The baby was lonesome, helpless and afraid. It
wasn't his fault he was seven hundred feet tall!

The dancing green blip traced an erratic course upon the glossy grayscreen, the jagged-line pattern repeated over and over, its outlinegoing from dim to sharply emerald brightness to dim again beforefading. The technician cut the switch. There was a sustained whir ofreorganization within the machine as the data-cards were refiled.

"Care to see it again, sir?" asked the technician. His fingers hoveredover the dials, his body in an attitude of impending motion.

Jerry Norcriss tilted his head in a brief, authoritative nod. Thetechnician started the machine again. With a soft humming, the graycircular screen began to pulse once more with that dancing line ofbrightness.

"Now, here, sir," said the tech, "is where the scanner beam firstcaught the pulse of the creature."

Jerry nodded, his eyes riveted to that zigzag phosphor pattern upon thescreen. He noted the soaring peaks and plunging valleys with somethinglike dismay. "It's a powerful one," he marveled. It was one of his rarecomments. Space Zoologists rarely spoke at all, to any but their ownkind, and even then were typically terse of speech.

The tech, almost as impressed by this—for Jerry—long speech as he hadbeen by the first warning from Naval Space Corps Headquarters on Earth,could only nod grimly. His own eyes were as intent upon the screen asJerry's.

"Here—" the line was glowing its brightest now—"here's where thecreature passed directly beneath the scanner-beam. That's the fullstrength of its life-pulse." The line lost clarity and strength, faded."And here's where it was lost again, sir."

"Time of focus?" snapped Jerry, trying to keep his voice calm.

"Nearly a full minute," said the tech, still blinking at the screen. Itwas now devoid of impulse, barren once more. "That means that whateverthe thing is, it's big, sir. Damned big, to stay at maximum pulse thatlong."

"I know very well what it means!" Jerry grated. "The thing's so—"

The tech smiled bleakly. "—incredible, sir?"

Jerry's nod was thoughtful. "The only word for it, Ensign." His innereye kept repeating for him that impossible green pattern he'd seen. Thestrong, flat muscles of his shoulders and neck knotted into what couldeasily become a villainous tension-headache. Jerry realized suddenlythat he was badly scared....

"Sir," the tech said suddenly, "I was under the impression thatthe roborocket scanners couldn't miss a life-pulse on a planet. Imean, making a complete circuit of the planet every ninety minutes,for a period of six months.... It's impossible for them to miss anuncatalogued life-form."

"I know it is," said Jerry Norcriss, pushing blunt fingers through hisshock of prematurely white hair. "Save for two precedents, I cannotconceive of any way in which this pulse could have been overlooked."

"Two precedents, sir?" said the tech, intrigued both by the unsuspectedfallibility of the scanner and by this unusual loquacity from thezoologist.

...