Pendillo said they would have to spend the next day in the cottage, to give the missionary a chance to rest. She was suffering, he said, from something he called shock. Precisely what that was neither of his sons knew, but they supposed it was an obscure ailment that beset the enemy. The more they learned about Tak Laleen, the stranger it seemed that such a weak people could have conquered the earth. During the interval of waiting, Lanny and Gill dried the two hides they had taken. They cut breeches and a jacket for Tak Laleen, to replace the uniform she could no longer wear. * * * * * After they resumed their trek north, it took them four days more to reach the pylon barrier south of the San Francisco treaty area. Tak Laleen became more and more exhausted. She shivered constantly in the cold air. Her nose began to run--a phenomenon Pendillo called a cold--and the wounds in her chest stubbornly refused to heal. When she saw the towered guns on the barrier, she dropped to the ground and wept hysterically. "We can't pass that," she whispered. "If you're afraid to run the guns," Lanny told her, "we can swim around them." "I don't know how." "There's no other way into the treaty area," Gill said brutally. She sniffled. "If I could just feel warm again--if you would build a fire and give me a chance to rest--" "Not until we're inside the barrier. The police would spot a fire out here." Gill picked her up and began to carry her toward the beach. She screamed in terror and beat her fists against his naked back. When he did not stop, she cried out, "I can tell you how to break the circuit on the pylons!" Gill paused. "Yes?" "If we could knock out just one of the guns, we could walk through the barrier, couldn't we?" Gill set her on her feet. She ran back to Lanny, stumbling over the rough ground and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. "Lanny, you and your brother can hit anything with a stone. Couldn't you knock out the power unit in a pylon?" "Sure, if we knew where it was. We've tried for years to find that out, but we can't get close enough to examine the towers." She pointed eagerly. "It's the criss-crossed framework, just under the sound receptor at the top." He measured the distance critically. "It will take careful marksmanship to hit anything so small. Think we could do it, Gill?" "We'll have to try; the lady's afraid to get her feet wet." Gill threw the first stone. It fell short of the target. The automatic energy guns swung on the stone, efficiently disintegrating it before it touched the ground. Lanny tried; and his brother threw again. It was Lanny's fourth missile that struck the tiny mechanism. A puff of smoke filled the air and the top of the pylon became a mass of twisted, metal girders.