from the ships. Once more the tug went over, slow,
and then Hyrst didn't see it again. The idea that they might have given
up occurred to him but he dismissed it as absurd. With the helmet mike
shut off, the silence was beginning to get on his nerves. Once he looked
up and saw a piece of cosmic debris smash into a monolith. Dust and
splinters flew, and a great fragment broke off and fell slowly downward,
bumping and rebounding, and all of it as soundless as a dream. You
couldn't hear yourself walk, you couldn't hear anything but the roar of
your own breathing and the pounding of your own blood. The grotesque
rocky avenues could hide an army, stealthy, creeping--

There was a hill, or at least a higher eminence, crowned with what might
have been the cyclopean image of a man stretched out on a noble
catafalque, with hooded giants standing by in attitudes of mourning. It
seemed like the best place to stop that Hyrst had seen, with plenty of
cover and a view of the surrounding area. With luck, you might stay
hidden there a long time. He jogged Shearing's elbow and pointed, and
Shearing nodded. There was a wide, almost circular sweep of open rock
around the base of the hill. Hyrst looked carefully for the tug. There
was no sign of it. He tore out across the open, with Shearing at his
heels.

The tug swooped over, going fast this time. It could not possibly have
missed them. Shearing dropped the cloak with a grunt. "No use for that
any more," he said. They bounded up the hillside and in among the
mourning figures. The tug whipped around in a tight spiral and hung over
the hill. Hyrst shook the sweat out of his eyes. His mind was clear
again. The tug's skipper was babbling into his communicator, and in
another place on the asteroid Hyrst could mentally see a thin skirmish
line spread out, and in still another four men in a bunch. They all
picked up and began to move, toward the hill.

Shearing said, nodding spaceward, "Our friends are on the way. If we can
hold out--"

"Fat chance," said Hyrst. "They're armed, and all we've got is
flare-pistols." But he looked around. His eyes detected nothing but
rock, hard sunlight, and deep shadow, but his mind saw that one of the
black blots at the base of the main block, the catafalque, was more than
a shadow. He slid into a crack that resembled a passage, being rounded
rather than ragged. Shearing was right behind him. "I don't like this,"
he said, "but I suppose there's no help for