OPERATION TERROR

 Murray Leinster

CHAPTER 1

On the morning the radar reported something odd out in space, Lockleyawoke at about twenty minutes to eight. That was usual. He'd slept ina sleeping bag on a mountain-flank with other mountains all around. That was not unprecedented. He was there to make a base linemeasurement for a detailed map of the Boulder Lake National Park, whose facilities were now being built. Measuring a base line, evenwith the newest of electronic apparatus, was more or less acommonplace job for Lockley. 

This morning, though, he woke and realized gloomily that he'd dreamedabout Jill Holmes again, which was becoming a habit he ought to break. He'd only met her four times and she was going to marry somebody else. He had to stop. 

He stirred, preparatory to getting up. At the same moment, certainthings were happening in places far away from him. As yet, no unusualobject in space had been observed. That would come later. But far awayup at the Alaskan radar complex a man on duty watch was relieved byanother. The relief man took over the monitoring of the giant, football-field-sized radar antenna that recorded its detections onmagnetic tape. It happened that on this particular morning only oneother radar watched the skies along a long stretch of the PacificCoast. There was the Alaskan installation, and the other was in Oregon. It was extremely unusual for only those two to be operating. Thepeople who knew about it, or most of them, thought that officialorders had somehow gone astray. Where the orders were issued, nothingout of the ordinary appeared. All was normal, for example, in theMilitary Information Center in Denver. The Survey saw nothing unusualin Lockley's being at his post, and other men at places correspondingto his in the area which was to become Boulder Lake National Park. Italso seemed perfectly natural that there should be bulldozeroperators, surveyors, steelworkers, concrete men and so on, allcomfortably at breakfast in the construction camp for the project. Everything seemed normal everywhere. 

Up to the time the Alaskan installation reported something strange inspace, the state of things generally was neither alarming norconsoling. But at 8:02 A. M. Pacific time, the situationchanged. At that time Alaska reported an unscheduled celestial objectof considerable size, high out of atmosphere and moving withsurprising slowness for a body in space. Its course was parabolic andit would probably land somewhere in South Dakota. It might be abolide--a large, slow-moving meteorite. It wasn't likely, but theentire report was improbable. 

The message reached the Military Information Center in Denver at 8:05A. M. By 8:06 it had been relayed to Washington and everyplane on the Pacific Coast was ordered aloft. The Oregon radar unitreported the same object at 8:07 A. M. It said the object wasseven hundred fifty miles high, four hundred miles out at sea, and washeaded toward the Oregon coastline, moving northwest to southeast. There was no major city in its line of travel. The impact pointcomputed by the Oregon station was nowhere near South Dakota. As othercomputations followed other observations, a second place of fall wascalculated, then a third. Then the Oregon radar unbelievably reportedthat the object was decelerating. Allowing for deceleration, threesuccessive predictions of its landing point agreed. The object, saidthese calculations, would come to earth somewhere near Boulder Lake, Colorado, in what was to become a national park. Impact time should beapproximately 8:14 A. M. 

These events followed Lockley's awakening in the wilds, but he knewnothing of any of them. He himself wasn't near the lake, which was tobe the center of a vacation facility for people who liked theoutdoors. The lake was almost circular and was a deep, rich blue. Itoccupied what had been the crater of a volcano millions of years ago. Already bulldozers had ploughed out roads to it through the forest. Men worked with graders and concrete mixers on highways and on bridgesacross small rushing streams. There was a camp for them. A lakesidehotel had been designed and stakes were driven in the ground where itsfoundation would eventually be poured. There were infant big-mouthedbass in the lake and fingerling trout in many of the streams. A hugeWild Life Control trailer-truck went grumbling about such trails aswere practical, attending to these matters. Yesterday Lockley had seenit gleaming in bright sunshine as it moved toward Boulder Lake on thehighway nearest to his station. 

But that was yesterday. This morning he awoke under a pale gray sky. There was complete cloud cover overhead. He smelled conifers andwoods-mould and mountain stone in the morning. He heard the faintsound of tree branches moving in the wind. He noted the cloud cover. The clouds were high, though. The air at ground level was perfectlytransparent. He turned his head and saw a prospect that made being inthe wilderness seem entirely reasonable and satisfying. 

Mountains reared up in every direction. A valley lay some thousands offeet below him, and beyond it other valleys, and somewhere a streamrushed white water to an unknown destination. Not many wake to such ascene. 

Lockley regarded it, but without full attention. He was preoccupiedwith thoughts of Jill Holmes, and unfortunately she was engaged tomarry Vale, who was also working in the park some thirty miles to thenortheast, near Boulder Lake itself. Lockley didn't know him wellsince he was new in the Survey. He was up there to the northeast withan electronic survey instrument like Lockley's and on the same job. Jill had an assignment from some magazine or other to write an articleon how national parks are born, and she was staying at theconstruction camp to gather material. She'd learned something fromVale and much from the engineers while Lockley had tried to think ofinteresting facts himself. He'd failed. When he thought about her, hethought about the fact that she was engaged to Vale. That was anunhappy thought. Then he tried to stop thinking about her altogether. But his mind somehow lingered on the subject. 

At ten minutes to eight Lockley began to dress, wilderness fashion. Hebegan by putting on his hat. It had lain on the pile of garments byhis bed. Then he donned the rest of his garments in the exact reverseof the order in which he'd removed them. 

At 8:00 he had a small fire going. He had no premonition that anythingout of the ordinary was going to happen that day. This was stillbefore the first Alaskan report. At 8:10 he had bacon sizzling and asmall coffeepot almost enveloped by the flames. Events occurred and heknew nothing at all about them. For example, the Military InformationCenter had been warned of what was later privately called OperationTerror while Lockley was still tranquilly cooking breakfast andthinking--frowning a little--about Jill. 

Naturally he knew nothing of emergency orders sending all planesaloft. He wasn't informed about something reported in space andapparently headed for an impact point at Boulder Lake. As the computedimpact time arrived, Lockley obliviously dumped coffee into his tincoffeepot and put it back on the flames. 

At 8:13 instead of 8:14--this information is from the taperecords--there was an extremely small earth shock recorded by theBerkeley, California, seismograph. It was a very minor shock, aboutthe intensity of the explosion of a hundred tons of high explosive avery long distance away and barely strong enough to record itslocation, which was Boulder Lake. The cause of that explosion or shockwas not observed visually. There'd been no time to alert observers, and in any case the object should have been out of atmosphere untilthe last few seconds of its fall, and where it was reported to fallthe cloud cover was unbroken. So nobody reported seeing it. Not atonce, anyhow, and then only one man. 

Lockley did not feel the impact. He was drinking a cup of coffee andthinking about his own problems. But a delicately balanced rock ahundred yards below his camp site toppled over and slid downhill. Itstarted a miniature avalanche of stones and rocks. The loose stuff didnot travel far, but the original balanced rock bounced and rolled forsome distance before it came to rest. 

Echoes rolled between the hillsides, but they were not very loud andthey soon ended. Lockley guessed automatically at half a dozenpossible causes for the small rock-slide, but he did not think at allof an unperceived temblor from a shock like high explosives going offthirty miles away. 

Eight minutes later he heard a deep-toned roaring noise to thenortheast. It was unbelievably low-pitched. It rolled and reverberatedbeyond the horizon. The detonation of a hundred tons of highexplosives or an equivalent impact can be heard for thirty miles, butat that distance it doesn't sound much like an explosion. 

He finished his breakfast without enjoyment. By that time well overthree-quarters of the Air Force on the Pacific Coast was airborne andmore planes shot skyward instant after instant. Inevitably themultiplied air traffic was noted by civilians. Reporters began totelephone airbases to ask whether a practice alert was on, orsomething more serious. 

Such questions were natural, these days. All the world had thejitters. To the ordinary observer, the prospects looked bad foreverything but disaster. There was a crisis in the United Nations, which had been reorganized once and might need to be shuffled again. There was a dispute between the United States and Russia oversatellites recently placed in orbit. They were suspected of carryingfusion bombs ready to dive at selected targets on signal. The Russiansaccused the Americans, and the Americans accused the Russians, andboth may have been right. 

The world had been so edgy for so long that there were falloutshelters from Chillicothe, Ohio, to Singapore, Malaya, and back again. There were permanent trouble spots at various places where practicallyanything was likely to happen at any instant. The people of everynation were jumpy. There was constant pressure on governments and onpolitical parties so that all governments looked shaky and allparties helpless. Nobody could look forward to a peaceful old age, andmost hardly hoped to reach middle age. The arrival of an object fromouter space was nicely calculated to blow the emotional fuses of wholepopulations. 

But Lockley ate his breakfast without premonitions. Breezes blew andfrom every airbase along the coast fighting planes shot into the airand into formations designed to intercept anything that flew on wingsor to launch atom-headed rockets at anything their radars could detectthat didn't. 

At eight-twenty, Lockley went to the electronic base line instrumentwhich he was to use this morning. It was a modification of the devicesused to clock artificial satellites in their orbits and measure theirdistance within inches from hundreds of miles away. The purpose was tomake a really accurate map of the park. There were other instrumentsin other line-of-sight positions, very far away. Lockley's schedulecalled for them to measure their distances from each other some timethis morning. Two were carefully placed on bench marks of thecontinental grid. In twenty minutes or so of cooperation, thedistances of six such instruments could be measured with astonishingprecision and tied in to the bench marks already scattered over thecontinent. Presently photographing planes would fly overhead, takingoverlapping pictures from thirty thousand feet. They would show thesurvey points and the measurements between them would be exact, thephotos could be used as stereo-pairs to take off contour lines, and ina few days there would be a map--a veritable cartographer's dream foraccuracy and detail. 

That was the intention. But though Lockley hadn't heard of it yet, something was reported to have landed from space, and a shock like animpact was recorded, and all conditions would shortly be changed. Itwould be noted from the beginning, however, that an impact equal to ahundred-ton explosion was a very small shock for the landing of abolide. It would add to the plausibility of reported deceleration, though, and would arouse acute suspicion. Justly so. 

At 8:20, Lockley called Sattell who was southeast of him. Themeasuring instruments used microwaves and gave readings of distance bycounting cycles and reading phase differences. As a matter ofconvenience the microwaves could be modulated by a microphone, so thesame instrument could be used for communication while measurementswent on. But the microwaves were directed in a very tight beam. Thedevice had to be aimed exactly right and a suitable receptioninstrument had to be at the target if it was to be used at all. Also, there was no signal to call a man to listen. He had to be listeningbeforehand, and with his instrument aimed right, too. 

So Lockley flipped the modulator switch and turned on the instrument. He said patiently, "Calling Sattell. Calling Sattell. Lockley callingSattell. "

He repeated it some dozens of times. He was about to give it up andcall Vale instead when Sattell answered. He'd slept a little laterthan Lockley. It was now close to nine o'clock. But Sattell hadexpected the call. They checked the functioning of their instrumentsagainst each other. 

"Right!" said Lockley at last. "I'll check with Vale and on out of thepark, and then we'll put it all together and wrap it up and take ithome. "

Sattell agreed. Lockley, rather absurdly, felt uncomfortable becausehe was going to have to talk to Vale. He had nothing against the man, but Vale was, in a way, his rival although Jill didn't know of hisfolly and Vale could hardly guess it. 

He signed off to Sattell and swung the base line instrument to make asimilar check with Vale. It was now ten minutes after nine. He alignedthe instrument accurately, flipped the switch, and began to say aspatiently as before, "Calling Vale. Calling Vale. Lockley callingVale. Over. "

He turned the control for reception. Vale's voice came instantly, scratchy and hoarse and frantic. 

"_Lockley! Listen to me! There's no time to tell me anything. I've gotto tell you. Something came down out of the sky here nearly an hourago. It landed in Boulder Lake, and at the last instant there was aterrific explosion and a monstrous wave swept up the shores of thelake. The thing that came down vanished under water. I saw it, Lockley!_"

Lockley blinked. "Wha-a-at?"

"_A thing came down out of the sky!_" panted Vale. "_It landed in thelake with a terrific explosion. It went under. Then it came up to thesurface minutes later. It floated. It stuck things up and out ofitself, pipes or wires. Then it moved around the lake and came in tothe shore. A thing like a hatch opened and . .. Creatures got out ofit. Not men!_"

Lockley blinked again. "Look here--"

"_Dammit, listen!_" said Vale shrilly, "_I'm telling you what I'veseen. Things out of the sky. Creatures that aren't men. They landedand set up something on the shore. I don't know what it is. Do youunderstand? The thing is down there in the lake now. Floating. I cansee it!_"

Lockley swallowed. He couldn't believe this immediately. He knewnothing of radar reports or the seismograph record. He'd seen a barelybalanced rock roll down the mountainside below him, and he'd heard agrowling bass rumble behind the horizon, but things like that didn'tadd up to a conclusion like this! His first conviction was that Valewas out of his head. 

"Listen, " said Lockley carefully. "There's a short wave set over atthe construction camp. They use it all the time for orders and reportsand so on. You go there and report officially what you've seen. To thePark Service first, and then try to get a connection through to theArmy. "

Vale's voice came through again, at once raging and despairing, "_Theywon't believe me. They'll think I'm a crackpot. You get the news tosomebody who'll investigate. I see the thing, Lockley. I can see itnow. At this instant. And Jill's over at the construction camp_--"

Lockley was unreasonably relieved. If Jill was at the camp, at leastshe wasn't alone with a man gone out of his mind. The reaction wasnormal. Lockley had seen nothing out of the ordinary, so Vale's reportseemed insane. 

"_Listen here!_" panted Vale again. "_The thing came down. There was aterrific explosion. It vanished. Nothing happened for a while. Then itcame up and found a place where it could come to shore. Things cameout of it. I can't describe them. They're motes even in my binoculars. But they aren't human! A lot of them came out. They began to landthings. Equipment. They set it up. I don't know what it is. Some ofthem went exploring. I saw a puff of steam where something moved. Lockley?_"

"I'm listening, " said Lockley. "Go on!"

"_Report this!_" ordered Vale feverishly. "_Get it to MilitaryInformation in Denver, or somewhere! The party of creatures that wentoff exploring hasn't come back. I'm watching. I'll report whatever Isee. Get this to the government. This is real. I can't believe it, butI see it. Report it, quick!_"

His voice stopped. Lockley painfully realigned the instrument againfor Sattell, thirty miles to the southeast. 

Sattell surprisingly answered the first call. He said in an astonishedvoice, "_Hello! I just got a call from Survey. It seems that the Armyknew there was a Survey team in here, and they called to say thatradars had spotted something coming down from space, right after eighto'clock. They wanted to know if any of us supposedly sane observersnoticed anything peculiar about that time. _"

Lockley's scalp crawled suddenly. Vale's report had disturbed him, butmore for the man's sanity than anything else. But it could be true!And instantly he remembered that Jill was very near the place wherefrighteningly impossible things were happening. 

"Vale just told me, " said Lockley, his voice unsteady, "that he sawsomething come down. His story was so wild I didn't believe it. Butyou pass it on and say that Vale's watching it. He's waiting forinstructions. He'll report everything he sees. I'm thirty miles fromhim, but he can see the thing that came down. Maybe the creatures init can see him. Listen!"

He repeated just what Vale had told him. Somehow, telling it tosomeone else, it seemed at once even less real but more horrifying asa possible danger to Jill. It didn't strike him forcibly that otherpeople were endangered, too. 

When Sattell signed off to forward the report, Lockley found himselfsweating a little. Something had come down out of space. The factseemed to him dangerous and appalling. His mind revolted at the ideaof non-human creatures who could build ships and travel through space, but radars had reported the arrival of a ship, and there were officialinquiries that nearly matched Vale's account, which was therefore nota mere crackpot claim to have seen the incredible. Something hadhappened and more was likely to, and Jill was in the middle of it. 

He swung the instrument back to Vale's position. His hands shook, though a part of his mind insisted obstinately that alarms werecommonplace these days, and in common sense one had to treat them asfalse cries of "Wolf!" But one knew that some day the wolf mightreally come. Perhaps it had. .. . 

Lockley found it difficult to align the carrier beam to Vale's exactlocation. He assured himself that he was a fool to be afraid; that ifdisaster were to come it would be by the imbecilities of men ratherthan through creatures from beyond the stars. And therefore. .. . 

But there were other men at other places who felt less skepticism. Thereport from Vale went to the Military Information Center and thence tothe Pentagon. Meanwhile the Information Center ordered aphoto-reconnaissance plane to photograph Boulder Lake from aloft. Inthe Pentagon, hastily alerted staff officers began to draft orders tobe issued if the report of two radars and one eye-witness should befurther substantiated. There were such-and-such trucks available here, and such-and-such troops available there. Complicated paper work wasinvolved in the organization of any movement of troops, but especiallyto carry out a plan not at all usual in the United States. 

