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For the saucer students it was a quarter past dinosaur, as Ann would have said, except she was asleep By that token the Wanderer was about an hour and fifteen her in the sky than it had been when the Corvette and the truck had first drawn up side by side on the saddle to look at the high tide Now late supper had been eaten, scrapes and scratches gotten rock-ed, and more than half the saucer students were asleep in and around the two vehicles, wrapped, despite the relative es of the big tarpaulin

Three figures still cozied up around the primus stove where they&039;d boiled water for coffee: Pop, curled up on his side like a pillbug and fingering his bad teeth through his parchmenty cheeks as sole to sue hied in the easiest variant of the lotus position - right ankle atop left knee, right knee atop left ankle - and staring up at the dinosaur rotating east on the Wanderer as if that now rather phallic-looking golden beast were the navel of the cos up the events and observations of the day in his notebook by Wanderer-light

Hunter, holding Margo&039;s hand in his, she walking beside him, stepped up to the Little Man and touched him on the shoulder and said quietly, "Doddsy, Miss Gelhorn and I are going up to the crest across the road If there&039;s a serious eency: five horn blasts"

The Little Man looked up and nodded

Froo was carrying and then turned his eyes away and blew through his lips a sry disapproval

The Ramrod withdrew from his contemplation to look down at Pop "Shut up," he said softly and calo, and above them at the Wanderer, and a sht forefinger traced tiny Isis-loops on his right knee he said, "Ispan shower blessings on your love"

The Little Man bent his head to his note-jotting His lips were corin and perhaps suppress a chuckle

Hunter and Margo crossed the road Ann and herblanket-wrapped just beyond the shadow of the truck and it see at them open-eyed, but as he came closer he saw that her eyes were closed Just then he becaure standing back in the shadow of the truck Even its face was dark, shadowed by a black hat with brim turned down

A shiver mounted Hunter&039;s spine, because he was certain it was Doc He wanted Doc to speak and show his face, but the figure only raised its hands to its hat and pulled it further down and drew back into the shadow

At that instant Hunter felt Margo&039;s fingers tighten hard on his, and he looked directly into the shadow of the truck There was no longer a figure there

They walked on, saying nothing to each other about it Wild grass crunched faintly under their feet as they ht noon of the Wanderer They were strongly aware of the sea invading the hills - the high tide at its stand fifty yards away, its waves crea the hillside - and of the Wanderer invading the sky, or rather invading Earth&039;s space and bringing its own dark, pearly sky with it, and of strangeness invading the life of all e and from that to another, and there before theiant&039;s coffin Margo spread the blanket on it and they kneeled on it facing each other They stared at each other intently, unsly, or if their lips sly The hushes between the surges of the surf were filled with the rhythh-crash of the sea itself The hills see with theo zipped down her jacket, laying the momentuan to unbutton her blouse, but Hunter took that work away froht hand up into his beard andher knuckles into his chin Then tiency of movement; it became a place in the open where one stood rather than a low, narrow corridor dohich one was hurried The sea and the rocks and the hills and the sky and the cool enfolding air and the wide rich planet overhead all ca fixtures of the room that is the mind, or - truer - the o became aware of each other&039;s bodies and each other, thearound theest and the least, even the tiny violet dash, scarcely an eighth of an inch long, in the scale on the grip of the s unseen as well as things seen, the dead as well as the living Their bodies and the heavens were one, the engorged sun wooed the dark , punishing surf was in them, and the sea with all its swell and stor with silent tread, for once not hu death with life Overhead the golden lingah the dark purple beca in the next hour-face of the Wanderer - the fe about and finally crushing the er - while around about the great intruding planet the littered and danced like the ly, fiercely, about the ovubolt a brief account of his experiences in space and aboard the Wanderer It seeerishka had told Paul and it revived in hi of the h he was still shaken and hurt by the subsequent change in her feelings Noas telling Don what had happened to hiht of the Wanderer&039;s appearance - at the flying saucer sy and in the earthquake waves - when Tigerishka interrupted sharply

"Stop chattering, please! I have so at the pinkly embowered control panel - had presumably been in silent contact with her superiors Paul and Don were sitting on the pink floor, across which Miaowsorties from the flower banks - evidently ued or at least stiravity

"Have you two beings been well treated here and during your contacts withhowof her fur, the felinoid he had seen catch a great topaz bird and drink its blood with the air of a ballerina nibbling at an after-theater snack

He said: "After I escaped from the moon - wholly by my own efforts as far as I know - I was picked up by two of your ships, escorted to the Wanderer, kept in a coht here Nobody talked to me much I think my mind was turned inside out and inspected In a dreas That&039;s about it"

"Thank you Now you, Paul Hagbolt, have you been well treated?"

"Well" he began, sly

"A simple yes or no will do!" she snapped

"Then - yes"

"Thank you Question two: Have you seen evidence of your Earth people being given aid in their tidal troubles?"

Paul said: There were those things you showed rad: fires put out by rain, tides being driven back by some sort of repulsion field"

Don said: "I think I saw television pictures of the sa my vision or dream"

"It was a true vision," she assured hierishka," Paul interrupted, "does all this have soraphs that don&039;t match the Wanderer&039;s false exits from hyperspace? Are you people afraid the pursuit will catch up with you, and are you preparing a defense of your actions here?"

Don looked at him in surprise - Paul had as yet told hierishka&039;s story - but she said si,Yes, that is possible But question three: So far as you know, have your companions suffered by reason of the Wanderer?"

Don said harshly: "My three companions at Moonbase were killed when Luna broke up"

She nodded curtly and said: "One of the checked Paul Hagbolt?"

He said, "I was just telling Don about that, Tigerishka Margo and the saucer people were OK when I last saw them - I h in the wash of so to o"

"They&039;re still alive," Tigerishka asserted Her violet eyes twinkled and she shaped her lips in a thin, hu an eye on them - you ods worry about you: all you see are the floods and the earthquakes However I won&039;t ask either of you to accept my word for that, I&039;ll show you! Stand up, please, both of you I a to send you down to Earth to see for yourselves"

"You a?" Don asked as they complied "As I&039;m sure you know, it&039;s linked to this saucer now by a space tube and I was given the idea that I - I mean that , Paul and myself - would be able to use it to return to Earth Which the Baba Yaga can e, I think, if we are released above the atmosphere with no orbital speed to - "

"No, no, no," she interrupted "Later you&039;ll do that - in an hour or two, say, and at your Vandenberg Two space field - which is just five hundred miles below us now, by the way - but now I send you there a ether!"

Don cori to take a snapshot of us"

Tigerishka said, "That&039;s just about what I aan to di out of the flowers and rubbed around their ankles On a sudden io and Hunter had dressed and folded the blankets and started down the hillside arlow of their loveo!"