CHAPTER V

There were six people in the living-room of the old New Jersey farmhouse, and only one of them was an Earthman.

It seemed a madly impossible thing, to Birrel. The year was nineteen-fifty-seven and it was twenty-five minutes to midnight on the eighth of July, and this couldn't be happening but it was.

"You were easy, easy," Vannevan was saying. "Did you think I _wanted_ to overtake you out there on the road? All I wanted was to get close enough to pop a tracer on the back of your vehicle, and then follow you."

He was a very happy man, Vannevan. He had outwitted and beaten his enemies, and he was enjoying that part of it more than the actual capture.

He strode up and down on the old, faded carpet, but he was careful not to get in front of Birrel and Kara and Holmer.

The three sat in chairs and across the room stood Vannevan's two men. Each of them held one of the fluted metal cylinders, and each cylinder was pointing toward the three prisoners, reminding them how quickly they could be paralyzed again, or killed.

The incongruity of it gave Birrel a crazy desire to laugh. The musty old farmhouse, the smoky kerosene lamp, the ticking cuckoo-clock on the wall--and five strangers from the stars.

He wondered what a "tracer" was. He supposed it was some sort of tiny gadget that could be shot to stick onto a moving car, and broadcast a signal that could be read and followed. He doubted if he'd live long enough to find out if that was right.

Vannevan said to Birrel, "You killed Jull, didn't you?"

There was no amusement in his hard face now. It was cut out of cold iron, and Birrel had the feeling that Vannevan was every bit as tough as he thought he was.

"Who," said Birrel, "is Jull?"

"A man of Ir," said Vannevan. "My man. The man you trailed and killed. We found the blaster-scar in the ground."

Birrel began to understand a little. He shrugged. "If you know, why ask me?"

Vannevan came closer and his eyes had a yellow glow in their dark depths.

"You wouldn't just blast him outright. You'd shock him and search him first. Just as we're doing to you. Where are the"--(he used another unfamiliar word)--"you found on him?"

Birrel said, "I found nothing. I just blasted."

Something exploded in his face. He reeled in the chair, putting up his hands blindly, half-stunned. Then he saw Vannevan's clenched fist drawing back. Vannevan, keeping carefully to one side, let the fist go again in Birrel's face.

"You're lying," he said. "You wouldn't come all the way here from Ruun, spying on us, and trail Jull all that way, and then just blast him. Did you pass them on to Holmer before the Earthmen caught you?"

Birrel felt blood running down his face, and he felt a hate and rage that he had never suspected he could experience. He started to get up, and the Irrians with the weapons across the room pointed their cylinders at him. He didn't want to die, any sooner than he had to. He sat down again.

"The men of Ruun are brave," said Vannevan, mockingly. "Now will you tell me--"

He stopped suddenly. An expression of interest and amazement crossed his face. He reached out his hand, toward Birrel's eyes.

Birrel recoiled--but Vannevan's hand swiped across his forehead, across his eyebrows. Then Vannevan uttered an incredulous exclamation.

"This isn't a man of Ruun at all. He's an _Earthman_!"

* * * * *

Birrel realized what had happened. The blow, the blood streaming down his face, had effectively ruined the careful work of Connor's make-up experts.

Before he could resist, Vannevan rubbed a handkerchief across his face. Birrel, a little dazed and half-blinded by the blood in his eyes, struck out savagely but hit nothing.

Kara's voice reached him. "Rett, you can't be--" Her voice trailed away, and then it came on a different note. "But you're not Rett. He's right, you're an Earthman. Where's Rett?"

Birrel got his eyes open, and now he could see her face, and Holmer's, and the pallor of shocked surprise on both.

He felt a queer guilt. There was no reason for it, they were spies and he was a counter-spy defending his country, defending Earth, but he couldn't rid himself of the feeling.

"Yes," said Vannevan fiercely, "where is Rett? Where's the man you've been impersonating?"

Birrel looked at him and said nothing.

One of the Irrians came to Vannevan's side and spoke so rapidly that Birrel could not follow it.

Vannevan said somberly to him, "Your people--the Earth people--have this Rett, don't they? They captured him, didn't they?"

That was so obvious that there was no use denying it. "They did," said Birrel.

"And they disguised you as Rett, and published that report of a captured spy, to draw the others," Vannevan said, "Of course. Which means--they know there are strangers on their world."

Holmer said, with a taunt in his voice, "You don't like it, do you, Vannevan? It spoils the plans of Ir, doesn't it?"

Vannevan looked at him. "No. There will be no check at all in the plans of Ir. And when we've got what we need from Earth, our plans for _your_ world will go right ahead. Be sure of that."

Birrel's mind vainly tried to grapple with the hint in that byplay. Then this was not merely a personal enmity, or a factional one? Then the world of Ir and the world of Ruun--wherever those far worlds might be--were enemies? Then the Irrians, at least, had come to Earth secretly for something they needed for conquest?

It didn't make sense! These star-strangers had already used weapons far subtler and more complex than any weapon of Earth. Why would they need to filch the arms of a less scientifically advanced planet?