Everything, though, depended on what the reconnaissance planephotographs might show. 

Lockley did not see the plane nor consciously hear it. There was thefaintest of murmuring noises in the sky. It moved swiftly toward thenorth, tending eastward. The plane that made the noise was invisible. It flew above the cloud cover which still blotted out nearly all theblue overhead. It went on and on and presently died out beyond themountains toward Boulder Lake. 

Lockley tried to get Vale back, to tell him that radars had verifiedhis report and that it would be acted on by the military. But thoughhe called and called, there was no answer. 

An agonizingly long time later the faint and disregarded sound of theplane swept back across the heavens. Lockley still did not notice it. He was too busy with his attempts to reach Vale again, and with grislyimaginings of what might be done by aliens from another world whenthey found the workmen near the lake--and Jill among them. He picturedalien monsters committing atrocities in what they might considerscientific examination of terrestrial fauna. But somehow even that wasless horrible than the images that followed an assumption that theoccupants of the spaceship might be men. 

"Calling Vale . .. Vale, come in!" He fiercely repeated the call intothe instrument's microphone. "Lockley calling Vale! Come in, man! Comein!"

He flipped the switch and listened. And Vale's voice came. 

"_I'm here. _" The voice shook. "_I've been trying to find where thatexploring party went. _"

Lockley threw the speech switch and said sharply, "The Army askedSurvey if any of us had seen anything come down from the sky. I gaveSattell your report to be forwarded. It's gone to the Pentagon now. Two radars reported tracking the thing down to a landing near you. Nowlisten! You go to the construction camp. Most likely they'll getorders to clear out, by short wave. But you go there! Make sure Jill'sall right. See her to safety. "

The switch once more. Vale's voice was desperate. 

"_A . .. While ago a party of the creatures started away from the lake. An exploring party, I think. Once I saw a puff of steam as if they'dused a weapon. I'm afraid they may find the construction camp, andJill_. .. . "

Lockley ground his teeth. Vale said unsteadily, "_I . .. Can't findwhere they went. .. . A little while ago their ship backed out into thelake and sank. Deliberately! I don't know why. But there's a party ofthose . .. Creatures out exploring! I don't know what they'll do_. .. . "

Lockley said savagely, "Get to the camp and look after Jill! Theworkmen may have panicked. The Army'll know by this time what'shappened. They'll send copters to get you out. They'll send help ofsome sort, somehow. But you look after Jill!"

Vale's voice changed. 

"_Wait. I heard something. Wait!_"

Silence. Around Lockley there were the usual sounds of the wilderness. Insects made chirping noises. Birds called. There were those smallwhispering and rustling and high-pitched sounds which in the wildconstitute stillness. 

A scraping sound from the speaker. Vale's voice, frantic. 

"_That . .. Exploring party. It's here! They must have picked up ourbeams. They're looking for me. They've sighted me! They're coming_. .. . "

There was a crashing sound as if Vale had dropped the communicator. There were pantings, and the sound of blows, and gaspedprofanity--horror-filled profanity--in Vale's voice. Then somethingroared. 

Lockley listened, his hands clenched in fury at his own helplessness. He thought he heard movements. Once he was sure he heard a sound likethe unshod hoof of an animal on bare stone. Then, quite distinctly, heheard squeakings. He knew that someone or something had picked upVale's communicator. More squeakings, somehow querulous. Thensomething pounded the communicator on the ground. There was a crash. Then silence. 

Almost calmly Lockley swung his instrument around and lined it up forSattell's post. He called in a steady voice until Sattell answered. Hereported with meticulous care just what Vale had said, and what he'dheard after Vale stopped speaking--the roaring, the sound of blows andgasps, then the squeakings and the destruction of the instrumentintended for the measurement of base lines for an accurate map of thePark. 

Sattell grew agitated. At Lockley's insistence, he wrote down everyword. Then he said nervously that orders had come from Survey. TheArmy wanted everybody out of the Boulder Lake area. Vale was to havebeen ordered out. The workmen were ordered out. Lockley was to get outof the area as soon as possible. 

When Sattell signed off, Lockley switched off the communicator. He putit where it would be relatively safe from the weather. He abandonedhis camping equipment. A mile downhill and four miles west there was ahighway leading to Boulder Lake. When the Park was opened to thepublic it would be well used, but the last traffic he'd seen was thebig trailer-truck of the Wild Life Control service. That huge vehiclehad gone up to Boulder Lake the day before. 

He made his way to the highway, following a footpath to the spot wherehe'd left his own car parked. He got into it and started the motor. Hemoved with a certain dogged deliberation. He knew, of course, thatwhat he was going to do was useless. It was hopeless. It was possiblysuicidal. But he went ahead. 

He headed northward, pushing the little car to its top speed. This wasnot following his instructions. He wasn't leaving the Park area. Hewas heading for Boulder Lake. Jill was there and he would feelashamed for all time if he acted like a sensible man and got to safetyas he was ordered. 

Miles along the highway, something occurred to him. The base lineinstrument had to be aimed exactly right for Vale or Sattell to pickup his voice as carried by its beam. Vale's or Sattell's instrumentshad to be aimed as accurately to convey their voices to him. Yet afterthe struggle he'd overheard, and after Vale had been either subdued orkilled, someone or something seemed to have picked up thecommunicator, and Lockley had heard squeakings, and then he had heardthe instrument smashed. 

It was not easy to understand how the beam had been kept perfectlyaligned while it was picked up and squeaked at. Still less was itunderstandable that it remained aimed just right so he could hear whenit was flung down and crushed. 

But somehow this oddity did not change his feelings. Jill could be indanger from creatures Vale said were not human. Lockley didn't whollyaccept that non-human angle, but something was happening there andJill was in the middle of it. So he went to see about it for the sakeof his self-respect. And Jill. It was not reasonable behavior. It wasemotional. He didn't stop to question what was believable and whatwasn't. Lockley didn't even give any attention to the problem of how amicrowave beam could stay pointed exactly right while the instrumentthat sent it was picked up, and squeaked at, and smashed. He gave thatparticular matter no thought at all. 

He jammed down the accelerator of the car and headed for BoulderLake. 

CHAPTER 2

The car was ordinary enough; it was one of those scaled-down vehicleswhich burn less fuel and offer less comfort than the so-calledstandard models. For fuel economy too, its speed had been lowered. ButLockley sent it up the brand-new highway as fast as it would go. 

Now the highway followed a broad valley with a meadow-like floor. Nowit seemed to pick its way between cliffs, and on occasion it ran overa concrete bridge spanning some swiftly flowing stream. At least onceit went through a cut which might as well have been a tunnel, and thecrackling noise of its motor echoed back from stony walls on eitherside. 

He did not see another vehicle for a long way. Deer, he saw twice. Over and over again coveys of small birds rocketed up from beside theroad and dived to cover after he had passed. Once he saw movement outof the corner of his eye and looked automatically to see what it was, but saw nothing. Which meant that it was probably a mountain lion, blending perfectly with its background as it watched the car. At theend of five miles he saw a motor truck, empty, trundling away fromBoulder Lake and the construction camp toward the outer world. 

The two vehicles passed, combining to make a momentary roaring noiseat their nearest. The truck was not in a hurry. It simply lumberedalong with loose objects in its cargo space rattling and bumpingloudly. Its driver and his helper plainly knew nothing of untowardevents behind them. They'd probably stopped somewhere to have aleisurely morning snack, with the truck waiting for them at theroadside. 

Lockley went on ten miles more. He begrudged the distances added bycurves in the road. He tended to fume when his underpowered carnoticeably slowed up on grades, and especially the long ones. He saw abear halfway up a hillside pause in its exploitation of a berry patchto watch the car go by below it. He saw more deer. Once a smalleranimal, probably a coyote, dived into a patch of brushwood and stayedhidden as long as the car remained in sight. 

More miles of empty highway. And then a long, straight stretch ofroad, and he suddenly saw vehicles coming around the curve at the endof it. They were not in line, singlelane, as traffic usually is on acurve. Both lanes were filled. The road was blocked by motor-driventraffic heading away from the lake, and not at a steady pace, but inheadlong flight. 

It roared on toward Lockley. Big trucks and little ones; passengercars in between them; a few motorcyclists catching up from the rear byriding on the road's shoulders. They were closely packed, as if bysome freak the lead had been taken by great trucks incapable of theroad speed of those behind them, yet with the frantic rearmost carsunable to pass. There was a humming and roaring of motors that filledthe air. They plunged toward Lockley's miniature roadster. Truck hornsblared. 

Lockley got off the highway and onto the right-hand shoulder. Hestopped. The crowded mass of rushing vehicles roared up to him andwent past. They were more remarkable than he'd believed. There weredirt mover trucks. There were truck-and-trailer combinations. Therewere sedans and dump trucks and even a convertible or two, and thenmore trucks--even tank trucks--and more sedans and half-tonners--acomplete and motley collection of every kind of gasoline-drivenvehicle that could be driven on a highway and used on a constructionproject. 

And every one was crowded with men. Trailer-trucks had their bodydoors open, and they were packed with the workmen of the constructioncamp near Boulder Lake. The sedans were jammed with passengers. Dirtmover trucks had men holding fast to handholds, and there were men inthe backs of the dump trucks. The racing traffic filled the highwayfrom edge to edge. It rushed past, giving off a deafening roar andclouds of gasoline fumes. 

They were gone, the solid mass of them at any rate. But now there cameolder cars, no less crowded, and then more spacious cars, not crowdedso much and less frantically pushing at those ahead. But even thesecars passed each other recklessly. There seemed to be an almosthysterical fear of being last. 

One car swung off to its left. There were five men in it. It brakedand stopped on the shoulder close to Lockley's car. The driver shoutedabove the din of passing motors, "You don't want to go up there. Everybody's ordered out. Everybody get away from Boulder Lake! Whenyou get the chance, turn around and get the hell away. "

He watched for a chance to get back on the road, having delivered hiswarning. Lockley got out of his car and went over, "You're talkingabout the thing that came down from the sky, " he said grimly. "Therewas a girl up at the camp. Jill Holmes. Writing a piece about buildinga national park. Getting information about the job. Did anybody gether away?"

The man who'd warned him continued to watch for a reasonable gap inthe flood of racing cars. They weren't crowded now as they had been, but it was still impossible to start in low and get back in thestream of vehicles without an almost certain crash. Then he turned hishead back, staring at Lockley. 

"Hell! Somebody told me to check on her. I was routing men out andloading 'em on whatever came by. I forgot!"

A man in the back of the sedan said, "She hadn't left when we did. Isaw her. But I thought she had a ride all set. "

The man at the wheel said furiously, "She hasn't passed us! Unlessshe's in one of these. .. . "

Lockley set his teeth. He watched each oncoming car intently. A girlamong these fugitives would have been put with the driver in the cabof a truck, and he'd have seen a woman in any of the private cars. 

"If I don't see her go by, " he said grimly, "I'll go up to the campand see if she's still there. "

The man in the driver's seat looked relieved. 

"If she's left behind, it's her fault. If you hunt for her, make itfast and be plenty careful. Keep to the camp and stay away from thelake. There was a hell of an explosion over there this morning. Threemen went to see what'd happened. They didn't come back. Two more wentafter 'em, and something hit them on the way. They smelled somethingworse than skunk. Then they were paralyzed, like they had hold of ahigh-tension line. They saw crazy colors and heard crazy sounds andthey couldn't move a finger. Their car ditched. In a while they cameout of it and they came back--fast! They'd just got back when we gotshort wave orders for everybody to get out. If you look for that girl, be careful. If she's still there, you get her out quick!" Then he saidsharply, "Here's a chance for us to get going. Move out of the way!"

There was a gap in the now diminishing spate of cars. The driver ofthe stopped car drove furiously onto the highway. He shifted gears andaccelerated at the top of his car's power. Another car behind himbraked and barely avoided a crash while blowing its horn furiously. Then the traffic went on. But it was lessening now. It was mostlyprivate cars, owned by the workmen. 

Suddenly there were no cars coming down the long straight stretch ofroad. Lockley got back on the highway and resumed his rush toward thespot the others fled from. He heard behind him the diminishing rumbleand roar of the fugitive motors. He jammed his own accelerator down tothe floor and plunged on. 

There'd been an explosion by the lake, the man who'd warned him said. That checked. Three men went to see what had happened. That wasreasonable. They didn't come back. Considering what Vale had reported, it was almost inevitable. Then two other men went to find out whathappened to the first three and--that was news! A smell that was worsethan skunk. Paralysis in a moving car, which ditched. Remainingparalyzed while seeing crazy colors and hearing crazy sounds. .. . Lockley could not even guess at an explanation. But the men hadremained paralyzed for some time, and then the sensations lifted. Theyhad fled back to the construction camp, evidently fearing that theparalysis might return. Their narrative must have been hair-raising, because when orders had come for the evacuation of the camp, they hadbeen obeyed with a promptitude suggesting panic. But apparentlynothing else had happened. 

The first three men were still missing--or at least there'd been nomention of their return. They'd either been killed or taken captive, judging by Vale's account and obvious experience. He was eitherkilled or captured, too, but it still seemed strange that Lockley hadheard so much of that struggle via a tight beam microwave transmitterthat needed to be accurately aimed. Vale had been captured or killed. The three other men missing probably had undergone the same fate. Thetwo others had been made helpless but not murdered or taken prisoner. They'd simply been held until when they were released they'd flee. 

The car went over a bridge and rounded a curve. Here a deep cut hadbeen made and the road ran through it. It came out upon undulatingground where many curves were necessary. 

Another car came, plunging after the others. In the next ten milesthere were, perhaps a dozen more. They'd been hard to start, perhaps, and so left later than the rest. Jill wasn't in any of them. There wasone car traveling slowly, making thumping noises. Its driver made thebest time he could, following the others. 

Sober common sense pointed out that Vale's account was fully verified. There'd been a landing of non-human creatures in a ship from outerspace. The killing or capture of the first three men to investigate agigantic explosion was natural enough--the alien occupants of a spaceship would want to study the inhabitants of the world they'd landedon. The mere paralysis and release of two others could be explained onthe theory that the creatures who'd come to earth were satisfied withthree specimens of the local intelligent race to study. They had Vale, too. They weren't trying to conceal their arrival, though it wouldhave been impossible anyhow. But it was plausible enough that they'dtake measures to become informed about the world they'd landed on, andwhen they considered that they knew enough, they'd take the actionthey felt was desirable. 

All of which was perfectly rational, but there was anotherpossibility. The other possible explanation was--consideringeverything--more probable. And it seemed to offer even more appallingprospects. 

He drove on. Jill Holmes. He'd seen her four times; she was engaged toVale. It seemed extremely likely that she hadn't left the camp withthe workmen. If Lockley hadn't been obsessed with her, he'd have triedto make sure she was left behind before he tried to find her. If shewas still at the camp, she was in a dangerous situation. 

There'd been no other car from the camp for a long way now. But therecame a sharp curve ahead. Lockley drove into it. There was a roar, anda car came from the opposite direction, veering away from the road'sedge. It sideswiped the little car Lockley drove. The smaller carbucked violently and spun crazily around. It went crashing into aclump of saplings and came to a stop with a smashed windshield andcrumpled fenders, but the motor was still running. Lockley had brakedby instinct. 

The other car raced away without pausing. 

Lockley sat still for a moment, stunned by the suddenness of themishap. Then he raged. He got out of the car. Because of its smallsize, he thought he might be able to get it back on the road withsaplings for levers. But the job would take hours, and he wasirrationally convinced that Jill had been left behind in theconstruction camp. 

He was perhaps five miles from Boulder Lake itself and about the samedistance from the camp. It would take less time to go to the camp onfoot than to try to get the car on the road. Time was of the essence, and whoever or whatever the occupants of the landed ship might be, they'd know what a road was for. They'd sight an intruder in a car ona road long before they'd detect a man on foot who was not on ahighway and was taking some pains to pass unseen. 

He started out, unarmed and on foot. He was headed for the nearneighborhood of the thing Vale had described as coming from the sky. He was driven by fear for Jill. It seemed to him that his best pacewas only a crawl and he desperately needed all the speed he couldmuster. 

He headed directly across country for the camp. All the world seemedunaware that anything out of the ordinary was in progress. Birds sangand insects chirruped and breezes blew and foliage waved languidly. Now and again a rabbit popped out of sight of the moving figure of theman. But there were no sounds, or sights or indications of anythinguntoward where Lockley moved. He reflected that he was on his way tosearch for a girl he barely knew, and whom he couldn't be sure neededhis help anyway. 

