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painted P-grin. Bee ran beside him. The rest broke off their gyrations to follow. Most of them were staggering and dazed from the forced breathing. They were high on it already. Practice did that. They were getting so they could send themselves fast, with only a few wild breaths. If there was time, they could go on and on for hours, and then the high was incredible. It was like acid and speed and all that old-days junk thrown in together. You could break right through and pull your mind inside out. It was like going to the Planet. Once Caraway had thought he was there, that he had really made it. Bee had talked him back that time. And it had all been done with his own self, just the natural molecules of his mind. And breath.
    Soon they had stretched into a long hurrying line. Those who had children dragged them along by the hand. They crossed a rough meadow. Caraway flung a gate open and they poured through behind him. Tension soon rose in them again. They blinked. Their mouths twitched. Hands clenched and shoulders jerked as if a nervous illness had taken them all. Some People ran aside, and spun for a little and then ran again.
    They were on a road now.
    An unusual thing happened. They were overtaken by a motor van. It was so rare that some of the People jumped in the ditch. An ugly machine with steel mesh all over its windows, and an old man peering out.
    It came to a stop not far ahead.
    Uneasiness spread down the column, which drifted to a halt. Any vehicle on the road was liable to be official and that was bad.
    The old man got out. He started trotting towards them and as he came he was pulling something out of his pocket.
    “I just wanted to ask you,” said the old man. “Has anybody seen her?”
    He held a photograph out to Caraway.
    “Why?”
    “I’m her grandfather. I don’t know where she is.”
    Bee giggled at that, as if she had hardly ever heard anything so funny. Her mad streak. The plumb-bob in Caraway’s hand swung in silence for a moment. Then he raised it like a signal and they all started to move again. The old man stood helplessly holding out his pictures as they passed him by.
    He was like a beggar.
    “Please help me! I’ve got to find her. Take them and look at them—you might have seen her. Her name’s on the back. Hettie. And my name too. Will you please—?”
    He managed to push three or four of them into a child’s hand but the young mother struck them scattering away. He picked them up and hurried alongside the column.
    “She talked about Planet People. I think she wanted to—to belong. I only want to meet her, that’s all—” He was running now. “I want to talk to her and tell her—I’ve so much to tell her—” He thrust prints at Bee. “You’re about her age. Take some of these, I’ve got plenty more. Pass them on, you never know—”
    Caraway halted. He was angry. A few yards away was the waggon with the other man and a big guard dog inside it.
    “What are you?” Caraway wanted to know. “Cops?”
    “No.”
    “What then? What kind of old man are you?”
    Truth now. Quatermass knew it was necessary to speak to them honestly if one were to gain any trust. “I’m . . . I was a scientist.”
    He said it quietly enough but it seemed to be the wrong thing. There was dead silence. The Planet People were crowding round him. Even those who had shunned him were pushing forward. Joe Kapp called uneasily across from the waggon: “Leave them.”
    “What kind of scientist?” asked Caraway. “Some are worse.”
    Say it. “Space research,” said Quatermass.
    “Yes, that’s worse.”
    An angry whisper ran down the column. Caraway bellowed shockingly into the old man’s face: “Rockets make holes in the skin of the world! Did you know that? They tear it open!”
    Quatermass fell back.
    Kapp was at his side, grabbing him by the arm to get him back to the waggon. But he resisted. He had to talk to them.
    “Is that what you believe?”
    “Come on!” Kapp