The fox, as still as a statue in a headlight's beam, snarled its defiance as it tried to outstare ten tons of metal hurtling towards it at seventy miles an hour.

There was a bump, a swish, and darkness.

Masklin lay face down in the cool moss for a long time. Then, dreading what he was about to see, trying not to imagine it, he pulled himself to his feet and plodded back towards whatever was left of his home.

Grimma was waiting at the burrow's mouth, holding a twig like a club. She spun round and nearly brained Masklin as he staggered out of the darkness and leaned against the bank. He stuck out a weary hand and pushed the stick aside.

'We didn't know where you'd gone,' she said, her voice on the edge of hysteria. 'We just heard the noise and there it was you should have been here and it got Mr Mert and Mrs Coom and it was dig­ging at the-' She stopped, and seemed to sag.

'Yes, thank you,' said Masklin coldly, 'I'm all right, thank you very much.' 'What what happened?' He ignored her, and trooped into the darkness of the burrow and lay down. He could hear the old ones whispering as he sank into a deep, chilly sleep.

I should have been here, he thought.

They depend on me.

We're going. All of us.

It had seemed a good idea, then.

It looked a bit different, now.

Now the nomes clustered at one end of the great dark space inside the lorry. They were silent. There wasn't any room to be noisy. The roar of the engine filled the air from edge to edge. Sometimes it would falter, and start again. Occasionally the whole lorry lurched.

Grimma crawled across the trembling floor.

'How long is it going to take to get there?' she said.