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from the brush and came straight toward him, rolling up the hill.
The small drops pulsed in their sandy snares and he gave each one a savage
rap. As if it, too, shared the insult, the great globe flared, then subsided
sullenly. But its ponderous ascent was alarmingly rapid.
He could not take his eyes away from it. The smaller drops were rocks, were
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mere bits of oddly glowing crystal; but this great thing before him seemed the
most beautiful and the most terrible thing he had ever seen in his life. And
it was alive. No man could have looked upon it and said that it was not alive.
The brilliant golden heart in it swelled and blazed upon the golden veining
that closed it in.
There were noises now from the winding path in the forest below, and the
twinkling pinpoint lights of men. But Thorne did not hear them, nor see any
light except the great one before him. He could not move. Sweat stood out on
his face and the instinct to flee dissolved into terror that folded his legs
like boneless things. He half-crouched on hands and knees and stared& . and
stared.
The thing was closer now, nearly up to the line of sand humps that Thorne had
worked so hard on. He had to get away. There was no more time. He forced his
paralyzed hands and feet to tear into the loose sand of the side of the
depression and pull him up. He had to get on the other side of the hill.
In the last instant, his numbed fingers pressed the stud of the little
transmitter that would activate the firing caps of the neonitro buried in the
sand.
But the monster must have realized, somehow. Because he felt when he flung
himself out over the peak with the deep red sky around him a searing, mounting
pain that started on the inside and flooded outward. He rolled unconscious
over the far side of the hill just as the five solemn detonations blasted the
golden glowing globe to bits.
There were white, gauzy circles around the place where his eyes looked out. He
was vaguely surprised to see six people with the eyes three sets of two. He
made the eyes blink and the six
people changed into Seppel, MacInnes and Jeanne. He tried to raise an arm and
was rewarded by a fierce jab of pain. The arm was thick and bandaged, like the
rest of him.
The six three people had seen his eyes open and they moved closer to him.
Jeanne sat down beside the bed and leaned her head close.
"I hope that's you in there," she said, and he was amazed to see there were
tears in her eyes.
"How am I?" he mumbled through the bandages.
"Medium rare," said Seppel. "You doggone crazy fool."
"We almost got to the top, anyway," said MacInnes gruffly. "But you went and
beat us to it."
"Had to," Thorne said painfully.
"You would," Jeanne said.
"Is it gone?" he asked. There were six people again and he felt very tired.
"Shivered to atoms," said Seppel with finality. "You should see the crater in
the sand. But we'll still have small ones to study. Your ad brought in four
more today. I was talking to Camestres on the phone, and he says he's sure he
can swing ,a nice fat research grant for us as soon as you're able to get out
of that bed "
Thorne groaned.
"He says," Jeanne translated firmly, "that he's sticking to
Ecological Studies of the Michigan
Dunes, Chapter Eight. No more dune rollers, thank you."
MacInnes laughed and wagged his gray old head. "You'd better surrender, Dr.
Seppel. Jeanne's got her mind made up. And one thing about her whatever she
says, she'll always be Wright."
"Don't be too sure about that," she said pertly, laying her two small hands
gently on Thorne's bandaged arm. It didn't hurt a bit.
High on a dune above the lake, the moon rode high over a blackened crater in
the sand. Two of the grains of sand, which gleamed in the moonlight a bit more
golden than the rest, tumbled down together into a sheltered hollow to begin
anew the work of three hundred years.
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