Rapidly, he told Tom all that had happened since their first experience with the Prospector. The brain specialist listened impassively until the end of the story. "So you conclude there's something monstrous on the moon, and this experience you've just had would indicate that it's highly inimical to human life," said Tom. "That's about it," said Jim. "What do you expect to do about it?" "I want to finish what we started here. Then I've got to show the authorities that the moon project has got to stop. We can't go ahead with our moon landings now. If we do, that thing will be stirred out of dormancy into life--and, somehow, it will make its way to earth. I wouldn't be surprised if it could navigate space alone, its own naked being." Tom turned back to his equipment. "All right, let's go. I want to get a sampling of that before we're through, too." With a control that he could operate himself, Jim found it endurable. With the control at minimum intensity, he tensed for that first terrible impact of the alien impulses pouring into his own mind. They were weaker, but still he felt as if the shroud of death had settled over him. He heard a moan from Sam and knew his companion was experiencing the same sensations. The impulses of evil poured on through the electrodes into his mind. He sensed the immensity and purpose of the thing that had generated them. He sensed that out of some far reach of space, where time and dimension were not the same, the thing had acquired an eternal nature of a kind that knew no birth and could experience no death in the dimensions of man. He sensed that its nature and its purpose were pure destruction. Destruction of life in any form. It was a thing of death, and life and it could not exist in the same universe. He sensed how it had come and why it had come, and the partial defeat that had sent it into dormancy because there was no life of the kind it knew in the universe through which it hurtled. Now--it was once again aware of life. * * * * * The three of them went back to the tracking station laboratory together. Jim managed to obtain a clearance for Tom to see what they were doing. "I want to move the Prospector a long distance and try one more hole," he told Sam. "What do you mean by a long distance?" "A hundred miles." "A hun--! You think you'll still find this thing that far away?" "We'll find out. Can the Prospector travel that far?" "Sure. If you wait long enough. Its maximum speed is two miles an hour." "A little better than two days. Let's pick the direction of the flattest and lowest terrain. I don't want to get it up into the mountains."