stump of a dead cigar and listened intently to what was--or for
what wasn't--coming in to his headset receiver. A couple of assistants
checked dials and refreshed their memories from notebooks and peered
anxiously into the big screen. A large, plump-faced, young man in
soiled khaki shirt and shorts, with extremely hairy legs, was doodling
on his notepad and eating candy out of a bag. And a black-haired girl
in a suit of coveralls three sizes too big for her, and, apparently,
not much of anything else, lounged with one knee hooked over her
chair-arm, staring into the screen at the distant horizon.

"Dr. Murillo. Dr. Mur--" The radioman broke off in mid-syllable and
listened for a moment. "I hear you, doctor, go ahead." Then, a moment
later "What's your position, now, doctor?"

"I can see them," the girl said, lifting a hand in front of her. "At
two o'clock, about one of my hand's-breadths above the horizon."

The man with the grizzled beard put his face into the fur around the
eyepiece of the telescopic-'visor and twisted a dial. "You have good
eyes, Miss Quinton," he complimented. "Only four personal armors;
Ahmed, ask him where the fifth is."

"We only see four of your personal-armors," the radioman said. "Who's
missing, and why?" He waited for a moment, then lowered the hand-phone
and turned. "The fifth one's inside the handling-machine. One of the
Ullerans. Gorkrink."

The larger of the specks that had appeared on the horizon resolved
itself into a handling-machine, a thing like an oversized
contragravity-tank, with a bulldozer-blade, a stubby derrick-boom
instead of a gun, and jointed, claw-tipped arms to the sides. The
smaller dots grew into personal armor--egg-shaped things that sprouted
arms and grab-hooks and pushers in all directions. The man with the
grizzled beard began talking rapidly into his hand-phone, then hung it
up. There was a series of bumps, and the armor-tender, weightless on
contragravity, shook as the handling-machine came aboard.

"You ever see any nuclear bombing, Miss Quinton?" the young man with
the hairy legs asked, offering her his candy bag.

"Only by telecast, back Sol-side," she replied, helping herself.
"Test-shots at the Federation Navy proving-ground on Mars. I never
even heard of nuclear bombs being used for mining till I came here,
though."

"Well, if this turns out as well as the other job, three months ago,
it'll be something to see," he promised. "These volcanoes have be