Janus hefted his gun nervously. It was still crackling faintly from the discharge. "I say let's get back to the ship!" Allenby sighed. "My leg hurts." He studied the hills. "Give me the field-glasses." Randolph handed them over. Allenby put them to the shield of his mask and adjusted them. After a moment he sighed again. "There's a hole. On a plane surface that catches the Sun. A lousy damned round little impossible hole." "Those hills," Burton observed, "must be thousands of feet thick." * * * * * The argument lasted all the way back to the ship. Janus, holding out for his belief that the whole thing was of religious origin, kept looking around for Martians as if he expected them to pour screaming from the hills. Burton came up with the suggestion that perhaps the holes had been made by a disintegrator-ray. "It's possible," Allenby admitted. "This might have been the scene of some great battle--" "With only one such weapon?" I objected. Allenby swore as he stumbled. "What do you mean?" "I haven't seen any other lines of holes--only the one. In a battle, the whole joint should be cut up. That was good for a few moments' silent thought. Then Allenby said, "It might have been brought out by one side as a last resort. Sort of an ace in the hole." I resisted the temptation to mutiny. "But would even one such weapon, in battle make only _one_ line of holes? Wouldn't it be played in an arc against the enemy? You know it would." "Well--" "Wouldn't it cut slices out of the landscape, instead of boring holes? And wouldn't it sway or vibrate enough to make the holes miles away from it something less than perfect circles?" "It could have been very firmly mounted." "Hugh, does that sound like a practical weapon to you?" Two seconds of silence. "On the other hand," he said, "instead of a war, the whole thing might have been designed to frighten some primitive race--or even some kind of beast--the _hole_ out of here. A demonstration--" "Religious," Janus grumbled, still looking around. We walked on, passing the cactus on the low ridge. "Interesting," said Gonzales. "The evidence that whatever causes the phenomenon has happened again and again. I'm afraid that the war theory--" "Oh, my God!" gasped Burton. We stared at him. "The ship," he whispered. "It's right in line with the holes! If whatever made them is still in operation...." "Run!" yelled Allenby, and we ran like fiends. * * * * * We got the ship into the air, out of line with the holes to what we fervently hoped was safety, and then we realized we were admitting our fear that the mysterious hole-maker might still be lurking around. Well, the evidence was all for it, as Gonzales had reminded us--that cactus had been oozing. We cruised at twenty thousand feet and thought it over. Janus, whose only training was in photography, said, "Some kind of omnivorous animal? Or bird? Eats rocks and everything?"