"Squad, Right Face!" ordered Jon. "Forward MARCH! HALT! Hey, dress up those ranks there." The right-end sphere in the front rank was at least two meters out of position. Booger broke ranks without orders and trundled swiftly to the side of the offending one, wheeled in a short arc and vigorously hunched him into position. Jon applauded with space-gloved hands. [Illustration: "_Squad, Right Face! Forward MARCH! HALT!_"] "All right, Booger, you win. You are hereby promoted to Corporal of the Drake Irregulars. Now let's see some snappy close-order drill." They drilled for some minutes, and then in a particularly tricky maneuver, the squad went to pieces. Two of them simply vanished. Three of them squatted--that was the only word Jon could find to fit--into hemispheres, and the rest either stopped or trundled about aimlessly. "Well all right," said Jon with dignity. "Squad dismissed." He turned away to continue his tramp, and stopped with a startled gasp. There were spheres all about him. Ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty--there must be at least fifty of them, he calculated. "Well, this is cozy," he said. "If I'd known I was working before an audience, I'd shown you some real drilling. Some audience, sitting on your hands." He walked through the throng of them, giving them plenty of leeway in case one of them decided to roll his way. One, he thought it must be the one he had named Booger, followed him slowly. He got a good close-up look at several of them. Smooth sleek balls they were, with shiny metallic surfaces, unbroken by any mark. No eyes, no feeding orifices, just smooth spheres. _What a bunch of bowling balls you'd make_, he thought, _if we just had some pins_. Then he gasped. At least six of them had extruded necks and _were_ huge bowling pins! "Now wait a minute," he gasped. "Do that again." They did. It seemed to be contagious. Within a few seconds he was surrounded by a veritable gallery of bowling pins, ten meters high! He closed his eyes and counted to twenty--slowly. Then he snapped his eyes open quickly. They were still there. "Doc was right," he groaned. "The heat's getting me." Then his whimsical humor made him think, _Booger, come here!_ One of the anonymous pins sprang back into a sphere and trundled to him. Jon made a sweeping gesture. "Knock 'em down," he ordered. Booger took a rolling start and smashed into the ranks of pins with the enthusiasm of a runaway space tug. The earth-quaking impact shook Jon off his feet. He lay stretched on his belly laughing hysterically at the ludicrous sight. _Steady lad_, some sane corner of his brain whispered. _Steady. This is no time to go to pieces._ _What the hell_, he retorted to himself. _At least the condemned man had a hearty laugh._ But he pulled himself to his feet and trudged back to the ship. * * * * * Doc silently busied himself with the storage of the new reels after they had eaten.