"We lost them, long ago!" she was saying. "Rett, slow this thing before you wreck us."
Birrel eased the gas-pedal. Beside him, Holmer looked scared.
"These clumsy Earth cars—I'll never get into one again!" he said, with feeling.
They were running up a hillside, with scrub woods on either side of the road.
"Stop on the crest, and we'll listen," said Kara.
He stopped, cutting the motor and lights. They got out and looked back. In the soft summer night, the little woods-sounds, the monotonous song of peepers, were somehow shocking in their ordinariness, to Birrel. Impossible that it was just another July night in New Jersey, when beside him stood a man and woman not of Earth.
He looked up at the summer sky, decked with chains and hives of stars. From which dot in the sky had these two come? From where had those others come, those who pursued, the Irrians? "The sky is full of worlds," Connor had said. And the sky was full of mystery and menace....
"Yes," said Holmer. "We've lost them. But we'd better not linger here."
They got back into the car, and Birrel drove on again. Holmer said, "We'll go back to the house. We've got to decide fast, what to do—now that Vannevan knows we're on Earth. We can stay here, and keep watching them. Or we can go home, with what we already know."
With a queer icy feeling, Birrel realized that "home" meant the world from which they had come somewhere across the abyss of space. There must be a ship, hidden somewhere, waiting for these people. If he could keep up his imposture till he reached that ship, and then get word to Connor.