nd forth before the rampart of rocks.

They hadn't kept a tight enough check on their excitement yesterday! The
globes could sense emotions long after the man who'd had them left a
spot, and if the emotion were anger or grief or strong excitement, the
globes could detect their residue as much as forty-eight hours later.

The thing floated back to them, briskly now, and ordered Revel
telepathically to pull down some of the rocks at the end.

He eyed it coolly, his various brains walled with the protective screen
that he had learned to erect between his thoughts and the outside world.
This screen was made of shallow ideas, humdrum speculations on prosaic
things--the last woman he'd had, the good feeling he got from working
this rich vein of coal after some days of poor luck, even (to make the
god think it was hearing secret desires) a wish that he might taste the
wine that the gentry drank. He could throw up the screen and forget it,
using his core of brains for serious plans.

A dozen rocks displaced, he thought, and we're doomed. For not telling
the gods about the cave, he and Jerran would be given to the squires for
the next big hunt.

So, without much hope of living through the next minute, but believing
it was the only thing he could do now, he shoved Jerran to one side,
raised his pick and slammed it with all his might into the center of the
small, gold, eight-tentacled sphere.

And Revel had killed a god!

The feel of the pick slashing through it told him that: it was like
hitting an overripe melon. The globe recoiled, dragged itself off the
pick, and sank toward the floor, wobbling and dripping yellow ooze, with
its aura of energy fading quickly into air. Jerran said quietly, "No
others in sight. We're lucky!" and began to make a hole in a pile of
discarded rocks. "Help me hide it, Revel."

"You can't hide it," he said dully. "They're telepathic, after all. It
must have signaled its consorts."

"They can't hear or send messages through rock," said Jerran, working
away. Revel automatically started to help him.

"How do you know?"

"We've proved it."

Revel heard the phrase, wondered who "we" might be; but so much had
happened in the last seconds that he did not question Jerran. He
couldn't absorb all the shattering facts. A man could not only touch a
god, he could murder it! The gods were not all-powerful, for they could
not perform telepathy if rock were in the way. Truly it was a morning of
wonders