"I wonder." Jak was suddenly diffident. "Don't laugh now, but do you suppose maybe those flames could be some sort of life, and that they're feeding on the metal, which you said was highly radioactive?" "Now who's nutty?" Jon asked witheringly, while Mrs. Carver gasped at the daring concept. "Well, some of those flames are coming higher and aiming for us." Jak tried to defend his position. "We'd have said such crystal-creatures as we found on Four were impossible, but we know they aren't and that they have some sort of--well, intelligence, from the way they tried to get our ship. So why not flame-beings?" "Do you think they're dangerous?" Their mother's voice held a frightened note as she saw in her plate those swiftly approaching flames. "Don't see how they could possibly hurt the ship, or us." Jon tried to speak calmly ... but he tilted the nose and the space-yacht was soon nearly ten miles high, although it still continued circling. "Man, oh man, they're certainly beautiful!" Jak was enthralled as those bright, shining tongues of flame grew taller and taller. "There ... there does seem to be a ... a purpose in the way they act, though." His tone changed to a more anxious one. The flames were now high above the storm of fire that constituted the main ... body? Now these tongues broke loose, and as they continued rising toward the ship they became more spherical in shape--were no longer simply extensions of the planet-based fires. And as they rose ever higher and faster, they seemed to the anxious watchers to be really thinking, intelligent entities. "Let's move away from here," their mother pleaded. "I'm getting the feeling that they are actually pursuing us--and for no good purpose, either." Jon touched the controls, and the ship began rising more swiftly. "No, don't leave; I want to study ..." Jak began, but Jon interrupted him. "So would I like to know more about them, but if Mom wants to leave, away we go." Yet there was an undercurrent of relief in his voice. But as if guessing his intention, the flames hurtled after them at such tremendous speed that before the ship had barely begun accelerating, they were almost up to it. "Hang on tight!" Jon yelled, and increased the acceleration. Soon the ship had left the flames behind. Peering in their telescopic plates, the three could see the flames, reluctantly and as if baffled, return at last to their home below. "All gone, Mother. We're safe now," Jak said comfortingly. "Thank you, God," she said devoutly and sank limply into a seat. "I was afraid for awhile...." "So was I," Jon's teeth began chattering and his body shaking so hard that he, too, was glad he was sitting down. Now that it was all over the shock of that strangeness--that utter alienness--was hitting him. Nor was Jak in much better shape, in spite of his expressed desire to stay and study the enigmatic flame-life.