on the ground, hands out in front of him, staring in horror as the
Dusties kept moving into the fire. "Do you see what they're doing!" he
screamed. "They'll be slaughtered, every one of them!" And then he was
running down the road, shouting at them to stop, and so were Pete and
Tegan and the rest of the men.

Something hit Pete in the shoulder as he ran. He spun around and fell
into the dusty road. A dozen Dusties closed in around him, lifted him up
bodily, and started back through the village with him. He tried to
struggle, but vaguely he saw that the other men were being carried back
also, while the river of brown creatures held the jeeps at bay. The
Dusties were hurrying, half carrying and half dragging him back through
the village and up a long ravine into the hills beyond. At last they
set Pete on his feet again, plucking urgently at his shirt sleeve as
they hurried him along.

He followed them willingly, then, with the rest of the colonists at his
heels. He didn't know what the Dusties were doing, but he knew they were
trying to save him. Finally they reached a cave, a great cleft in the
rock that Pete knew for certain had not been there when he had led
exploring parties through these hills years before. It was a huge
opening, and already a dozen of the men were there, waiting, dazed by
what they had witnessed down in the valley, while more were stumbling up
the rocky incline, tugged along by the fuzzy brown creatures.

Inside the cavern, steps led down the side of the rock, deep into the
dark coolness of the earth. Down and down they went, until they suddenly
found themselves in a mammoth room lit by blazing torches. Pete stopped
and stared at his friends who had already arrived. Jack Mario was
sitting on the floor, his face in his hands, sobbing. Tegan was sitting,
too, blinking at Pete as if he were a stranger, and Dorfman was
trembling like a leaf. Pete stared about him through the dim light, and
then looked where Tegan was pointing at the end of the room.

He couldn't see it clearly, at first. Finally, he made out a raised
platform with four steps leading up. A torch lighted either side of a
dais at the top, and between the torches, rising high into the gloom,
stood a statue.

It was a beautifully carved thing, hewn from the heavy granite that made
up the core of this planet, with the same curious styling as other
carving the Dusties had done. The design was intricate, the lines
carefully turned and pol