Within a week the doors to the deserted city were opened, and the earthmen passed through. When they glimpsed the interior, they stopped in consternation, then started to laugh. Huge worms covered the ground, and smaller editions of the same species, crawled around them. _They were using the dome for a hatching place!_ They had only entered it to bring forth their young! It was not _brains_ that tempted them to attack the city, but the instinct to find a protected place for their eggs. Since they had broken in, many of the young had hatched, and were crawling around the ground. Sight of the earthmen seemed to excite their feelings, and several of the creatures started toward them. The men fired carefully, and the forms squirmed on the ground. The ones that came behind stopped, and some of the young tried to feed on the remains of their companions. The sight was so sickening that the earthmen fired at every living thing they could see. Several of the wounded creatures crawled up the huge pillars, to disappear through the opening above, while the men shot at their disappearing forms. When the last caterpillar lay dead, the entire area appeared like a battlefield. Three days later the gas had been expelled, and the hole in the dome repaired. The population was returning to their homes, burying the carcasses in the fields. The city was livable again, and they knew electric current would stop any future attack of the strange creatures. * * * * * Ten years later, Dick Barrow sat on the balcony before his apartment. His son John, eight years old, was playing with Dick McCarthy. While he watched the boys, his mind swung back to the earth the little group had left so many years before. For three years they had talked of returning to their home planet, and the evening before the conversation reached a climax. They were starting in two months. It no longer required years to manufacture fuel for one trip. All machinery was working at top efficiency, and they could turn out enough of the liquid in a month, to drive the ship back and forth several times. Crews of workmen had been trained to care for all mechanical equipment, and there was no longer need for the engineers from the earth. The day the little party (it now consisted of eighteen with the four children), entered the space ship tears rolled down the cheeks of many of the crowd. The dome people had learned to almost worship these members of an alien race, and thought they would never leave. But when they realized that their leaders were dissatisfied, and wanted to return to their native planet, they aided in every way they knew how. The ship was out of port for less than a week when the people became restless. They hardly spoke, even at meal time, and for the first time in ten years there were petty quarrels.