Outside in the world, there were places where things were not sotranquil. By this time there were already troops in motion in longtrains of personnel-carrying trucks. There were mobile guided missiledetachments moving at top speed across state lines and along theexpress highway systems. Every military plane in the coastal area wasaloft, kept fueled by tanker planes to be ready for any sort ofoffensive or defensive action that might be called for. The short waveinstructions to the construction camp had become known, and all theworld knew that Boulder Lake National Park had been evacuated to avoidcontact with non-human aliens. The aliens were reported to have huntedmen down and killed them for sport. They were reported to haveparalysis beams, death beams and poison gas. They were described asindescribable, and described in "artist's conceptions" on televisionand in the newspapers. They appeared--according to circumstances--toresemble lizards or slugs. They were portrayed as carnivorous birdsand octopods. The artists took full advantage of their temporarilygreater importance than cameramen. They pictured these diverse aliensin their one known aggressive action of trailing Vale down andcarrying him away. This was said to be for vivisection. None of theartists' ideas were even faintly plausible, biologically. Thecreatures were even portrayed as turning heat rays upon humans, whodramatically burst into steam as the beams struck them. Obviously, there were also artist's conceptions of women being seized by thecreatures from outer space. There was only one woman known to be inthe construction camp, but that inconvenient fact didn't bother theartists. 

The United States went into a mild panic. But most people stayed ontheir jobs, and followed their normal routine, and the trains ran ontime. 

The public in the United States had become used to newspaper andbroadcast scares. They were unconsciously relegated to the samecategory as horror movies, which some day might come true, but notyet. This particular news story seemed more frightening than most, butstill it was taken more or less as shuddery entertainment. So most ofthe United States shivered with a certain amount of relish as ever newand ever more imaginative accounts appeared describing the landing ofintelligent monsters, and waited to see if it was really true. Thetruth was that most of America didn't actually believe it. It was likea Russian threat. It could happen and it might happen, but it hadn'thappened so far to the United States. 

An official announcement helped to guide public opinion in this safechannel. The Defense Department released a bulletin: An object hadfallen from space into Boulder Lake, Colorado. It was apparently alarge meteorite. When reported by radar before its landing, defenseauthorities had seized the opportunity to use it for a test ofemergency response to a grave alarm. They had used it to trigger atraining program and test of defensive measures made ready againstother possible enemies. After the meteorite landed, the defensemeasures were continued as a more complete test of the nation'sfighting forces' responsive ability. The object and its landing, however, were being investigated. 

Lockley tramped up hillsides and scrambled down steep slopes with manyboulders scattered here and there. He moved through a landscape inwhich nothing seemed to depart from the normal. The sun shone. Thecloud cover, broken some time since, was dissipating and now a goodtwo-thirds of the sky was wholly clear. The sounds of the wildernesswent on all around him. 

But presently he came to a partly-graded new road, cutting across hisway. A bulldozer stood abandoned on it, brand-new and in perfectorder, with the smell of gasoline and oil about it. He followed thegash in the forest it had begun. It led toward the camp. He came to aplace where blasting had been in progress. The equipment for blastingremained. But there was nobody in sight. 

Half a mile from this spot, Lockley looked down upon the camp. Therewere Quonset huts and prefabricated structures. There were streets ofclay and wires from one building to another. There was a long, low, open shed with long tables under its roof. A mess shed. Next to itmetal pipes pierced another roof, and wavering columns of heated airrose from those pipes. There was a building which would be acommissary. There was every kind of structure needed for a small city, though all were temporary. And there was no movement, no sound, nosign of life except the hot air rising from the mess kitchenstovepipes. 

Lockley went down into the camp. All was silence. All was lifeless. Helooked unhappily about him. There would be no point, of course, inlooking into the dormitories, but he made his way to the mess shed. Some heavy earthenware plates and coffee cups, soiled, remained on thetable. There were a few flies. Not many. In the mess kitchen there wasgrayish smoke and the reek of scorched and ruined food. The stovesstill burned. Lockley saw the blue flame of bottled gas. He went on. The door of the commissary was open. Everything men might want to buyin such a place waited for purchasers, but there was no one to buy orsell. 

The stillness and desolation of the place resulted from less than anhour's abandonment. But somehow it was impossible to call out loudlyfor Jill. Lockley was appalled by the feeling of emptiness in suchbright sunshine. It was shocking. Men hadn't moved out of the camp. They'd simply left it, with every article of use dropped andabandoned; nothing at all had been removed. And there was no sign ofJill. It occurred to Lockley that she'd have waited for Vale at thecamp, because assuredly his first thought should have been for hersafety. Yes. She'd have waited for Vale to rescue her. But Vale waseither dead or a captive of the creatures that had been in the objectfrom the sky. He wouldn't be looking after Jill. 

Lockley found himself straining his eyes at the mountain from whoseflank Vale had been prepared to measure the base line between his postand Lockley's. That vantage point could not be seen from here, butLockley looked for a small figure that might be Jill, climbingvaliantly to warn Vale of the events he'd known before anybody else. 

Then Lockley heard a very small sound. It was faint, with an irregularrhythm in it. It had the cadence of speech. His pulse leaped suddenly. There was the mast for the short wave set by which the camp had keptin touch with the outer world. Lockley sprinted for the building underit. His footsteps sounded loudly in the silent camp, and they drownedout the sound he was heading for. 

He stopped at the open door. He heard Jill's voice saying anxiously, "But I'm sure he'd have come to make certain I was safe!" A pause. "There's no one else left, and I want. .. . " Another pause. "But he wasup on the mountainside! At least a helicopter could--"

Lockley called, "Jill!"

He heard a gasp. Then she said unsteadily, "Someone just called. Waita moment. "

She came to the door. At sight of Lockley her face fell. 

"I came to make sure you were all right, " he said awkwardly. "Are youtalking to outside?"

"Yes. Do you know anything about--"

"I'm afraid I do, " said Lockley. "Right now the important thing is toget you out of here. I'll tell them we're starting. All right?"

She stood aside. He went up to the short wave set which looked muchlike an ordinary telephone, but was connected to a box with dials andswitches. There was a miniature pocket radio--a transistor radio--ontop of the short wave cabinet. Lockley picked up the short wavemicrophone. He identified himself. He said he'd come to make sure ofJill's safety, and that he'd been passed by the rushing mass of carsand trucks that had evacuated everybody else. Then he said, "I've gota car about four miles away. It's in a ditch, but I can probably getit out. It'll be a lot safer for Miss Holmes if you send a helicopterthere to pick her up. "

The reply was somehow military in tone. It sounded like a civilianbeing authoritative about something he knew nothing about. Lockleysaid, "Over" in a dry tone and put down the microphone. He picked upthe pocket radio and put it in his pocket. It might be useful. 

"They say to try to make it out in my car, " he told Jill wryly. "Ascivilians, I suppose they haven't any helicopters they can give ordersto. But it probably makes sense. If there are some queer creaturesaround, there's no point in stirring them up with a flying contraptionbanging around near their landing place. Not before we're ready totake real action. Come along. I've got to get you away from here. "

"But I'm waiting. .. . " She looked distressed. "He wanted me to leaveyesterday. We almost quarrelled about it. He'll surely come to makesure I'm safe. .. . "

"I'm afraid I have bad news, " said Lockley. Then he described, asgently as he could, his last talk with Vale. It was the one whichended with squeaks and strugglings transmitted by the communicator, and then the smashing of the communicator itself. He didn't mentionthe puzzling fact that the communicator had stayed perfectly aimedwhile it was picked up and squeaked at and destroyed. He had noexplanation for it. What he did have to tell was bad enough. She wentdeathly pale, searching his face as he told her. 

"But--but--" She swallowed. "He might have been hurt and--not killed. He might be alive and in need of help. If there are creatures fromsomewhere else, they might not realize that he could be unconsciousand not dead! He'd make sure about me! I--I'll go up and make sureabout him. .. . "

Lockley hesitated. "It's not likely, " he said carefully, "that he wasleft there injured. But if you feel that somebody has to make sure, I'll do it. For one thing, I can climb faster. My car is ditched backyonder. You go and wait by it. At least it's farther from the lake andyou should be safer there. I'll make sure about Vale. "

He explained in detail how she could find the car. Up this hillside toa slash through the forest for a highway. Due south from an abandonedbulldozer. Keep out of sight. Never show against a skyline. 

She swallowed again. Then she said, "If he needs help, you could--domore than I can. But I'll wait there where the woods begin. I can hideif I need to, and I--might be of some use. "

He realized that she deluded herself with the hope that he, Lockley, might bring an injured Vale down the mountainside and that she couldbe useful then. He let her. He went through the camp with her to puther on the right track. He gave her the pocket radio, so she couldlisten for news. When she went on out of sight in brushwood, he turnedback toward the mountain on which Vale had occupied an observationpost. It was actually a million-year-old crater wall that he climbedpresently. And he took a considerable chance. As he climbed, for sometime he moved in plain view. If the crew of the ship in Boulder Lakewere watching, they'd see him rather than Jill. If they took action, it would be against him and not Jill. Somehow he felt better equippedto defend himself than Jill would be. 

He climbed. Again the world was completely normal, commonplace. Therewere mountain peaks on every hand. Some had been volcanoesoriginally, some had not. With each five hundred feet of climbing, hecould see still more mountains. The sky was cloudless now. He climbeda thousand feet. Two. Three. He could see between peaks for a fullthirty miles to the spot where he'd been at daybreak. But he wasmaking his ascent on the back flank of this particular mountain. Hecould not see Boulder Lake from there. On the other hand, no creatureat Boulder Lake should be able to see him. Only an exploring partywhich might otherwise sight Jill would be apt to detect him, a slowlymoving speck against a mountainside. 

He reached the level at which Vale's post had been assigned. He movedcarefully and cautiously around intervening masses of stone. The windblew past him, making humming noises in his ears. Once he dislodged asmall stone and it went bouncing and clattering down the slope he'dclimbed. 

He saw where Vale could have been as he watched something come downfrom the sky. He found Vale's sleeping bag, and the ashes of hiscampfire. Here too was the communicator. It had been smashed by a hugestone lifted and dropped upon it, but before that it had been moved. It was not in place on the bench mark from which it could measureinches in a distance of scores of miles. 

There was no other sign of what had apparently happened here. Theashes of the fire were undisturbed. Vale's sleeping bag looked as ifit had not been slept in, as if it had only been spread out for thenight before. Lockley went over the rock shelf inch by inch. No redstains which might be blood. Nothing. .. . 

No. In a patch of soft earth between two stones there was a hoofprint. It was not a footprint. A hoof had made it, but not a horse's hoof, nor a burro's. It wasn't a mountain sheep track. It was not the trackof any animal known on earth. But it was here. Lockley found himselfwondering absurdly if the creature that had made it would squeak, orif it would roar. They seemed equally unlikely. 

He looked cautiously down at the lake which was almost half a milebelow him. The water was utterly blue. It reflected only the craterwall and the landscape beyond the area where the volcanic cliffs hadfallen. Nothing moved. There was no visible apparatus set up on theshore, as Vale had said. But something had happened down in the lake. Trees by the water's edge were bent and broken. Masses of brushwoodhad been crushed and torn away. Limbs were broken down tens of yardsfrom the water, and there were gullies to be seen wherever there wassoft earth. An enormous wave had flung itself against the nearlycircular boundary of the lake. It had struck like a tidal wave dozensof feet high in an inland body of water. It was extremely convincingevidence that something huge and heavy had hurtled down from the sky. 

But Lockley saw no movement nor any other novelty in this wilderness. He heard nothing that was not an entirely normal sound. 

But then he smelled something. 

It was a horrible, somehow reptilian odor. It was the stench ofjungle, dead and rotting. It was much, much worse than the smell of askunk. 

He moved to fling himself into flight. Then light blinded him. Closinghis eyelids did not shut it out. There were all colors, intolerablyvivid, and they flashed in revolving combinations and forms whichsucceeded each other in fractions of seconds. He could see nothing butthis light. Then there came sound. It was raucous. It was cacophonic. It was an utterly unorganized tumult in which musical notes anddiscords and bellowings and shriekings were combined so as to beunbearable. And then came pure horror as he found that he could notmove. Every inch of his body had turned rigid as it became filled withanguish. He felt, all over, as if he were holding a charged wire. 

He knew that he fell stiffly where he stood. He was blinded by lightand deafened by sound and his nostrils were filled with the nauseatingfetor of jungle and decay. These sensations lasted for what seemedyears. 

Then all the sensations ended abruptly. But he still could not see;his eyes were still dazzled by the lights that closing his eyelids hadnot changed. He still could not hear. He'd been deafened by the soundsthat had dazed and numbed him. He moved, and he knew it, but he couldnot feel anything. His hands and body felt numb. 

Then he sensed that the positions of his arms and legs were changed. He struggled, blind and deaf and without feeling anywhere. He knewthat he was confined. His arms were fastened somehow so that he couldnot move them. 

And then gradually--very gradually--his senses returned. He heardsqueakings. At first they were faint as the exhausted nerve ends inhis ears only began to regain their function. He began to regain thesense of touch, though he felt only furriness everywhere. 

He was raised up. It seemed to him that claws rather than fingersgrasped him. He stood erect, swaying. His sense of balance had beenlost without his realizing it. It came back, very slowly. But he sawnothing. Clawlike hands--or handlike claws--pulled at him. He felthimself turned and pushed. He staggered. He took steps out of the needto stay erect. The pushings and pullings continued. He found himselfurged somewhere. He realized that his arms were useless because theywere wrapped with something like cord or rope. 

Stumbling, he responded to the urging. There was nothing else to do. He found himself descending. He was being led somewhere which couldonly be downward. He was guided, not gently, but not brutally either. 

He waited for sight to return to him. It did not come. 

It was then he realized that he could not see because he wasblindfolded. 

There were whistling squeaks very near him. He began helplessly todescend the mountain, surrounded and guided and sometimes pulled byunseen creatures. 

CHAPTER 3

It was a long descent, made longer by the blindfold and clumsier byhis inability to move his arms. More than once Lockley stumbled. Twicehe fell. The clawlike hands or handlike claws lifted him and thrusthim on the way that was being chosen for him. There were whistlingsqueaks. Presently he realized that some of them were directed at him. A squeak or whistle in a warning tone told him that he must beespecially careful just here. 

He came to accept the warnings. It occurred to him that the squeakssounded very much like those button-shaped hollow whistles thatchildren put in their mouths to make strident sounds of varying pitch. Gradually, all his senses returned to normal. Even his eyes under theblindfold ceased to report only glare blindness, and he saw thosepeculiar, dissolving grayish patterns that human eyes transmit fromdarkness. 

More squeakings. A long time later he moved over nearly level grassyground. He was led for possibly half a mile. He had not tried to speakduring all his descent. It would have been useless. If he was to bekilled, he would be killed. But trouble had been taken to bring himdown alive from a remaining bit of crumbling crater wall. His captorshad evidently some use for him in mind. 

They abruptly held him still for a long time--perhaps as much as anhour. It seemed that either instructions were hard to come by, or somepreparation was being made. Then the sound of something or someoneapproaching. Squeaks. 

He was led another long distance. Then claws or hands lifted him. Metal clanked. Those who held him dropped him. He fell three or fourfeet onto soft sand. There was a clanging of metal above his head. 

Then a human voice said sardonically, "Welcome to our city! Where'dthey catch you?"

Lockley said, "Up on a mountainside, trying to see what they weredoing. Will you get me loose, please?"

Hands worked on the cord that bound his arms close to his body. Theyloosened. He removed the blindfold. 

He was in a metal-walled and metal-ceilinged vault, perhaps eight feetwide and the same in height, and perhaps twelve feet long. It had afloor of sand. Some small amount of light came in through the circularhole he'd been dropped through, despite a cover on it. There werethree men already in confinement here. They wore clothing appropriateto workmen from the construction camp. There was a tall lean man, anda broad man with a moustache, and a chunky man. The chunky man hadspoken. 

"Did you see any of 'em?" he demanded now. 

Lockley shook his head. The three looked at each other and nodded. Lockley saw that they hadn't been imprisoned long. The sand floor wasmarked but not wholly formed into footprints, as it would have beenhad they moved restlessly about. Mostly, it appeared, they'd simplysat on the sand floor. 

"We didn't see 'em either, " said the chunky man. "There was a hell ofa explosion over at the lake this mornin'. We piled in a car--mycar--and came over to see what'd happened. Then something hit us. Allof us. Lights. Noise. A godawful stink. A feeling all over like anelectric shock that paralyzed us. We came to blindfolded and tied. They brought us here. That's our story so far. What's happened toyou--and what really happened to us?"

