Terl came rumbling down toward the morgue. Jonnie turned on his picto-recorder. Psychlos were getting busy again around the firing platform. The bullhorn bawled: “Coordinates holding and linked in second stage.” They were still lined up with Psychlo.

Jonnie envisioned that far-off planet, universes away, purple and heavy like a huge discolored boil, infecting and paining the universes. He knew there were scraps of its space right in front of him, linked to the space of Earth. Psychlo: a parasite larger than the host. Voracious, pitiless, without even a word for “cruelty.”

Terl was now opening up the morgue. Small lift trucks dashed by him and into it. Terl stood there watching, a list in his hand. The first lift truck came out. Terl looked at the closed coffin number and checked his list. The truck with the huge coffin borne in its claws sped to the firing platform and dumped its burden with a thud. The coffin teetered and then fell flat.

A second truck came out of the morgue with another coffin. Terl read the number and checked it off, and that coffin was carried up and dumped on the firing platform. Then rapidly a third and a fourth truck repeated the action. The first truck was bringing another coffin out.

Jonnie watched while sixteen coffins were piled, this way and that, carelessly, on the platform.

A line of returning personnel were dropped off a flatbed ground truck with their baggage near Terl at the morgue. He went through their clothing and glanced into their effects. There were twelve of them. As they finished, the lift trucks moved them and their baggage to the firing platform.

The white light went steady. “Coordinates on first stage!” bawled the bullhorn. “Motors off!"

The twelve departing Psychlos stood there or sat on their mounds of baggage. The sixteen coffins were mixed up with the baggage.

It suddenly struck Jonnie that nobody waved or said goodbye. It meant nothing to anyone here that these creatures were going home. Or maybe it did, he thought, looking more closely. The machine operators around seemed to be moving with more savage jerks; one couldn't see well into their helmets, or at this distance, but Jonnie felt they resented the homegoers.

A red light over the operations area began to flash. A horn wailed. The bullhorn bawled, “Stand clear!”

The wires began to hum. Jonnie glanced at his watch.

The tree leaves quivered. The ground vibrated. The hum of the wires gradually and slowly built to a roar.

Two minutes went by. On went the purple light.

A wavering haze appeared over the platform.

The personnel and coffins were gone.

Then Jonnie noticed an undulating wave of sound and a quiver in the wires. It was almost like a recoil.

A different horn went off. A white light flashed. The bullhorn bawled, “Firing completed. Start motors and resume normal actions.”

Terl was locking the morgue. He came rumbling up the slope. Jonnie turned off his picto-recorder remote and started to move off. Terl seemed to be very distracted but the movement caught his eye.

“Don't hang around here!” snapped Terl.

Jonnie guided the horse toward him. In a low guttural, Terl said, “You must not be seen around here anymore. Now clear out.”

“What about the girls?”

"I’ll take care of it, I’ll take care of it.”

“I wanted to give you the report.”

“Shut up!” Terl looked around. Was he frightened? He drew close to the horse's shoulder, bringing his eyes to the level of Jonnie's head. “I’ll come over and see you tomorrow. Hereafter, don't come near this place.”

“Go over to your car and get to your base. Right now!” And Terl made sure that he did.

It took a very dicey scout that night to recover the picto-recorder from the tree. But with a heat shield to prevent detection, Jonnie did it. What was up with Terl?

“It looks like it will be almost impossible to get out,” said Jonnie. “And it's going to take an awful lot of advice and skill.”

He was uneasy about the state Terl was in. Their conference was already two days late.

They were meeting in an abandoned mine drift, a workings fifty feet underground and a mile south of the “defense base.” It was dusty; the timbers sagged; it was a dangerous place to be due to the possibility of cave-in.

Terl had come silently to the base, having parked his ground car some distance away under brush in a ravine and walked the rest of the distance in the night, a mining heat shield over his head. Silently, with gestures, he had made the night sentry– who almost shot him, so mysteriously did he materialize in the dark– get Jonnie. He had then led Jonnie to this abandoned drift and checked around them with a probe.

But the monster did not seem to be attending to what was going on. Jonnie had shown him the pictures of the lode on a portable viewer he had brought and explained about the overheating motor, about the wind. Terl had emitted a few mutters but little else.

For Terl was a very worried Psychlo. When the crowd had arrived at the semiannual, Terl had been efficiently going down the line checking them out. He was almost two-thirds finished when he found himself face to face with him.

The newcomer had his head down and the dome firing helmet was not too clean to see through, but there was no mistaking.

It was Jayed!

Terl had seen him once while a student at the school. There had been a crime nobody ever learned about and Jayed had been the agent who appeared to handle it.

He was not a company agent. He was a member of the dreaded imperial Bureau of investigation, the I.B.I. itself.

There was no mistaking him. Round jowled face, left front fang splintered, discolored mouth and eyebones, mange eroding his paws. It was Jayed all right.

It was such a shock that Terl had not been quick-witted enough to go on with his inspection. He had simply passed on the rest of the line. Jayed didn't seem to notice– but the great I.B.I. never missed anything.

What was he there for? Why had he come to this planet?

On the incoming receipt forms he was listed as "Snit" and designated as “general labor.” This meant to Terl that Jayed must be undercover.

But why? Was it Numph's messing with payrolls? Or– and Terl shuddered-was it the animals and the gold?

His first impulse was to load up blast rifles and rush over and wipe out the animals, return the vehicles, and claim it was all Numph's idea and that he had had to step in and handle it.

For two days, however, Terl waited around to see whether Jayed would sidle up to him and confide. He gave the fellow every chance. But Jayed simply went into the general labor force at the local mine.

Terl didn't dare put a button camera near him. Jayed would detect that. He didn't dare interrogate the workers around Jayed to see what questions the agent was asking. Jayed would hear it right back.

No button cameras appeared in Terl's area. Probes detected no remote devices beaming in on him.

A very tense Terl had then decided to be very wary and wait for the first outgoing dispatch box, for Jayed might possibly put a report into it.

Sitting there, looking at the lode on the screen, Terl gradually forced himself to focus his eyes. Yes, it did appear difficult. He knew it would be.

“You say wind?” said Terl.

“Overheats the motors. A flying drill platform would not be able to hold itself in place long enough to do any effective work.”

The miner in Terl stirred. “Long spike rods driven into the cliff side. One could build a platform on that. It 's precarious but the rods sometimes hold.”

“One would have to have a place to land on top.”