here there was scarcely room to turn, let alone fight or hide.

The featureless walls were pressing inward to crush them, swimming
before eyes filmed with exhaustion, in the blue shimmer which no doubt
sufficed for the perceptions of the drones but which hardly served
human vision....

The tunnel was in fact perhaps a thousand yards long.

But it seemed as if they had been staggering for a lifetime through the
nightmare, through the blue glow, and it scarcely seemed real when a
patch of night sky showed through the exit before them, and when they
stumbled panting out into the clean cold air of the mountainside, and
saw the white radiance of moonrise over the Barrier cliffs above them.

They sank down to catch their breath on a rock not far from the tunnel.
They'd made it none too soon--only a minute or two had passed when the
night once more buzzed with motor noise, and a column of foraging drones
rolled up the trail and plunged at full speed into the mouth of the
shaft.

Qanya buried her face against Dworn's shoulder.

"Easy, now," Dworn whispered, patting her with clumsy gentleness. "The
worst's over. We made it ... Qanya, darling, we made it!"

She looked up at him and by the moonlight he saw her smile tremulously.
She said breathlessly, "Would ... would you mind saying that again,
please?"

* * * * *

The moon was already high as they trudged across the rolling desert
beyond the foot of the great landslip.

After the tunnel, the rest of the descent had been relatively easy;
they had followed the trail used by the wingless drones, being forced
off it only once by the passage of a cavalcade of the little
marauders. And they had discovered, to their surprise, that the human
physique--inferior though it might be to machines in ruggedness, speed,
and other respects--was better equipped for traversing rough terrain
than the most ingenious vehicle ever constructed.

But both of them, unaccustomed as they were to walking on their own
feet, were dead weary. They tramped on doggedly, searching the shadows,
hoping to come upon some living machine-creature--of what race, didn't
matter now.

So far they had seen only abundant evidence that the drones were abroad
in force tonight, preparing perhaps for their swarming time. Drones in
the air and on the ground, and once the burnt-out shell of an
unidentifiable machine with a crew of the wingless salvagers worrying
it, and once the light