Shooting a swift glance in the same direction, Grayder grabbed the caller-microphone and rapped, "All personnel will prepare for take-off at once!" Then he seized his intercom phone and spoke on that. "Who's there? Sergeant Major Bidworthy? Look, Sergeant Major, there are a half a dozen men loafing outside the midway lock. Order them in immediately -we're lifting as soon as everything is ready."

By now the fore and aft gangways had been rolled into their stowage spaces. The midway one swiftly followed. Some fast-thinking quartermaster prevented further escape by operating the midship ladder-wind, thus trapping Bidworthy along with an unknown number of would-be sinners.

Finding himself stalled by the fifty-foot drop, Bidworthy stood in the rim of the airlock and glared at those outside. His mustache not only bristled, but quivered. Five of the objects of his fierce attention had been members of the first leave-quota. One of them was Trooper Casartelli. That got Bidworthy's rag out, a trooper. The sixth was Harrison, complete with bicycle polished and shining.

Searing the lot of them, especially the trooper, Bidworthy grated, "Get back on board. No funny business. We're about to go up."

"Hear that, Mortimer?" asked one, nudging the nearest. "Get back on board. If you can't jump fifty feet you'd better flap your arms and fly."

"No sauce from you," roared Bidworthy. "I have my orders."

"Ye gods, he actually takes orders! At his age!"

Bidworthy scrabbled at the lock's smooth rim in vain search of something to grasp. A ridge, a knob, any kind of projection was needed to help take the strain.

"I warn you men that if you try me too-"

"Quiet, freak."

"Save your breath, Rufus," put in Casartelli. "From now on I'm a Gand." With that, he turned away and walked rapidly toward the road. Four followed him.

Getting astride his bike, Harrison put a foot on the pedal. His back tire promptly sank with a loud whee-e-e.

"Come back!" howled Bidworthy at the retreating five. "Come back!" He made extravagant motions, tried to tear the ladder from its automatic grips. A siren keened thinly inside the vessel and that upped his agitation by several ergs.

"Hear that?" His expression murderous, he watched Harrison calmly tighten the rear valve and apply a hand-pump. "We're about to lift. For the last time-"

Again the siren, this time in a rapid series of shrill toots. Bidworthy jumped backward as the airlock seal came down. The lock closed. Harrison again mounted his machine, settled a foot on a pedal but remained watching.

The metal monster shivered from nose to tail then arose slowly and in complete silence. There was stately magnificence in this ascent of such enormous bulk. The ship gradually increased its rate of climb, went faster, faster, became a toy, a dot, and finally disappeared.

For a brief moment Harrison felt a touch of doubt, a hint of regret. It soon passed away. He glanced toward the road.

The five self-elected Gands had thumbed a coach which was now picking them up. That was helpfulness apparently precipitated by the ship's vanishing. Quick on the uptake, these people. He saw it move off on huge rubber balls bearing the five with it. A fan-cycle raced in the opposite direction, hummed into the distance.

"Your brunette," was how Gleed had described her. What had given him that idea? Had she made some remark that he'd construed as complimentary because it had contained no reference to outsize ears?

He had a last look around. The earth bore a great curved rut one mile long by ten feet deep. Two thousand Terrans had been there.

Then about eighteen hundred.

Then sixteen hundred.

Less five.

"One left," he said to himself. "Me."

Giving a fatalistic shrug, he put on the pressure and rode to town.

And then there were none.