Alone against the Pyramids, she had been unable to bring the recaptured sections back into the circuit that Tropile's Components now dominated. It was the end of hope; but it was not the fear of defeat and damnation for the Earth that paralyzed Tropile. It was Alla Narova, gone from him forever. The Pyramids were too strong. And yet, he thought, quickening, they had been too strong before and still a weak spot had been found! "Think," he ordered himself desperately. And then again: "Think!" Components stirred restlessly around him, questioning. "Think!" he cried mightily. "All of you, think! Think of your lives and hopes! "Think! "Hope! "Worry! "Dream!" The Components were reaching toward him now, wonderingly. He commanded them violently: "Do it--concentrate, wish, think! Let your minds run free and think of Earth, pleasant grass and warm sun! Think of loving and sweat and heartbreak! Think of death and birth! _Think_, for the love of heaven, _think_!" And the answer was not in sound, but it was deafening. * * * * * In the cut-off sections, Alla Narova's soaring mind lay trapped. It had not been enough; she could not force her will against the dull inflexibility of the Pyramids.... Until that inflexible will began to waver. There was a leakage of thought. It maddened and baffled the Pyramids. The whole neuronic network was resounding to a babble of thoughts and emotions that, to a Pyramid, were utterly demented! The rousing Component minds throbbed with urge and emotion that were new to Pyramid experience. What could a Pyramid make of a human's sex drive? Or of the ropy-armed aliens' passionate deification of the Egg? What of hunger and thirst and the blazing Wolf-need for odds and advantage that streamed out of such as Tropile? They wavered, unsure. Their reactions were slow and very confused. For Alla Narova succeeded in her purpose. She was able to reach out across the space and barrier to Tropile and the propulsion-pneuma was back in circuit. The section that controlled the master generators of the electronic scythe lay under his hands. "Now!" he cried, and all of the Components reached out to grasp and move. "Now!" And the central control was theirs; the full flood of power from the generators was at their command. "Now! Now! Now!" And they reached out, with a fat pencil of electrostatic force and caught the sluggish, brooding Pyramid on Mount Everest. It had squatted there without motion for more than two centuries. Now it quivered and seemed to draw back, but the probing pencil caught it, and whirled it, and hurled it up and out of Earth, into the tiny artificial sun. It struck with a flare of blue-white light. "One gone!" gloated Tropile. "Alla Narova, are you there?" "Still here," she called from a great distance. "Again?" "Again!"