They got back into the car, and Birrel drove on again. Holmer said, "We'll go back to the house. We've got to decide fast, what to do--now that Vannevan knows we're on Earth. We can stay here, and keep watching them. Or we can go home, with what we already know." With a queer icy feeling, Birrel realized that "home" meant the world from which they had come somewhere across the abyss of space. There must be a ship, hidden somewhere, waiting for these people. If he could keep up his imposture till he reached that ship, and then get word to Connor. "Rett, you're going wrong, the other road is the way to the house!" Kara said suddenly. They had just passed a crossroads. Birrel braked the car, and with dismay realized that he had not the faintest notion where "the house" was. Yet that was something that, as Rett, he obviously should know. He said, "I'm sorry, it's been so many weeks. You had better call out the turns for me." Neither Kara nor Holmer seemed to find it surprising that he should not clearly remember. But as he drove on, with the girl warning him of each turn on these far-back-in country roads, Birrel wondered how long he could maintain this impossible imposture. He had never been supposed to maintain it for long, the plan had been that Connor and his agents would be following quick and close, but that plan had been irretrievably ruined and he had to ram ahead alone and do what he could, find out what he could. He was driving down a dark, bumpy road between untilled fields when he became aware that now Holmer and the girl were both peering more intently ahead. Birrel made out the dark loom of an unlighted farmhouse. Was this "the house"? He dared not ask them that--as Rett, he might have forgotten the network of roads but he certainly wouldn't have forgotten this. But if he turned in, and it was the wrong place. Birrel thought of a stratagem. As they approached the dark house, he slowed down as though to turn in. If they protested, he could explain that he only wanted to stop and listen again. But they didn't protest, it must be the place. Birrel turned the car right into the rutted drive, with the headlights striking past an old lilac bush to the front of a ramshackle barn. "Cut off the lights," said Holmer, worriedly. Birrel did so, his hand shaking a little. He couldn't gamble like this forever without slipping. * * * * * They went into the dark house, Kara first going through the rooms and pulling down the blinds, and then carefully lighting a kerosene lamp. They had, Birrel thought, picked a hideout far off the main roads indeed, to be without power. The place was cold, musty, with some battered old furniture that looked as though it had been here for a long time. There was no evidence at all of how many people had been living here, and there was no evidence that its occupants were aliens from a far world. It was just an old house in the country, silent and lonely.