There was a sputter of sound. Lanny leaped to his feet, his hand closing on his stone knife. He heard a roar of clanging metal in the automobile showroom. Then silence. Lanny sprang through the open door. Dimly he saw Gill sitting in the sedan, his hands gripping the wheel. "What happened?" "It started, Lanny. I just came in to look at it, to touch it again, and--" "So you made the motor turn over?" This came from Dr. Pendillo, who was feeling his way through the door behind Lanny. "How, Gill?" Gill slid out of the car, backing away from it. "I don't know. I don't know!" "You must, Gill." "I got in. I was--I was pretending it was before the invasion and I was driving the machine down the road. I could see the matter structure of the motor in my mind, and how the parts fit together. I must have touched the starter." "After twenty years, the battery would be dead and the fuel would have evaporated. Tell me what you really did, Gill." Gill clenched his fist against his mouth. "It seemed as if it were a part of me, like my hand. And then the machinery began to move, because--because I wanted it to. Maybe there was some fuel left, father, and maybe--" "Why are you afraid of the truth, Gill?" "People don't run machines by wanting them to go!" "The thinking mind, my son, is capable of--" Pendillo's voice trailed off, for they all heard the sound outside--the high whine made by the force-field of an enemy sphere. Lanny darted to the showroom window. At the end of the street an opalescent sphere was riding in the fog, three feet above the ground. Enemy police guards in protective capsules spilled through the open port, carrying energy guns slung over their shoulders. "The Almost-men picked up the sound of the motor," Pendillo gasped. Then he saw the woman in the white uniform of the Triangle. She stood at the port, spotlighted by the glow of blue light that came from within the ship. It was the missionary, Tak Laleen. * * * * * In the street the tracer light began to dart back and forth over the empty buildings, responding to the commands of the sound receptors. Lanny and Gill seized their father and plunged into the choking darkness of the forest. Dead brush snapped. The tracer light swung toward the trees, concentrating with smug, mechanical self-assurance upon the place where the three men had been. Lying flat against the cold earth, they wormed their way foot by foot toward the coast.