ot, as
was supposed, rationalizations dreamed up by man to account for the
control of phenomena at a level beyond his own power to control?

"It's been bad since then," Jed continued. "Seems like once they got
the wind up, the whole thing hit them all over again. Like cattle in a
stampede, they didn't have a lick of sense. They didn't even stay
together. They scattered in all directions, hid out in the bushes from
each other.

"You could hunt for 'em, call for 'em, yell your lungs out. You could
pass within ten feet of one of 'em, callin', pleadin', and they wouldn't
say a word. Just stand there and watch you like a hunted animal, not
even breathin' lest you discover them.

"After a couple of days, some of us kind of pulled ourselves
together--me and Martha, Ahmed and Dirk here. Maybe a dozen of us now
have got together again. Funny thing though, even so, all we want is to
hide. Can't get over hidin', somehow. That's why you didn't see us from
the air. We was hidin' from you.

"Martha, couple other womenfolks, they practically had to push us out of
the woods to come greet you, lead you to us. They wouldn't come
themselves, being naked and all. They told us, first thing was to get
some clothes for them from the ship.

"We was countin' on the arrival of your ship to bring the rest of the
colonists back to their senses. Some ain't been found yet, not since the
footprint thing. If they were watchin' you from hidin' places, if they
also saw your ship disappear--well now, I just don't know."

"There'll be another ship from Earth," Cal said. "In a matter of fifteen
or twenty hours at most. We were communicating at the time. They'll know
we didn't cut out through choice."

"Yes," Tom Lynwood confirmed. "As I remember, I got cut off in the
middle of a sentence. They'll know something was wrong."

"There's another ship out there right now," Cal added. "Not an E.H.Q.
ship, but one that would have seen what happened. We'll not count on
anything from them, but an E.H.Q. ship will be here soon, probably with
an E on board--McGinnis."

"Don't know what good it would do," Jed said despondently. "That ship
might disappear, too, soon as it landed. And the next, and the next."

"I don't plan to let it land," Cal told them. "You'll notice nothing
happened to us until we touched ground. I'll find a way to talk to the
ship, keep it from landing until we've got a line on whatever this is."

"You figger to solve this one?" Jed ask