"I'm not sure, " said Lockley. 

He hesitated. Then he told them about Vale, and what he'd reported. They'd had no explanation at all of what had happened to them. Theyseemed relieved to be informed, though the information was hardlyheartening. 

"Critters from Mars, eh?" said the moustached man. "I guess we'd actthe same way if we was to get to Mars. They got to figure out some wayto talk to who lives here. I guess that makes us it--unless we canfigure out something better. "

Lockley, by temperament, tended to anticipate worse things in thefuture than had come in the past. The suggestion that the occupants ofthe spaceship had captured men to learn how to communicate with themseemed highly optimistic. He realized that he didn't believe it. Itseemed extremely unlikely that the invaders from space were entirelyignorant of humanity. The choice of Boulder Lake as a landing place, for example, could not have been made from space. If there was needfor deep water to land in--which seemed highly probable--then it wouldhave been simple good sense to descend in the ocean. The ship couldsubmerge, and it could move about in the lake. Vale had said so. Sucha ship would almost inevitably choose deep water in the ocean for alanding place. To land in a crater lake--one of possibly two or threeon an entire continent suitable for their use--indicated that they hadinformation in advance. Detailed information. It practically shoutedof a knowledge of at least one human language, by which informationabout Crater Lake could have been obtained. Whoever or whatever madeuse of the lake was no stranger to earth!

Yes. .. . They'd needed a deep-water landing and they knew that BoulderLake would do. They probably knew very much more. But if they didn'tknow that Jill waited for him where the trail toward his ditched carbegan, then there was no reason to let them overhear the information. 

"I was part of a team making some base line measurements, " saidLockley, "when this business started. I began to check my instrumentswith a man named Vale. "

He told exactly, for the second time, what Vale said about the thingfrom the sky and the creatures who came out of it. Then he told whathe'd done. But he omitted all reference to Jill. His coming to thelake he ascribed to incredulity. Also, he did not mention meeting thefleeing population of the construction camp. When his story wasfinished he sounded like a man who'd done a very foolhardy thing, buthe didn't sound like a man with a girl on his mind. 

The broad man with the moustache asked a question or two. The tall manasked others. Lockley asked many. 

The answers were frustrating. They hadn't seen their captors at all. They'd heard squeaks when they were being brought to this place, andthe squeaks were obviously language, but no human one. They'd beenbound as well as blindfolded. They hadn't been offered food sincetheir capture, nor water. It seemed as if they'd been seized and putinto this metal compartment to wait for some use of them by theircaptors. 

"Maybe they want to teach us to talk, " said the moustached man, "ormaybe they're goin' to carve us up to see what makes us tick. Ormaybe, " he grimaced, "maybe they want to know if we're good to eat. "

The chunky man said, "Why'd they blindfold us?"

Lockley had begun to have a very grim suspicion about this. It cameout of the realization of how remarkable it was that a ship designedto be navigable in deep water should have landed in a deep craterlake. He said, "Vale said at first that they weren't human, thoughthey were only specks in his binoculars. Later, when he saw themclose, he didn't say what they look like. "

"Must be pretty weird, " said the tall man. 

"Maybe, " said the man with the moustache, attempting humor, "maybethey didn't want us to see them because we'd be scared. Or maybe theydidn't mean to blindfold us, but just to cover us up. Maybe theywouldn't mind us seeing them, but it hurts for them to look at us!"

Lockley said abruptly, "This box we're in. It's made by humans. "

The moustached man said quickly, "We figured that. It's the shell ofa compost pit for the hotel that's goin' to be built around here. They'll sink it in the ground and dump garbage in it, and it'll rot, and then it'll be fertilizer. These critters from space are just usingit to hold us. But what are they gonna do with us?"

There were faint squeakings. The cover to the round opening lifted. Three rabbits dropped down. The cover closed with a clang. The rabbitsshivered and crouched, terrified, in one corner. 

"Is this how they're gonna feed us?" demanded the chunky man. 

"Hell, no!" said the tall man, in evident disgust. "They're dumped inhere like we were. They're animals. So are we. This is a temporarycage. It's got a sand floor that we can bury things in. It won't beany trouble to clean out. The rabbits and us, we stay caged untilthey're ready to do whatever they're goin' to do with us. "

"Which is what?" demanded the chunky man. 

There was no answer. They would either be killed, or they would not. There was nothing to be done. Meanwhile Lockley evaluated his threefellow captives as probably rather good men to have on one's side, andbad ones to have against one. But there was no action which waspractical now. A single guard outside, able to paralyze them bywhatever means it was accomplished, made any idea of escape indaylight foolish. 

"What kind of critters are they?" demanded the chunky man. "Maybe wecould figure out what they'll do if we know what kind of thing theyare!"

"They've got eyes like ours, " said Lockley. 

The three men looked at him. 

"They landed by daylight, " said Lockley. "Early daylight. They couldcertainly have picked the time for their landing. They picked earlymorning so they could have a good long period of daylight in which toget settled before night. If they'd been night moving creatures, they'd have landed in the dark. "

The tall man said, "Sounds reasonable. I didn't think of that. "

"They saw me at a distance, " said Lockley, "and I didn't see them. They've got good eyes. They beat me up to the top of the mountain andhid to see what I'd do. When they saw me looking the lake over afterchecking up on Vale, they paralyzed me and brought me here. So they'vegot eyes like ours. "

"This guy Vale, " said the chunky man. "What happened to him?"

Lockley said, "Probably what'll happen to us. "

"Which is what?" asked the chunky man. 

Lockley did not answer. He thought of Jill, waiting anxiously at theedge of the woods not far from the camp. She'd surely have watched himclimbing. She might have followed his climb all the way to where hewent around to Vale's post. But she wouldn't have seen his capture andshe might be waiting for him now. It wasn't likely, though, that she'dclimb into the trap that had taken Vale and then himself. She mustrealize that that spot was one to be avoided. 

She'd probably try to make her way to his ditched car. She'd heard himask on short wave for a helicopter to come to that place to pick herup. It hadn't been promised; in fact it had been refused. But if sheremained missing, surely someone would risk a low-level flight to findout if she were waiting desperately for rescue. A light plane couldland on the highway if a helicopter wasn't to be risked. Somehow Jillmust find a way to safety. She was in danger because she'd waitedloyally for Vale to come to her at the camp. Now. .. . 

Time passed. Hot sunshine on their prison heated the metal. It becameunbearably hot inside. There came squeakings. The cover of the compostpit shell lifted. Half a dozen wild birds were thrust into theopening. The cover closed again. Lockley listened closely. It waslatched from the outside. There would naturally be a fastening on thecover of a compost pit to keep bears from getting at the garbage itwas built to contain. 

The heat grew savage. Thirst was a problem. Once and only once theyheard a noise from the world beyond their prison. It was a droning humwhich, even through a metal wall, could be nothing but the sound of ahelicopter. It droned and droned, very gradually becoming louder. Then, abruptly, it cut off. That was all. And that was all that thefour in the metal tank knew about events outside of their ownexperience. 

But much was happening outside. Troop-carrying trucks had reached theedge of Boulder Lake National Park, a very few hours after the workmenfrom the camp had gotten out of it. They had a story to tell, and ifit lacked detail it did not lack imagination. The three missing menhad their fate described in various versions, all of which weredramatic and terrifying. The two men who had been paralyzed by someunknown agency described their sensations after their release. Theirstories were immediately relayed to all the news media. It nowappeared that dozens of men had seen the thing descend from the sky. They had not compared notes, however, and their descriptions variedfrom a black pear-shaped globe which had hovered for minutes beforedescending behind the mountains into the lake, to detailed wordpictures of a silvery, torpedo-shaped vessel of space with portholesand flaming rockets and an unknown flag displayed from a flagstaff. 

Of course, none of those accounts could be right. The velocity of thefalling object, as reported from two radar installations, checkedagainst a seismograph record of the time of the impact in the lake andallowed no leeway of time for it to hover in mid-air to be admired. 

But there were enough detailed and first-hand accounts of alarmingevents to make a second statement by the Defense Department necessary. It was an over-correction of the first soothing one. It was intendedto be more soothing still. 

It said blandly that a bolide--a slow-moving, large meteoricobject--had been observed by radar to be descending to earth. It hadbeen tracked throughout its descent. It had landed in Boulder Lake. Air photos taken since its landing showed that an enormous disturbanceof the water of the lake had taken place. It had seemed wise to removeworkmen from the neighborhood of the meteoric fall, and the wholeoccurrence had been made the occasion of a full-scale practiceemergency response by air and other defense forces. Investigation ofthe possible bolide itself was under way. 

The writer of the bulletin was obviously sitting on Vale's report andthat of the workmen so as to tell as little as possible and thatslanted to prevent alarm. The bulletin went on to say that there wasno justification for the alarming reports now spreading through thecountry. This happening was not--repeat, was not--in any wayassociated with the cold war of such long standing. It was simply avery large meteor arriving from space and very fortunately falling ina national park area, and even more fortunately into a deep craterlake so that there was no damage even to the forests of the park. 

The bulletin had no effect, of course. It was too late. It wasreleased at just about the time the temperature in the metalprison--which seemed likely to become a metal coffin--had begun tofall. The moving sun had gone behind a mountain and the compost pitshell was in shadow once more. 

Again the cover of that giant box was opened. A porcupine was droppedinside. The cover went on again. This was, at a guess, about fiveo'clock in the afternoon. The chunky man said drearily, "If this issupposed to be the way they'll feed us, they coulda picked somethingeasier to eat than a porcupine!"

The box now held four men, three rabbits--panting in terror in onecorner--half a dozen game birds and the just-arrived porcupine. Allthe wild creatures shrank away from the men. At any sudden movementthe birds tended to fly hysterically about in the dimness, dashingthemselves against the metal wall. 

"I'd say, " observed Lockley, "that his guess, " he nodded at the tallman, "is the most likely one. Rabbits and birds and porcupines wouldbe considered specimens of the local living creatures. We could beconsidered specimens too. Maybe we are. Maybe we're simply being heldcaged until there's time for a scientific examination of us. Let'shope they don't happen to drop a bear down here to wait with us!"

The tall man said, "Or rattlers! I wonder what time it is. I'll feelbetter when dark comes. They're not so likely to find rattlers in thedark. "

Lockley said nothing. But if Boulder Lake had been chosen for alanding place on the basis of previously acquired information, itwasn't likely that either bears or rattlesnakes would be put inconfinement with the men. The men would have been killed immediately, unless there was a practical use to be made of them. He began to makeguesses. He could make a great many, but none of them added up exactlyright. 

Only one seemed promising, and that assumed a lot of items Lockleycouldn't be sure of. He did know, though, that he'd been lifted upbefore he was dropped into the round opening of this tank-like metalshell. The top of the box was well above ground. It was not sunk inplace as it would eventually be. Evidently it was not yet in itspermanent position. The light inside was dim enough, but he could seethe other men and the animals and the birds. He could make out theriveted plates which formed the box's sides and top. 

Inconspicuously, he worked his hand down through the sand bottom ofthe prison. Four inches down the sand ended and there was earth. Hefelt around. He found grass stems. The box, then, rested on top of theground, which was perfectly natural for a compost pit shell not yetplaced where it would finally belong. The sand. .. . He exploredfurther. 

He waited. The other three stayed quiet. The faint brightness aroundthe cover hole faded away. The interior of the tank-like box becameabysmally black. 

"Can anybody guess the time?" he asked, after aeons seemed to havepassed. 

"It feels like next Thursday, " said the voice of the moustached man, "but it's probably ten or eleven o'clock. Looks like we're just goingto be left here till they get around to us. "

"I think we'd better not wait, " said Lockley. "We've been prettyquiet. They probably think we're well-behaved specimens of thisplanet's wild life. They won't expect us to try anything this late. Suppose we get out. "

"How?" demanded the chunky man. 

Lockley said carefully, "This box is resting on top of the ground. I've dug down through the sand and found the bottom edge of the metalsidewall. If it's resting only on dirt, not stone, we ought to be ableto dig out with our hands. I'll start now. You listen. "

He began to dig with his hands, first clearing away the sand for areasonable space. He felt a certain sardonic interest in what mighthappen. He strongly suspected that nothing undesirable would takeplace. 

It was at least quaint that aliens from outer space should accept abottomless metal shell as a suitable prison for animals. It was quaintthat they'd put in a sandy floor. How would they know that such athing meant a cage, on earth?

Of course the whole event might have been a test of animalintelligence. Almost any animal would have tried to burrow out. 

Lockley dug. The earth was hard, and its upper part was filled withtenacious grass roots. Lockley pulled them away. Once he'd gottenunder them, the digging went faster. Presently he was under the metalside wall. He dug upward. His hand reached open air. 

"One of you can spell me now, " he reported in a low tone. "It lookslike we'll get away. But we've got to make our plans first. We don'twant to be talking outside the tank, or even when the hole'sfair-sized. For instance, will we want to keep together when we getoutside?"

"Nix!" said the chunky man. "We wanna tell everybody about thesecharacters. We scatter. If they catch one they don't catch any more. We couldn't fight any better for bein' together. We better scatter. Icall that settled. I'm scatterin'!"

He crawled to Lockley in the darkness. 

"Where you diggin'? OK. I got it. Move aside an' give me room. "

"Everybody agrees on that?" asked Lockley. 

They did. Lockley was relieved. The chunky man dug busily. There wasonly the sound of breathing, and the occasional fall of thrown-outearth against the metal of the thing that confined them. The chunkyman said briskly, "This dirt digs all right. We just got to make thehole bigger. "

In a little while the chunky man stopped, panting. The tall man said, "I'll take a shot at it. "

There was a breakthrough to the air outside. The atmosphere in thetank improved. The smell of fresh-dug dirt and cool night air wasrefreshing. The moustached man took his turn at digging. Lockley wentat it again. Soon he whispered, "I think it's OK. I'll go ahead. Notalking outside!"

He shook hands all around, whispered "Good luck!" and squirmed throughthe opening to the night. Innumerable stars glittered in the sky. Theywere reflected on the water of the lake, here very close. Lockleymoved silently. In the blackness just behind him, his eyes had becomeadjusted to almost complete darkness. He headed away from the shiningwater. He got brushwood between himself and his former companions. Hestood very, very still. 

He heard them murmuring together. They were outside. But they hadproposed entirely separate efforts at escape. He went on, relieved. Ithappened that the next time he'd see them, circumstances would beentirely different. But he believed they were competent men. 

Guided by the Big Dipper, he moved directly toward the place whereJill should be waiting for him. By the angle of the Dipper's handle heknew that it was almost midnight. Jill would surely have known thatnearly the worst had happened. He'd have to find her. .. . 

It was two o'clock when he reached the place where Jill had intendedto wait. He showed himself openly. He called quietly. There was noanswer. He called again, and again. 

He saw something white. It was a scrap of paper speared on a brushwoodbranch which had been stripped of leaves to make the paper showclearly. Lockley retrieved it and saw markings on it which thestarlight could not help him to read. He went deep into the woods, found a hollow, and bent low, risking the light of his cigarettelighter for a swift look at the message. 

 _"I saw creatures moving around in the camp. They weren't men. I was afraid they might be hunting me. I've gone to wait by the car if I can find it. "_

She'd written in English, in full confidence that creatures from spacewould not be able to read it. Lockley was not so sure, but the messagehadn't been removed. If it had been read, there'd have been an ambushwaiting for him when he found it. So it appeared. 

He headed through the night toward the ditched small car. 

It seemed a very long way, though he did stop and drink his fill froma little mountain stream over which a highway bridge had almost beencompleted. In the night, though, and with hard going, it was not easyto estimate how far he'd gone. In fact, he was anxiously debating ifhe mightn't have passed the abandoned bulldozer when he came upon theplace where blasting had been going on. Still, it was a very long wayto be negotiated over still-remaining tree stumps and the unfilledholes from which others had been pulled. 

He reached the bulldozer and turned south, and at long last reachedthe highway. His car should be no more than a quarter-mile away. Hemoved toward it, close to the road's edge. He heard music. It wasfaint, but vivid because it was the last sound that anybody wouldexpect to hear in the hours before dawn in a wilderness deserted bymankind. He scraped his foot on the roadway. The music stoppedinstantly. He said, "Jill?"

He heard her gasp. 

