'Er,' he said.

'Yes, lad?' 'Heaven. Do humans go there?' The old nome shook his head. 'The Heavens,' he said. 'More than one of'em see? Only nomes go there.' 'You're absolutely certain?' 'Oh, yes.' Torrit beamed. 'O'course, they may have heavens of their own,' he said, 'I don't know about that. But they ain't ours, you may depend upon it.' 'Oh.' Torrit stared at the Thing again.

We've stopped,' he said. 'Where are we?' Masklin stared wearily into the darkness.

'I think I had better go and find out,' he said.

There was whistling outside, and the distant rumble of human voices. The lights went out. There was a rattling noise, followed by a click, and then silence.

After awhile there was a faint scrabbling around the back of one of the silent lorries. A length of line, no thicker than thread, dropped down until it touched the oily floor of the garage.

A minute went by. Then, lowering itself with great care hand overhand, a small, stumpy figure shinned down the line and dropped on to the floor. It stood rock-still for a few seconds after landing, with only its eyes moving.

It was not entirely human. There were defi­nitely the right number of arms and legs, and - the additional bits like eyes and so on were in the usual places, but the figure that was now creeping across the darkened floor in its mouseskins looked like a brick wall on legs. Nomes are so stocky that a Japanese Sumo wrestler would look half-starved by comparison, and the way this one moved sug­gested that it was considerably tougher than old boots.

Masklin was, in fact, terrified out of his life. There was nothing here that he recognized, except for the smell of all, which he had come to associate with humans and especially with lorries (Torrit had told him loftily that all was a burning water that lorries drank, at which point Masklin knew the old nome had gone mad. It stood to reason. Water didn't burn).