was perfect but the monstrous thing with
which it was cursed!

* * * * *

Trembling with the reaction wrought in him by the faint glow of hope, he
began to race toward the lake and his wrecked Blinco Dart. It wasn't
hard to find the way; the rock giant had left a trail as broad as a
road; trees broken off like celery stalks, bushes smashed flat, tracks
that looked like shallow wells sunk into the firm ground. Fifty yards to
a step, he leaped along this path, praying that one object, just one bit
of machinery in the Dart had escaped the general wreckage.

Arrived at the little shell at last, he was forced to pause a moment and
compose himself before he could step into the battered interior.
Everything hinged on this one final chance!

Drawing a long breath, he entered the cabin and made his way to the
stern repellor. A groan escaped his lips. It was ruined. Evidently the
thing had reached in the man-hole opening with one of its three mighty
tentacles, and, with sure instinct, had fastened its stone claws on the
repellor housing. At any rate, it was ground to bits. But--there was the
bow repellor.

He went to that, and the flame of hope came back to his eyes. It was
untouched! He threw back the housing to make sure. Yes, the
inter-sliding series of plates, that reversed or neutralized
gravitational attraction at a touch, were in alignment.

He bent to the task of disconnecting it from the heavy bed-plate to
which it was bolted, his fingers flying frenziedly. Then back to the
torpid colossus he hurried, clutching the precious repellor tight in his
arms lest he should drop it, walking carefully lest he should fall with
it.

There he was faced by a new difficulty that at first seemed
insurmountable. How could he fasten the repellor to that great,
impenetrable, opalescent bulk?

A second time he bounded back toward the Dart, to return with the heavy
bow and stern bed-plates from its hull.

* * * * *

Once more the orange ball of the sun was sinking low. The terrible
brevity of those three-hour days! He had less than ten minutes, Earth
time, in which to work.

One of the thing's arms, or tentacles, was pointing out away from the
parent mass. It was twice the diameter of his body, and was ponderously
heavy; but by rigging a fulcrum and lever device, with a stone as the
fulcrum and a tough log as the lever, he managed to raise it high enough
to thrust o