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quivering as they walked.
    They came down the steps in single file, in perfect military order, with half a foot or so of spacing between each one of them.
    They came down the steps and walked out into the desert in a straight, undeviating line as if they knew exactly where they might be bound. There was something deadly purposeful about them and yet they didn’t hurry.
    Taine counted sixteen of them and he watched them go out into the desert until they were almost lost to sight.
    There go the ones, he thought, who came to live with me. They are the ones who fixed up the ceiling and who repaired Abbie’s television set and jiggered up the stove and radio. And more than likely, too, they were the ones who had come to Earth in the strange milk-glass contraption out there in the woods.
    And if they had come to Earth in that deal out in the woods, then what sort of place was this?
    He climbed the porch and opened the screen door and saw the neat, six-inch circle his departing guests had achieved in the screen to get out of the house. He made a mental note that some day, when he had the time, he would have to fix it.
    He went in and slammed the door behind him.
    â€œBeasly,” he shouted.
    There was no answer.
    Towser crawled from beneath the love seat and apologized.
    â€œIt’s all right, pal,” said Taine. “That outfit scared me, too.”
    He went into the kitchen. The dim ceiling light shone on the overturned coffee pot, the broken cup in the center of the floor, the upset bowl of eggs. One broken egg was a white and yellow gob on the linoleum.
    He stepped down on the landing and saw that the screen door in the back was wrecked beyond repair. Its rusty mesh was broken – exploded might have been a better word – and a part of the frame was smashed.
    Taine looked at it in wondering admiration.
    â€œThe poor fool,” he said. “He went straight through it without opening it at all.”
    He snapped on the light and went down the basement stairs. Halfway down he stopped in utter wonderment.
    To his left was a wall – a wall of the same sort of material as had been used to put in the ceiling.
    He stooped and saw that the wall ran clear across the basement, floor to ceiling, shutting off the workshop area.
    And inside the workshop, what?
    For one thing, he remembered, the computer that Henry had sent over just this morning. Three trucks, Beasly had said – three truckloads of equipment delivered straight into their paws!
    Taine sat down weakly on the steps.
    They must have thought, he told himself, that he was co-operating! Maybe they had figured that he knew what they were about and so went along with them. Or perhaps they thought he was paying them for fixing up the TV set and the stove and radio.
    But to tackle first things first, why had they repaired the TV set and the stove and radio? As a sort of rental payment? As a friendly gesture? Or as a sort of practice run to find out what they could about this world’s technology? To find, perhaps, how their technology could be adapted to the materials and conditions on this planet they had found?
    Taine raised a hand and rapped with his knuckles on the wall beside the stairs and the smooth white surface gave out a pinging sound.
    He laid his ear against the wall and listened closely and it seemed to him he could hear a low-key humming, but if so it was so faint he could not be absolutely sure.
    Banker Stevens’ lawn mower was in there, behind the wall, and a lot of other stuff waiting for repair. They’d take the hide right off him, he thought, especially Banker Stevens. Stevens was a tight man.
    Beasly must have been half-crazed with fear, he thought. When he had seen those things coming up out of the basement, he’d gone clean off his rocker. He’d gone straight through the door without even bothering to try to open it and now he was down in the village yapping to anyone who’d stop to listen to him.
    No