"When do we leave?" she said, in the same empty tones, turning her face to the wall. "When do we get off this planet?" "Today is the last day. The deadline is midnight. Krafft will have a ship pick us up when we are ready. But we still have our job to do. I've got that body. You're going to have to examine it. We must find out about the magter--" "Nothing can be done now except leave," her voice was a dull monotone. "There is only so much that a person can do and I've done it. Please have the ship come, I want to leave now." Brion chewed his lip in helpless frustration. Nothing seemed to be able to penetrate the apathy she had sunk into. Too much shock, too much terror, in too short a time. He took her chin in his hand and turned her head to face him. She didn't resist, but her eyes were shining with tears, tears trickled down her cheeks. "Take me home, Brion, please take me home." He could only brush her sodden hair back from her face then and force himself to smile at her. The particles of time were running out, faster and faster, and he no longer knew what to do. The examination had to be made. Yet he couldn't force her. He looked for the medbox and saw that Telt had taken it back to the sandcar. There might be something in it that could help. A tranquilizer perhaps. Telt had some of his instruments open on the chart table and was examining a tape with a pocket magnifier. He jumped nervously and put the tape behind his back when Brion entered, then relaxed when he saw who it was. "Thought you were the creepie out there, coming for a look," he whispered. "Maybe you trust him--but I can't afford to. Can't even use the radio. I'm getting out of here now, I have to tell Hys!" "Tell him what?" Brion asked sharply. "What is all the mystery about?" Telt handed him the magnifier and tape. "Look at that. Recording tape from my scintillation counter. Red verticals are five-minute intervals, the wiggly black horizontal line is the radioactivity level. All this where the line goes up and down, that's when we were driving out to the attack. Varying hot level of the rock and ground." "What's the big peak in the middle?" "That coincides exactly with our visit to the house of horrors! When we went through the hole in the bottom of the tower!" He couldn't keep the enthusiasm out of his voice. "Does it mean that--" "I don't know. I'm not sure. I have to compare it with the other tapes back at base. It could be the stone of the tower, some of these heavy rocks got a high natural count. There maybe could be a box of instruments there with fluorescent dials. Or it might be one of those tactical atom bombs they threw at us already, some arms runner sold them a few." "Or it could be the cobalt bombs?" "It could be," Telt said, packing his instruments swiftly. "A badly shielded bomb, or an old one with a crack in the skin, could give a trace like that. Just a little radon leaking out would do it." [Illustration]