The Pyramids were the mightiest race of warriors the Universe had ever known. They were invulnerable and unconquerable, except from within. Like Alexander the Great, they had met every enemy and whipped them all. And, like dying Alexander, they writhed and raged against the tiny, unseen bacillus within themselves. Blindly, almost suicidally, the Pyramids returned to their ancient principle of shove-and-haul. The geography of the binary planet was like a hive of bees, nearly featureless on the surface, but internally a congeries of tunnels, chambers, warrens, rooms, tubes and amphitheaters. Machinery and metal Components were everywhere thick under the planet's crust. The more delicate and more useful Components of flesh and blood were, to a degree, concentrated in a few areas.... And one of those areas had disappeared. Tropile, battering futilely with his mind at the periphery of the vanished area, cried sharply to Alla Narova and the others: "It looks as though they've broken a piece right out of the planet! Everything stops here--there's a physical gap which I can't cross. Hurry, one of you--what was this section for?" "Propulsion." "I see." Tropile hesitated, confused for the first time since his awakening. "Wait." He retreated to the snowflake and communed with the other eight-branched members, now become something that resembled his general staff. He told them--most of them already knew, but the telling took so little time that it was simpler to go through it from beginning to end: "The Pyramids attempted to cut the propulsion-pneuma out of circuit some seconds or days ago and were unsuccessful; we awakened additional Components and were able to maintain contact with it. They have now apparently cut it loose from the planet itself. I do not think it is far, but there is a physical space between." "The importance of the propulsion-pneuma is this: It controls the master generators of electrostatic force, which are used both to move this planet and ours, and to perform the act of Translation. If the Pyramids control it, they may be able to take us out of circuit, perhaps back to Earth, perhaps throwing us into space, where we will die. The question for decision: How can we counteract this move?" * * * * * A rush of voices all spoke at once; it was no trick for Tropile and the others to sort them out and follow the arguments of each, but it cannot be reproduced. At last, one said: "There is a way. I will do it." It was Alla Narova. "What is the way?" Tropile demanded, curiously alarmed. "I shall go with them, trace the areas the Pyramids are attempting to isolate, place my entire self--" by this she meant her "concentration," her "psyche," that part of all of them which flashed along the neurone guides unhampered by flesh or distance--"in the most likely point they will next cut loose. And then I shall cause the propulsion units on the severed sections to force them back into circuit."