The planetoid was playing with them!
Burt called: "Get inside the ship, Marcia! Inside!"
"I can't. If I stand still long enough to manipulate the lock, these stones will get me. Burt—"
"I'm coming!"
He switched on his equalizer and Johnny's, and still holding the boy under one arm, he plunged across the rock. Something reached up and tripped him, and he sprawled out flat. He had fallen over a small out-cropping of rock—where no out-cropping had been before.
He got up, and then he reached the Pacemaker. He pushed Johnny in front of him, and the boy stood with his sister. Marcia looked up:
"How are we going to get inside, Burt?"
"You just open the lock. Come on, now."
She turned her back and went to work on the dials. Burt stood there, waiting for the stones that would come, hunching himself over, trying to cover the three of them—
No stones came.