's vision and, instinctively, he dropped to the ground as a great clanking form swept past him. Rolling over, he saw it was the Mineral Analyzer, boring in for another attack. The six-legged automaton drew up in front of the OC and swung its stout drill head in a sweeping arc.