Prokle continued: "Hype, listen. I hate to admit it, but I guess you were right. There's someone here all right, and I've got him spotted. I've got him spotted so damn good that I don't dare move! He's got a ray-pistol and he just took two pot shots at me." Garth's voice came again, thinly: "If this is your idea of a joke, it's out of place and very unfunny." "It's unfunny all right! You get over here damn quick! And Hype, be careful. I'll keep talking to guide you." Ten minutes later Garth crept cautiously to his partner's side and whispered: "You're sure it wasn't a meteor you saw?" "Do meteors singe your ears? It was a ray, I tell you! It came from down there." Garth crept to the edge of the chasm and rolled a fragment of rock over the rim. It bounded steeply down in the dark, but they could hear no sound due to the helmets they wore. No answering ray flashed up. For a minute Garth lay there, peering down cautiously. Then he crept back. "You're right," he told Prokle, "someone's down there." "See something?" Garth shook his head. "Oh, I see, it's one of those--those things of yours again. Well, you've never been wrong yet on those premonitions, but this time you don't need it. Can you tell if there's more than one?" "Not sure," Garth said, "but I don't think so. Just _someone_. Lord knows where he got the ray-pistol, those life-boats aren't equipped with 'em. He was probably carrying one." "But good Lord, why take pot shots at us? He must know who we are! He must know we're here to get him off this blasted rock!" Garth looked straight at Prokle and spoke calmly: "Maybe he knows it and maybe not. Twenty-one days, Prokle, remember? Imagine three weeks on this place, knowing there's only a chance in a million of you being located. Maybe watching the others die off one by one. You'd hate to be the last, Prokle, wouldn't you? But remember what I said about some men loving life more than others, clinging to it longer, even when it means...." Garth didn't finish, but Prokle nodded and said the last word for him. "Madness. You're right, Hype, that's all it can mean. We've got a madman on our hands. Let's go home." * * * * * Garth shook his head and pointed across the chasm. Fifty yards away the opposite precipice, a bit higher, was limned raggedly against the stars. "Our best bet is to get over there unobserved. It may not be easy dealing with him." Prokle patted his own ray-pistol at his side. "No," Garth cautioned. "We don't want to use those and I don't think we'll have to." Slowly, circuitously and with much effort they gained the opposite rim. It took them nearly ten minutes but the negotiation was masterful and noiseless. Finally, from behind a protecting rock formation they peered again into the depths, their eyes becoming slowly accustomed to that darker darkness. Then Garth silently pointed. "What is it?" Prokle whispered. "I don't see a thing." "Keep looking. A little to the right."