"It looks disappointed," said Stan dourly. "I wonder if it wants to chase us?"
He sent the skid darting away. They landed. In seconds the vibration caused by the huge machine's motion began and grew loud. They saw it race into view. As it appeared, instantly a deafening clamor began. Slabs in all directions rose to their vertical position, so that the two humans could not dodge from one row of girders to another. And then with a roar and a rush the thing plunged toward them once more.
Again the skid took off. Again the huge machine overran the spot where they had been, then stopped short as if baffled. Stan sent his odd craft off at an angle. Instantly the gigantic thing was in motion, moving in lightning speed in one direction, stopping short to move on a new course at right angles to the first, and so progressing in zigzag but very swift pursuit.
"'Won't you land so I can crush you?' said the monster to us two," said Stan dryly. "They won't let us have any more power, and we haven't any more to waste. But still—"
He listened to his suit-radio, twisting the tuning dials as he sent the skid up in a spiral.
"I'm wondering," he observed, "if they're trying to tell us something by radio. And meanwhile I'd like a more comprehensive view of this damned checkerboard!"
A faint, faint, wavering whine came into the headphones.
"There's something," he commented "Not a main communication wave, though. A stray harmonic—and of a power beam, I think. They must use plenty short waves!"
But he was searching the deadly monotony of the grid below him as he spoke. Suddenly, he pointed. All the area below them to the horizon was filled with geometric shapes of grids and squares. But one space was different from the rest. Four squares were thrown into one, there. And as the skid dived for a nearer view, that one square was seen to be a deep, hollow shaft going down toward the very vitals of this world. As Stan looked, though, it filled swiftly with something rising from its depths. The lifting thing was a platform, and things moved about on it.
"That's that!" said Stan hardly.