"I found where Vale had been, " he said steadily. "There was no bloodthere. There's no sign that he's been killed. Then I was caughtmyself. I was put with three other men who were believed killed butwho are still alive. We escaped. It is within reason to hope that Valeis unharmed and that he may escape or somehow be rescued. "

What he said was partly to make her sure that it was he who appearedin the darkness. But it was technically true, too. It was withinreason to hope for Vale's ultimate safety. One can always hope, whatever the odds against the thing hoped for. But Lockley thoughtthat the odds against Vale's living through the events now in progresswere very great indeed. 

Jill stepped out into the starlight. 

"I wasn't--sure it was you, " she said with difficulty. "I saw thethings, you know, at a distance. At first I thought they were men. Sowhen I first saw you--dimly--I was afraid. "

"I'm sorry I haven't better news, " said Lockley. 

"It's good news! It's very good news, " she insisted as he drew near. "If they've captured him, he'll make them understand that he's a man, and that men are intelligent and not just animals, and that theyshould be our friends and we theirs. "

The girl's voice was resolute. Lockley could imagine that all the timeshe'd been waiting, she'd been preparing to deny that even the worstnews was final, until she looked on Vale's dead body itself. 

"Do you want to tell me exactly what you found out?" she asked. 

"I'll tell you while I work on the car, " said Lockley. "We want to getmoving away from here before daybreak. "

He went down to the little car, wedged in the saplings it hadsplintered and broken. He began to clear it so he could lever it backon to the highway. He used a broken sapling, and as he worked he toldwhat had happened, including the three men in the compost pit shelland the dumping of assorted small wild life specimens into it withthem. 

"But they didn't kill you, " said Jill insistently, "and they didn'tkill those three, and there were the two others you say got over theparalysis and went back to the camp. Counting you, that's six men theyhad at their mercy that we know weren't harmed. So why should theyhave harmed a seventh man?"

Lockley did not answer at once. None of the spared six, he thought, had put up a fight. Only Vale had exchanged blows with the crew of thespaceship. Nobody else had seen them. 

"That's right, about Vale, " he said after a moment in which he hadbeen busy. "But this doesn't look good!"

He felt under the car. He squeezed himself beneath its front end. There was a small, fugitive flicker of flame. It went out and he wassilent. 

Presently he got to his feet and said evenly, "We're in a fix. One ofthe front wheels is turned almost at a right angle to the other. Aking pin is broken. The car couldn't be driven even if I managed toget it up on the road. We've got to walk. There ought to be soldierson the way up to the lake today. If we meet them we'll be all right. But this is bad luck!"

It happened that he was mistaken on both counts. There were nosoldiers moving into the park, and it was not bad luck that his carcouldn't be driven. If he'd been able to get it on the road andtrundling down the highway, the car would have been wrecked and theycould very well have been killed. But this was for the future todisclose. 

They took nothing from the car because they could not see beyond thepresent. They started out doggedly to follow the highway that soldierswould be likely to follow on the way to the lake. It was not theshortest way to the world outside the Park. It was considerably longerthan a footpath would have been. But Lockley expected tanks, at least, against which eccentric unearthly weapons would be useless. So theyheaded down the main highway. Lockley was unarmed. They had no food. He hadn't eaten since the morning before. 

When day came--gray and still--and presently the dew upon grass andtree leaves glittered reflections of the sky, he moved aside into thewoods and found a broken-off branch, out of which by very great efforthe made a club. When he came back, Jill was listening attentively tothe little pocket radio. She turned it off. 

"I was hoping for news, " she explained determinedly. "The governmentknows that there are creatures in the spaceship, and he--" that wouldbe Vale "--will be trying to make them understand what kind of beingswe are. So there could be friendly communication almost any time. Butthere aren't any news broadcasts on the air. I suppose it's tooearly. "

He agreed, with reservations. They made their way along the dew-wettedsurface of the highway. As the light grew stronger, Lockley glancedagain and again at Jill's face. She looked very tired. He reflectedsadly that she was thinking of Vale. She'd never thought twice aboutLockley. Even now, or especially now, all her thoughts were for Vale. 

When sunlight appeared on the peaks around them, he said detachedly, "You've had no rest for twenty-four hours and I doubt that you've hadanything to eat. Neither have I. If troops come up this highway we'llhear the engines. I think we'd better get off the highway and try torest. And I may be able to find something for us to eat. "

There are few wildernesses so desolate as to offer no food at all forone who knows what to look for. There is usually some sort of berryavailable. One kind of acorn is not bad to eat. Shoots of bracken arenot unlike asparagus. There are some spiny wild plants whose leaves, if plucked young enough, will yield some nourishment and of coursethere are mushrooms. Even on stone one can find liverish rock-tripewhich is edible if one dries it to complete dessication before soakingit again to make a soup or broth. 

Before he searched for food, though, Lockley said abruptly, "You saidyou saw the creatures and they weren't men. What did they look like?"

"They were a long way away, " Jill told him. "I didn't see themclearly. They're about the size of men but they just aren't men. Faraway as they were, I could tell that!"

Lockley considered. He shrugged and said, "Rest. I'll be back. "

He moved away. He was hungry and he kept his eyes in motion, lookingfor something to take back to Jill. But his mind struggled to form apicture of a creature who'd be the size of a man but would be knownnot to be a man even at a distance; whose difference from mankindcouldn't be described because seen at such great distance. Presentlyhe shook his head impatiently and gave all his attention to the searchfor food. 

He found a patch of berries on a hillside where there was enough earthfor berry bushes, but not for trees. Bears had been at them, but therewere many left. 

He filled his hat with them and made his way back to Jill. She had thepocket radio on again, but at the lowest possible volume. He put theberry-filled hat down beside her. She held up a warning hand. Specklesof sunshine trickled down through the foliage and the tree trunks werespotted with yellow light. They ate the berries as they heard thenews. 

A new official news release was out. And now, twelve hours after thelast, wholly reassuring bulletin, there was no longer any pretensethat the thing in Boulder Lake was merely a meteorite. 

The pretext that it was a natural object, said the news broadcaster, resuming, had been abandoned. But reassurance continued. Photographicplanes had been attempting to get a picture of the alien ship as itfloated in the lake. So far no satisfactory image had been secured, but pictures of wreckage caused by an enormous wave generated in thelake by the alien spaceship's arrival were sharp and clear. Troopshave been posted in a cordon about the Boulder Lake Park area toprevent unauthorized persons from swarming in to see earth's visitorsfrom space. Details of its landing continue to be learned. Workmenfrom the construction camp have been questioned, and the two men whowere paralyzed and then released have told their story. So far fourhuman beings are known to have been seized by the occupants of thespaceship. One is Vale, an eye-witness to the ship's descent andlanding. The three others went to investigate the gigantic explosionaccompanying the landing in the lake. They have not been seen since. This, however, does not imply that they are dead. Quite possibly theinvaders--aliens--guests--who have landed on American soil are tryingto learn how to communicate with the American people who are theirhosts. 

Lockley watched Jill's face. As she heard the references to Vale, shewent white, but she saw Lockley looking at her and said fiercely, "They don't know that the visitors didn't kill you and let you and theother three men escape. Someone ought to tell these broadcasters. .. . "

Lockley did not answer. In his own mind, though, there was the factthat of the two workmen who'd been paralyzed and released, the threemen in the compost pit shell, and himself, none had seen theircaptors. But Vale had. 

The broadcaster went on with a fine air of confidence, reporting thatyesterday afternoon a helicopter had flown into the mountains toexamine the landing site in detail since it could not be examined froma high-flying plane. 

Lockley remembered the droning he and the others had heard through themetal plates of their prison. 

The helicopter had suddenly ceased to communicate. It is believed tohave had engine trouble. However, later on a fast jet had attempted aflight below the extreme altitude of the photographic planes. Itspilot reported that at fifteen thousand feet he'd suddenly smelled anappalling odor. Then he was blinded, deafened, and his muscles knottedin spasms. He was paralyzed. The experience lasted for seconds only. It was as if he'd flown into a searchlight beam which produced thosesensations and then had flown out of it. He'd instinctively usedevasive maneuvers and got away, but twice before he passed the horizonthere were instantaneous flashes of the paralysis and the pain. Scientists determined that the report of the men who'd been paralyzedand released agreed with the report of the pilot. It was assumed thatwhatever or whoever had landed in Boulder Lake possessed a beam--itmight as well be called a terror beam because of the effects ithad--of some sort of radiation which produced the paralysis and theagony. Unless the three men missing from the construction camp haddied of it, however, it was not to be considered a death ray. 

The news went on with every appearance of frankness and confidence. Itwas natural for strangers on a strange planet to take precautionsagainst possibly hostile inhabitants of the newly-found world. Butevery effort would be exerted to make friendly contact and establishpeaceful communications with the beings from space. Their weaponappeared to be of limited range and so far not lethal to human beings. Occasional flashes of its effects had been noted by the troops nowforming a cordon about the Park, but it only produced discomfort, notparalysis. Nevertheless the troops in question have been moved back. Meanwhile rocket missiles are being moved to areas where they candeliver atom bombs on the alien ship if it should prove necessary. Butthe government is extremely anxious to make this contact withextra-terrestrials a friendly one, because contact with a race moreadvanced than ourselves could be of inestimable value to us. Thereforeatom bombs will be used only as a last resort. An atom bomb woulddestroy aliens and their ship together--and we want the ship. Thepublic is urged to be calm. If the ship should appear dangerous, itcan and will be smashed. 

The news broadcast ended. 

Jill said, obviously speaking of Vale, "He'll make them realize thatmen aren't like porcupines and rabbits! When they realize that wehumans are intelligent people, everything will be all right!"

Lockley said reluctantly, "There's one thing to remember, though, Jill. They didn't blindfold the rabbits or the porcupine. They onlyblindfolded men. "

She stared at him. 

"One of the men in the pit with me, " said Lockley, "thought theydidn't want us to see them because they were monsters. That's notlikely. " He paused. "Maybe they blindfolded us to keep us from findingout they aren't. "

CHAPTER 4

"The evidence, " said Lockley as Jill looked at him ashen-faced, "theevidence is all for monsters. But there was something in thatbroadcast that calls for courage, and I want to summon it. We're goingto need it. "

"If they aren't monsters, " said Jill in a stricken voice, "Then--thenthey're men. And we have a cold war with only one country, and they'rethe only ones who'd play a deadly trick like this. So if they aren'tmonsters, in the ship, they must be men, and they'd kill anybody whofound it out. "

"But again, " insisted Lockley, "the evidence is still all formonsters. You've been very loyal and very confident about Vale. Butwe're in a fix. Vale would want you in a safe place, and there'ssomething in that broadcast that doesn't look good. "

"What was in the broadcast?"

Lockley said wryly, "Two things. One was there and one wasn't. Therewasn't anything about soldiers marching up to Boulder Lake to welcomevisitors from wherever they come from, and to say politely to themthat as visitors they are our guests and we'd rather they didn't shootterror beams or paralysis beams about the landscape. We were more orless counting on that, you and I. We were expecting soldiers to comeup the highway headed for the lake. But they aren't coming. "

Jill, still pale, wrinkled her forehead in thought. 

"That's what wasn't in the broadcast, " Lockley told her. "This is whatwas. The troops have formed a cordon about the Park. They've run intothe terror beam. The broadcast said it was weakened by distance andonly made the soldiers uncomfortable. But they've moved back. You seethe point? They've moved back!"

Jill stared, suddenly understanding. 

"But that means--"

"It means, " said Lockley, "that the terror beam is pretty much of aweapon. It has a range up in the miles or tens of miles. We don't knowhow to handle it yet. Whoever or whatever arrived in the thing Valesaw, it or they has or have a weapon our Army can't buck, yet. Thepoint is that we can't wait to be rescued. We've got to get out ofhere on our own feet. Literally. So we forget about highways. Fromhere on we sneak to safety as best we can. And we've got to put ourwhole minds on it. "

Jill shook her head as if to drive certain thoughts out of it. Thenshe said, "I guess you're right. He would want me to be safe. And if Ican't do anything to help him, at least I can not make him worry. Allright! What does sneaking to safety mean?"

Lockley led her down the highway running from Boulder Lake to theoutside world. They came to a blasted-out cut for the highway to runthrough. The road's concrete surface extended to the solid rock oneither side. There was no bare earth to take or hold footprints, andthere was a climbable slope. 

"We go up here and take to the woods, " said Lockley, "because we'renot as easy to spot in woodland as we'd be on a road. The charactersat the lake will know what roads are. If we figure out how to handletheir terror beam, they'll expect the attack to come by road. Sothey'll set up a system to watch the roads. They ought to do it assoon as possible. So we'll avoid notice by not using the roads. It'slucky you've got good walking shoes on. That could be the decidingfactor in our staying alive. "

He led the way, helping her climb. There would be no sign that they'dabandoned the highway. In fact, there'd be no sign of their existenceexcept the small smashed car. Lockley's existence was known, but nothis and Jill's together. 

Lockley did not feel comfortable about having deliberately shockedJill into paying some attention to her own situation instead ofstaying absorbed in the possible or probable fate of Vale. But forthem to get clear was going to call for more than sentimentality onJill's part. Lockley couldn't carry the load alone. 

There was an invasion in process. It could be, apparently, an invasionfrom space, in which case the terror produced would be terror of theunknown. But Lockley had conceived of the possibility that it might bean invasion only from the other side of the world. Such an invasionwas thought of by every American at least once every twenty-fourhours. The fears it would arouse would be fears of the all toothoroughly known. 

The whole earth had the jitters because of the apparently inevitabletrial of strength between its two most gigantic powers. Their rivalryseemed irreconcilable. Most of humanity dreaded their conflict withappalled resignation because there seemed no way to avoid it. Yet itwas admittedly possible that an all-out war between them might endwith all the world dead, even plants and microbes in the deepest seas. It was ironic that the most reasonable hope that anybody could havewas that one or the other nation would come upon some weapon so newand irresistible that it could demand and receive the surrender of theother without atomic war. 

Atom bombs could have done the trick, had only one nation owned them. But both were now armed so that by treacherous attack either couldalmost wipe out the other. There was no way to guard against desperateand terrible retaliation by survivors of the first attacked country. It was the certainty of retaliation which kept the actual war a coldone--a war of provocation and trickery and counter-espionage, but notof mutual extermination. 

But Lockley had suggested--because it was the worst ofpossibilities--that America's rival had developed a new weapon whichcould win so long as it was not attributed to its user. If the UnitedStates believed itself attacked from space, it would not launchmissiles against men. It would ask help, and help would be given evenby its rival if the invasion were from another planet. Men wouldalways combine against not-men. But if this were a ship from nofarther than the other side of the earth, and only pretended to befrom an alien world . .. America could be conquered because it believedit was fighting monsters instead of other men. 

This was not likely, but it was believable. There was no proof, but inthe nature of things proof would be avoided. And if his idea shouldhappen to be true, the disaster could be enormously worse than aninvasion from another star. This first landing could be only a test tomake sure that the new weapon was unknown to America and could not becountered by Americans. The crew of this ship would expect to besuccessful or be killed. In a way, if an atom bomb had to be used todestroy them, they would have succeeded. Because other ships couldland in American cities where they could not be bombed without killingmillions; where they could demand surrender under pain of death. Andget it. 

Lockley looked at the sun. He glanced at his watch. 

"That would be south, " he indicated. "It's the shortest way for us toget to where you'll be reasonably safe and I can tell what I know tosomeone who may use it. "

Jill followed obediently. They disappeared into the woods. They couldnot be seen from the highway. They could not even be detected fromaloft. When they had gone a mile, Jill made her one and final protest. 

"But it can't be that they aren't monsters! They must be!"

"Whatever they are, " said Lockley, "I don't want them to lay hands onyou. "

They went on. Once, from the edge of a thicket of trees, they saw thehighway below them and to their left. It was empty. It curved out ofsight, swinging to the left again. They moved uphill and down. Now thegoing was easy, through woods with very little underbrush and a carpetof fallen leaves. Again it was a sunlit slope with prickly bushes tobe avoided. And yet again it was boulder-strewn terrain that might benearly level but much more often was a hillside. 

Lockley suddenly stopped short. He felt himself go white. He graspedJill's hand and whirled. He practically dragged her back to the patchof woods they'd just left. 

"What's the matter?" The sight of his face made her whisper. 

He motioned to her for silence. He'd smelled something. It was faintbut utterly revolting. It was the smell of jungle and of foulness. There was the musky reek of reptiles in it. It was a collection of allthe smells that could be imagined. It was horrible. It was infinitelyworse than the smell of skunk. 

Silence. Stillness. Birds sang in the distance. But nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. After a long time Lockley said suddenly, "I've gotan idea. It fits into that broadcast. I have to take a chance to findout. If anything happens to me, don't try to help me!"

