Looking around cautiously, I rose to my feet. There was no sign of the creature. I ran to where Max lay. The plump paleontologist was sprawled flat in the sand, face down. I bent, yanked him over, peered in his facemask. His eyes were open, staring--and lifeless. * * * * * It wasn't till we got back to the ship that we could open his spacesuit and confirm what I thought I saw on his face. Doc Graves pronounced it finally: "He's dead. Heart attack. What the devil did you _see_ out there, anyway?" Quickly I described it. When I was finished the medic shivered. "Lord! No wonder Max had an attack. What a nightmare!" Donaldson, the anthropologist, appeared from somewhere in the back of the ship. Seeing Max's body, he said, "What happened?" "We were attacked on the desert. Max was the only casualty. The thing didn't touch us--it just stood there and changed shape. Max must have died of fright." Donaldson scowled. He was a wry, taciturn individual with a coldness about him that I didn't like. I could pretty much guess what he would say. No expression of grief, or anything like that. "It's going to look bad for you, Doc, when it's discovered we had a man with a weak heart in the crew." The medic stiffened. "I checked Max's heart before we left. It was as good as anyone's. But the shock of seeing that thing--" "Yeah," Don Forster said angrily. "You'd have been shivering in your boots too if that thing had popped out of nowhere right over _your_ left shoulder." "Keep your remarks to yourself, Forster. I signed on for the Exploratory Team with the same understanding any of you did--that we were going into alien, uncharted worlds and could expect to meet up with anything. Anything at all. Fright's a mere emotional reaction. Adults--as you supposedly are--should be able to control it." I felt like hitting him, but I restrained myself. That ordeal out on the desert had left me drained, nerves raw and shaken. I shrugged and looked away. "Well?" Hamner said. "What do we do? Go home?" It was said half as a joke, but I saw from the look on young Leo Mickens' face that he was perfectly willing to take the suggestion seriously and get off Pollux V as fast as he could. To forestall any trouble, I said, "It's a tempting idea. But I don't think it would look good on our records." "You're right," Hamner agreed. "We stay. We stay until we know what that thing is, where it came from, and how we can lick it." * * * * * We stayed. We spent the rest of that day aboard ship, having called off the day's explorations in memory of Max. The bright orb of Pollux set about 2000 ship time, and the sky was filled with a glorious sight: a horde of moons whirling above. The moons of Pollux V were incredible.