Children of the Gates by Andre Norton

happened his inner excitement grew until he could hardly control it. Run—out into the night—answer—
    Nick sat up now, his breath coming faster as if he had already been running. There was movement behind him in the shelter.
    “Lorelei—” Hadlett’s precise, gentle voice was a whisper.
    “Lorelei,” Nick repeated and swallowed. He was not going, he dared not. Caution born of his basic sense of self-preservation was alert, warning—He dared not.
    “A lure,” the Vicar continued. “The rain appears to produce it. Or else the proximity of water. There is this you must understand—part of those who are the permanent inhabitants are well intentioned toward us, or neutral; others are merely maliciously spiteful. A few are blackly evil. Since we cannot guess which are which, we must be ever on guard. But we have proof of the Lorelei—we witnessed the results of its—feeding. Oh, not on flesh and blood—it feeds on the life-force. What is left is an empty husk. Yet its lure is so strong that, even knowing what it may do, men have gone to it.”
    “I know why,” Nick said. His hands were balled into fists so tightly that his nails, short as they were, cut into his skin. For even as Hadlett had been talking that sound swelled. Now, in growing fear, he raised his fingers to his ears, plugged out the melody.
    How long he sat so, or if the Vicar continued to talk to him, Nick did not know. But at last he allowed his hands to fall, dared to listen again. There was nothing now but the rain and the stream. With a sigh of relief he settled back on the pile of dried stuff that formed his bed. Later he slept and dreamed. But as important as those dreams seemed, he could not remember them past waking.
    For two days thereafter they might have been camping out on a normal countryside with no sign that they shared the land, untouched as it was by ax, uncut by road.
    Fishing was good, and in addition there were ripe berries and a variety of headed grass close to the grain of their own world, which could be harvested. Nick learned that this shelter by the river was not the permanent base of the party, but that they had a cave further north they considered their headquarters. They were engaged now in making a series of exploratory trips.
    Using the compass on the second day Nick managed to guide Stroud and Crocker back to the jeep.
    “Tidy little jumper.” The Warden considered the machine regretfully. “No getting it out of that pinch though.”
    Nick had gone straight to the cargo, those cases of drinks and the melons. But someone or something had been there before him. All that remained were a couple of smashed bottles.
    “Pity,” Stroud commented. “Not a pint of the old stuff, maybe, but we could’ve used it. What do you say, Barry—who nosed in ahead of us?”
    The pilot had been inspecting the leaf mold around the stranded jeep.
    “Boots—army issue, I’d say. Those Chinese maybe. They could have drifted down this way. But it was in the early part of the evening, maybe the afternoon.” He squatted on his heels, using a twig to point out what he could read stamped into the ground. “There’s been a slinker here, its pads cover one of the boot marks, and those don’t go prowling until dark. Anything else worth taking?”
    Stroud was searching the jeep with the care of an experienced scrounger.
    “Tool kit.” He had unrolled a bundle that he had found under the seat to reveal a couple of wrenches and some other tools. “That’s all, I’d say.”
    Nick stood near the tree against which the jeep nosed. This had been the middle of the Cut-Off. Yet looking around now he could not believe it.
    “What caused it—our coming through?” he asked, though he did not expect any answer.
    Stroud had rewrapped the tools, his face mirroring his satisfaction in the find. Now he looked up.
    “There was a talk I heard—about our world running on electromagnetism. This brain who was talkin’, he said we were all—every