Rape, to Ivy's mind, was the most likely possibility. She fled from the thought. That she was being abducted for other, more permanent reasons was also possible, but she had no idea what they could be. Kidnapping for ransom money was out of the question. Her parents were not wealthy and she herself had only about thirty-three dollars in the bank. The only other thing she could think of was that she was being abducted into white slavery. She made a futile attempt to scream.
Two more bodies, both young girls, joined her in the truck before morning. White slavery began to look horribly believable.
At last the morning came and the truck stopped, and the doors at the rear were thrown open. Ivy was the first to be lifted out.
She found herself being carried up the side of a heavily wooded hill, toward a long low house half-hidden in the pines. She had a chance to look at the man who carried her, and at the other men who were gathered at the back of the truck, and one thing struck her immediately.
All of the men were old. And they all looked strangely alike. They were quite small and round-shouldered, every one of them, with large peculiar eyes and thickly lined faces. There was about them an almost brotherly resemblance, particularly about the nose, which was invariably tiny, thin and sharp, like a small beak. The eerie regularity of their faces was unnerving. She began to realize that there was something here which was more than just abduction.
She was carried into a long house, and once again she was laid on a floor in darkness. She could not see anyone else but she could feel the presence of bodies, row on row of other bodies. Back in the truck she had tried to cry, but it hadn't worked. She tried again now.
After a while she felt the paralysis beginning to wear off.
Web was now very tired and he sat down. He had gone through the whole station and there was nobody aboard. Forty-seven men, all gone. Dundon had said nothing had approached this station, or left it, but the forty-seven men had, and that was for sure. And he knew that if he bothered to check the other rocket, the lonesome rocket that had come up first, there would be nobody in it either.
"Web."