"We don't know where it's going," said Angalo, in a reasonable tone of voice.
"I do," said Masklin. "You looked out the window when we were on the Concorde. We were going toward the sun."
"Yes. It was setting," said Angalo. "Well?"
"It's morning now. It's going toward the sun again," Masklin pointed out.
"Well? What about it?"
"It means it's going home."
Angalo bit his lip while he worked this out.
"I don't see why the sun has to rise and set in different places," said Gurder, who refused even to try to understand basic astronomy.
"Going home," said Angalo, ignoring him. "Right. I see it. So we go with it, yes?"
"Yes."
Angalo ran his hands over the Ship's controls. "Right," he said. "Here we go. I expect the Concorde drivers will probably be quite pleased to have some company up here."
The Ship drew level with the plane.
"It's moving around a lot," said Angalo. "And it's starting to go faster too."
"I think they may be worried about the Ship," said Masklin.
"Can't see why," said Angalo. "Can't see why at all. We're not doing anything except following them."
"I wish we had some proper windows," said Gurder, wistfully. "We could wave."
"Have humans ever seen a Ship like this before?" Angalo asked the Thing.
"No. But they 've made up stories about ships coming from other worlds."
"Yes, they'd do that," said Masklin, half to himself. "That's just the sort of thing they'd do."
"Sometimes they say the ships will contain friendly people-"
"That's us," said Angalo.
"And sometimes they say they will contain monsters with wavy tentacles and big teeth."
The nomes looked at one another.
Gurder cast an apprehensive eye over his shoulder.
Then they all stared at the passages that radiated off the control room.
"Like alligators?" said Masklin.
"Worse."
"Er," Gurder said, "We did look in all the rooms, didn't we?"
"It's something they made up, Gurder. It's not real," said Masklin.
"Whoever would want to make up something like that?"
"Humans would," said Masklin.
"Huh," said Angalo, nonchalantly trying to swivel around in the chair in case any tentacled things with teeth were trying to creep up on him. "I can't see why."
"I think I can. I've been thinking about humans a lot."
"Can't the Thing send a message to the Concorde drivers?" said Gurder.
"Something like 'Don't worry, we haven't got any teeth and tentacles, guaranteed'?"
"They probably wouldn't believe us," said Angalo. "If I had teeth andtentacles all over the place that's just the sort of message I'd send.
Cunning."
The Concorde screamed across the top of the sky, breaking thetransatlantic record. The Ship drifted along behind it.
"I reckon," said Angalo, looking down, "that humans are just aboutintelligent enough to be crazy."
"I think," said Masklin, "that maybe they're intelligent enough to belonely."
The plane touched down with its tires screaming. Fire engines racedacross the airport, and there were other vehicles behind them.
The great black ship shot over them, turned across the sky like aFrisbee, and slowed.
"There's the reservoir!" said Gurder. "Right under us! And that's therailway line! And that's the quarry! It's still there!"
"Of course it's still there, idiot," muttered Angalo as he headed theShip toward the hills, which were patchy with melting snow.
"Some of it," said Masklin.
A pall of black smoke hung over the quarry. As they got closer, they sawit was rising from a burning truck. There were more trucks around it, andalso several humans, who started to run when they saw the shadow of theShip.
"Lonely, eh?" snarled Angalo. "If they've hurt a single nome, they'llwish they'd never been born!"
"If they've hurt a single nome, they'll wish Fd never been born," saidMasklin. "But I don't think anyone's down there. They wouldn't hangaround if the humans came. And who set fire to the truck?"
"Yay!" said Angalo, waving a fist in the air.
Masklin scanned the landscape below them. Somehow he couldn't imaginepeople like Grimma and Dorcas sitting in holes, waiting for humans totake over. Trucks didn't just set fire to themselves. A couple ofbuildings looked damaged too. Humans wouldn't have done that, would they?
He stared at the field by the quarry. The gate had been smashed, and apair of wide tracks led through the slush and mud.
"I think they got away in another truck," he said.
"What do you mean, yayy said Gurder, lagging a bit behind theconversation.
"Across the fields?" said Angalo. "It'd get stuck, wouldn't it?"
Masklin shook his head. Perhaps even a nome could have instincts. "Followthe tracks," he said urgently. "And quickly!"
"Quickly? Quickly? Do you know how difficult it is to make this thing goslow?" Angalo nudged a lever. The Ship lurched up the hillside, strainingat the indignity of restraint.
They'd been up here before, on foot, months ago. It was hard to believe.
The hills were quite flat on the top, forming a kind of plateauoverlooking the airport. There was the field where there had been potatoes. There was the thicket where they'd hunted, and the wood wherethey'd killed a fox for eating nomes.
And there ... there was something small and yellow, rolling across the fields.
Angalo craned forward.
"Looks like some kind of a machine," he admitted, fumbling for levers without taking his eyes off the screen. "Weird kind of one, though."
There were other things moving on the roads down there. They had flashing lights on top.
"Those cars are chasing it, do you think?" said Angalo.
"Maybe they want to talk to it about a burning truck," said Masklin. "Can you get to it before they do?"
Angalo narrowed his eyes. "Listen, I think we can get to it before they do even if we go via Floridia." He found another lever and gave it a nudge.
There was the briefest flicker in the landscape, and the truck was now right in front of them.
"See?" he said.
"Move in more," said Masklin.
Angalo pressed a button.
"See, the screen can show you below-" he began.
"There's nomes!" said Gurder.
"Yeah, and those cars are running away!" shouted Angalo. "That's it, run away! Otherwise it's teeth and tentacles time!"
"So long as the nomes don't think that too," said Gurder. "Masklin, do you think-"
Once again, Masklin wasn't there.
I should have thought about this before, he thought.
The piece of branch was thirty times longer than a nome. They'd been keeping it under lights, and it seemed to be growing quite happily withone end in a pot of special plant water. The nomes who had once flown inthe Ship had grown lots of plants that way.
Pion helped him drag the pot toward the hatch. The frogs watched Masklin with interest.
When it was positioned as well as the two of them could manage, Masklinlet the hatch open. It wasn't one that slid aside. The ancient nomes hadused it as some kind of elevator, but it didn't have wires-it went up anddown by some force as mysterious as auntie's gravy or whatever that was.
It dropped away. Masklin looked down and saw the yellow truck roll to ahalt.
When he straightened up, Pion was giving him a puzzled look.
"Flower is a message?" said the boy.
"Yes. Kind of."
"Not using words?"
"No," said Masklin.
"Why not?"
Masklin shrugged.
"Don't know how to say them."
It nearly ends there... . But it shouldn't end there.
Nomes swarmed all over the Ship. If there were any monsters withtentacles and teeth, they'd have been overwhelmed by sheer force of nome.