the hurt man and took him limping away between them. They went down the dark road. Presently, in the distance, Birrel heard a car start.

When he could not hear it any more he said, "All right, let's go."

And he took Kara away across the dark brushy fields running, stumbling, toward a future whose incredible outlines he was beginning vaguely and against his will to see.

CHAPTER VI

They sat together in a brushy hollow by a stream. Frogs chorused in the marshy spots. The stars swung overhead, above the dark trees. Close by in the warm night an owl sang a weird fluttering song to his love, and there were crickets.

Birrel and Kara spoke of things so strange and far away that they were doubly unbelievable in this setting.

Birrel was stubborn. "I've got to take you back to Connor." He had explained to her who Connor was. "He'll study the facts and decide what to do. After all, you've got to remember that Earth is our world. It's more important to us than any other."

Kara was stubborn, too. "The threat is not against your Earth! It's against Ruun, my world. I told you—"

"But your man Rett, the real Rett—he had that probe-ray record of our most secret atomic installations on him."

"Of course he did," she said angrily. Birrel gathered that she had liked Rett, not romantically but as a good comrade in arms. She had taken the news of his death rather hard. "Why do you think he was there at all? He took that record from the Irrian. It was the proof we needed of the Irrians' activities here, so that our government back home will act before it's too late. If your people hadn't shot him, everything would have been arranged by now. As it is, it's worse than ever."

"Look," said Birrel. "I want to believe you, Kara. I do believe you. But it's just too big a responsibility for me to take on my own shoulders. Connor—"

"Connor!" she said contemptuously. "You're afraid."

"Yes," he said. "I'd be a fool if I wasn't."

She put her head between her hands and said in a very patient voice, "I am trying to remember your side of it. Now listen to me once again. There is a star—you call it Wolf 359. It has several planets, of which five are inhabited. We, the people of 

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