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The people in the trailer wrapped themselves in an assortment of garments and blankets which they had snatched up against the somber chill of this early autumn night on Bronson Beta. Tony did not recognize a shawled figure who crowded through the others to his side until he heard his voice.
“It is a shame to be driven out like this!”
“It is, Duquesne.”
“But by whom—and for what?”
“I don’t know.”
The Frenchman shook his fist toward the northwest. “Pigs!” he muttered. “Beasts! Dogs!”
For an hour they traveled.
They crossed through the valley where they had cut lumber, and they went over the bridge of the Other People. They reached a fork in the road among foothills of the western range. It was a fork hidden by a deep cut, so that Tony and Eliot James had not seen it on their flight of exploration. Then, suddenly, the light of the truck-tractor went out, and word came back in the form of a soft human shushing that made all of them silent.
CHAPTER XII
A SURPRISING REFUGEE
TONY leaped over the side of the trailer in which he had been standing near Hendron’s litter.
He ran forward. “What is it?”
The driver of the truck—Von Beitz—leaned out in the Stygian dark.
“We saw a light ahead!” he whispered.
“Light?”
“Light.… Light ahead!” The word ran among the passengers.
“Where?” Tony asked.
“Over the hills.”
Tony strained his eyes; and against the aurora and the stars he saw a series of summits. He could even see the metal road that wound over the hills, gleaming faintly. But there was no light.
Not a sound emerged from the fifty human beings packed in the caravan behind.
The wind blew—a raw wind. Then there was a soft, sighing ululation.
Tony gripped Von Beitz’ arm. “What was that?”
“God knows.”
They strained their eyes.
Tony saw it, then: a shape—a lightless and incomprehensible shape, moving slowly on the gleaming surface of the road—toward them.
“See!” His voice shook.
Von Beitz jumped from his seat behind the wheel. He stood beside Tony.
“Don’t see anything.”
Tony pointed ahead. “Something. Dipped into a valley. There!”
Again the soft moaning sound. Again the meaningless shape topped a rise and slithered along the road toward them. Its course was crooked, and suggested the motion of an animal that was sniffing its way along.
