t we meant no harm. Otherwise
we might be murdering each other.

The long wait was agony. In spite of the dehumidifying unit of my
spacesuit, I could feel the sweat from my body collecting in puddles
in the bottoms of my boots. A dozen times there were soft rustles and
scrapes at the airlock; then sounds of hurried retreat.

But at last a mass of gray-pink tendrils intruded over the threshold.
And we saw the stalked eyes, faintly luminous in the shadowy interior
of the lock. Grotesquely up-ended on its tentacles, the monster seemed
to flow into the cabin. Over its mouth-palps was the cup of what must
have been its oxygen mask.

What was clearly the muzzle of some kind of pistol, smoothly machined,
was held ready by a mass of tendrils that suggested Gorgon hair.
Behind the first monster was a second, similarly armed. Behind him was
a third. After that I lost count, as the horde, impelled by fear to
grab control in one savage rush, spilled into the cabin with a
dry-leaf rustle.

* * * * *

All my instincts urged me to yank my automatic out of my belt and let
go at that flood of horror. Yes, that was in me, although I'd been in
intimate association with Etl for four years. Psychologists say that
no will power could keep a man's reflexes from withdrawing his hand
from a hot stove for very long. And going for my gun seemed almost a
reflex action.

There was plenty of sound logic to back up the urge to shoot. In the
presence of the unfathomable, how could you replace the tried defenses
of instinct with intellectual ideas of good will?

[Illustration]

On the other hand, to shoot now would be suicide and ruin our hopes,
besides. So maybe there'd have to be human sacrifices to faith between
the planets. If we succeeded in following the plan, our faith would
be proven either right or wrong. If we didn't act passively, the
failure would be partly our fault. In any case, if we didn't get back
to Earth, hatred and fear of the Martians would inevitably arise
there, whether it had been the Martians' fault or ours. The message
that Miller had left for newscast might only give people the
self-righteous attitude that Earthly intentions had been good. If
another expedition ever came to Mars, it might shoot any inhabitants
on sight, and maybe get wiped out itself.

Still, how could we know that the Martians weren't preparing the kind
of invasion of Earth that has been imagined so often? It was a