silence, while rain fell with heavy drumming noises
and the world was only a deep curtain of lightning-lighted droplets of
falling water.

"Thanks," said Jill very quietly. "I'm glad."

And then they sat in silence while the long hours went by. Eventually
they dozed. Lockley was awakened by the ending of the rain. It was
then just the beginning of gray dawn. The sky was still filled with
clouds. The ground was soaked. There were puddles here and there in
the barnyard, and water dripped from the barn's eaves, and from the
now vaguely visible house, and from the two or three trees beside it.

Lockley opened the car door and got out quietly. Jill did not waken.
He visited the chicken house, and horrendous squawkings came out of
it. He found eggs. He went to the house, stepping gingerly from grass
patch to grass patch, avoiding the puddles between them. He found
bread, jars of preserves and cans of food. He inspected the lane. The
car's tracks had been washed out. He nodded to himself.

He went back to the barn. There was still only dusky half-light. He
pulled the doors almost shut behind him, leaving only a four-inch gap
to see through. Now the car was safely out of sight and there was no
sign that any living being was near.

"You closed the doors," said Jill. "Why?"

He said reluctantly, "I'm afraid we're as badly off as we were at the
beginning. Unless I'm mistaken, we got turned around in that rainstorm
on those twisty roads, and the Park begins nearby. This isn't the
highway I drove up on to find you, the one where my car's wrecked.
This is another one. I don't think we're more than twenty miles from
the Lake, here. And that's something I didn't intend!"

He began to unload his pockets.

"I got something for us to eat. We'll just have to lie low until night
and fumble our way out toward the cordon, with the stars to guide us."

There was silence, save for the lessened dripping of water. Lockley
was filled with a sort of baffled impatience with himself. He felt
that he'd acted like an idiot in trying to escape the evacuated area
by car. But there'd been nothing else to do. Before that he'd stupidly
been unsuspicious when the Wild Life truck came down a highway that
he'd known was blocked by a terror beam. And perhaps he'd been a fool
to refuse to discuss why he'd gone up to the construction camp to see
to her safety when by all the rules of reason it was none of his
business.

The gray light paled a little.