He'd smelled the foul odor at least fifteen minutes before, and haddragged Jill back, and there had been no other sign of monsters ornot-monsters upon the earth. Now he crouched down and crawled amongthe bushes. He came to the place where he'd smelled the ghastly smellbefore. He smelled it again. He drew back. It became fainter, thoughit remained disgusting. He moved forward, stopped, moved back. He wentsideways, very, very carefully, extending his hand before him. 

He stopped abruptly. He came back, his face angry. 

"We were lucky we couldn't use the car, " he said when he was near Jillagain. "We'd have been killed or worse. "

She waited, her eyes frightened. 

"The thing that paralyzes men and animals, " he told her, "is aprojected beam of some sort. We almost ran into it. It's probably akinto radar. I thought they'd put watchers on the highways. They didbetter. They project this beam. When it blocks a highway, anybody whocomes along that highway runs into it. His eyes become blinded byfantastic colored lights, and he hears unbearable noises and feelsanguish and they smell what we smelled just now. And he's paralyzed. Such a beam was turned on me yesterday and I was captured. A beam likethat on the highway at the lake paralyzed three men who were carriedaway, and later two others whose car ditched and who stayed paralyzeduntil the beam was turned off. "

"But we only smelled something horrible!" protested Jill. 

"You did. I rushed you away. I'd smelled it before. But I went back. And I smelled it, and I crawled forward a little way and I began tosee flashes of light and to hear noises and my skin tingled. I pushedmy hand ahead of me--and it became paralyzed. Until I pulled it back. "Then he said, "Come on. "

"What will we do?"

"We change our line of march. If we drove into it or walked into itwe'd be paralyzed. It's a tight beam, but there's just a littlescatter. Just a little. You might say it leaks at its edges. We'll tryto follow alongside until it thins out to nothing or we get where wewant to go. Unless, " he added, "they've got another beam that crossesit. Then we'll be trapped. "

He led the way onward. 

They covered four miles of very bad going before Jill showed signs ofdistress and Lockley halted beside a small, rushing stream. He sawfish in the clear water and tried to improvise a way to catch them. Hefailed. He said gloomily, "It wouldn't do to catch fish here anyhow. Afire to cook them would show smoke by day and might be seen at night. And whatever's at the Lake might send a terror beam. We'll leave herewhen you're rested. "

He examined the stream. He went up and down its bank. He disappearedaround a curve of the stream. Jill waited, at first uneasily, thenanxiously. 

He came back with his hands full of bracken shoots, their ends tightlycurled and their root ends fading almost to white. 

"I'm afraid, " he observed, "that this is our supper. It'll taste a lotlike raw asparagus, which tastes a lot like raw peanuts, and aone-dish meal of it won't stick to your ribs. That's the trouble witheating wild stuff. It's mostly on the order of spinach. "

"I'll carry them, " said Jill. 

She actually looked at him for the first time. Until she found herselfanxious because he was out of sight for a long time, she hadn't reallyregarded him as an individual. He'd been only a person who was helpingher because Vale wasn't available. Now she assured herself that Valewould be very grateful to him for aiding her. "I'm rested now, " sheadded. 

He nodded and led the way once more. He watched the sun for direction. Two or three miles from their first halt he said abruptly, "I thinkthe terror beam should be over yonder. " He waved an arm. "I've got anidea about it. I'll see. "

"Be careful!" said Jill uneasily. 

He nodded and swung away, moving with a peculiar tentativeness. Sheknew that he was testing for the smell which was the first symptom ofapproach to the alien weapon. 

He halted half a mile from where Jill watched, resting again while shegazed after him. He moved backward and forward. He marked a place witha stone. He came well back from it and seemed to remove his wristwatch. He laid it on a boulder and stamped on it. He stamped again andagain, shifting it between stampings. Then he pounded it with a smallrock. He stood up and came back, trailing something which glitteredgolden for an instant. 

He halted before he reached the rock he'd placed as a marker. He didcryptic things, facing away from Jill. From time to time there was agolden glitter in the air near him. 

He came back. As he came, he wound something into a little coil. Itwas the silicon bronze mainspring of his non-magnetic watch. He heldit for her to see and put it in his pocket. 

"I know what the terror beam is--for what good it'll do!" he saidbitterly. "It's a beam of radiation on the order of radar, and forthat matter X-rays and everything else. Only an aerial does pick it upand this watchspring makes a good one. I could barely detect the smellat a certain place, but when I touched the laid out spring, it pickedup more than my body did and it became horrible! Then I moved in towhere my skin began to tingle and I saw lights and heard noises. Thespring made all the difference in the world. I even found thedirection of the beam. "

Jill looked frightened. 

"It comes from Boulder Lake, " he told her. "It's the terror beam, allright! You can walk into it without knowing it. And I suspect that ifit were strong enough it would be a death ray, too!"

Jill seemed to flinch a little. 

"They're not using it at killing strength, " said Lockley coldly. "They're softening us up. Letting us find out we're frustrated andhelpless, and then letting us think it over. I'll bet they intendedthe four of us to escape from that compost pit thing so we could tellabout it! But we'll know, now, if we find dead men in rows in awiped-out town, we'll know what killed them, and when they ask uspolitely to become their slaves, we'll know we'll have to do it ordie!"

Jill waited. When he seemed to have finished, she said, "If they'remonsters, do you think they want to enslave us?"

He hesitated, and then said with a grimace, "I've a habit, Jill, oflooking forward to the future and expecting unpleasant things tohappen. Maybe it's so I'll be pleasantly surprised when they don't. "

"Suppose, " said Jill, "that they aren't monsters. What then?"

"Then, " said Lockley, "it's a cold war device, to find out if theother side in the cold war can take us over without our suspectingthey're the ones doing it. Naturally those in this ship will blowthemselves up rather than be found out. "

"Which, " said Jill steadily, "doesn't offer much hope for. .. . "

She didn't say Vale's name. She couldn't. Lockley grimaced again. 

"It's not certain, Jill. The evidence is on the side of the monsters. But in either case the thing for us to do is get to the Army with whatI've found out. I've had a stationary beam to test, however crudely. The cordon must have been pushed back by a moving or an intermittentbeam. It wouldn't be easy to experiment with one of those. Come on. "

She stood up. She followed when he went on. They climbed steephillsides and went down into winding valleys. The sun began to sink inthe west. The going was rough. For Lockley, accustomed to wildernesstravel, it was fatiguing. For Jill it was much worse. 

They came to a sere, bare hillside on which neither trees norbrushwood grew. It amounted to a natural clearing, acres in extent. Lockley swept his eyes around. There were many thick-foliaged smalltrees attempting to advance into the clear space. He grunted insatisfaction. 

"Sit down and rest, " he commanded. "I'll send a message. "

He broke off branches from dark green conifers. He went out into theclearing and began to lay them out in a pattern. He came back andbroke off more, and still more. Very slowly, because the lines had tobe large and thick, the letters S. O. S. Appeared in dark green on theclayey open space. The letters were thirty feet high, and the lineswere five feet wide. They should show distinctly from the air. 

"I think, " said Lockley with satisfaction, "that we might getsomething out of this! If it's sighted, a 'copter might risk coming inafter us. " He looked at her appraisingly. "I think you'd enjoy a goodmeal. "

"I want to say something, " said Jill carefully. "I think you've beentrying to cheer me up, after saying something to arouse me--which Ineeded. If the creatures aren't monsters, they'll never actually letanybody loose who's seen that they aren't. Isn't that true? And if itis--"

"We know of six men who were captured, " insisted Lockley, "and I wasone of them. All six escaped. Vale may have escaped. They're not goodat keeping prisoners. We don't know and can't know unless it'smentioned on a news broadcast that he's out and away. So there'sabsolutely no reason to assume that Vale is dead. "

"But if he saw them, when he was fighting them--"

"The evidence, " insisted Lockley again, "is that he saw monsters. Theonly reason to doubt it is that they blindfolded four of us. "

Jill seemed to think very hard. Presently she said resolutely, "I'mgoing to keep on hoping anyhow!"

"Good girl!" said Lockley. 

They waited. He was impatient, both with fate and with himself. Hefelt that he'd made Jill face reality when--if this S. O. S. Signalbrought help--it wasn't necessary. And there was enough of grimness inthe present situation to make it cruelty. 

After a very long time they heard a faint droning in the air. Theremight have been others when they were trudging over bad terrain, andthey might not have noticed because they were not listening for suchsounds. There were planes aloft all around the lake area. They'd beensent up originally in response to a radar warning of something comingin from space. Now they flew in vast circles around the landing placeof that reported object. They flew high, so high that only contrailswould have pointed them out. But atmospheric conditions today weresuch that contrails did not form. The planes were invisible from theground. 

But the pilots could see. When one patrol group was relieved byanother, it carried high-magnification photographs of all the park, tobe developed and examined with magnifying glasses for any signs ofactivity by the crew of the object from space. 

A second lieutenant spotted the S. O. S. Within half an hour of thefilms' return. There was an immediate and intense conference. Thelengths of shadows were measured. The size and slope and probablecondition of the clearing's surface were estimated. 

A very light plane, intended for artillery-spotting, took off from thenearest airfield to Boulder Lake. 

And Lockley and Jill heard it long before it came in sight. It flewlow, threading its way among valleys and past mountain-flanks to avoidbeing spotted against the sky. The two beside the clearing heard itfirst as a faint mutter. The sound increased, diminished, thenincreased again. 

It shot over a minor mountain-flank and surveyed the bare space withthe huge letters on it. Lockley and Jill raced out into view, wavingfrantically. The plane circled and circled, estimating the landingconditions. It swung away to arrive at a satisfactory approach path. 

It wavered. It made a half-wingover, and it side-slipped crazily, andcame up and stalled and flipped on its back and dived. .. . 

And it came out of its insane antics barely twenty feet above theground. It raced away as close as possible to touching its wheels toearth. It went away behind the mountains. The sound of its goingdwindled and dwindled and was gone. It appeared to have escaped from adeliberately set trap. 

Lockley stared after it. Then he went white. 

"Idiot!" he cried fiercely. "Come on! Run!"

He seized Jill's hand. They fled together. Evidently, something hadplayed upon the pilot of the light plane. He'd been deafened andblinded and all his senses were a shrieking tumult while his musclesknotted and his hands froze on the controls of his ship. He hadn'tflown out of the beam that made him helpless. He'd fallen out of it. And then he raced for the horizon. He got away. And it would appear tothose to whom he reported that he'd arrived too late at thedistress-signal. If fugitives had made it, they'd been overtaken andcaptured by the creatures of Boulder Lake, and there'd been an ambushset up for the plane. It was a reasonable decision. 

But it puzzled the pilot's superior officers that he hadn't beenallowed to land the plane before the beam was turned on him. He couldhave been paralyzed while on the ground, and he and his plane couldhave yielded considerable information to creatures from another world. It was puzzling. 

Lockley and Jill raced for the woodland at the clearing's edge. Lockley clamped his lips tight shut to waste no breath in speech. Thearrival and the circling of the plane had been a public notice thatthere were fugitives here. If the beam could paralyze a pilot inmid-air, it could be aimed at fugitives on the ground. .. . There couldbe no faintest hope. .. . 

Wholly desperate, Lockley helped Jill down a hillside and into avalley leading still farther down. 

He smelled jungle, and muskiness, and decay, and flowers, and everyconceivable discordant odor. Flashes of insane colorings formedthemselves in his eyes. He heard the chaotic uproar which meant thathis auditory nerves, like the nerves in his eyes and nostrils andskin, were stimulated to violent activity, reporting every kind ofmessage they could possibly report all at once. 

He groaned. He tried to find a hiding-place for Jill so that if orwhen the invaders searched for her, they would not find her. But heexpected his muscles to knot in spasm and cramp before he couldaccomplish anything. 

They didn't. The smell lessened gradually. The meaningless flashingsof preposterous color grew faint. The horrible uproar his auditorynerves reported, ceased. He and Jill had been at the mercy of theunseen operator of the terror beam. Perhaps the beam had grazed them, by accident. Or it could have been weakened. .. . 

It was very puzzling. 

CHAPTER 5

When darkness fell, Lockley and Jill were many miles away from theclearing where he had made the S. O. S. They were under a dense screenof leaves from a monster tree whose roots rose above ground at thefoot of its enormous trunk. They formed a shelter of sorts againstobservation from a distance. Lockley had spotted a fallen tree fargone with wood-rot. He broke pieces of the punky stuff with hisfingers. Then he realized that without a pot the bracken shoots he'dgathered could not be cooked. They had to be boiled or not cooked atall. 

"We'll call it a salad, " he told Jill, "minus vinegar and oil andgarlic, and eat what we can. "

She'd been pale with exhaustion before the sun sank, but he hadn'tdared let her rest more than was absolutely necessary. Once he'doffered to carry her for a while, but she'd refused. Now she satdrearily in the shelter of the roots, resting. 

"We might try for news, " he suggested. 

She made an exhausted gesture of assent. He turned on the tiny radioand tuned it in. There was no scarcity of news, now. A few days past, news went on the air on schedule, mostly limited to five-minuteperiods in which to cover all the noteworthy events of the world. Partof that five minutes, too, was taken up by advertising matter from asponsor. Now music was rare. There were occasional melodies, but mostwere interrupted for new interpretations of the threat to earth atBoulder Lake. Every sort of prominent person was invited to air hisviews about the thing from the sky and the creatures it brought. Mosthad no views but only an urge to talk to a large audience. Something, though, had to be put on the air between commercials. 

The actual news was specific. Small towns around the fringe of thePark area were being evacuated of all their inhabitants. Foreignscientists had been flown to the United States and were at thetemporary area command post not far from Boulder Lake. Rocket missileswere aimed and ready to blast the lake and the mountains around itshould the need arise. A drone plane had been flown to the lake with atelevision camera transmitting back everything its lens saw. Itarrived at the lake and its camera relayed back exactly nothing thathad not been photographed and recorded before. But suddenly there wasa crash of static and the drone went out of control and crashed. Itscamera faithfully transmitted the landscape spinning around until itsdestruction. Military transmitters were beaming signals on everyconceivable frequency to what was now universally called the alienspaceship. They had received no replies. The foreign scientists hadagreed that the terror beam--paralysis beam--death beam--waselectronic in nature. 

Lockley had thought Jill asleep from pure weariness, but her voicecame out of the darkness beside the big tree trunk. 

"You found that out!" she said. "About its being electronic!"

"I had a sample stationary beam to check on, " said Lockley. "Theyhaven't. Which may be a bad thing. Nobody's going to make usefulobservations of something that makes him blind and deaf and paralyzedwhile he's in the act. There are some things that puzzle me aboutthat. Why haven't they killed anybody yet? They've got the publicabout as scared as it can get without some killing. And why didn't weget the full force of the beam after the plane had been driven away?They could have given us the full treatment if they'd wanted to. Whydidn't they?"

"If people run away from the towns, " said Jill's voice, very tired andsleepy, "maybe they think that's enough. They can take the towns. .. . "

Lockley did not answer, and Jill said no more. Her breathing becamedeep and regular. She was so weary that even hunger could not keep herawake. 

Lockley tried to think. There was the matter of food. Bracken shootswere common enough but unsubstantial. It would need more carefulobservation to note all the likely spots for mushrooms. Perhaps theywere far enough from the lake to take more time hunting food. Theywere almost exactly in the situation of Australian bushmen who liveexclusively by foraging, with some not-too-efficient hunting. ButAustralian savages were not as finicky as Jill and himself. They ategrubs and insects. For this sort of situation, prejudices were ahandicap. 

He considered the idea with sardonic appreciation. Two days ofinadequate food and such ideas came! But he and Jill wouldn't be theonly ones to think such things if matters continued as they weregoing. The towns around Boulder Lake were being evacuated. The cordonabout it had been made to retreat. There was panic not only inAmerica, but everywhere. In Europe there were wild rumors of otherlandings of other ships of space. The stock markets would undoubtedlyclose tomorrow, if they hadn't closed today. There'd be the beginningof a mass exodus from the larger cities, starting quietly but buildingup to frenzy as those who tried to leave jammed all the routes bywhich they could get away. If the creatures of the spaceship wantedmore than the flight of all humans from about their landing place, there would be genuine trouble. Let them move aggressively and therewould be panic and disorder and pure catastrophe, with self-exiledcity dwellers desperate from hunger because they were away from marketcenters. It looked as if a dozen or two monsters could wreck acivilization without the need to kill one single human being directly. 

He heard a sound. He turned off the radio, gripping the clumsy clubwhich was probably useless against anything really threatening. 

The sound continued. There were rustlings of leaves, and then faintrattling, almost clicking noises. Whatever the creature was, it wasnot large. It seemed to amble tranquilly through the forest and thenight, neither alarmed nor considering itself alarming. 

