Manson waited, tense with unaccustomed strain. Somewhere a bird trilled sleepily, and the night-wind, fragrant with the smell of trampled clover, blew cool against his damp face.
Irrelevantly, the scene inside reminded him of his own quiet study where he had labored for ten years over the scant gleanings of his search. In that time he had written four books, fighting with a reformer's apostolic zeal to open the eyes of men to their own possibilities, and he had failed.
He had not awakened his kind, but he had found the Watchers. The failure was not his fault. It was Theirs....
The girl left the room. Manson straightened at his window, bringing up the blast gun.
"Come out, Havlik," he ordered. "Quickly, or I'll blow you to dust where you stand—Watcher!"
His quarry looked up, startled—a small, dark man with a thin, tired face and sparse gray hair, a perfect replica of the million ordinary businessmen his camouflage of humanity aped.
Manson snicked off the safety catch of his weapon, and Havlik came through the window quickly, without protest. Manson prodded him into the gyro and manacled his wrists together.
"We Earthmen have a time-tested proverb," Manson said, "to the effect that you can't fool all the people all the time. I've spent ten years searching for you, Havlik—and here I am."
He set the autopilot for his cabin on Green River, holding his blast gun warily, and sent the gyro slanting upward into the night. Havlik smiled faintly, dark eyes gleaming in the light of the instrument panel.