drove on, he was faintly startled by an upgush of yellow light that silhouetted the bending trees ahead. A great segment of silver was rising in the sky. Then he realized—it was that moon that they'd passed on their way in.

The moon of Earth, the "Moon" of the old Earth poems people still read. Not too impressive, but pretty. But how the threads of all you'd read and heard kept subtly running back to this old planet! He supposed some of these flowers whose fragrance he could smell on the warm night air were "roses". Funny, how much you knew about Earth that you didn't realize you knew.

The old road gleamed beneath the rising moon. He glanced up at the star-pricked sky. Had the Kirk who was his seventh grandfather, all those years ago, looked at the starry sky as he walked this same road? He must have. He'd looked too long, and finally he'd gone out to that sky and not come back.

The house was dark when he turned in at the lane, but he saw Lyllin's dim figure sitting on the front porch.

"No. No one came," she said, as he sat down beside her.

"And no sign of any agent of Ferdias in the village," Kirk said. "A fine thing. We'll have to wait."

They sat a while in the soft warm darkness. Kirk's thoughts were more and more gloomy. They couldn't wait here forever, yet he had to make contact as Ferdias had ordered—

Strange, glowing little sparks of light drifted across his vision, and now he became aware that the whole dark yard and woods were swarming with such floating sparks. They winked on and off, in a fashion he had never seen, dancing and whirling under the dark trees.

"What are they?" asked Lyllin, fascinated.

"Fireflies?" Kirk said doubtfully. "I remember that word, from somewhere...."

Then he suddenly started and exclaimed, "Hell, what—"

A small sinuous body had suddenly plopped into his lap. Two green eyes looked insolently up at him. It was the cat.

"It's very tame," said Lyllin. "It must have been somebody's pet."

"Probably belonged to the last people who lived here," Kirk said. "It's tame, all right."

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