Birrel thought. He had got by in the rush of their flight, but he could not possibly bull it out in a conference where his ignorance must betray him.

Holmer said worriedly, "I say, go! Now that the Irrians know that Ruun has taken a hand in this, that we've followed them to Earth, they'll never rest until they hunt down us and the ship. You know what Vannevan is like! I say, go with what we've found—right now."

"It all depends," the girl said quickly, "on what Rett has learned. Rett—"

She never finished. At that moment, quite without warning, something like an enormous hand struck Birrel and knocked him in perfect silence to the floor.

He did not lose consciousness. He was able to see the others fall too, stricken by that same silent power. Only he could see from their horrified eyes that they knew what the power was, while he did not. He tried with desperate urgency to move but every nerve was paralyzed, and he could only lie there and watch.

The door of the room opened. Two men came in, moving fast, dark ordinary men in ordinary clothes. Each one carried in his hand a thick, fluted metal cylinder. The cylinders must generate the paralyzing force which had worked effectively from outside the house, Birrel thought.

A third man followed them.

He was no taller than the others, but he was wider in the shoulders, a powerful easy-moving man. His face was the face of a man born to command, dedicated to it, living for and by it—a man to whom life without personal and immediate power over everything in sight would be intolerable. Just now he had it, and he was happy.

Holmer spoke, but his stiff lips could make only a terrible whisper.

"Irrians—Vannevan!"

CHAPTER V

There were six people in the living-room of the old New Jersey farmhouse, and only one of them was an Earthman.

It seemed a madly impossible thing, to Birrel. The year was nineteen-fifty-seven and it was twenty-five minutes to midnight on the eighth of July, and this couldn't be happening but it was.

"You were easy, easy," Vannevan was saying. "Did you think I wanted to overtake you out there on the road? All I wanted was to get close enough to pop a tracer on the back of 

 Prev. P 22/57 next