Grundy looked about them. There was no one in sight. No one at all. That was not too peculiar, not here, not this near a Father's house, but the other streets should have been full of people.... It was all very strange. Down at the bottom of the hill the driverless "car" crashed into a tree. It was the only sound but for their breathing. Helen shivered. Comstock said, "Let's get in the house. Quickly." It was one thing, Comstock thought, to have been in a room that belonged to a Gantry, as they had been, but it was a completely different and much more frightening thing to be walking up the path to a house that belonged to a Father, even one like this that belonged to Bowdler who certainly had seemed to be friendly. They were on the steps of a broad pleasant verandah now, and the entrance to the house was directly in front of them. The door was white, and had neatly lettered on it, "Enter." Comstock grabbed Helen's free hand, her other was in the fold of Grundy's arm. Then all of them moved slowly towards the door. It opened before Comstock could put his hand on the knob. It swung wide enough for them to see that no one had opened it for them. From inside the house, a heavy metallic voice said, "Welcome may you be." CHAPTER 8 Perhaps the single most frightening thing in the big living room to Comstock was the fact that the walls were solid with books. The cases ran from the floor to the ceiling and every available space was stuffed helter skelter with books, books and more books. In all his life it is highly unlikely that Comstock had ever seen more than ten or fifteen books at one time, and then only in what passed for a library in his culture. Why, he thought, there must be thousands of books here. On what subjects could the authors have written? What was there to write that much about? A small hope persisted for a moment that maybe, for some strange reason, most of the books might be duplicates. But that was eradicated when he looked at the odd, mysterious titles of the volumes. There were no duplicates and seemingly the books were divided up into categories. But some of the categories were so strange to Comstock that they passed his ability to comprehend. What, he wondered, could sociology be? Or anthropology, or psychology, or these massive volumes full of poems ... not simple enjoyable poems like Father Goose, but queer, abstruse ones, whose words made no sense at all to Comstock's reeling brain. While he hurried around the room blowing dust off the tops of the books he was looking at, Helen and Grundy were concerned with who had greeted them on their entrance. Leaving Comstock to his perusal of the shelves, Grundy tip-toed out of the room, and then looking in no particular direction, he called, "Hello? Who are you! Where are you?" The same metallic voice answered, "I am the house. I am here to supply your wants, to feed you and make you comfortable."