I unfasten the belt of the antigrav, having turned it on again, and pull the belt through the buckle. No time to take it off and rearrange it; anyway it will work as well under the stretcher as on top of it. I drag the boat down to the water, put in an Andite cartridge with the longest fuse I have, set the controls to take it straight out to sea at maximum depth the radar control will allow--six feet above bottom--and push it off. The other Andite cartridge starts burning a hole in my pocket; I would have liked to put that in too, but I must keep it, in case. I look at my chrono and see that in five minutes the hopper will come. Five minutes. I am halfway back to the stretcher when I hear a noise further up the beach. Unmistakable. Shingle under a booted foot. I stand frozen in mid-stride. I turned the light out after launching the boat but my eyes have not recovered yet; it is murkily black. Even my white suit is only the faintest degree paler than my surroundings. Silence for a couple of minutes. I stand still. But it can't have gone away. What happens when the hopper comes? They will see whoever it is on the infrared vision screen. They won't come-- Footsteps again. Several. Then the clouds part and one of those superfluous little moons shines straight through the gap. The bay is not like the stereo the colonel showed because that was taken in winter; now the snow is melted, leaving bare shingle and mud and a tumble of rocks; more desolate than the snow. Fifty feet off is a man. He is huddled up in a mass of garments but his head is bare, rising out of a hood which he has pushed back, maybe so as to listen better; he looks young, hardly older than me. He is holding a long thin object which I never saw before, but it must be a weapon of some sort. This is the end of it. All the evidence of faking is destroyed; except M'Clare and me. Even if I use the Andite he has seen me--and that leaves M'Clare. [Illustration] I am standing here on one foot like a dancer in a jammed movie, waiting for Time to start again or the world to end-- Like the little figure in the dance-instruction kit Dad got when I was seven, when you switched her off in the middle. * * * * * Like a dancer-- My weight shifts on to the forward foot. My arms swing up, forwards, back. I take one step, another. Swing. Turn. Kick. Sideways. Like the silly little dancer who could not get out of the plastic block; but I am moving forward little by little, even if I have to take three steps roundabout for every one in advance. Arms, up. Turn, round. Leg, up. Straighten, out. Step. Called the Dance of the Little Robot, for about three months Dad thought it was no end cute, till he caught on I was thinking so, too. It is just about the only kind of dance you could do on shingle, I guess.