"What of Aidennsport?"
"It is a dreadful—an evil place. There are forces here which you would not understand. Leave at once while you are still able to go!"
"You forget that I am a policeman. To leave without completing the census would be dereliction. I remind you that the Empire is inexorable in these things. And who are you, anyway?"
She did not answer, but drew away so quickly that he could not grasp her. In a moment, from across the room her voice came. It was less intimate, even matter-of-fact.
"If you will not leave," she said, "lock this door behind me and do not, as you value your life, step outside this hut until daylight."
She was suddenly gone and he was alone in mystification and wonder, and a dull, stirring anger that he could not account for.
But he could make nothing of it and after a time he put the incident resolutely out of his mind and tried to sleep. This was not accomplished at once. Curious sounds had begun to filter in through the fenestrations. Some were the night sounds of birds or insects. Other sounds, faint hissings and gruntings, were unidentifiable. Once he thought he heard the slap-slap of bare feet running past his door.
At last he was forced to employ a mild form of auto-suggestion, learned long ago and employed often during those first lonely years in space. He slept.
But once, in the early hours of morning, he was awakened by a tumult. There was much loud hissing and the scampering of many feet outside the daub-hut, as though some intricate and riotous game might be in progress out there, the nature of the game—or for that matter, the players—unguessed at. But he was half asleep, and thought little of it until he awoke again at daybreak.