Yet they were safe--so far, so far. They walked toward the door now, a step at a time. Each step seemed to take an hour, a full day. Dara walked ahead, straight and tall: Cadnan caught up with her, and she put out her hand. There was no more than an instant of hesitation. He took the hand. That pledged them to each other, until the time of mating. But what was one more law now? Another step. Another. Cadnan, in the silence, was suddenly tempted to make a noise, any sort of noise--but it seemed impossible to create sound. The quiet dimness wrapped him like a blanket. He took another step. Mating, he thought. If the chain of obedience was broken would the trees refuse to obey, in their turn? Puna had said so, and it was true. And if the trees refused to obey there would be no mating.... Yet Dara would be safe. That was the important thing. One thing at a time. Another step. And then, at last, the door. Cadnan pushed at it, and it opened--and then there was sound, plenty of sound, more sound than he could have imagined, sound to fill the great lobby, to fill the entire building with rocking, trembling agonies of noise! There was an alarm-bell, to be exact, an alarm-buzzer, combinations and solo cadenzas. The guards were, after all, no more than dressing: the automatic machinery never slept, and it responded beautifully and with enthusiasm. Cadnan and Dara ran crazily out into the darkness. The building fell behind them and the jungle was ahead: still they ran, but Cadnan felt the ground, bumpy instead of smooth, and stumbled once, nearly falling. He saw Dara ahead of him. Getting up and beginning again was automatic: panic beat at him. The noise grew and grew. His feet moved, his heart thudded.... And then the lights went on. Automatic sweep searchlights were keyed in. The machinery continued to respond. Cadnan found himself suddenly struck blind: ahead of him, Dara made a single, lonely, terrified sound that overrode all the alarms. Cadnan tried to shout: "We must run! In the dark the masters cannot see--" But, of course, by then it was too late to move. The masters were all around them. The escape was over. 15 Of course there was Norma, Dodd told himself. There was Norma to make everything worth-while--except that Norma needed something, too, and he couldn't provide it. No one could provide it, not as long as no one was allowed off-planet. And it was quite certain, Dodd told himself gloomily, that the restrictions that had been in force yesterday were going to look like freedom and carefree joy compared with the ones going into effect tomorrow, or next week.