toward their cars. Kirk turned away, defeated and furious. He'd have to try by himself—

Motors roared to life, and the cars started to go by him. A big red truck paused beside him, and Vinson reached down from it to haul him aboard.

"What are you standin' there for?" he cried to Kirk. "You said it might come any minute!"

Kirk, a little dazedly, scrambled up into the truck beside him. "You mean they're going back with me—"

"What did you think? Like Fred said, no blasted strangers from away outside are going to come sneaking in here!"

The truck roared away down the moonlit road, following the speeding cars back the way Kirk had come, waking hurrying echoes, raising a great cloud of dust to redden the moon.

Kirk thought, "I'll never understand these damned Earthmen—never!"

CHAPTER VIII

At three minutes and fourteen seconds before midnight a small, fast spacecraft with the insigne of the striding warrior on her bows dropped down out of the sky and landed in the brush-grown meadow at the edge of the Kirk woods. There was nothing anywhere in sight around it but the dark quiet mass of the trees, the patches of bramble and pale white blossoms of the Queen Anne's Lace. Across the meadow was the Kirk house, with a single lamp burning in it.

A hatch opened and a party of men came out, climbing down a collapsible ladder. There were fifteen of them, armed. They stood still, looking around and listening. Then they began to move toward the house, scrambling and stumbling among the briars and the tufts of bunch-grass, fanned out like skirmishers.

Kirk, lying behind a hazel bush in the fringe of the woods, waved one hand slowly in an outward arc, and there were several small rustlings in the brush to his left. He waited, feeling tense and prickly all over, sweating heavily, though the night was cooler now. He counted, slowly and carefully, moving his lips. Held tight in the crook of his arm was the heavy sono-beam device, snatched up from the house as they came past it. Vinson was beside him, and among the trees nearby were eight more men, waiting for Kirk's signal. Kirk could not see Vinson's face in the dark, but he could hear his breathing, quick and excited. He leaned his head close to the Earthman's, and whispered,

"Remember, keep down out of 

 Prev. P 43/54 next