Biddy urged Buck on up the slope. She went fearfully at first, then with more courage because everything looked very quiet and peaceful, really. Maybe the horrid people from the Eastern Bloc had realized how silly it was--trying to blow up our station--and had packed up and gone home. It wasn't scary at all now. Biddy urged Buck right up to the wall and he stood there with his eyes half-closed catching a nap. And that was good because you couldn't fool animals about people. If there had been anyone around, Buck would have known, all right. "Hello, little girl." A chill went through Biddy. Not the cold kind, the tickly kind, as she turned and saw the man. Buck turned and saw him too and then went back to sleep. The speaker was a man and Biddy wondered how on earth she could have missed him. He was sitting on a rock beside the place the doorway had been and while Biddy wanted to be scared and thought she ought to be scared, she wasn't able to feel that way about the man at all. He got up from his rock and stood there smiling at her. He was very tall--taller than Pop who was no shorty himself--and had a kind of yellow hair that was thick and curly. There seemed to be a shiny circle around the hair but then Biddy saw that was just the sun and the way the man was standing. It was hard to say how old the man really was. He was about like Pop, but in some ways he seemed a lot younger than that and in some ways much older. It was very confusing. He was kind of slim but he had a lot of muscle too--probably the way Davey Crockett would look with his shirt off maybe. Biddy raised one leg and the man said, "Need any help?" "No--no I can make it all right." "That horse seems to be built right to your size." Biddy laughed. "Buck's not a horse." "He's not? Or should I say she's not?" This man was so funny. "Buck's a boy." "Oh." "And he's a burro, not a horse." "Well what do you know about that? Can you imagine me calling him a horse? Will you pardon me?" * * * * * Biddy took a couple of steps toward the man, then stopped uncertainly. "I--are you--?" "Why don't you come over here and sit down with me?" "Is--is it all right?" "I don't know why not." "I thought maybe you were from the Eastern Bloc." That was foolish of course. Nobody as nice as this man could be from the horrid East. "No. I'm not from there." The man's clear gray eyes were on Biddy's brace as she approached. "Then where are you from?" That seemed to take a little thought. "Well, let's say I'm from the sky bloc." "There _is_ a sky bloc?" "Oh, yes. A very big, big one. After all, the sky is very big isn't it?" "Yes, that's right. But what are you doing here?" That was obviously an even tougher one to answer. "Oh, I've got a little job to do." "You aren't going to blow up our space station, are you?" "No, that is, I hope not." "You mean that maybe you will?" * * * * *