sun. He glanced at his watch.

"That would be south," he indicated. "It's the shortest way for us to
get to where you'll be reasonably safe and I can tell what I know to
someone who may use it."

Jill followed obediently. They disappeared into the woods. They could
not be seen from the highway. They could not even be detected from
aloft. When they had gone a mile, Jill made her one and final protest.

"But it can't be that they aren't monsters! They must be!"

"Whatever they are," said Lockley, "I don't want them to lay hands on
you."

They went on. Once, from the edge of a thicket of trees, they saw the
highway below them and to their left. It was empty. It curved out of
sight, swinging to the left again. They moved uphill and down. Now the
going was easy, through woods with very little underbrush and a carpet
of fallen leaves. Again it was a sunlit slope with prickly bushes to
be avoided. And yet again it was boulder-strewn terrain that might be
nearly level but much more often was a hillside.

Lockley suddenly stopped short. He felt himself go white. He grasped
Jill's hand and whirled. He practically dragged her back to the patch
of woods they'd just left.

"What's the matter?" The sight of his face made her whisper.

He motioned to her for silence. He'd smelled something. It was faint
but utterly revolting. It was the smell of jungle and of foulness.
There was the musky reek of reptiles in it. It was a collection of all
the smells that could be imagined. It was horrible. It was infinitely
worse than the smell of skunk.

Silence. Stillness. Birds sang in the distance. But nothing happened.
Absolutely nothing. After a long time Lockley said suddenly, "I've got
an idea. It fits into that broadcast. I have to take a chance to find
out. If anything happens to me, don't try to help me!"

He'd smelled the foul odor at least fifteen minutes before, and had
dragged Jill back, and there had been no other sign of monsters or
not-monsters upon the earth. Now he crouched down and crawled among
the bushes. He came to the place where he'd smelled the ghastly smell
before. He smelled it again. He drew back. It became fainter, though
it remained disgusting. He moved forward, stopped, moved back. He went
sideways, very, very carefully, extending his hand before him.

He stopped abruptly. He came back, his face angry.

"We were lucky we couldn't use the car," he said when he was near Jill
again. "We'd have been killed o