“I was,” said Lockley.  “I am.  He played it safe, refused to admit that anybody in authority over him could possibly be mistaken.  That’s sound policy, and I was contradicting the official opinion of his superiors.  I’ve got to find somebody of much lower rank, or much higher.  Maybe—­”

Jill said in a strained voice, “Stop!”

He braked.  She said unsteadily, “Holding the wire, I smell that horrible smell.”

He put his hand on the wire’s end.  He shared the sensation.

“Terror beam across the highway,” he said calmly.  “Maybe on our account, maybe not.  But there was a side road a little way back.”

He backed the car.  He’d smashed the backing lights, too.  He guided himself by starlight.  Presently he swung the wheel and faced the car about.  He drove back the way he had come.  A mile or so, and there was another hard-surface road branching off.  He took it.  Half an hour later Jill said quickly, “Brakes!”

The road was blocked once more by an invisible terror beam, into which any car moving at reasonable speed must move before its driver could receive warning.

“This isn’t good,” he said coldly.  “They may have picked some good places to block.  We have to go almost at random, just picking roads that head away from the Park.  I don’t know how thoroughly they can cage us in, though.”

There was a flicker of light in the sky.  Lockley jerked his head around.  It flashed again.  Lightning.  The sky was clouding up.

“It’s getting worse,” he said in a strained voice.  “I’ve been taking every turn that ought to lead us away from the Park, but I’ve had to use the stars for direction.  I didn’t think that soldiers would keep us from getting away from here.  I was almost confident.  But what will I do without the stars?”

He drove on.  The clouds piled up, blotting out the heavens.  Once Lockley saw a faint glow in the sky and clenched his teeth.  He turned away from it at the first opportunity.  The glow could be Serena, and he could have been forced back toward it by the windings of the highway he’d followed without lights.  Twice Jill warned him of beams across the highway.  Once, driven by his increasing anxiety, his brakes almost failed to stop him in time.  When the car did stop, he was aware of faint tinglings on his skin.  There were erratic flashings in his eyes, too, and a discordant composite of sounds which by association with past suffering made him nauseated.  Perhaps this extra leakage from the terror beam was through the metal of the car.

When he got out of that terror beam the sky was three-quarters blacked out and before he was well away from the spot there was only a tiny patch of stars well down toward the horizon.  There were lightning flickers overhead.  After a time he depended on them to show him the road.