e hammock had somehow twisted out from under him, and
he looked up at it resentfully, the way a man blames something else for
his own fault. There wasn't any hammock.

At the same time, he heard Martha cry out. He craned his neck quickly in
the direction of the house. There wasn't any house. Martha was standing
there on bare ground, and there wasn't a dad-blamed thing else, not a
stove, nor a chair, a dish, nothing.

And Martha didn't have a stitch of clothes on her!

His first thought was that she ought to have more sense than to stand
right out in the yard plumb naked. What was the matter with her anyhow?
He peered quickly down toward the village to see if anybody was looking
up in this direction.

The whole thing hit him like a blow on top the head. There wasn't any
hammock. There wasn't any house.

There wasn't any village.

He saw a whole passel of people squirming around down there where the
village ought to be. They were standing, or crouched, or lying around as
if they'd fallen down.

And every one of the crazy galoots was plumb naked.

And so was he! He'd just realized it.

It had all happened so quietly that that fool bird up in the tree was
still singing. Hadn't missed a note. Funny how a thing like that stood
out above all the rest. Still singing.

Jed got up on his knees, scrambled to his feet, and dodged behind a
tree. Fine lot of authority he'd have as village mayor if anybody saw
him standing out in his front yard naked as a jay bird.

The reminder of his responsibility caused him to sweep his eyes beyond
the sight of the village to where their spaceship should be in its
hangar, always ready for instant escape if anything should go wrong,
real wrong, that is. This ship wasn't there. The hangar wasn't there.
Nothing.

For a little bit he thought he must be looking in the wrong direction.
He'd got turned around or something in the confusion, because there was
a grove of trees where the hangar ought to be. And it was the same grove
they'd cleared away over two years ago. He recognized one of the trees
because it had a peculiar shape.

And he remembered feeding the trunk of that very tree into the power saw
for lumber. It was twisted and gnarled, and Martha had asked him to save
the wood for furniture because it was real pretty. That was the tree,
there on the edge of the grove.

He felt drunk, in a daze. He turned the other direction and looked out
where the experimental fields ought to be