She saw movement out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned there was nothing. There could be no movement in the fortress unless by machinery or one of the five humans who'd come so recently. The asteroid had been airless for ten thousand years. It was unthinkable that anything alive, even a microbe, could have survived. So Sandy did not think of a living thing as having made the movement. But movement there had been. She stared. There were totally motionless machines all about. None of them showed any sign of stirring. Sandy swallowed the ache in her throat and it returned instantly. She moved, to look where the movement had been. She glanced at each machine in turn. One might have made some automatic adjustment. She'd tell Burke. She passed a fifteen-foot-high assembly of insulators and bright metal, connected overhead to other cryptic things by heavy silvery bars. She passed a cylinder with dials in its sides. She saw movement again. In a different place. She spun around to look. Something half the height of a man, with bird-legs and feet and swollen plumage and a head with an oversized beak which was pure caricature--something alive and frightened fled from her. It waddled in ridiculous, panicky haste. It flapped useless stumps of wings. It fled in terrified silence. It vanished. The first thing that occurred to Sandy was that Burke wouldn't believe her if she told him. Chapter 9 Burke found her, rooted to the spot. He had a small metal box in his hand. He didn't notice her pallor nor that she trembled. "I may have something," he said with careful calm. "The case had this in it. There's a black cube in the box. The case seems to have been made to hold and call attention to this cube. I'll take it up to the instrument-room and use a reader on it." He led the way. Sandy followed, her throat dry. She knew, of course, that he was under almost intolerable emotional strain. He'd brought her along to be with her for a few moments, but he was so tense that he could think of nothing personal to say. Now it was not possible for him to talk of anything at all. Yet Sandy realized that even under the stress that pressed upon him, he'd asked her to go look for tools in the gravity-machine room because she'd spoken of possible danger in the opening of the case. He'd gotten her away while he opened it. When they reached the ship-lock he said briefly, "I want to hurry, Sandy. Wait for me in the ship?" She nodded, and went to the small spacecraft which had brought them all from Earth. When she saw Pam, inside, she said shakily, "Is--anybody else here?" "No," said Pam. "Why?" Sandy sat down and shivered. "I think," she said through chattering teeth, "I think I'm going to have hysterics. L-listen, Pam! I--I saw something alive! It was like a bird this high and big as a--There aren't any birds like that! There can't be anything alive here but us! But I saw it! And it saw me and ran away!"