on to the highway. He used a broken sapling, and as he worked he told
what had happened, including the three men in the compost pit shell
and the dumping of assorted small wild life specimens into it with
them.

"But they didn't kill you," said Jill insistently, "and they didn't
kill those three, and there were the two others you say got over the
paralysis and went back to the camp. Counting you, that's six men they
had at their mercy that we know weren't harmed. So why should they
have harmed a seventh man?"

Lockley did not answer at once. None of the spared six, he thought,
had put up a fight. Only Vale had exchanged blows with the crew of the
spaceship. Nobody else had seen them.

"That's right, about Vale," he said after a moment in which he had
been busy. "But this doesn't look good!"

He felt under the car. He squeezed himself beneath its front end.
There was a small, fugitive flicker of flame. It went out and he was
silent.

Presently he got to his feet and said evenly, "We're in a fix. One of
the front wheels is turned almost at a right angle to the other. A
king pin is broken. The car couldn't be driven even if I managed to
get it up on the road. We've got to walk. There ought to be soldiers
on the way up to the lake today. If we meet them we'll be all right.
But this is bad luck!"

It happened that he was mistaken on both counts. There were no