the two creatures. They were of the steel-blue color from
the crown of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of their walking
appendages.

They were about the height of Karyl--six feet. But where he tapered from
broad shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up and down. They had
no legs, just appendages, many-jointed that stretched and shrank
independent of the other, but keeping the cylindrical body with its four
pairs of tentacles on a level balance.

Where their eyes would have been was an elliptical-shaped lens, covering
half the egg-head, with its converging ends curving around the sides of
the head.

Robots! Jon gauged immediately. But where were their masters?

The Steel-Blues moved out of the range of the televisor. A minute later
Jon heard a pounding from the station upstairs.

He chuckled. They were like the wolf of pre-atomic days who huffed and
puffed to blow the house down.

The outer shell of the station was formed from stelrylite, the toughest
metal in the solar system. With the self-sealing lock of the same
resistant material, a mere pounding was nothing.

Jon thought he'd have a look-see anyway. He went up the steel ladder
leading to the station's power plant and the televisor that could look
into every room within the station.

He heaved a slight sigh when he reached the power room, for right at his
hand were weapons to blast the ship from the asteroid.

Jon adjusted one televisor to take in the lock to the station. His
teeth suddenly clamped down on his lower lip.

Those Steel-Blues were pounding holes into the stelrylite with
round-headed metal clubs. But it was impossible. Stelrylite didn't break
up that easily.

Jon leaped to a row of studs, lining up the revolving turret which
capped the station so that its thin fin pointed at the squat ship of the
invaders.

Then he went to the atomic cannon's firing buttons.

He pressed first the yellow, then the blue button. Finally the red one.

The thin fin--the cannon's sight--split in half as the turret opened and
the coiled nose of the cannon protruded. There was a soundless flash.
Then a sharp crack.

Jon was dumbfounded when he saw the bolt ricochet off the ship. This was
no ship of the solar system. There was nothing that could withstand even
the slight jolt of power given by the station cannon on any of the Sun's
worlds. But what was this? A piece of the ship had changed. A bubble of
metal, like a huge drop of blue wax, dripped off