"Then why don't you call me by my name, instead of 'Sweetheart'?"
"That's because I like you, Sweetheart." She was looking out the rear window. "Now just step on the gas, because we've got company."
The car that had been parked near the sentry hut was whipping into view around the curve. It was lighter than his, but it was fast, too. He stepped on it.
Now the road had become narrow and twisting. The grade was steep but the surface was good. Abruptly, it entered a forest.
The girl said: "Two more curves. Then you'll see a field and a barn. Off the road and into the barn, fast."
He took the curves with rubber screaming and almost without braking sent the car bumping across the field and into the barn. It was bigger than it had seemed from the outside. As he brought the car to a lurching halt the barn door closed.
Where he had expected to see stalls and milking machines and hay he saw an expanse of metal floor and monstrous machinery. The barn door which had been a rickety wooden slab from the outside was a gleaming sheet of metal from the inside. It glided silently shut and left no joint or seam to show where there had been an opening.
"Out," said Naomi.
As they left the car, a flexible metal arm snaked from one of the smooth walls, attached itself to the front bumper of the vehicle, and whisked it into a cubicle which opened to receive it and closed behind it.