Torcred did not answer; he was frowning in thought. Suddenly he rose to his feet--wincing a little as he put his weight on them; with gentle firmness he turned the girl around and faced her toward the west, suggesting, "Let's go back a little way." "Back! Are you crazy, terrapin?" "Remember the wreck of an armadillo we saw about a quarter of a mile back? I want to get something there." "That wreck was years old," sniffed Ladna. "There couldn't be any supplies left in it." "I have an idea," said Torcred. Then, as he saw her unyielding disbelief, "I intend to capture the panzer." And he trudged off purposefully to the west. The girl followed, still protesting in an undertone, as all their argument had been carried on. "You _are_ sunstruck! That monster--and we've not got so much as a knife--You might as well try to tear down that mountain peak," she pointed toward a distant blue height, wreathed in cottony clouds, "with your bare hands." "Maybe I will," said the Terrapin. * * * * * The smashed armadillo had long since been stripped of usable parts by the desert's scavengers. The remaining wreckage was widely strewn, half-buried in the sand and eaten by rust. Torcred searched with a grim intensity, tugging at the projecting steel ribs. Some were deeply buried, others too badly bent, still others too short. At last he found what he was looking for; a narrow T-beam, six straight feet of alloy steel, light but tremendously strong. He hefted it with satisfaction. "You don't intend to attack the panzer with that!" exclaimed Ladna. "I do," said Torcred. He looked into her wide blue eyes for a moment, then pointed down at something that had been disturbed when he pried loose the beam. A chalk-white skull with empty eyes. He kicked at it, and it crumbled. "Of such are we made, bird-girl. A fragile framework compared with the machines'. But alive, we have intelligence, and with intelligence and this weapon I mean to take the panzer." They tramped eastward again, following their own tracks, under a sun already growing hot. After a while the girl asked in a meek voice, "How can you hope to do it?" Torcred smiled inwardly at the impression his--largely assumed--confidence had made. He answered, "This morning I noticed some of the thing's weaknesses." "It didn't look weak to me." "In the first place, its guns are set high on that huge frame--above the housing of the treads. They couldn't hit a man standing right beside it. And I think I can get that close to it, because it will be resting now, the crew asleep--or one of them may be watching, but he can't watch all ways at once. There will be automatic alarms, of course, but I don't think they'll respond to anything as small and harmless as a lone man." Ladna drew breath sharply. "Perhaps you're right--But even so, what then? You can't dent its armor with that bar, and it can simply move away and shoot you down!"