"Perhaps." A faraway light flickered in Grushenko's pale eyes. "Yes, once we learn their language ... it might very well be possible, mutual interest and--After all, their level of technology implies they have reached the soviet stage of development." "Oh, come off it," said Levine in English. Holbrook used a downblast to land the jet in a meadow, a few kilometers from the alien diggings. If the craft had not been noticed--and it had gone over very quickly--its crew should be able to steal up and observe.... He was glad of the imposed silence as they slipped among great shadowy trees; what could he have said, even to Levine? That was how it always went, he thought in a curious irrelevant anguish. He was not much more nervous than the next man, but he had no words at the high moments. His tongue knotted up and he stood like a wooden Indian under the gaze of Ekaterina Ivanovna. At the end of their walk, they stood peering down a slope through a screen of brush. The land was raw and devastated, it must have been worked for centuries. Holbrook remembered a survey report: curious formations spotted all over the planet, pits hundreds of meters deep. Yes, they must be the grass-grown remnants of similar mines, exhausted and abandoned. How long had the aliens been coming here? The automatons which purred about, digging and carrying, grinding, purifying, loading into the incredibly big and sleek blue spaceships, were such as no one on Earth had ever built. Levine's voice muttered to a recorder beyond the mountains, "Looks like rare-earth ores to me. That suggests they've been civilized long enough to use up their home planet's supply, which is one hell of a long time, my friends." Holbrook thought in a frozenness that it would be very hard to describe the engines down there; they were too foreign, the eye saw them but the mind wasn't yet prepared to register-- "They heard us! They are coming!" Grushenko said it almost exultantly. Holbrook and Levine whirled about. Half a dozen forms were moving at a trot up the slope, directly toward the humans. Holbrook had a lurching impression of creatures dressed in black, with purplish faces muffled by some kind of respirator snout, two legs, two arms, but much too long and thin. He remembered the goblins of his childhood, in a lost Maine forest, and a primitive terror took him. He fought it down just as Grushenko stepped out of concealment. "Friends!" cried Grushenko. He raised both hands. "Friends!" The sun gleamed on his bare head. An alien raised a tube. Something like a fist struck Holbrook. He went to his knees. A small hot crater smoked not two meters from him. Grushenko staggered back, shooting. One of the aliens went on its unhuman face. They deployed, still running to the attack. Another explosion outraged the earth; fire crawled up a tree trunk. And another. "Let's _go_!" yelled Holbrook.