But she had ingested only a slotful of fragments when the ground bulged beside her. Displaced soil slid away and Screw Worm erupted, carrying in his thread pouches mineral specimens for her analyzers. Bigboss generated more easily as he watched Worm at work. Not that the menial helper, who occupied the lowest rung on the ladder, was worthy of speculative attention. But a laboring borer meant Minnie was pre-occupied with her limited supervisory function and couldn't be plotting to supplant him. * * * * * Working near Minnie, Seismo squatted at his sedentary task. Sensor rod sunk to bedrock, he was proudly purring an encoded disclosure of distant rumblings beneath the surface. Less than a hectometer away, Sky Watcher's tripodal locomotive system was bringing him carefully up a rise. Arriving, he assumed the location Sun Watcher had only recently abandoned. He adjusted himself on dead level, then thrust out a number of lensed tubes that locked on a referent star, three distant planets and a smaller satellite. At that moment came an excited eureka impulse from Breather, posted outside a cave and briskly inflating and deflating the external pouches that bracketed his long, cylindrical form. The impulse proudly told of his detection of oxygen traces. Nearby, Scraper diligently shoveled soil into his scoop in an endless search for micro-organisms and DNA molecules. Grazer munched on a growth already identified as lichen. Peter the Meter sat on a knoll scanning the sky with his battery of inferometers, radiometers and bolometers. Of the distant workers, Bigboss was most sensitively aware of the volant signals from Maggie. Kilometers away, she was covering the ground in great, leaping strides of abandon as she sought out and traced down each fascinating isomagnetic line of variation. Work, work, work. Get the job done. Shake a leg. Shoulder (whatever that was) to the wheel. Dig in and pitch. But--for _what_? What was responsible for the irresistible compulsion? Was it _his own_ idea? But of course, it must be. For, how could there be any power capable of directing _Him_? Unless, perhaps, it might conceivably be the insolent creatures who lurked like vague shadows on the fringe of his almost obliterated memory. But, no! _He, Himself_, was the Supreme Being of All Creation! His master timer peaked in its four hundred-cycle sine wave, reminding him of the chore at hand. The sun had set and the huge, pink planet had already laid claim to the night sky. Just below it was the special grouping of stars that matched, point for point, the referent pattern on his orientation drum. Programmed functions took over. Sensors hunted out the bright central star and aimed his parabolic antenna at the designated spot seven degrees southeastward. Then he loosed his transmission into subspace. Data stored over long hours of tedious sequencing surged from the tape, bringing a euphoria of relief.