"That doesn't matter. When an adult tells you something—"
The tall boy was interrupted then by a second sounding of the shrill signal, and at once, he hurried to the end of the building. The others fell in behind him in a column of threes. Mike and Terry took positions at the end of the column.
"Where are we going?"
"Breakfast, I hope!" Terry said. The tall boy pressed a stud in the wall, and the front door rolled back. Then he turned his head and bellowed "Section, tench-hut! Forward march!" And he sounded as though he enjoyed it.
They marched out, and, to Terry's gratification, it was to a huge, diamond-shaped building in which they found breakfast waiting.
It was during the rest period after the half-hour session of calisthenics that the Mikol VII landed. Terry and Mike had been laying prostrate on the thickly-matted, damp blue grass, a little out of breath but strangely enough, little more fatigued than had they just finished a short inning of sandlot baseball. They both had been watching the milky-blue sky, and had chosen a place to rest somewhat apart from the others. There were hundreds and hundreds of the others in formations of their own, Terry had noticed, and all together he could only guess at how many there were. There was one adult in charge of all of them, but they had not seen him closely yet nor heard his voice.
Before the first sounds of thunder, Mike had been puzzling a lot of things at once.
"Did you ever jump so high before?"
"It really wasn't awful high. Higher, though I guess than ever before. Felt kind of funny, huh?"