n slow motion, giving the watchers the eerie feeling that
he was moving through a thicker, heavier medium than air, in a place where
the gravity was much less than that of Earth.

"Speed the tape up to normal," said Colonel Mannheim to the man who was
operating the machine. "If there's anything Mr. Stanton wants to look at
more closely, we can run it through again."

As if in obedience to the colonel's command, the Nipe seemed to shake
himself a little and go about his business more briskly, and the air and
gravity seemed to revert to those of Earth.

"What's he doing?" Stanton asked. The Nipe was doing something with an
odd-looking box that sat on the floor in front of him.

"He's got a screwdriver that he's modified to give it a head with an
L-shaped cross-section, and he's wiggling it around inside that hole in
the box. But what he's doing is a secret between God and the Nipe at this
point," the colonel said glumly.

Stanton glanced away from the screen for a moment to look at the other men
who were there. Some of them were watching the screen, but most of them
seemed to be watching Stanton, although they looked away as soon as they
saw his eyes on them.

_Trying to see what kind of a bloke this touted superman is_, Stanton
thought. _Well, I can't say I blame 'em._

He brought his attention back to the screen.

So this was the Nipe's hideaway. He wondered if it were furnished in the
fashion that a Nipe's living quarters would be furnished on whatever
planet the multilegged horror called home. Probably it had the same
similarity as Robinson Crusoe's island home had to a middle-class
Nineteenth Century English home.

There was no furniture at all, as such. Low-slung as he was, the Nipe
needed no tables for his work, and sleeping was a form of metabolic rest
that he evidently found unnecessary, although he would sometimes just
remain quiet for periods of time ranging from a few minutes to a couple of
hours.

"We had a hard time getting the first cameras in there," the colonel was
saying. "That's why we missed some of the early stages of his work. There!
Look at that!"

"That attachment he's making?"

"That's right. Now, it looks as though it's a meter of some kind, but we
don't know whether it's a test instrument or an integral part of the
machine he's making. The whole thing might be a test instrument. After
all, he had to start out from the very beginning--making the tools to make
the tools to make the