"They'll be all right," Ken reassured her. "They probably found something bigger than they expected at the dam. If they should have trouble with the car they can find a phone along the road at some farmhouse and let us know."

"I can't help worrying," said Maria. "Everything feels so strange tonight, just the way it does before a big thunderstorm, as if something terrible were going to happen!"

Ken sensed the way she felt. It was all he could do to hold back the same reaction within himself, but he knew it must be far more difficult for Maria, being in a foreign country among strangers with customs she didn't understand.

"Why don't you and your mother come over here until they get back?" he asked.

"Suppose they don't come back at all? Tonight, I mean."

"Then you can sleep here. Mom's got plenty of room."

"I'll ask Mamma. If it's all right with her, we'll be right over."

Ken hoped they would come. He found himself concerned beyond all reason that Maria and her mother should be made comfortable and relieved of their worries.

He went out to the backyard again, where all the other members of the club were still lounging on the grass, watching the sky. The comet was twenty degrees above the horizon, although the sun had long since set below the western mountains. No one seemed to feel this was a night for sleeping.

"Let's try your battery portable for a few minutes," said Joe Walton. "I'd like to know what's going on in the rest of the world."

Ken brought it out and turned it on. The local station was off the air, of course, and so was the one in Frederick. Half the power there came from the Collins Dam. More than one-third of the usual stations were missing, but Ken finally picked up one coming in clearly from the northern tip of the state.

The announcer didn't sound like an announcer. He sounded like an ordinary man in the midst of a great and personal tragedy.

"Over three-fourths of the cars in the United States," he was saying, "are now estimated to be out of commission. The truck transportation system of the country has all but 

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