It was just that everyone was settling down. We're going to turn thisinto our little world, just like in the Store. They thought the roof wasthe sky, and we think the sky is the roof.

We'll just stay and ...

There was a truck coming up the quarry road. It was such an unusual sightthat Masklin realized he had been watching it for a while without reallyseeing it at all.

"There was no one on watch! Why wasn't there anyone on watch? I saidthere should always be someone on watch!"

Half a dozen nomes scurried through the dying bracken toward the quarrygate.

"It was Sacco's turn," muttered Angalo.

"No it wasn't!" hissed Sacco. "You remember, yesterday you asked me toswap because-"

"I don't care whose turn it was!" shouted Masklin. "There was no one there! And there should have been! Right?"

"Sorry, Masklin."

"Yeah. Sorry, Masklin."

They scrambled up a bank and flattened themselves behind a tuft ofdried grass.

It was a small truck, as far as trucks went. A human had already climbedout of it and was doing something to the gates leading into the quarry.

"It's a Land-Rover," said Angalo smugly. He'd spent a long time in theStore reading everything he could about vehicles, before the Long Drive.

He liked them. "It's not really a truck, it's more to carry humans over-"

"That human is sticking something on the gate," said Masklin.

"On our gate," said Sacco disapprovingly.

"Bit odd," said Angalo. The man sleepwalked, in the slow, ponderous waythat humans did, back to the vehicle. Eventually it backed around androared off.

"All the way up here just to stick a bit of paper on the gate," saidAngalo, as the nomes stood up. "That's humans for you."

Masklin frowned. Humans were big and stupid, that was true enough, but there was something unstoppable about them and they seemed to be controlled by bits of paper. Back in the Store a piece of paper had said theStore was going to be demolished and, sure enough, it had beendemolished. You couldn't trust humans with bits of paper.