Nolan followed through the shattered doors, and presently the skipper made a helpless gesture. There was the discovery. It looked more like an old-fashioned telescope than anything else. It had a brass barrel, and it was very solidly mounted, and there were micro-micro adjustments to point it with almost infinite exactitude. It had been sealed in a completely air-tight environment, and what moisture was present had combined with other metals. It wasn't rusted. There was an eyepiece, placed in an improbable position, and there was a trigger. It wasn't like a gun-trigger, but it couldn't have any other purpose. There was no porthole for it to fire through. The compartment in which it had been sealed was deep underground. Nolan said uneasily: "It's a weapon, of course." "Of course!" said the skipper. He mopped his forehead. "I--I think we should take it home. It might make a difference to WDA. But we don't know what it does! It could be a mistake...." Nolan walked around it. He saw that it could be aimed in almost any direction. But not quite. There was a direction that stops prevented it from pointing to. Nolan said: "What's in that direction?" The skipper jumped. When Nolan asked the question he began to suspect many answers. He said in a stricken voice, "That's where the missiles were launched--and where the others are stored." Nolan stared at the thing. It looked hateful. It had the savage feel of a frozen snarl. "The power-pile?" The skipper nodded. He mopped his face again. "Right alongside. We figured they wanted to shield the rest of the base from radioactives." Nolan said carefully: "It could be that they wanted to shield the radioactives from something in the base. Maybe something that would act on radioactives is involved." He said painfully, "Men can't change the rate of fission except by building up a critical mass. But maybe--possibly bug-eyed monsters could." The skipper perspired. He'd have worked out the same thing in the long run, but Nolan saw it right away. He went away and got the ship's engineers. They brought an X-ray for finding flaws in metal. They took pictures of the inwards of the brass-barreled instrument in its place. They traced two separate, incomprehensible circuits. But they were separate. * * * * * At long last the skipper nodded permission for Nolan to try the eyepiece, to see what it showed with heavy metal and much soil and vegetation atop it. They taped the trigger so it could not be moved. The controls affecting the eyepiece they left free. The skipper almost dripped sweat as Nolan turned on the eyepiece circuit, peering in.