Eventually telemetric transmission ended and Bigboss, as had become his custom, automatically turned his thoughts to the Totem. All metal it was--sleek and sheening and shaped like a truncated cone as it lay powerless on the plain beyond the hill. How akin it was to him and the clan! Why, it even seemed he could almost _remember_ having once been a part of the huge, polished thing. Perhaps it was the very vessel He had used on His Celestial Tour of Creation. Yes, it was time for Pilgrimage to Totem. And a fitting reward it would be, as always, for successful transmission. * * * * * He mustered the volition required to break functional compulsion. Then he sent the "fall-in" impulse to his subjects. Eventually the line of march took shape, with Bigboss leading his analyzers up the first hill and calling for the proper reverential attitude. Behind him lumbered Minnie, her thick neck weighted by the bulky drill and swinging awkwardly with the sway of her six-legged stride. Seismo, encumbered with a faulty, dragging sensor rod, was having some difficulty maintaining a straight course. Sky Watcher came along in lunging motions, a natural consequence of his tripodal system. Immediately to his rear, Sun Watcher, who held the fifth rung on the ladder, moved smoothly ahead with all his instruments retracted except the solar plasma detector. Then there was a break in the line for Maggie, who could now be seen galloping along on an interceptive course. Peter the Meter, lurching from the imbalance of an extended boom-and-ball sensor, appeared somewhat like a many-spiked sphere on spindly legs. Farther down the file, no deference was extended in the form of gaps for those missing workers who had yet to join the march. Bringing up the rear were the diminutive Scraper and Grazer, resembling a pair of scurrying crabs, and Screw Worm, using his blade-edge jets to propel himself in a rolling, transverse motion. Aware of commotion behind him, Bigboss continued unconcernedly up the rise. Sky Watcher, interpreting Seismo's faulty motions as an opportunity for his own forced ascendancy, had drawn back a photo-multiplier tube and sent it crashing into the other's rear plate. The attack, though, was only self-thwarting, since it jarred a servo unit into retracting Seismo's dangling sensor rod. His locomotive integrity restored, he kicked out with a pedal pad and sent Sky Watcher flailing back into Sun Watcher. The latter rammed forward with his plasma detector's boom-and-ball shield, managing to knock Sky Watcher back into his proper position. Finally fearful of damage to instruments, Bigboss gruffly radioed "cut-the-comedy" impulses, then trained his rearward lens on Minnie. She had inched furtively forward and was now menacing his upper section with her drill head.