The clickings again. And suddenly Lockley knew what it was. Of course!He'd heard it in the compost pit shell, when he was a prisoner of theinvaders from space. He rose and moved toward the noise. The creaturedid not run away. It went about its own affairs with the same peacefulindifference as before. Lockley ran into a tree. He stumbled over afallen branch on the ground. He came to the place where the creatureshould be. There was silence. He flicked the flint of his pocketlighter and in the flash of brightness he saw his prey. It had heardhis approach. It was a porcupine, prudently curled up into a spikyball and placidly defying all carnivores, including men. A porcupineis normally the one wild creature without an enemy. Even mencustomarily spare it because so often it has saved the lives of losthunters and half-starved travelers. It accomplishes this by its blandrefusal to run away from anybody. 

Lockley classed himself as a half-starved traveler. He struck withthe club after a second spark from his lighter-flint. 

Presently he had a small, barely smouldering fire of rotted wood. Hecooked over it, and the smell of cooking roused Jill from herexhausted slumber. 

"What--"

"We're having a late supper, " said Lockley gravely. "A midnight snack. Take this stick. There's a loin of porcupine on it. Be careful! It'shot!"

Jill said, "Oh-h-h-h!" Then, "Is there more for you?"

"Plenty!" he assured her. "I hunted it down with my trusty club, andonly got stuck a half-dozen times while I was skinning and cleaningit. "

She ate avidly, and when she'd finished he offered more, which sherefused until he'd had a share. 

They did not quite finish the whole porcupine, but it was an odd andcompanionable meal, there in the darkness with the barely-glowingcoals well-hidden from sight. Lockley said, "I'm sort of a newsaddict. Shall we see what the wild radio waves are saying?"

"Of course, " said Jill. She added awkwardly: "Maybe it's the suddenfood, but--I hope you'll remain my friend after this is all over. Idon't know anyone else I'd say that to. "

"Consider, " said Lockley, "that I've made an eloquent and gratefulreply. "

But his expression in the darkness was not happy. He'd fallen in lovewith Jill after meeting her only twice, and both times she had beenwith Vale. She intended to marry Vale. But on the evidence at handVale was either dead or a prisoner of the invaders; if the last, hischances of living to marry Jill did not look good, and if the first, this was surely no time to revive his memory. 

He found a news broadcast. He suspected that most radio stationswould stay on the air all night, now that it was officially admittedthat the object in Boulder Lake was a spaceship bringing invaders toearth. The government releases spoke of them as "visitors, " in abelated use of the term, but the public was suspicious of reassurancesnow. At the beginning the landing had seemed like another exaggeratedhorror tale of the kind that kept up newspaper circulations. Now thepublic was beginning to believe it, and people might stop going totheir offices and the trains might cease to ran on time. When thathappened, disaster would be at hand. 

The news came in a resonant voice which revealed these facts:

Four more small towns had been ordered evacuated because of theirproximity to Boulder Lake. The radiation weapon of the aliens hadpushed back the military cordon by as much as five miles. But the bignews was that the aliens had broken radio silence. Apparently they'dexamined and repaired the short wave communicator from the helicopterthey'd knocked down. 

Shortly after sundown, said the news report, a call had come throughon a military short wave frequency. It was a human voice, firstmuttering bewilderedly and then speaking with confusion anduneasiness. The message had been taped and now was released to thepublic. 

_"What the hell's this . .. ? Oh. .. . What do you characters want me todo? This feels like the short wave set from the 'copter. .. . Hmm. .. . You got it turned on. .. . What'll I do with it, Broadcast? I don't knowwhether you want me to talk to you or to back home, wherever thatis. .. . Maybe you want me to say I'm havin' a fine time an' wish youwas here. .. . I'm not. I wish I was there. .. . If this is goin' on theair I'm Joe Blake, radio man on the_ '_copter two 'leven. We wereheadin' in to Boulder Lake when I smelled a stink. Next second therewere lights in my eyes. They blinded me. Then I heard a racket likeall hell was loose. Then I felt like I had hold of a powertransmission line. I couldn't wiggle a finger. I stayed that way tillthe 'copter crashed. When I come to, I was blindfolded like I am now. I don't know what happened to the other guys. I haven't seen 'em. Ihaven't seen anything! But they just put me in front of what I thinkis the 'copter's short wave set an' squeaked at me_--"

The recorded voice ended abruptly. The news announcer's voice cameback. He said that the member of the 'copter crew had given some otherinformation before he was arbitrarily cut off. 

"I'll bet, " said Lockley when the newscast ended, "I'll bet the otherinformation was that the invaders have managed to tell him that earthmust surrender to them!"

"Why?"

"What else would they want to say? To come and play patty-cake, whenthey can push the Army around at will and have managed to keep planesfrom flying anywhere near them? They may not know we've got atombombs, but I'll bet they do! Part of that extra information could havebeen a warning not to try to use them. It would be logical to bluffeven on that, though they couldn't make good. "

Jill said very carefully, "You hinted once that they might be men, pretending to be monsters. But that would mean that somebody I careabout would probably be killed because he'd seen them and knew theyweren't creatures from beyond the stars. "

"I think you can forget that idea, " said Lockley. "They don't act likemen. Chasing away the plane that was going to land for us, and notusing the beam on the fugitives it was plainly going to landfor--that's not like men preparing to take over a continent! Andnudging the Army back to make the cordoned space larger--that's notlike our most likely human enemy, either. They'd wipe out the cordonby stepping up the terror beam to death ray intensity. "

"Suppose they couldn't?"

"They wouldn't have landed with a weapon that couldn't kill anybody, "said Lockley. "It's much more likely that they're monsters. But theydon't act like monsters, either. "

Jill was silent for a moment. 

"Not even monsters who wanted to make friends?"

"They, " said Lockley drily, "would hardly make a surprise landing. They'd have parked on the moon and squeaked at us until we gotcurious, and then they'd arrange to land, or to meet men in orbit, orsomething. But they didn't. They made a surprise landing, and cleareda big space of humans, keeping themselves to themselves. But if theydo think we're animals, like rabbits, they'd kill people instead ofstinging them up a bit, or paralyzing them for a while and thenletting them go. That's not like any monster I can imagine!"

"Then--"

"You'd better go to sleep, " said Lockley. "We've got a long day's hikebefore us tomorrow. "

"Yes-s-s, " agreed Jill reluctantly. "Good-night. "

"'Night, " said Lockley curtly. 

He stayed awake. It was amusing that he was uneasy about wild animals. There were predators in the Park, and he had only an improvised clubfor a weapon. But he knew well enough that most animals avoid manbecause of a bewildering sudden development of instinct. 

Grizzly bears, before the white man came, were so scornful of manthat they could be considered the dominant species in North America. They'd been known to raid a camp of Indians to carry away a man forfood. Indian spears and arrows were simply ineffective against them. When Stonewall Jackson was a lieutenant in the United States Army, stationed in the West to protect the white settlers, he and adetachment of mounted troopers were attacked without provocation by agrizzly who was wholly contemptuous of them. The then LieutenantJackson rode a horse which was blind in one eye, and he maneuvered toget the bear on the horse's blind side so he could charge it. With hiscavalry sabre he split the grizzly's skull down to its chin. It wasthe only time in history that a grizzly bear was ever killed by a manwith a sword. But no grizzly nowadays would attack a man unlesscornered. Even cubs with no possible experience of humankind areterrified by the scent of men. 

All that was true enough. In addition, preparations for the Parkincluded much activity by the Wild Life Control unit, which persuadedbears to congregate in one area by putting out food for them, and tookvarious other measures for deer and other animals. It had seeded troutstreams with fingerlings and the lake itself with baby big-mouthedbass. The huge trailer truck of Wild Life Control was familiar enough. Lockley had seen it headed up to the lake the day before the landing. Now he found himself wondering sardonically to what degree the WildLife Control men determined where mountain lions should hunt. 

He'd slept in the open innumerable times without thinking of mountainlions. With Jill to look after, though, he worried. But he washorribly weary, and he knew somehow that in the back of his mind therewas something unpleasant that was trying to move into his consciousthoughts. It was a sort of hunch. Wearily and half asleep, he tried toput his mind on it. He failed. 

He awoke suddenly. There were rustlings among the trees. Somethingmoved slowly and intermittently toward him. It could be anything, evena creature from Boulder Lake. He heard other sounds. Another creature. The first drew near, not moving in a straight line. The secondcreature followed it, drawing closer to the first. 

Lockley's scalp crawled. Creatures from space might have some of thehighly-developed senses which men had lost while growingcivilized--full keenness of scent, for example. 

Such a creature might be able to find Lockley and Jill in the darknessafter trailing them for miles. And so primitive a talent, in acreature farther advanced than men, was somehow more horrifying thananything else Lockley had thought of about them. He gripped his clubdesperately, wholly aware that a star creature should be able toparalyze him with the terror beam. .. . 

There were whistling, squealing noises. They were very much like thesqueaks his captors had directed at each other and at him when he wasblindfolded and being led downhill to imprisonment in the compost pitshell. Very much like, but not identical. Nevertheless, Lockley's hairseemed to stand up on end and he raised his club in desperation. 

The whistling squeals grew shriller. Then there was an indescribablesound and one of the two creatures rushed frantically away. Ittraveled in great leaps through the blackness under the trees. 

And then there was a sudden whiff of a long-familiar odor, smelled ahundred times before. It was the reek of a skunk, stalked by acarnivore and defending itself as skunks do. But a skunk was nothinglike a terror beam. Its effluvium offended only one sense, affectedonly one set of sensation nerves. The terror beam. .. . 

Lockley opened his mouth to laugh, but did not. The thing at the backof his mind had come forward. He was appalled. 

Jill said shakily, "What's the matter? What's happened? That smell--"

"It's only a skunk, " said Lockley evenly. "He just told me some verybad news. I know how the terror beam works now. And there's not athing that can be done about it. Not a thing. It can't be!"

He raged suddenly, there in the darkness, because he saw the utterhopelessness of combatting the creatures who'd taken over BoulderLake. There was nothing to keep them from taking over the whole earth, no matter what sort of monsters or not-monsters they might be. 

CHAPTER 6

It was nine o'clock at night when Lockley killed the porcupine, andten by the time Jill had gone back to sleep huddled between theprojecting roots of a giant tree. Shortly after midnight Lockley hadbeen awakened when a skunk defeated a hungry predator within a hundredyards of their bivouac. But some time in between, there was anotherhappening of much greater importance elsewhere. 

Something came out of Boulder Lake National Park. All humans hadsupposedly fled from it. It was abandoned to the creatures of thething from the sky. But something came out of it. 

Nobody saw the thing, of course. Nobody could approach it, which wasthe point immediately demonstrated. No human being could endure beingwithin seven miles of whatever it was. It was evidently a vehicle ofsome sort, however, because it swung terror beams before it, andterror beams on either side, and when it was clear of the Park itplayed terror beams behind it, too. Men who suffered the lightesttouch of those sweeping beams of terror and anguish moved franticallyto avoid having the experience again. So when something moved out ofthe Park and sent wavering terror beams before it, men moved to oneside or the other and gave it room. 

On a large-scale map in the military area command post, its progresscould be watched as it was reported. The reports described adevelopment of unbearable beam strength which showed up as a bulge inthe cordon's roughly circular line. That bulge, which was the cordonitself moving back, moved outward and became a half-circle some milesacross. It continued to move outward, and on the map it appeared likea pseudopod extruded by an enormous amoeba. It was the area ofeffectiveness of a weapon previously unknown on earth--the area wherehumans could not stay. 

Deliberately, the unseen moving thing severed itself from the similarand larger weapon field which was its birthplace and its home. Itmoved with great deliberation toward the small town of Maplewood, twenty miles from the border of the Park. 

Jeeps and motorcycles scurried ahead of it, just out of reach of itsbeams. They made sure that houses and farms and all inhabited placeswere emptied of people before the moving terror beams could engulfthem. They went into the town of Maplewood itself and frantically madesure that nothing alive remained in it. They went on to clear thecountryside beyond. 

The unseen thing from the Park moved onward. High overhead there was adull muttering like faraway thunder, but it was planes with filledbomb racks circling above the starlit land. There were men in thoseplanes who ached to dive down and destroy this separated fraction ofan invasion. But there were firm orders from the Pentagon. So long asthe invaders killed nobody, they were not to be attacked. There wasreason for the order in the desire of the government to be on friendlyterms with a race which could travel between the stars. But there wasan even more urgent reason. The aliens had not yet begun to murder, but it was suspected that they had a horrifying power to kill. So itwas firmly commanded that no bomb or missile or bullet was to be usedunless the invaders invited hostilities by killing humans. Theircaptives--the crew of a helicopter--might be freed if aliens and menachieved friendship. So for now--no provocation!

The thing which nobody saw moved comfortably over the ground betweenthe park and Maplewood. In the center of the weapon field there was asomething which generated the terror beam and probably carriedpassengers. Whatever it was, it moved onward and into Maplewood andfor seven miles in every direction troops watched for it to move outagain. Artillerymen had guns ready to fire upon it if they ever gotfiring coordinates and permission to go into action. Planes were readyto drop bombs if they ever got leave to do so. And a few miles awaythere were rockets ready to prove their accuracy and devastatingcapacity if only given a launching command. But nothing happened. Noteven a flare was permitted to be dropped by the planes far up in thesky. A flare might be taken for hostility. 

The thing from the Park stayed in Maplewood for two hours. At the endof that time it moved deliberately back toward the Park. It left thetown untouched save for certain curious burglaries of hardware storesand radio shops and a garage or two. It looked as if intensely curiousnot-human beings had moved from their redoubt--Boulder Lake--to findout what civilization human beings had attained. They could guess atit by the buildings and the homes, but most notably in the technicalshops of the inhabitants. 

It went slowly and deliberately back into the Park. Humans movedcautiously back into the area that had been emptied. Not many, butenough to be sure that the thing had really returned to the place fromwhich it had come. Soldiers were tentatively entering theagain-abandoned town of Maplewood when the unseen thing changed therange of its weapon bearing on that little city. It was thenpresumably not less than seven miles on its way back to Boulder Lake. The military had congratulated themselves on what they'd learned. Thebeam projectors at the lake had a range of much more than seven miles, but this movable, unidentifiable thing carried a lesser armament. Fromit, men and animals seven miles away were safe. This was notable news. 

Then the unseen object did something. The terror beam that flickedback and forth doubled in intensity. The soldiers just reenteringMaplewood smelled foulness and saw bright lights. Bellowings deafenedthem. They fell with every muscle rigid in spasm. Beyond them othermen were paralyzed. For five minutes the invaders' mobile weaponparalyzed all living things for a distance of fifteen miles. Then forthirty seconds it paralyzed living things for a distance of thirtymiles. For a bare instant it convulsed men and animals for a greaterdistance yet. And all these victims of the terror beam knew, thereafter, an invincible horror of the beam. 

The thing from the Park which nobody had seen went back into the Park. And then men were permitted to return to exactly the same placesthey'd been allowed to occupy before the thing began its excursion. 

It seemed that nothing was changed, but everything was changed. Ifthere were mobile carriers of the invasion weapon, then victory couldnot be had by a single atom bomb fired into Boulder Lake. There mightbe a dozen separate mobile terror beam generators scattered throughthe Park. Any atomic attack would need to be multiplied in itsviolence to be certain of results. Instead of one bomb there might bea need for fifty. They would have to destroy the Park utterly, evenits mountains. And the fallout from so many atom bombs simply couldnot be risked. The invaders were effectively invulnerable. 

While this undesirable situation was being demonstrated, Jill sleptheavily between two roots of a very large tree, and Lockley dozedagainst a nearby tree trunk. He believed that he guarded Jill mostvigilantly. 

He awoke at dawn with the din of bird song in his ears. Jill openedher eyes at almost the same instant. She smiled at him and tried toget up. She was stiff and sore from the hardness of the ground onwhich she'd slept. But it was a new day, and there was breakfast. Itwas porcupine cooked the night before. 

"Somehow, " said Jill as she nibbled at a bone, "somehow I feel morecheerful than I did. "

"That's a mistake, " Lockley told her. "Start out with a fewpremonitions and the day improves as they turn out wrong. But if youstart out hoping, the day ends miserably with most of your hopesdenied. "

"You've got premonitions?" she asked. 

"Definitely, " he said. 

It was true. As yet he knew nothing of last night's temporaryoccupation of a human town, but he believed he knew how the terrorbeam worked even if he couldn't figure out a way to generate it. Hecould imagine no defense against it. But if Jill had awakened feelingcheerful, there was no reason to depress her. She'd have reason enoughto be dejected later, beginning with proof of Vale's death and goingon from there. 

