Jonnie started it up. He felt uneasy; a sixth sense was biting him, like when you had a puma behind you that you hadn't seen. It wasn't Terl's threats. It was something else. He looked over the crowd.

“Raise the blade!” roared Terl, through the horn.

Jonnie did. “Lower the blade!” Jonnie did. “Roll it ahead.” Jonnie did. “Back it up.” Jonnie did.

“Put it in a circle.” Jonnie did.

“Now build a mound of snow from all angles!”

Jonnie started maneuvering, handling the controls, taking light scrapes of snow, pushing them to a center. He was doing better than just making a mound; he was building a square-sided pile and leveling off its top. He worked rapidly, backing up, pushing in more snow. The precisely geometric mound took shape.

He had just one more run to make inward, a run that would carry him toward the cliff a few hundred feet away.

Suddenly the controls did not respond. There had been a prolonged whirring whine in the guts of the control box. And every knob and lever on the control panel went slack!

The blade machine yawed to the right, yawed to the left.

Jonnie hammered at the slack controls. Nothing bit! The blade abruptly rose high in the air.

The machine rumbled relentlessly forward and rose up to the top of the pile, almost somersaulted over backward. At the top, it slammed down flat. Then it almost did a forward flip as it went down the other side.

It was rolling straight toward the cliff edge!

Jonnie punched the kill button time after time but it had no effect on the roaring engine.

He fought the controls. They stayed slack.

Wildly he looked back at the crowd. He got a fleeting impression of Zzt off to the side. The brute had something in its paw.

Jonnie strained at the collar that held him to this deadly machine.

He tugged at the flexirope. It was as unyielding as ever.

The cliff edge was coming nearer.

There was a manual blade control to his left, held by a hook. Jonnie fought to get the hook loose. If he could drop the blade it might stick and hold. The hook wouldn't let go.

Jonnie grabbed in his pocket for a fire flint and banged the flint against the hook. The hook let go. By its own weight the scraper blade came down in a swooping arc and gouged into the rocky earth. The machine rocked and slowed.

There was a small explosion under the hood. An instant later smoke shot up in the air. And a split second after that a roaring tongue of flame rose.

The cliff edge was only a few feet away. Jonnie stared at it for an instant through the growing sheets of flame. The machine edged forward, buckling its scraper blade.

Jonnie whirled to the roll bar behind him. The flexirope was wrapped around and around it. Pressing the rope against the metal he attacked it with the flint. He had tried it before with no success. But on the verge of being yanked in flames two hundred feet down, hope was all he had left.

His back was getting scorched. He turned to face front. The instrument panel was beginning to glow red hot.

The machine inched closer to the edge.

Small explosions sounded as instruments burst. The searing metal of the panel's upper edge was glowing with heat.

Jonnie grabbed what slack he had on the flexirope and held it against the red-hot metal edge. The rope began to melt!

It took all his will power to hold his hands there. The flexirope dripped molten drops.

The machine teetered. At any moment the blade was going to go into vacant space to shoot the machine into thin air.

The flexirope parted!

Jonnie went off the machine in a long dive and rolled.

With a shuddering groan, the last support of the blade snapped. Flames geysered. As though shot from a catapult, the machine leaped into empty space.

It struck far below on the slope, bounced, plunged to a stop, and was consumed in fire.

Jonnie pressed his burned hands into the cooling snow.

Terl was looking for Zzt.

When the machine finally went over, Terl had looked around in sudden suspicion. But Zzt wasn't there.

The crowd had laughed. Especially at the last part of it when the machine went. And their laughter was like daggers in Terl's ears.

Numph just stood there, shaking his head. He seemed almost cheerful when he commented to Terl, “Well, just shows you what animals can do.” Only then had he laughed. “They pee on the floor!”

They had drifted back to their offices and Terl was now searching the transport compound. In the underground floors, he walked past rows and rows of out-of-use vehicles, battle planes, trucks, blade scrapers...yes, and ground cars, some of them quite posh. It had not struck him before how villainous was Zzt's pawing off on him of that old wreck of a Mark ll.

He searched fruitlessly for half an hour and then decided to try the repair room again.

Seething, he stomped into it and stared around.

His earbones picked up a tiny whisper of metal on metal.

He knew that sound. It was the safety slide being pulled back on a blaster.

“Stand right there,” said Zzt. “Keep your paws well away from your belt gun.”

Terl turned. Zzt had been standing just inside a dark tool locker.

Terl was boiling. “You installed a remote control when you 'fixed' that motor!”

“Why not?” said Zzt. “And a remote destruct charge as well.”

Terl was incredulous. “You admit it!”

“No witnesses here. Your word, my word. Means nothing.”

“But it was your own machine!”

“Written off. Plenty of machines.” “But why did you do it?”

“I thought it was pretty clever, actually.” He stepped forward, holding the long-barreled blast gun in one hand.

“But why?”

“You let our pay and bonuses be cut. If you didn't do it, you let it be done.”

“But look, if I could make animal operators, profits would come back.”

“That's your idea.” It 's a good idea!” snapped Terl.

“All right. I’ll be frank. You ever try to keep machines going without mechanics? Your animal operators would have just messed up equipment. One just did, didn't it?”

“You messed that up,” said Terl. “You realize that if this occurred on your report, you'd be out of work.”

“It won't occur on my report. There are no witnesses. Numph even saw me walk off before the thing went wild. He would never forward the report. Besides, they all thought it was funny.”

“Lots of things can be funny,” said Terl.

Zzt motioned with the blaster barrel. “Why don't you just walk out of here and have a nice crap.”

Leverage. Leverage, thought Terl. He was fresh out of it.

He left the garage.

Jonnie was a mound of misery in the cage.

The monster had pitched him in there before going off.

It was cold but Jonnie could not hold a flint in his hands to start a fire. His fingers were a mass of blisters. And somehow, right then, he didn't want much to do with fire.

His face was scorched, eyebrows and beard singed away. Some of his hair was gone. The old Chinko uniform cloth must have been fireproof– it had not ignited or melted, thus saving body burns.

Bless the Chinkos. Poor devils. With their polite phrases and brightness they had yet been exterminated.

That was one lesson to be learned. Anyone who befriended or sought to cooperate with the Psychlos was doomed from the beginning.

Terl had not made one motion in the direction of that burning vehicle to salvage him, knowing he was tied to it. Compassion and decency were no part of the Psychlo character. Terl had even had a gun and could have shot the flexirope in half.

Jonnie felt the ground rumble. The monster was in the cage. A boot toe turned him over. Slitted, amber eyes appraised him.