them," Halliday explained. "My former assistant and I had to call them something and Raspers seemed as logical as anything else."

"Have you ever seen one of these—er—Raspers?" Ward asked.

"I'm not sure," Halliday said thoughtfully. He removed his glasses again. "I've had two brushes with them, but I'm not sure that I saw them distinctly either time. Possibly the picture that came to my mind, later, was supplied by my imagination. But I know that there is something very repellent and fearsome about them. I felt that much."

Ward crossed his legs and lit a cigarette casually.

"Can these things be killed?" he asked.

"I don't know," Halliday answered. "The two chances I had I was too scared to find out."

Ward felt a cold anger against this man growing in him. This man had been entrusted with the task of surveying the atmospheric conditions of this area—a vital, desperately necessary job—and he was dawdling along, timidly hugging the cover of this fortress because of a stupid, half-imaginary fear of the natives of the area. He felt his cheeks growing hot.

"We can't stay cooped up here indefinitely," he said. "How about the work we're supposed to be doing. Or does that bother you?"

Halliday looked at him queerly and then dropped his eyes. He fiddled nervously with his glasses.

Ward suddenly found the gesture maddening.

"For Pete's sake!" he exploded. "Leave 'em on, or leave 'em off, one or the other. That's apparently your only job here, taking those damn glasses off and putting them back on again."

"I'm sorry," Halliday said quickly, apologetically. "It's just a habit I guess. It's a little something to break the nervous tension of being here all alone, thinking...."

His voice trailed off and his hand moved nervously toward his glasses and then fell back limply in his lap.

"About the work here," he said in a mild, controlled voice, "we are forced to work on a definitely limited schedule. I have field apparatus located at points several miles distant from here. But we can't venture out to take the necessary readings until the weather is propitious."

"What's the weather got to do with our taking readings?" Ward demanded.

"Simply this: There are certain periods of intense precipitation on this area of Mars. These periods are accompanied by high velocity winds. The atmospheric disturbance reaches monsoon proportions. During such periods, for some reason, the Raspers are exceptionally active. Something in the nature of the monsoon reacts on them with very savage results. They seem to feed on the electric disturbances in the atmosphere. They go wild during these changes in the weather and search for any moving thing to destroy. In some manner they are able to cover enormous distances during the monsoon and they can travel with incredible speed. When a monsoon is threatening I never leave the station."

Ward listened in growing irritation to this explanation.

"How often do you have monsoons here?" he demanded.

"Unfortunately, quite often," Halliday answered. "All of my instruments indicate now that one is brewing. I haven't been able to do more than a few hours of work in the last two months. I've been waiting for the weather to break, but so far it hasn't."

"Do you mean to tell me," Ward said incredulously, "that you've been sitting here, twiddling your thumbs for the past two months because you're afraid to take a chance on a wind blowing up?"

"That is exactly what I mean," Halliday said. "But it isn't the wind I'm afraid of. It's the things that come with the wind that make any field work impossible. I've learned a few things about the Raspers in my three years and one is that it doesn't pay to give them a chance. That's all they need. That's all they're waiting for."

Ward stood up impatiently and jammed his fists into his pockets. It took all of his self control not to let his anger and contempt for the man explode in roaring fury.

"I can't understand your attitude," he said at last, through tight lips. "I'm green and new here. I don't know anything about the set-up except what you've told me. But I know from your own admission that you've never seen these things you're so mortally afraid of, you've never stood up to them and given them a taste of ray juice to think about, you don't really know anything about them, except that you're terrified of the very thought of them. That isn't a reasonable attitude. Only one kind of man thinks that way, and that's a man without a touch of starch in his backbone, or a bit of honest-to-goodness guts in his make-up. If you want to hug this place like a scared school-girl that's all right, but I'll be double-damned if I'm going to let any superstitious nonsense keep me from doing the job I was sent here to do."

"That is a very brave speech, Lieutenant," Halliday said, "and I admire you for it. But you are going to do as I say in spite of your own opinions. We will stay here and take no unnecessary chances until our instruments indicate that the monsoon weather has passed. That is an order."

Ward choked back his wrath. He glared at Halliday for an instant, then wheeled and strode into the small storeroom that was to serve as his sleeping quarters. He banged the door shut and sat down on the edge of the cot, his fingers opening and closing nervously.

He wasn't sure just what he'd do, but he didn't intend to stand for Halliday's craven policy of hiding in a locked room, instead of doing the work his country expected him to do. Halliday was a psychopathic case; his mind was full of a hundred and one imagined horrors and they kept him from doing his job. There was little wonder that he had been three years attempting to compile the information that should have been gathered in three months.

The man was so terrified of imagined dangers that he was helpless to act. Ward felt a moment of pity for him, the pity the brave invariably feel for the weak and cowardly. But he also felt a cold and bitter contempt for the man who had allowed his own fear and timidity to hold up the important work of accumulating data on this section of the planet. If he wasn't man enough to do the job, he should have at least been man enough to admit it.

Ward decided that the next day he'd have the thing out. He undressed slowly and stretched out on the narrow cot, but sleep was a long time in coming.

When he stepped from his room the next day he saw that Halliday was standing in the doorway gazing out over the dull gray Martian landscape.

"Aren't you taking quite a chance?" he asked, with heavy sarcasm.

Halliday ignored the gibe. "No. I made a careful check before I released the door lock and opened up. Did you sleep well?"

"Fair," Ward said. "How can you tell the days and nights here? Is there ever any change in the sky?"

Halliday shook his head. "Sometimes it gets a little darker, sometimes it's lighter. When you're tired you go to bed. That's the only standard we have." He shaded his eyes with his hand and stared for a long moment at the bleak, depressing horizon.

Looking over his shoulder, Ward noticed swirling humid mists drifting in the air and, above, huge massive clouds of dense blackness were gathering. He felt a peculiar electric tightness in the atmosphere.

Halliday closed and locked the door carefully.

"Might as well have breakfast," he said. "There's nothing else we can do today."

"Do we have to stay cooped up here all day?" Ward asked.

"I'm afraid so. This weather is ready to break any minute now, and when it does I intend to be behind a well-locked door."

Ward's lips curled slightly.

"Okay," he said quietly, "we'll wait for the monsoon to blow over. Then, Raspers or not, I'm going to work."

But four long days dragged by and there was no indication that the monsoon weather was prepared to break. Low dense clouds were massed overhead and the air was gusty with flurries of humid wind.