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from physical force, but apparently from a will to escape. Perhaps the pressures of civilization had been too great. People had fled from it as from a plague the moment a real opportunity arose.
    However, even in retrospect such a likelihood seemed improbable. Civilization had seemed so firmly entrenched. Scientifically, culturally, man had attained a high point indeed. Although his activities as a social animal left much to be desired, he was perpetually striving, seeking, learning. . . . Somewhere there must have been an intolerable rigidity, a basic falseness. By implication, from what the girl had said, Cargill guessed the answer: Authority had once more attained too great a position. In response, people had flung themselves away from a civilization that, more and more, told them that they knew nothing, that they must conform to patterns laid down for them by those who knew, or rather by those who had the legal right to know.
    Instinctively, they had tried to return to a state of being Cause instead of Effect. They had rejected the hierarchy of intellect which, ever frigid, never dynamic, sought always to impose restrictions. Men had fought up from a thousand dark ages, each time to meet the same blind control forces, each time to surrender for a while to a growing mass of chains; and then—taking alarm—struggling as blindly to escape.
    It seemed pretty disheartening to realize that it had happened again, to realize that the supersalesmen and the advertising executives, and the TV geniuses, and the Cadillacs and the Buicks and the Jaguars had not been able to maintain their glamor -hold. . . . Something had certainly been missing. Maybe it was the right to self-determination.
    The kitchen had grown dark when Cargill became aware of the ship sinking to a lower level. He didn't realize just how low until he heard the metal shell under him whisk against the upper branches of trees. A minute later there was a thud and then a shock. The floater dragged for several feet along the ground and came to a stop. Cargill grew conscious of a muffled roaring sound outside.
    Lela came into the room. Or rather, she walked straight through to the kitchen. Cargill had a sudden suspicion of what she planned to do and lurched to his feet. He was too late. The door of the engine room was open, and the girl was in, the act of lowering a section of the glass wall. As he watched she eased down a hinged section of the outer wall and stepped through, out of sight. A damp sea breeze blew into Cargill's face and now he heard the roar of the surf.
    The girl came back after about a minute and paused in his room. "You can go outside if you want," she said. She hesitated. Then, "Don't try to run away. You won't get far, and Pa might burn you with a spit gun."
    Cargill said ruefully, "Where would I run to? I guess you folks are stuck with me."
    He watched her narrowly to see how she took that. She seemed relieved. It was not a positive reaction but it was suggestive and fitted with his feeling that Lela Bouvy would welcome the presence of someone other than her father. As he hobbled through the kitchen a moment later, Cargill silently justified the plan he had of winning the girl's confidence. A prisoner in his situation was entitled to use .every trick and device necessary to his escape.
    He did not pause at the engine room door—how it opened, he would discover in the morning. He manipulated his chained legs down a set of steps—part of the outer wall, folded out and down on hinges. A moment later he stepped onto a sandy beach.
    They spent most of the evening catching crabs and other sea creatures that crowded around a light which Bouvy lowered into the water. It was a wild seacoast, rocky except for brief stretches of sand. In places, a primeval forest came down almost to the edge of the rock that overlooked the restless sea below. Lela scooped up the tiny creatures with a little net and tossed them onto a pile where Cargill with his fingers