Ellen protested, "But what could be so hopeless? If the pets survived—"
"My guess doesn't run to what they fled from, Ellen. But I think it's the white spot that flung that heat-ray at us. And I think that after all the people in the ground cars were dead, winter came, and covered up the vehicles with snow. Spring came, and floods washed mud along the highway and partly covered up the cars with mud. That went on for years and years and years. The pets that had been put out of the cars did survive. They were probably arctic animals to begin with, judging by their fur. And they have a language of sorts. They yearned for their masters. That was instinct. But they told their children—pups, what have you—about the masters they had lost. And one day a space-ship came bumbling down out of the sky and landed with a crash—and Jerry got out of it. And he was like their masters. So they have adopted us as their masters. And so—that's my guess. All of it."
"Dee!" cried Ellen softly. "How terrible!"
"You think, sir," asked Jerry, "that they were running away from something on the white spot?"
"We did," said Borden. "We had to. Maybe they had to, too."
"But what do you think it is?"
"That," Borden told him, "is something I hope we don't have to find out. Right now I suggest that we get some sleep."
And presently there was silence inside the Danaë, while the night grew deeper and darker outside.
There was no moon on this planet, but there were many stars in the sky. In the starlight the furry bipeds waited patiently about the hull for dawn when the humans would come out again. Some of them slept. Some sat erect, blinking meditatively. One or two walked about from time to time.