s to stop
tingling. Sherri must have been the last one--the drug must have taken
effect at last, and not a moment too soon. He decided to wait another
half hour before he tried to get into the spaceship, just the same.

The huge globe of the _Lord Nelson_ stood forlornly in the center of the
valley. The airlock door stayed open; no one tried to close it.

Wayne's mouth was growing dry; his tongue felt like sandpaper.
Nevertheless, he forced himself to sit quietly, watching the ship
closely for the full half hour, before he picked up Sherri, tied his
rope around her waist, and lowered her to the valley floor. Then he
wandered around the rocks, collecting the six unconscious men, and did
the same for them.

He carried them all, one by one, across the sand, burning a path before
him with the needle beam.

Long before he had finished his task, the sand was churning loathsomely
with the needles of hundreds and thousands of the monstrous little
beasts. They were trying frantically to bring down the being that was so
effectively thwarting their plans, jabbing viciously with their upthrust
beaks. The expanse of sand that was the valley looked like a pincushion,
with the writhing needles ploughing through the ground one after
another. Wayne kept the orifice of his beam pistol hot as he cut his way
back and forth from the base of the cliff to the ship.

When he had dumped the seven unconscious ones all inside the airlock, he
closed the outer door and opened the inner one. There was not a sound
from within.

_Fifty-nine down_, he thought, _and none to go_.

He entered the ship and dashed down the winding staircase to the water
purifiers to change the water in the reservoir tanks. Thirsty as he
was, he was not going to take a drink until the water had been cleared
of the knockout drug he had dropped into the tanks.

After that came the laborious job of getting everyone in the ship
strapped into their bunks for the takeoff. It took the better part of an
hour to get all sixty of them up--they had fallen all over the ship--and
nestled in the acceleration cradles. When the job was done, he went to
the main control room and set the autopilot to lift the spaceship high
into the ionosphere.

Then, sighting carefully on the valley far below, he dropped a flare
bomb.

"Goodbye, little monsters," he said exultantly.

For a short space of time, nothing happened. Then the viewplate was
filled with a deadly blue-white glare. Unlik