Morrow walked past the house and around the block to the alley. He walked up the alley behind the house. Its rear was as inconspicuous as its front: a wide yard, partly in lawn, partly in flower garden and part gravelled with clothesline, enclosed by a low, whitewashed wood fence. The only noticeable difference was a small sand-box in which a small brother and sister were playing with toy cars. The little boy and girl wore matching rompers and had straw-colored hair which, Morrow concluded, they must have inherited from their mother. He'd never met Mrs. Foster, but he remembered Bob Foster's dark, heavy hair. He walked on down the alley, studying the back yards behind the other houses. He noted how wide the alleyway was, how high surrounding fences, garages, and other obstructions were, and the lack of telephone poles or wires overhead. He nodded his satisfaction. When he got back to the truck, he took a street-map from the glove compartment and carefully marked the exact location of Foster's house. Then he drove out of Sacramento, had dinner at a roadside restaurant, and proceeded to Stockton. Smitty met him downtown and they went into a lunchroom for coffee. "Groceries and laundry's taken care of," Smitty reported wryly. "How was Sacramento?" "Fine," Morrow said. "If the weather forecasts for tomorrow night pan out, we'll get in and out without any trouble." Smitty frowned worriedly. "It's still a big risk to take, Bill. We'll be flying into the Coastal Radar-Defense Zone, you know, and we can't just file a flight-plan at an airport for an unauthorized, illegal ship. I'd hate to look up and see an F-140 night-fighter with its nose-cannon blazing at me!" "That ground radar isn't effective below three thousand feet," Morrow reminded him. "I think we can sneak in at treetop-level without being detected." "That's all right, unless we fly into a power-line in the dark," Smitty grumbled. "It's still risky as hell--" "We've got to have Foster," Morrow said firmly. "I can't say for sure whether he'll join us or not, but we've got to try!" "Okay!" Smitty signed resignedly. "We'll try." The following night, Morrow left Smitty checking over their ship and flight equipment and drove the truck down to a gas station on the highway, thirty miles west of their sawmill-workshop. He parked beside the gas pumps, told the attendant to fill the tank and check the oil, and went inside to the pay-phone booth. He called Sacramento Long Distance and gave them Foster's home videophone number.