Not far off, a half-dozen dignitaries, huddled close together in the midst of these Cyclopean man-made things that dwarfed their policies, their principles and ambitions, stood talking rather nervously with two officers, aristocratically gaudy in the scarlet of the Martian Fleet. Blue-clad guardsmen of Earth watched from a distance--watched boredly enough. And out on the steel-stripped tarmac, under the solenoid of Number Two Runway, lay a towship, backed like a stegosaur with its massive magnets--the _Shahrazad_, panting like a dragon amid rolling clouds of steam. She was plainly ready to go into space. The bottom dropped out of Ryd's stomach before he realized that a warning at least must be sounded before the ship could lift. But that might come any moment now. "Relax," said Mury in a low voice. "Nothing's gone wrong. We'll be aboard the _Shahrazad_ when she lifts." For a moment his black eyes shifted, hardening, toward Runway Four. The Martian warship lay there beyond the solenoid, a spiteful hundred-foot swordfish of steel, with blind gunvalves, row on row, along its sleek sides and turret-blisters. It had not yet been tugged onto the turntable; it could not be leaving again very soon, though Earth weight was undoubtedly incommoding its crew. About it a few figures stood that were stiffly erect and immobile, as tall as tall men. From head to toe they were scarlet. "Robots!" gasped Ryd, clutching his companion's arm convulsively. "Martian soldier robots!" "They're unarmed, harmless. They aren't your police with built-in weapons. Only the humans are dangerous. But we've got to move. For God's sake, take it easy." Ryd licked dry lips. "Are we going--out into space?" "Where else?" said Mury. * * * * * The official-looking individual in the expensive topcoat and sport hat had reached the starboard airlock of the towship before anyone thought to question his authorization, escorted as he was by a blue-uniformed guardsman. When another sentry, pacing between runways a hundred yards from the squat space vessel, paused to wonder, it was--as it came about--just a little too late. The guard turned and swung briskly off to intercept the oddly-behaving pair, hand crowding the butt of his pistol, for he was growing uneasy. His alarm mounted rapidly, till he nearly sprained an ankle in sprinting across the last of the two intervening runways, between the solenoid wickets. Those metal arches, crowding one on the other in perspective, formed a tunnel that effectively shielded the _Shahrazad's_ airlocks from more distant view; the gang of notables attracted by the occasion was already being shepherded back to safety by the Communications guards, whose attention was thus well taken up.