"Martha, couple other womenfolks, they practically had to push us out of the woods to come greet you, lead you to us. They wouldn't come themselves, being naked and all. They told us, first thing was to get some clothes for them from the ship.
"We was countin' on the arrival of your ship to bring the rest of the colonists back to their senses. Some ain't been found yet, not since the footprint thing. If they were watchin' you from hidin' places, if they also saw your ship disappear—well now, I just don't know."
"There'll be another ship from Earth," Cal said. "In a matter of fifteen or twenty hours at most. We were communicating at the time. They'll know we didn't cut out through choice."
"Yes," Tom Lynwood confirmed. "As I remember, I got cut off in the middle of a sentence. They'll know something was wrong."
"There's another ship out there right now," Cal added. "Not an E.H.Q. ship, but one that would have seen what happened. We'll not count on anything from them, but an E.H.Q. ship will be here soon, probably with an E on board—McGinnis."
"Don't know what good it would do," Jed said despondently. "That ship might disappear, too, soon as it landed. And the next, and the next."
"I don't plan to let it land," Cal told them. "You'll notice nothing happened to us until we touched ground. I'll find a way to talk to the ship, keep it from landing until we've got a line on whatever this is."
"You figger to solve this one?" Jed asked curiously, unbelieving.
"I'm going to try," Cal said with more confidence than he felt. "It's what I'm here for. Maybe I can't solve it, but I can try."
"I don't know how you're going to start," Dirk spoke up. "We're just like animals here. We can't use tools."