Monk breathed the cool air. His weary mind thought of the stupid white-bearded Martian and of his lovely daughter. He thought of what he was going to do to that idiot space rat, Stardust Luke. His gaze traveled to the empty red desert where, in about four hours, Stardust's sandcar would appear. It shifted to the sacks of priceless Devil's Egg seed, and he began to chuckle. And last, his gaze turned to the black, pin-point eyes and the moving fore-claws of the _two_ Aabs which squatted some three feet away from him in the jagged, sharp-edged shadow of a Devil's Egg....