s looking
scared, again.

* * * * *

John Endlich considered setting up floodlights, and working on through
the hours of darkness. But such lights would be a dangerous beacon for
prowlers; and when you were inside their area of illumination, it was
difficult to see into the gloom beyond.

Still, one did not know if the mask of darkness did not afford a greater
invitation to those with evil intent. For a long moment, Endlich was in
an agony of indecision. Then he said:

"We'll knock off from work now--get in the tent, eat supper, maybe
sleep..."

But he was remembering Neely's promise to return tonight.

In another minute the small but dazzling sun had disappeared behind the
broken mountains, as Vesta, unspherical and malformed, tumbled rather
than rotated on its center of gravity. And several hours later, amid
heavy cooking odors inside the now inflated plastic bubble that was the
tent, Endlich was sprawled on his stomach, unable, through well-founded
worry, even to remove his space suit or to allow his family to do so,
though there was breathable air around them. They lay with their helmet
face-windows open. Rose and Evelyn breathed evenly in peaceful sleep.

Bubs, trying to be very much a man, battled slumber and yawns, and kept
his dad company with scraps of conversation. "Let 'em come, Pop," he
said cheerfully. "Hope they do. We'll shoot 'em all. Won't we, pop? You
got the rifle and the pistol ready, Pop...."

Yes, John Endlich had his guns ready beside him, all right--for what it
was worth. He wished wryly that things could be as simple as his
hero-worshipping son seemed to think. Thank the Lord that Bubs was so
trusting, for his own peace of mind--the prankish and savage nature of
certain kinds of men, with liquor in their bellies, being what it was.
For John Endlich, having been, on occasion, mildly kindred to such men,
was well able to understand that nature. And understanding, now, chilled
his blood.

Peering from the small plastic windows of the tent, he kept watching for
hulking black shapes to silhouette themselves against the stars. And he
listened on his helmet phones, for scraps of telltale conversation,
exchanged by short-range radio by men in space armor. Once, he thought
he heard a grunt, or a malicious chuckle. But it may have been just
vagrant static.

Otherwise, from all around, the stillness of the vacuum was absolute. It
was unnerving. On this airless pi