Frank came crashing up and joined him. "We can't hang around up here, Jim."

"I know it. Wouldn't you know that he would pull a stunt like this just at the wrong time?"

"He's a pest, that's what he is. Come on."

Willis's voice-or, rather, Jim's voice as used by Willisreached them from a distance. "Jim boy! Jim! Come here!"

Jim struggled through the shrinking vegetation with Frank after him. They found the bouncer resting at the edge of an enormous plant, a desert cabbage quite fifty yards across. The desert cabbage is not often found near the canals; it is a weed and not tolerated in the green sea bottoms of the lower latitudes, though it may be found in the deserts miles from any surface water. The western half of this specimen was still spread out in a semicircular fan, flat to the ground, but the eastern half was tilted up almost vertically, its flat leaves still reaching greedily for the Sun's rays to fuel the photosynthesis by which plants live. A hardy plant, it would not curl up until the Sun was gone completely, and it would not withdraw into the ground at all. Instead it would curl into a tight ball, thus protecting itself from the cold and incidentally simulating, on giant scale, the Earth plant for which it was named.

Willis sat by the edge of the half that was flat to the ground. Jim reached for him.

Willis bounced up on the edge of the desert cabbage and rolled toward the heart of the plant. Jim stopped and said, "Oh, Willis, dam your eyes, come back here. Please come back."

"Don't go after him," warned Frank. "That thing might close up on you. The Sun is almost down."

"I won't. Willis! Come back!"

Willis called back, "Come here, Jim boy."

"You come here."

"Jim boy come here. Frank come here. Cold there. Warm here."

"Frank, what'U I do?"

Willis called again. "Come, Jim boy. Warm! Stay warm all night."

Jim stared. "You know what, Frank? I think he means to let it close up on him. And he wants us to join him/"

"Sounds that way."

"Come, Jim! Come, Frank!" Willis insisted. "Hurry!"

"Maybe he knows what he's doing," Frank added. "Like Doc says, he's got instincts for Mars and we haven't."

"But we can't go inside a cabbage. It would crush us."

"I wonder."

"Anyhow, we'd suffocate."

"Probably." Frank suddenly added, "Do as you like, Jim. I can't skate any farther." He set one foot on a broad leafwhich flinched under the contact-and strode steadily toward the bouncer. Jim watched him for a moment and then ran after them.

Willis greeted them ecstatically. "Good boy, Frank! Good boy, Jim! Stay nice and warm all night."

The Sun was slipping behind a distant dune; the sunset wind whipped coldly at them. The far edges of the plant lifted and began to curl toward them. "We still could get out if we jumped, Frank," Jim said nervously.

"I'm staying." Nevertheless Frank eyed the approaching leaves apprehensively.

"We'll smother."

"Maybe. That's better than freezing."

The inner leaves were beginning to curl faster than the outer leaves. Such a leaf, four feet wide at its widest and at least ten feet long, raised up back of Jim and curved in until it touched his shoulder. Nervously he struck at it. The leaf snatched itself away, then slowly resumed its steady progress toward him. "Frank," Jim said shrilly, "they'll smother us!"

Frank looked apprehensively at the broad leaves, now curling up all around them. "Jim," he said, "sit down. Spread your legs wide. Then take my hands and make an arch."

"What for?"

"So that we'll take up as much space as possible. Hurry!"

Jim hurried. With elbows and knees and hands the two managed to occupy a roughly spherical space about five feet across and a little less than that high. The leaves closed down on them, seemed to feel them out, then settled firmly against them, but not, however, with sufficient pressure to crush them. Soon the last open space was covered and they were in total darkness. "Frank," Jim demanded, "we can move now, can't we?"

"No! give the outside leaves a chance to settle into place."

Jim kept still for quite a long while. He knew that considerable time had passed for he spent the time counting up to one thousand. He was just starting on his second thousand when Willis stirred in the space between his legs. "Jim boy, Frank boy-nice and warm, huh?"

"Yeah, Willis," he agreed. "Say, how about it. Frank?"

"I think we can relax now." Frank lowered his arms; the inner leaf forming the ceiling immediately above him at once curled down and brushed him in the dark. He. slapped at it instinctively; it retreated.

Jim said, "It's getting stuffy already."

"Don't worry about it. Take it easy. Breathe shallowly. Don't talk and don't move and you'll use up less oxygen."

"What difference does it make whether we suffocate in ten minutes or an hour? This was a crazy thing to do, Frank; any way you figure it we can't last till morning."

"Why can't we? I read in a book that back in India men have let themselves be buried alive for days and even weeks and were still alive when they were dug up. Fakers, they called them."

"'Fakers' is right! I don't believe it."

"I read it in a book, I tell you."

"I suppose you think that anything that's printed in a book is true?"

Frank hesitated before replying, "It had better be true because it's the only chance we've got. Now will you shut up? If you keep yapping, you'll use up what air there is and kill us both off and it'll be your fault."

Jim shut up. All that he could hear was Frank's breathing. He reached down and touched Willis; the bouncer had withdrawn all his stalks. He was a smooth ball, apparently asleep. Presently Frank's breathing changed to rasping snores.

Jim tried to sleep but could not. The utter darkness and the increasing deadness of the air pressed down on him like a great weight. He wished again for his watch, lost to Smythe's business talent; if he only knew what time it was, how long it was until sunrise, he felt that he could stand it.

He became convinced that the night had passed-or had almost passed. He began to expect the dawn and with it the unrolling of the giant plant. When he had been expecting it "any minute now" for a time that he estimated at two hours, at least, he became panicky. He knew how late in the season it was; he knew also that desert cabbages hibernated by the simple method of remaining closed through the winter.. Apparently Frank and he had had the enormous bad luck to take shelter in a cabbage on the very night on which it started its hibernation.

Twelve long months from now, more man three hundred days in the future, the plant would open to the spring Sun and release them-dead. He was sure of it.

He remembered the flashlight he had picked up in the first Project shelter. The thought of it stimulated him, took his mind off his fears for the moment. He leaned forward, twisted around and tried to get at his bag, still strapped to his shoulders.

The leaves about him closed in; he struck at them and they shrank away. He was able to reach the torch, drag it out, and turn it on. Its rays brightly illuminated me cramped space. Frank stopped snoring, blinked, and said, "What's the matter?"

"I just remembered this. Good thing I brought it, huh?"

"Better put it out and go to sleep."

"It doesn't use up any oxygen. I feel better with it on."

"Maybe you do, but as long as you stay awake you use up more oxygen."

"I suppose so." Jim suddenly recalled what had been terrifying him before he got out the light. "It doesn't make any difference." He explained to Frank his conviction that they were trapped forever in the plant.

"Nonsense!" said Frank.

"Nonsense yourself! Why didn't it open up at dawn?"

"Because," Frank said, "we haven't been in here more than an hour."