And again there was disappointment. Because there was no living creature here. The room was perhaps thirty feet long and as wide. There were many vision-screens in it, and some of them showed the stars outside with a precision of detail no earthly television could provide. The sun glowed as a small disk a third of its proper diameter. It was dimmer, too. The Milky Way showed clearly. And there were very many screens which showed utterly clear views of the surface of the asteroid, all broken, chaotic, riven rock and massy, unoxydized metal. But there was no life. There were not even symbols of life. There were only machines. They noticed a large transparent disk some ten feet across. Specks of light glowed within its substance. Off at one side an angular metal arm held a small object very close to the disk's surface, a third of the way from its edge. It did not touch the disk, but under it and in the disk there was a little group of bright-red specks which quivered and wavered. They were placed in a strict mathematical arrangement which very, very slowly changed so that it would be hours before it had completed a rotation and had exactly the same appearance again. The flutings came from a tall metal cone on the floor. Another machine nearby held a round plate out toward the cone. "There's nobody here," said Sandy in a strange voice. "What'll we do now, Joe?" "This must be the transmitter," he murmured. "The sound-record for the broadcasts must be in here, somehow. It's possible that this plate is a sort of microphone--" Keller, beaming, pointed to a round spot which quivered with an eerie luminescence. It glowed more brightly and dimmed according to the flutings. Burke said "The devil!" and the round spot flickered up very brightly for an instant. "Yes," said Burke. "It's a mike. It's quite likely--" the round spot flared up and dimmed with the modulations of his voice--"it's quite likely that what I say goes into the broadcast to Earth." The cone ceased to emit fluting noises. Burke said very steadily--and the spot flickered violently with the sounds--"I think I am transmitting to Earth. If so, this is Joe Burke. I announce the arrival of my ship at Asteroid M-387. The asteroid has been hollowed out and fitted with an air-lock which admitted our ship. It is a--a--" He hesitated, and Holmes said curtly, "It's a fortress."