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the reflections from the beam only made it easier for him to penetrate the brush.
    He broke into a meadow and trotted across it—and then he was in brush again. For the first time he heard her voice calling. "You fool, you! Come back!" For several minutes, her words broke the spell of the night but he heard only snatches now. Once he thought she said, "Watch out for the Planiacs!" But that didn't make sense. He passed over the crest of a hill and thereafter heard her no more.
    Purposefully, though carefully, Cargill pressed on through the darkness. He grew startled at the extent of the wilderness, but it was important that he keep moving. In the morning a search might be made for him, and he had better be as far as possible from the road where he had left Ann Reece. The night was dark, the sky continued sullen. The tangy smell of water warned him that he was approaching either a river or a lake. Cargill turned aside. He was crossing what seemed to be an open space when, out of the night, the beam of a flashlight focused on him.
    A girl's high-pitched voice said, "Darn you, I've got my spitter on you." It sounded like "spitter." "Put up your hands."
    In the reflections of the flashlight, Cargill glimpsed a dull metal gadget that looked like nothing else than an elongated radio tube. It pointed at him steadily.
    The girl raised her voice in a yell. "Hey, Pa, I've caught myself a Tweener." The word sounded like
    "Tweener." The girl went on excitedly, "Come on, Pa, and help me get him aboard."
    Afterward, Cargill realized this was the moment he should have tried to escape. It was the unnatural weapon that held him indecisive. Had it been an ordinary gun he'd have dived off into the darkness—or so he told himself when it was too late.
    Before he could decide, a roughly dressed man loped out of the darkness. "Good work, Lela," he said. "You're a smart girl."
    Cargill had a quick glimpse of a lean, rapacious, bearded countenance. And then the man had taken up a position behind him and was jabbing another of the tubelike weapons into him.
    "Get going, stranger, or I'll spit you."
    Cargill started forward reluctantly. Ahead of him a long, snub-nosed, snub-tailed structure loomed vaguely out of the darkness. The light from the flash reflected from the object's glassy surface. And then—
    "Follow Lela through that door."
    Now there was no escape. The man and the weapon crowded behind him. Cargill found himself in a large, dimly lighted room, amazingly well constructed and looking both cozy and costly. Urged across the carpeted floor, he moved through a comfortable lounge into a narrow corridor and toward a tiny room that was even more dimly lighted than the first one.
    A few moments later, while the man glowered in the doorway, the girl fastened a chain around Cargill's right and left ankles. A key clicked twice; then she was drawing back, saying, "There's a cot in that corner."
    His two captors retreated along the corridor toward the brighter light, the girl babbling happily about having "caught one of them at last."
    The man said, "Maybe we'd better cast adrift. Maybe there's more of them."
    The light in Cargill's room went out. There was a jerk and then a slow upward movement. Cargill thought, amazed, an airship!
    His mind jumped back to what Ann Reece had shouted at him: "Watch out for the Planiacs!" Had she meant—this? Carefully, in the darkness he edged towards the cot the girl had indicated. He reached it and sank down wearily.
    He spent about a minute fumbling over the chain with his fingers. The metal was hard, the chain itself just over a foot long, an excellent length for hobbling a man.
    He was suddenly too tired to think further. He lay down and fell asleep immediately.

4
    Cargill had a lazy sensation of drifting along. For some reason he resisted waking up, and kept sinking back into the darkness. Throughout that early dreamy stage he had no memory of what had happened or of where he was. Gradually, however, he grew