ting to strike.

* * * * *

Ban Wilson, hot, itching and uncomfortable inside the heavy space-suit
that he wore, and supremely aware of his consequent awkwardness,
watched the ranch's beacon sweeping past him thirty or more yards
away, and again sought relief from the tedium in conversation.

"Jupiter should be rising soon, Carse. It's the darkest hour--seems to
me he'll come now if he comes at all. What do you think?"

He was the one posted in a watrari tree "south" of Tantril's ranch.
Flung on the tight beam of his helmet-radio, which had been tuned and
adjusted by Eliot Leithgow so as to reach only two other radios, the
words rang simultaneously in the receivers of Friday, who was "east"
of the ranch, and Carse, who was "north."

The Hawk responded curtly:

"I don't know when he'll come; I suspect not before full morning."

Ban Wilson grunted at receipt of this discouraging opinion, and then
once more, as he had been doing regularly all through the night,
raised to his eyes the instrument that hung by a cord from the
neckpiece of the suit. Through it he scanned slowly and methodically
the portion of black heaven that had been assigned to him. The
instrument would have resembled a bulky pair of electro-binoculars
with its twin tubes and eyepieces, had not there been, underneath the
tubes, a small, compact box which by Leithgow-magic revealed the
world through infra-red light by one tube, and ultra-violet the other.

"Nothing!" Ban muttered to himself, lowering the device. "And damn Ku
Sui for makin' these space-suits so infernally uncomfortable! Might as
well have made 'em space-ships, while he was at it!... Say, Carse," he
began again aloud into his microphone, "maybe Dr. Ku's come already. I
know my men said no one had arrived at the ranch in a suit like these
we've got on--but, hell, if his whole asteroid's invisible, why
couldn't he make his space-suit invisible, too?"

"I don't think he's done that. Otherwise he would have--" The
adventurer's level tone raised incisively. "Now, both of you, still!
Conceal yourselves with great care--Jupiter's rising!"

* * * * *

The "western" horizon, a moment before indistinguishable, was now
faintly flushed, a flush which deepened quickly into glowing, riotous
crimson, causing long streamers to shoot out over the surface of the
Great Briney, tingling it, sparkling it. The light reached the jungle:
and w