He felt her gesture of negation. "I don't understand."
"We have a thing on Earth called a Fire Department. In the country every man is his brother's fire warden. Pretty soon the place will be swarming with trucks and volunteer firemen. Stand still and wait."
They waited.
Vannevan and the men spoke together. Finally they left the hurt one to groan and crawl in the grass, and the two of them began to move back and forth in the brush, circling out.
A great plume of flame shot up through some air-shaft in the house and stood out gloriously above the roof.
Vannevan and his man had vanished now in the brush. Birrel held Kara's hand and sweated, and prayed for a sound.
It came. The hoarse, harsh wailing of a country siren, designed to waken every sleeping volunteer in the township.
It rose and fell on the night air, ominous and loud. Vannevan and his man hastily reappeared in the shaking red light. They picked up the hurt man and took him limping away between them. They went down the dark road. Presently, in the distance, Birrel heard a car start.
When he could not hear it any more he said, "All right, let's go."
And he took Kara away across the dark brushy fields running, stumbling, toward a future whose incredible outlines he was beginning vaguely and against his will to see.