A car roared up outside. Another followed it, and then others at irregular intervals. Pretty soon Vinson's yard and porch were crowded with men carrying hunting-shockers. They looked at Vinson, and at Kirk, curious, doubtful, not exactly hostile but in no mood to be hurried into anything they didn't understand. Kirk glanced up at the sky and groaned. Then he spoke, as rapidly and forcefully as he could. "So that's the picture," he finished. "If that Orion scout takes off again after it lands, your Earth may be a different place tomorrow. We can stop it--if you will." He wailed. There was no reaction at all for a moment, the leathery faces looking silently at him. Then one man said, "If people come bothering us, we'll bother them back--plenty. But we don't need any stranger telling us what to do." Kirk's heart sank. The cursed Earth mulishness was going to defeat him, after all. Vinson said loudly, "What do you mean, stranger! This is one of the old Orville Kirks. _He's_ no stranger. It's strangers that he wants us to help slap down." They thought that over for a moment, and again Kirk looked up at the sky. It must be very close now. In minutes, maybe, it would drop down, and there would be nothing at all to stop it from going away again and giving the signal. And these stolid farmers.... The one who had spoken peered bleakly at Kirk, and said, "Well. Like I said, we don't want strangers interfering with us. Do we, boys?" The men nodded assent, and stalked toward their cars. Kirk turned away, defeated and furious. He'd have to try by himself-- Motors roared to life, and the cars started to go by him. A big red truck paused beside him, and Vinson reached down from it to haul him aboard. "What are you standin' there for?" he cried to Kirk. "You said it might come any minute!" Kirk, a little dazedly, scrambled up into the truck beside him. "You mean they're going back with me--" "What did you think? Like Fred said, no blasted strangers from away outside are going to come sneaking in here!" The truck roared away down the moonlit road, following the speeding cars back the way Kirk had come, waking hurrying echoes, raising a great cloud of dust to redden the moon. Kirk thought, "I'll never understand these damned Earthmen--never!" CHAPTER VIII At three minutes and fourteen seconds before midnight a small, fast spacecraft with the insigne of the striding warrior on her bows dropped down out of the sky and landed in the brush-grown meadow at the edge of the Kirk woods. There was nothing anywhere in sight around it but the dark quiet mass of the trees, the patches of bramble and pale white blossoms of the Queen Anne's Lace. Across the meadow was the Kirk house, with a single lamp burning in it.