twisted the knob. The door opened quietly inward.
"Oh, Dyke, should we?"
The young man made a deprecatory gesture. "It says 'for sale' doesn't it? It was probably left open especially for the purpose of prospective buyers going through. Now, do you want to go in or not?"
Lorinda was torn between her tremendous attraction to the house and an innate desire to do things exactly as they should be done. "Oh, I—I do want to go in, but there's no one here. Don't you think we should go and make an appointment with the agent first?"
Dyke sighed with impatience, "Look, it's almost dark now, too late to fly all the way back to town and back again with the agent. This is the second afternoon this week I've had to leave work early to go house hunting with you. Travis gave me a dirty look when I left today, and I can't get off again. Now, let's go through this place and then if we like it we can call the agency in the morning and get the details. Okay?"
With a little frown between her eyes, Lorinda followed Dyke into the house.
There was a hidden closet, indistinguishable from the pretty pastel wall. Freev was behind its locked door. He had been sending a message to his superior in The Big Ship that hurtled unseen in her slow orbit around Earth. "Freev regrets that no specimens have been taken as yet. There were two groups today, both unsuitable. The first was a mated couple but too old for bearing young. The second was a pair of females, the second being the young of the first. I turned on the Repulsor Beam for both groups. They never stepped over the threshold but left immediately with negative Mind-plants. They will not choose to return. It is approaching dusk, I fear that my hunt has been a failure. I may as well cut off the Attractor Beam and prepare for. . . wait! Specimens have just come in, two of them! I think. . . yes, a young, mated pair! I must break connection now, this demands all my attention."
Lorinda brought her hands together in a gesture of utter fascination. Her eyes wandered from the little open fireplace to the wide-set casement windows, "Ohh. . . lovely, Dyke, lovely. Let's see the rest of it."
The kitchen was a dream. Row on row of glistening white metal cabinets lined the walls. Everything was the answer to a housewife's dream. Lorinda suddenly realized that Dyke was not beside her. "Dyke, where are you?" she called.
His voice came from another room. "I was just looking for the . . ."
"Well come here," she interrupted, "I want you to see the kitchen. What did you say you were looking for?"
"The bathroom. I can't seem to find it. I—I don't think there is one!"
"Silly! There must be one. If this is one of your jokes . . ."
Lorinda followed Dyke's voice, opening doors as she went. Closet . . . bedroom . . . closet . . . closet . . . bedroom.
She didn't see the closet without a doorknob, the one that was indistinguishable from the pretty pastel wall, the one with Freev in it.
Finally, after they had tried all the doors, they stood looking at each other in a kind of amused perplexity. Lorinda burst out laughing. "How could they, Dyke, oh how could they forget the . . . and it's such a darling house?"
Dyke grinned, a little embarrassed. "Oh, you know how they slap these houses together nowadays, mass production and all that . . . well, we might as veil leave."
Lorinda pouted, "But Dyke, it was such a treasure of a house."
Freev realized that there had been a change in the attitude of his specimens. He felt their desire for the house wane, even though he turned up the Attractor Beam to its highest potential. Something was wrong. They were preparing to leave. No time now to contemplate on what he had done wrong, what detail he had overlooked. Something was wrong with the house and the specimens were leaving. He hadn't wanted to frighten them but emergency action was the only alternative now. The specimens had to be taken today if at all. The Big Ship had almost exhausted its fuel reserve fruitlessly circling Earth. It was
