acks. No sign. Only the feeling that other eyes watched him
as he walked along, other ears listened for the sound of his passing.

He turned back, retraced his steps to the fire. The embers had
blackened. The wisp of smoke that curled upward was very thin now.
Otherwise everything was the same as it had been.

He couldn't give up and fly back to the museum. If he did he might never
find them again. But even if he didn't, he might never find them.

"Listen!" He screamed the word, so loudly that they could have heard it
miles away. "I'm one of you. I can't perceive. Believe me! You've got to
believe me!"

"Believe me believe me believe me...."

Nothing. The tension went out of him suddenly and he began to tremble
again, and his throat choked up, wanting to cry. He stumbled away from
the embers, back in the direction of the aircar.

"Believe me...." This time the words were little more than a whisper,
and there was no echo.

"I believe you," a voice said quietly.

* * * * *

He swung about, trying to place it, and saw the woman. She stood at the
edge of the trees, above the campfire, half hidden in the undergrowth.
She looked down at him warily, a rock clenched in her hand. She wasn't
an attractive sight.

[Illustration]

She looked old, with a leathery skin and gnarled arms and legs. Her
grey-white hair was matted, pulled back into a snarled bun behind her
head. She wore a shapeless dress of some roughwoven material that hung
limply from her shoulders, torn, dirty, ancient. He'd never seen an
animal as dirty as she.

"So you can't perceive," the woman cackled. "I believe it, boy. You
don't have that look about you."

"I didn't know," Eric said softly. "I never knew until today that there
were any others."

She laughed, a high-pitched laugh that broke off into a choking cough.
"There aren't many of us, boy. Not many. Me and Nell--but she's an old,
old woman. And Lisa, of course...."

She cackled again, nodding. "I always told Lisa to wait," she said
firmly. "I told her that there'd be another young one along."

"Who are you?" Eric said.

"Me? Call me Mag. Come on, boy. Come on. What are you waiting for?"

She turned and started off up the hill, walking so fast that she was
almost out of sight among the trees before Eric recovered enough to
follow her. He stumbled after her, clawing his way up the steep slope,
slipping and grabbing the branches with his hands and hauling