Men had come out of the bushes that, in two years, had grown up close to the highway. They were unshaven men, wearing dirty jeans, with rifles in their hands. There were two on one side of the highway, and an older man on the other. Wales looked at their dusty faces. Then he cut the motor and got out of the car. They took his weapons, and the older man said, "You can put your hands down now. And come along with us." "Where?" "You'll see." One man remained, searching Wales' car. The other two, their rifles on the ready, walked beside Wales down the long winding hill highway into the old town. "I thought all these towns were evacuated," said Wales. "They were, a long time ago," said the older man. "But you men--" "We're not from here. Now anything more you want to know, you ask Sam Lanterman. He'll have some things to ask _you_." The main street of the town looked to Wales vaguely like a gypsy camp. Dusty cars were parked double along it, and there was a surprising number of men and women and kids about. The men all carried rifles or wore belted pistols. The children were pawing around in already-looted stores, and most of the women looked with a blank, tired stare at Wales and his guard. They took him into the stone courthouse. In the courtroom, dimly lighted and smelling of dust and old oak, four men were seated around what had once been a press-table. One of Wales' captors spoke to the man at the head of the table. "Got a prisoner, Sam," he said importantly. "This fellow. He was driving from the east." "From the east, was he?" said Lanterman. "Well, now, he might just have come from the south and swung around town, mightn't he?" He looked keenly at Wales. He was a gangling man of forty with a red face and slightly bulging blue eyes that had a certain fierceness in them. The others at the table were two heavy men who looked like farmers, and a small, dark, vicious-looking young man. "You didn't," said Lanterman, "just happen to come from Pittsburgh, did you?" They all seemed to watch him with a certain tenseness, at this. Wales shook his head. "I came from the east, all the way across state." "And where were you heading?" * * * * * Wales didn't like the implications of that "were". He said, "To Castletown. I'm looking for my girl. It's where she used to live." "People in Castletown been gone two years," Lanterman said promptly. "To Mars--the damn fools!" And he suddenly laughed uproariously. More and more worried, Wales said, "She wrote me she wasn't going to leave till I came." "You're not one of those Evacuation Officials, are you?" Lanterman asked shrewdly. "A lot more likely he comes from Pittsburgh," said the dark young man. Wales, sensing an increasing suspicion and danger, thought his safest bet was honest indignation. He said loudly,