Tropile objected: "But you don't know what will happen! We have never been cut off from our physical bodies, Alla Narova. It may be death. It may not be possible at all. You don't know!" Alla Narova thought a smile and a farewell. She said: "No, I do not." And then, "Good-by, Tropile." She had gone. Furiously, Tropile hurled himself after her, but she was quick as he, too quick to catch; she was gone. _Foolishness, foolishness!_ he shouted silently. How could she do an insane, chancy thing like this? And yet what else was there to do? They were all ignorant babes, temporarily successful because there had been no defense against them, for who expects babes to rise up in rebellion? They didn't _know_. For all they could guess or imagine, the Pyramids had an effective counter for any move they might make. Temporary success meant nothing. It was the final decision that counted, when either the Pyramids were vanquished or the men, and what steps were needed to make that decision favor the men were anyone's guess--Alla Narova's was as good as his. Tropile could only watch and wait. Through a great many viewpoints and observers, he was able to see roughly what happened. * * * * * There was a section of the planet next the severed chunk where the mind and senses of Alla Narova lay coiled for a moment--and were gone. For what it had accomplished, her purpose succeeded. She had been taken. She was out of circuit. The overwhelming consciousness of loss that flooded through Glenn Tropile was something outside of all his experience. Next to him in the snowflake, the body which he had learned to think of as the body of Alla Narova twisted sharply as though waking from a dream--and lay flaccid, floating in the fluid. "Alla Narova! _Alla Narova!_" There was no answer. A voice came piercingly: "Tropile! Here now, quickly!" Good-by, Alla Narova! He flashed away to see what the other voice had found. Great mindless boulders were chipping away from the crust of the binary planet and whirling like midges in the void around it. "What is it?" cried one of the others. Tropile had no answer. It was the Pyramids, clearly. Were they attempting to demolish their own planet? Were they digging away at the crust to uncover the maggot's-nest of awakened Components beneath? "The air!" cried Tropile sharply, and knew it was true. What the Pyramids were up to was a simple delousing operation. If you could destroy their own machinery for maintaining air and pressure and temperature, they would destroy all living things within--including Haendl and Citizen Germyn and thus, in the final analysis, including the bodies of Tropile and his awakened fellows. For without the mobile troops to defend their helpless cocoons against the machines of the Pyramids, the limp bodies could be destroyed as easily as a larva under a farmer's heel. So Alla Narova had failed.