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.He sobbed in sheer frustration.Suddenly his attention was drawn to the corporal.They had all perched on the crater's edge where the air was a little fresher.Now Barnes was struggling to get into the crater, and the air down there was dead, rotten.Cotrell reached out to stop him, but he was too weak.Then he saw Nelson trying to crawl in as well.He gasped a warning and fought himself to his hands and knees.Didn't they know they'd die in that foul muck down there, he must get them out.Then he froze in blind, panic-stricken horror as an indescribably inhuman something engulfed his mind and stated coldly, "You will enter this surface depression for your safety," and he found his limps moving him to the edge, and he, too, rolled flabbily to the bottom of the crater.He couldn't think what this meant.His eyes were open but everything was dark.He must be very nearly dead, he thought.He felt Nelson struggling feebly beside him, and gasped weakly, "They had telepathy all the time, the dirty—" But he didn't finish it, for with devastating suddenness sound returned.Roaring, crashing, tearing, earsplitting, beautiful sound.And with it came a blast of lovely dust-filled fresh air.The force-field had gone.The alien ship, its tests completed, hovered momentarily above the three men now lying safely in the deep crater before it flashed upwards to rejoin its flotilla.Surveying was a pretty dull job, the Commander thought, routine for the most part, but occasionally they would come upon a quite interesting planet.The End
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