directness, yet a
singular effect of direct observation, Zani had drawn a vehicle. It did
not have wheels. It rested on what looked like two short, thick runners
like skids.

"This isn't fantasy, either," said Soames. "There've been wheelless
vehicles built lately. They're held an inch or so above the ground by
columns of air pouring out. They ride on cushions of air. But they have
to have perfect highways. It isn't likely that a child would draw them
if she hadn't seen them."

In silence, Gail showed other sketches. A man and woman in costumes
somehow related to those the children had worn at the beginning. There
was a picture of a group of people.

"Odd," said Soames. "Everybody wears a belt like the children have on
now. Everybody. As if it were official."

He glanced at Zani. She wore a belt over American-style young-girl's
clothing today. The belt was neither leather nor plastic nor anything
that could have a name put to it. It had two round and two square
medallions placed two on each side of the fastening, which was not a
buckle. The others wore the same. Soames puzzled over it for a moment.

Gail offered him another sheet of paper.

"I'm going to tear this up when you've seen it."

It was a landscape, sketched in with surprisingly bold strokes of the
soft pencil. The time was night. Near the bottom of the picture there
was a city of the strange, catenary-curve architecture. It was drawn so
small, though, that most of the picture was black sky. But there was a
blazing light upon the city, and it came from something monstrous and
jagged and incandescent and vast, plunging upon the city from the sky,
trailing flames behind it.

"And this," said Gail, very quietly.

It was a picture of a crater, a ring-mountain, the scene of the impact
of something terrible and huge. It was a chasm with circular, broken
rocky walls. There was a fallen tree in the foreground, near the spot
from which the sketch seemed to have been made.

"You're right not to show anyone else those drawings," said Soames. "The
kids are in a bad enough fix as visitors of a superior race. If it
should be realized that they're not here by accident, but somehow to
open a way for invasion by the population of a whole planet, well, you
can just imagine ..."

* * * * *

Zani giggled suddenly, and he jumped. But her eyes were on the paper
before her. Soames glanced out the window. Mal had toppled over, and one
of