Treading carefully, but with a good deal of noise and confusion, they began to crash their way through the underbrush along the bank of the stream. At the foot of the valley it dived over a diminutive waterfall and then tumbled into another similar brook. Along the combined streams ran a road--a dirt road originally, now long untraveled, muddy and bad, but still a road. An hour's walking brought them around the foot of another mountain and into a valley where the road divided before a projecting buttress of rock. A teetering sign-post stood at the fork. With some trouble, and after getting himself immersed to the knees in the ditch, Murray managed to reach it and straining his eyes in the starlight, made out what it said. "THIS WAY TO HAMILTON'S CHICKEN DINNERS. 1 MILE" it read. With a snort of disgust he hurled the deceitful guidepost into the ditch and joined the others. "Toss a coin," someone suggested. No coins. A knife was flipped up instead. It fell heads and in accordance with its decision they took the road to the right. It led them along beside the stream for a while, then parted company with it and began to climb, and they soon found themselves at the crest of the hill. The night had become darker and darker, clouding over. But for the road they would have been completely lost. Finally, after skirting the hillcrest for a distance, the road dipped abruptly, and as it did so, they passed out of the forest into a region cleared but not cultivated, with numerous close-cut stumps coming right to the roadside. "But for the fact that it's a long ways away," remarked Sherman, "I would say that this was the district around the Lassan headquarters." "What makes you think it's a long ways away?" asked Gloria. "Do you know where we are? Neither do I." "By the nine gods of Clusium, I believe that's it, at that!" said Sherman suddenly as the road turned past a place where a long scar of earth ran up the hillside, torn and blackened. "Look--that looks exactly like the result of one of our gravity-beam shots! And there--isn't that the door?" They were on the hillside now, directly above the place he had indicated. From above and in the darkness it appeared as a cliff, breaking down rapidly to the valley, but Sherman led them to one side, straight down the hill and in another moment they were at its base. The great door through which the green balls had poured out that evening stood before them, a mighty arch reaching up into the dimness--and it was open. "Looks like the boys haven't come home to supper yet," said Gloria in an awed whisper, contemplating the gigantic arch and the dark passage into which it led. "Yes, and a lot of them aren't coming, either," replied Murray in a similar tone. "But what do we do--make a break for it or poke in and see if anybody's home?"