He should have foreseen that and made his escape in time. Now that he had solved the problem of human survival.... But the bright ocean laughed at him, sparkling away wave beyond rolling wave, and beyond that blue headland could be only a land made desert, where men become beasts fought crazily over the last morsels of food. He had lost track of the days he had been on the monster's back, but the rape of Earth must be finished now. He had no doubt that the things would depart as they had come into the Solar System--in that close, seemingly one-willed swarm that Earth's astronomers had at first taken for a comet. If this one was leaving, the rest no doubt were too. Westover sat for a space with head in hands, hearing the faint continuing murmurs from below. And he remembered the voices. * * * * * He had been hearing them again as he awoke--the distant muffled voices whose words he could not make out, not the small close ones that sometimes in the hot middays had spoken clearly in his ear and even called his name. The latter had to be, as he had vaguely accepted them even then, illusions--but the others--with his new clarity he was suddenly sure that they had been real. And a wild, white light of hope blazed in him, and he flung himself flat on the rough surface, beat on it with bare fists and shouted: "Help! Here I am! Help!" He paused to listen with fierce intentness, and heard nothing but the faint eructations deep inside the monster. Then he sprang to his feet, gripping his hand-ax, and ran panting to the place where he had dug for food. His excavations tended to close and heal overnight; now he went to work with vicious strokes enlarging the latest one, hacking and tearing it deeper and deeper. He was almost hidden in the cavity when a shadow fell across him from behind. He whirled, for there could be no shadows on the monster's back. A man stood watching him calmly--an elderly man in rusty black clothing, leaning on a stick. The staff, the snowy beard, and something that smoldered behind the benign eyes, gave him the look of an ancient prophet. "Who are you?" asked Westover, breathlessly but almost without surprise. "I am the Preacher," the old man said. "The Lord hath sent me to save you. Arise, my son, and follow me." Westover hesitated. "I'm not just imagining you?" he appealed. "Somebody else has really found the answer?" The Preacher's brows knitted faintly, but then his look turned to benevolent understanding. "You have been alone too long here. Come with me--I will take you to the Doctor." Westover was still not sure that the other was more than one of the powerful specters of childhood--the Preacher, the Doctor, no doubt the Teacher next--risen to rob him of his last shreds of sanity. But he nodded in childlike obedience, and followed.