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commenced Banuff.
    "That rock is peculiarly regular," I said, "and the smoking points are evenly spaced. Do you suppose...?"
    The slight jar of our landing interrupted me.
    "Get ready, Zat," Banuff ordered.
    I was ready. I opened the inner door and stepped into the airlock. Banuff would have to remain inside until I could find out whether it was possible for him to adjust. Men may have more power of originality than we, and they do possess a greater degree of adaptability than any other form of life, but their limitations are, nevertheless, severe. It might require a deal of ponderous apparatus to enable Banuff to withstand the conditions, but for me, a machine, adaptation was simple.
    The density of the atmosphere made no difference save slightly to slow my movements. The temperature, within very wide limits, had no effect upon me.
    "The gravity will be stronger," Banuff had warned me, "this is a much larger planet than ours."
    It had been easy to prepare for that by the addition of a fourth pair of legs.
    Now, as I walked out of the airlock, I was glad of them; the pull of the planet was immense.
    After a moment or so of minor adjustment, I passed around our machine to the window where Banuff stood, and held up the instruments for him to see. As he read the airpressure meter, the gravity indicator and the gas proportion scale, he shook his head. He might slowly adapt himself partway to the conditions, but an immediate venture was out of the question.
    It had been agreed between us that in such an event I should perform the exploration and specimen collecting while he examined the neighbourhood from the machine.
    He waved his arm as a signal and, in response, I set off at a good pace for the surrounding green and brown growths. I looked back as I reached them to see our silvery craft floating slowly up into the air.
    A second later, there came a stunning explosion; a wave of sound so strong in this thick atmosphere that it almost shattered my receiving diaphragm.
    The cause of the disaster must always remain a mystery: I only know that when I looked up, the vessel was nowhere to be seen—only a ram of metal parts dropping to earth all about me.
    Cries of alarm came from the large stone outcrop and simultaneously human figures appeared at the lowest of its many openings.
    They began to run towards the wreck, but my speed was far greater than theirs. They can have made but half the distance while I completed it. As I flashed across, I could see them falter and stop with ludicrous expressions of dismay on their faces.
    "Lord, did you see that?" cried one of them.
    "What the devil was it?" called another.
    "Looked like a coffin on legs," somebody said. "Moving some, too."
FLIGHT
    Banuff lay in a ring of scattered debris.
    Gently I raised him on my forerods. A very little examination showed that it was useless to attempt any assistance: he was too badly broken. He managed to smile faintly at me and then slid into unconsciousness.
    I was sorry. Though Banuff was not of my own kind, yet he was of my own world and on the long trip I had grown to know him well. These humans are so fragile. Some little thing here or there breaks—they stop working and then, in a short time, they are decomposing. Had he been a machine, like myself, I could have mended him, replaced the broken parts and made him as good as new, but with these animal structures one is almost helpless.
    I became aware, while I gazed at him, that the crowd of men and women had drawn closer and I began to suffer for the first time from what has been my most severe disability on the third planet—I could not communicate with them.
    Their thoughts were understandable, for my sensitive plate was tuned to receive human mental waves, but I could not make myself understood. My language was unintelligible to them, and their minds, either from lack of development or some other cause, were unreceptive of my thoughtradiations.
    As they approached, huddled into a group, I made an