ssible
implications of this situation?"

"Probably not," Hargraves answered. "Some that I do recognize, I exclude
from my thoughts."

His tone was so harsh that Noble said nothing more.

Dawn was already breaking over this Vegan world. The sky in the east was
the color of pearl. In the trees over them, creatures that sounded like
birds were beginning to chirp.

They reached the place where they had buried Hal Sarkoff and his two
companions.

The graves were empty.

No effort had been made to conceal the fact that the graves had been
opened. The dirt had been shoveled out again and had not been shoveled
back.

There were marks in the dirt, the tracks of sandaled feet. "Thulon, the
three who were with him, wore sandals!" Hargraves rasped. "They came
back here. They opened these graves."

"But what happened after that? Are you suggesting those primitive
gray-beards resurrected Hal Sarkoff?"

"I'm not suggesting anything because I don't know anything," Hargraves
answered. "I am just remembering that Thulon and the three who were with
him _looked human too_! I am also remembering that the sphere which
attacked us seemingly was without a crew. Our beams blasted it wide
open. It was seemingly filled with machinery. Nothing else. If there
were any intelligent creatures in it, they were in no form that we
recognize. Come on!" Hargraves started running toward the ship.

The ship, badly damaged as it was, represented their sole hope of
survival. Without it, they would be helpless.

Hal Sarkoff was with the ship. Or the thing that was masquerading as
Sarkoff. Thulon had looked human too. Possibly Sarkoff and his two dead
comrades had been removed from their graves in order to make possible a
perfect duplication of their bodies, the probing of cell structure, both
body and brain. Perhaps the things that lurked here on this world could
read memories from dead minds. That might be the explanation of
Sarkoff's memory.

The important fact was that Sarkoff's body was not in its grave. Where
so much was unknown, this was one indisputable fact. The thing that was
on the ship must be placed not only under heavy guard but in a cage from
which escape was impossible. Then an examination could begin.

There was evil on this world. The trees, the vegetation, the ground
under his racing feet, was evil. In his calmer moments Jed Hargraves
would have said that evil was another word for danger. He wasn't calm
now. The panic he had