"_You_ can wait," said Vannevan to Birrel, with a certain contempt. He turned and looked at Holmer and Kara. "But you two are important. No word is going back to Ruun of our plans! Where is your ship hidden?"

"Where is the ship of Ir hidden?" countered Holmer.

Vannevan smiled grimly. "Where you couldn't find it. And you've tried long enough, haven't you? This planet has a lot of wild places. Which one is your ship hidden in?"

Holmer merely laughed.

"You'll tell, one of you," promised Vannevan. He spoke to the Irrian beside him. "The man, first. Take him upstairs. He'll talk more freely and readily if she can't hear him."

The other man pointed his weapon at Holmer. Holmer, without a look at Kara or Birrel, started up the old stairway in the hall, with the Irrian close behind him.

Vannevan followed them.

Birrel looked at Kara. Her face was a stony mask. He looked at the Irrian across the room. In the yellow light of the lamp, the man's face was wrong. It was wrong because it was just a dark, average face. It didn't belong to an enemy from the stars. But the cylinder in his hand pointed levelly at Birrel and the girl.

The dusty cuckoo-clock ticked toward midnight. Strange, that it was running, Birrel thought. One of them--Kara or Holmer--must have started it out of curiosity.

He knew he was only thinking these thoughts so that his brain wouldn't crack from the insane unreality of the situation.

Birrel suddenly felt sweat on his forehead. Sounds were coming from upstairs, not loud sounds, but thumping, gasping noises. There was a voice, and then more of the gasping sounds.

Kara started to get to her feet and the man with the fluted metal cylinder said, "Sit down."

Birrel looked at the clock. Two minutes to midnight. A cuckoo-clock and a spy from the stars. Unreal. But a wild notion began to grow in his mind....

* * * * *

A shriek, a fading, choking death-cry, came down the stairs. And then Vannevan's voice came down, loud with anger.

"Damn him, he's dead."

"_Sit down_," said the armed Irrian, again.

A half-minute to midnight. He'd have to try it, there'd never be another chance, not after Vannevan came down those stairs for another of them, for Kara first, and then for Birrel--

The cuckoo-clock said, "_Cuckoo_."

At the sharp sound, at the little flirt of movement by the out-popping bird, the Irrian with the weapon looked up, startled.

Birrel had thought he would. He thought it unlikely that they had cuckoo-clocks out in the stars. He had waited for the moment, and as the Irrian's head turned, he sprang.

He didn't try to reach the Irrian himself. He was too far off. He went for the table with the kerosene lamp on it, which was quite near. He hooked his fingers under the edge of the table and heaved it over as hard as he could. The lamp went flying. It hit the floor, splashing hot oil and flame, and the Irrian screamed. The carpet was suddenly burning around his feet and little flames blossomed like magic where the oil spattered his clothes. There was no need for Birrel to tackle him. He fled screaming into the hall, tearing off his coat and beating in panic at his legs.

The room was in darkness now except for the splashes of fire that ran over the floor and up the window curtains and in erratic streaks on the wallpaper. Birrel grabbed Kara's hand and lunged for the outer door.

"Holmer!" she cried frantically, dragging back.

"He's dead, you heard--come _on_!" He pulled her, with rough determination.

They banged out over the sagging porch-floor into darkness, and he ran, not toward the car but toward the brush beyond the house, the black thickets that promised protection.

He looked over his shoulder and saw the leaping red glow spreading fast inside the grimy windows. The screams of the Irrian had sunk to a kind of groaning, and Birrel could hear Vannevan's fierce voice over it.

He kept tight hold of Kara's wrist, and now they were in the thicket, moving through saplings and brush. Then Birrel stopped.

Back there, three dark figures had come out of the house. Two of them were twined together, as though one half carried the other. The third was alone and in the lead. They stood silhouetted against the glowing windows, looking this way and that.

Birrel whispered to Kara, "Quiet. If we try to get any farther, he'll hear us."

"They will search until they find us," she whispered.

He shook his head. "That house is beginning to burn nicely. I don't think they'll stay here long."

He felt her gesture of negation. "I don't understand."

"We have a thing on Earth called a Fire Department. In the country every man is his brother's fire warden. Pretty soon the place will be swarming with trucks and volunteer firemen. Stand still and wait."

They waited.

Vannevan and the men spoke together. Finally they left the hurt one to groan and crawl in the grass, and the two of them began to move back and forth in the brush, circling out.

A great plume of flame shot up through some air-shaft in the house and stood out gloriously above the roof.

Vannevan and his man had vanished now in the brush. Birrel held Kara's hand and sweated, and prayed for a sound.

It came. The hoarse, harsh wailing of a country siren, designed to waken every sleeping volunteer in the township.

It rose and fell on the night air, ominous and loud. Vannevan and his man hastily reappeared in the shaking red light. They picked up the hurt man and took him limping away between them. They went down the dark road. Presently, in the distance, Birrel heard a car start.

When he could not hear it any more he said, "All right, let's go."

And he took Kara away across the dark brushy fields running, stumbling, toward a future whose incredible outlines he was beginning vaguely and against his will to see.