"We might listen to the news, " she suggested. "A premonition or twomight be ruled out right away!"

Silently, he turned on the little radio. Automatically, he set it forthe lowest volume they could hear distinctly. 

The main item in the news was a baldly factual but toned-down reportof the thing from the lake which had left the park and examined asmall human town in detail and then had returned to the Park. Therewere reports of peculiar hoofprints found where the invaders had been. They were not the hoofprints of any earthly animal. There was anoptimistic report from the scientists at work on the problem of thebeam. Someone had come up with an idea and some calculations whichseemed to promise that the beam would presently be duplicated. Once itwas duplicated, of course a way to neutralize it could be found. 

Lockley grunted. The broadcast was enthusiastic in its comments on thescientists. It talked gobbledegook which sounded as if it meantsomething but was actually nonsense. It barely touched on the factthat human beings were now ordered out of a much larger space than hadbeen evacuated before. There was a statement from an importantofficial that panic buying of food was both unnecessary and unwise. Lockley grunted again when the newscast ended. 

"The idea that anything that can be duplicated can be canceled, " heannounced gloomily, "is unfortunately rot. We can duplicate sounds, but there's no way to make them cancel out! Not accurately!"

Jill had eaten a substantial part of the porcupine while the newscastwas on. It was not a satisfying breakfast, but it cheered herimmensely after two days of near-starvation. 

"But, " she observed, "maybe that won't apply to this business when youreport what you know. It's not likely that anybody else has stood justoutside a beam and made tests of what it's like and how it's aimed andso on. "

They started off. For journeying in the Park, Lockley had theadvantage that as part of the preparation for making a new map, he'dfamiliarized himself with all mapping done to date. He knew verynearly where he was. He knew within a close margin just where theterror beam stretched. He'd smashed his watch, which during sunshinesubstituted admirably for a compass, but he could maintain areasonably straight line toward that part of the Park's border theterror beam would cross. 

They moved doggedly over mountain-flanks and up valleys, and once theyfollowed a winding hollow for a long way because it led toward theirdestination without demanding that they climb. It was in this areathat, pushing through brushwood beside a running stream, they cameabruptly upon a big brown bear. He was no more than a hundred feetaway. He stared at them inquisitively, raising his nose to sniff fortheir scent. 

Lockley bent and picked up a stone. He threw it. It clattered onrocks on the ground. The bear made a whuffing sound and movedaggrievedly away. 

"I'd have been afraid to do that, " said Jill. 

"It was a he-bear, " said Lockley. "I wouldn't have tried it on ashe-bear with cubs. "

They went on and on. At mid-morning Lockley found some mushrooms. Theywere insipid and only acute hunger would make them edible raw, but hefilled his pockets. A little later there were berries, and as theygathered and ate them he lectured learnedly on edible wild plants tobe found in the wilderness. Jill listened with apparent interest. Whenthey left the berry patch they swung to the left to avoid a steepclimb directly in their way. And suddenly Lockley stopped short. Atthe same instant Jill caught at his arm. She'd turned white. 

They turned and ran. 

A hundred yards back, Lockley slackened his speed. They stopped. Aftera moment he managed to grin mirthlessly. 

"A conditioned reflex, " he said wryly. "We smell something and we run. But I think it's the old familiar terror beam that crosses highways tostop men from using them. If it were a portable beam projector withsomebody aiming it, we wouldn't be talking about it. "

Jill panted, partly with relief. 

"I've thought of something I want to try, " said Lockley. "I shouldhave tried it yesterday when I first smashed my watch. "

He retraced his steps to the spot where they'd caught the first whiffof that disgusting reptilian-jungle-decay odor which had bombardedtheir nostrils. Jill called anxiously, "Be careful!"

He nodded. He got the coiled bronze watchspring out of his pocket. Hewent very cautiously to the spot where the smell became noticeable. Standing well back from it, he tossed one end of the spring into it. He drew it back. He repeated the operation. He moved to one side. Again he swung the gold-colored ribbon. He dangled it back and forth. Then he drew back yet again and wrapped his left hand and wrists withmany turns of the thin bronze spring, carefully spacing the turns. Hemoved forward once more. 

He came back, his expression showing no elation at all. 

"No good, " he said unhappily. "In a way, it works. The spring acts asan aerial and picks up more of the beam than my hand. But I tried tomake a Faraday cage. That will stop most electromagnetic radiation, but not this stuff! It goes right through, like electrons through aradio tube grid. "

He put the spring back in his pocket. 

"Well, " he grimaced. "Let's go on again. I had a little bit of hope, but some smarter men than I am haven't got the right gimmick yet. "

They started off once more. And this time they did not choose a pathfor easier travel, but went up a steep slope that rose for hundreds offeet to arrive at a crest with another steep slope going downhill. Atthe top Lockley said sourly, "I did discover one thing, if it meansanything. The beam leaks at its edges, but it's only leakage. Itdoesn't diffuse. It's tight. It's more like a searchlight beam thananything else in that way. You can see a light beam at night becausedust motes scatter some part of it. But most of the light goesstraight on. This stuff does the same. It's hard to imagine a limit toits range. "

He trudged on downhill. Jill followed him. Presently, when they'dcovered two miles or more with no lightening of his expression, shesaid, "You said you understand how it works. Radio and radar beamsdon't have effects like this. How does this have them?"

"It makes high frequency currents on the surface of anything it hits. High frequency doesn't go into flesh or metal. It travels on thesurface only. So when this beam hits a man it generates high frequencyon his skin. That induces counter currents underneath, and theystimulate all the sensory nerves we've got--of our eyes and ears andnoses as well as our skin. Every nerve reports its own kind ofsensation. Run current over your tongue, and you taste. Induce acurrent in your eyes, and you see flashes of light. So the beam makesall our senses report everything they're capable of reporting, true ornot, and we're blinded and deafened. Then the nerves to our musclesreport to them that they're to contract, and they do. So we'reparalyzed. "

"And, " said Jill, "if there's a way to generate high frequency on aman's skin there's nothing that can be done?"

"Nothing, " said Lockley dourly. 

"Maybe, " said Jill, "you can figure out a way to prevent that highfrequency generation. "

He shrugged. Jill frowned as she followed him. She hadn't forgottenVale, but she owed some gratitude to Lockley. Womanlike, she tried topay part of it by urging him to do something he considered impossible. 

"At least, " she suggested, "it can't be a death ray!"

Lockley looked at her. 

"You're wrong there, " he said coldly. "It can. "

Jill frowned again. Not because of his statement, but because shehadn't succeeded in diverting his mind from gloomy things. She hadreason enough for sadness, herself. If she spoke of it, Lockley wouldtry to encourage her. But he was concerned with more than his ownemotions. Without really knowing it, Jill had come to feel a greatconfidence in Lockley. It had been reassuring that he could find food, and perhaps more reassuring that he could chase away a bear. Suchtalents were not logical reasons for being confident that he couldsolve the alien's seemingly invincible weapon, but she was inclined tofeel so. And if she could encourage him to cope with themonsters--why--it would be even a form of loyalty to Vale. So shebelieved. 

In the late afternoon Lockley said, "Another four or five miles and weought to be out of the Park and on another highway we'll hope won't beblocked by a terror beam. Anyhow there should be an occasionalfarmhouse where we can find some sort of civilized food. "

Jill said hungrily, "Scrambled eggs!"

"Probably, " he agreed. 

They went on and on. Three miles. Four. Five. Five and a half. Theydescended a minor slope and came to a hard-surfaced road with tiremarks on it and a sign sternly urging care in driving. There wereploughed fields in which crops were growing. There was a row of stubbytelephone poles with a sagging wire between them. 

"We'll head west, " said Lockley. "There ought to be a farmhousesomewhere near. "

"And people, " said Jill. "I look terrible!"

He regarded her with approval. 

"No. You look all right. You look fine!"

It was pleasing that he seemed to mean it. But immediately she said, "Maybe we'll be able to find out about . .. About. .. . "

"Vale, " agreed Lockley. "But don't be disappointed if we don't. Hecould have escaped or been freed without everybody knowing it. "

She said in surprise, "Been freed! That's something I didn't thinkof. He'd set to work to make them understand that we humans areintelligent and they ought to make friends with us. That would be thefirst thing he'd think of. And they might set him free to arrange it. "

Lockley said, "Yes, " in a carefully noncommittal tone. 

Another mile, this time on the hard road. It seemed strange to walk onso unyielding a surface after so many miles on quite different kindsof footing. It was almost sunset now. There was a farmhouse set wellback from the road and barely discernable beyond nearby growing corn. The house seemed dead. It was neat enough and in good repair. Therewere clackings of chickens from somewhere behind it. But it had thefeel of emptiness. 

Lockley called. He called again. He went to the door and would havecalled once more, but the door opened at a touch. 

"Evacuated, " he said. "Did you notice that there was a telephone lineleading here from the road?"

He hunted in the now shadowy rooms. He found the telephone. He liftedthe receiver and heard the humming of the line. He tried to call anoperator. He heard the muted buzz that said the call was sounding. Butthere was no answer. He found a telephone book and dialed one numberafter another. Sheriff. Preacher. Doctor. Garage. Operator again. General store. .. . He could tell that telephones rang dutifully inremote abandoned places. But there was no answer at all. 

"I'll look in the chicken coops, " said Jill practically. 

She came back with eggs. She said briefly, "The chickens were hungry. I fed them and left the chicken yard gate open. I wonder if the beamhurts them too?"

"It does, " said Lockley. 

He made a light and then a fire and she cooked eggs which belonged tothe unknown people who owned this house and who had walked out of itwhen instructions for immediate evacuation came. They felt queer, making free with this house of a stranger. They felt that he mightcome in and be indignant with them. 

"I ought to wash the dishes, " said Jill when they were finished. 

"No, " said Lockley. "We go on. We need to find some soldiers, or atelephone that works. .. . "

"I'm not a good dishwasher anyhow, " said Jill guiltily. 

Lockley put a banknote on the kitchen table, with a weight on it tokeep it from blowing away. They closed the house door. They'd eatenfully and luxuriously of eggs and partly stale bread and the sensationwas admirable. They went out to the highway again. 

"West is still our best bet, " said Lockley. "They've blocked thehighway to eastward with that terror beam. "

The sun had set now, but a fading glory remained in the sky. They sawthe slenderest, barest crescent of a new moon practically hidden inthe sunset glow. They walked upon a civilized road, with a fence onone side of it and above it a single sagging telephone wire that couldbe made out against the stars. 

"I feel, " said Jill, "as if we were almost safe, now. All this looksso ordinary and reassuring. "

"But we'd better keep our noses alert, " Lockley told her. "We knowthat one beam comes nearly this far and probably--no, certainlycrosses this road. There may be more. "

"Oh, yes, " agreed Jill. Then she said irrelevantly, "I'll bet they domake him a sort of--ambassador to our government to arrange formaking friends. He'll be able to convince them!"

Again she referred to Vale. Lockley said nothing. 

Night was now fully fallen. There were myriad stars overhead. They sawthe telephone wire dipping between poles against the sky's brightness. They passed an open gate where another telephone wire led away, doubtless to another farmhouse. But if there was no one at the otherend of a telephone line, there was no point in using a phone. 

There came a rumbling noise behind them. They stared at one another inthe starlight. The rumbling approached. 

"It--can't be!" said Jill, marvelling. 

"It's a motor, " said Lockley. He could not feel complete relief. "Sounds like a truck. I wonder--"

He felt uneasiness. But it was absurd. Only human beings would usemotor trucks. 

There was a glow in the distance behind them. It came nearer as thesound of the motor approached. The motor's mutter became a grumble. Itwas definitely a truck. They could hear those other sounds that trucksalways make in addition to their motor noises. 

It came up to the curve they'd rounded last. Its headlight beamsglared on the cornstalks growing next to the highway. One headlightappeared around the turn. Then the other. An enormous trailer-truckcombination came bumbling toward them. Jill held up her hand for it tostop. Its headlights shone brightly upon her. 

Airbrakes came on. The giant combination--cab in front, gigantic boxbody behind--came to a halt. A man leaned out. He said amazedly, "Hey, what are you folks doin' here? Everybody's supposed to be long gone!Ain't you heard about all civilians clearing out from twenty milesoutside the Park? There's boogers in there! Characters from Mars orsomewhere. They eat people!"

Even in the starlight Lockley saw the familiar Wild Life Controlmarkings on the trailer. He heard Jill, her voice shaking with relief, explaining that she'd been at the construction camp and had been leftbehind, and that she and Lockley had made their way out. 

"We want to get to a telephone, " she added. "He has some informationhe wants to give to the Army. It's very important. " Then sheswallowed. "And I'd like to ask if you've heard anything about a Mr. Vale. He was taken prisoner by the creatures up there. Have you heardof his being released?"

The driver hesitated. Then he said, "No, ma'm. Not a word about him. But we'll take care of you two! You musta been through plenty! Jud, you go get in the trailer, back yonder. Make room for these two folksup on the front seat. " He added explanatorily, "There's cases andstuff in the back, ma'm. You two folks climb right up here alongsideof me. You sure musta had a time!"

The door on the near side of the truck cab opened. A small man gotout. Silently, he went to the rear of the trailer and swung up out ofsight. Jill climbed into the opened door. Lockley followed her. Hestill felt an irrational uneasiness, but he put it down to habit. Thepast few days had formed it. 

"We've been cartin' stuff for the soldiers, " explained the driver asLockley closed the door behind him. "They keep track of where thatterror beam is workin', and they tell us by truck radio, and we dodgeit. Ain't had a bit of trouble. Never thought I'd play games withMartians! Did you see any of 'em? What sort of critters are they?"

He slipped the truck into gear and gunned the motor. Truck andtrailer, together, began to roll down the highway. Lockley wasirritated with himself because he couldn't relax and feel safe, asthis development seemed to warrant. 

Later, he would wonder why he hadn't used his head in this as in othermatters during the few days just past. 

He plainly hadn't. 

CHAPTER 7

The driver was avidly curious about the area where supposedly no humanbeing could survive. He asked absorbed questions, especially andinsistently about the aliens. Jill said that she'd seen a few of them, but only at a distance. They'd been investigating the evacuatedconstruction camp. They were about the size of men. She couldn'tdescribe them, but they weren't human beings. He seemed to find itunthinkable that she hadn't examined them in detail. 

Lockley came to her rescue. He observed that he'd been a prisoner ofthe invaders, and had escaped. Then the driver's curiosity becameinsatiable. He wanted to know every imaginable detail of thatexperience. He expressed almost incredulous disappointment thatLockley couldn't give even a partial description of the creatures. When convinced, he launched a detailed recital of the descriptionsoffered by the workmen from the camp. He pictured the aliens as hoofedlike horses, equipped with horns like antelopes, fitted with multiplearms like octopi and huge multi-faceted eyes like insects. 

He seemed to contemplate this picture with vast satisfaction as thetruck growled and rumbled through the night. 

The headlights glared on ahead of the truck. There were dark fieldsand darker mountains beyond them. From time to time little side roadsbranched off. They undoubtedly led to houses, but no speck of lamplight appeared anywhere. This part of the world was empty, with theloneliness of a landscape from which every hint of human activity hadbeen removed. 

Jill asked a question. The driver grew garrulous. He gave a dramaticpicture of terror throughout the world, the suspension of all ordinaryantagonisms in the face of this menace to every man and nation on theearth. There was peace even in the world's trouble spots as appalledagitators saw how much worse things could be if the monsters took overthe world to rule. But the driver insisted that the United States wascalm. Us Americans, he assured Lockley, weren't scared. We wereeducated and we knew that them scientists would crack this nutsomehow. Like only yesterday a broadcast said this Belgian guy hadcome up with calculations that said this poison beam had to besomething like a radar beam or a laser beam or something like that. And the American scientists were right out there in front, along withguys from England and France and Italy and Germany and even Russia. All the big brains of the world were workin' on it! Those Martianswere gonna wish they'd come visitin' polite instead of barging in likethey owned the world! They'd be lucky if they wound up ownin' Mars!

Lockley pressed for details about the scientists' results. He didn'texpect to get them, but the driver cheerfully obliged. 

Radio, said the driver largely, worked by making waves like those ona pond. They spread out and reached places where there wereinstruments to detect them, and that was that. Radar made the samekind of waves, only smaller, which bounced back to where there was aninstrument to detect them. These were ripple waves. 

Lockley interpreted the term to mean sine waves, rounded at top andtrough. It was a perfectly good word to express the meaning intended. 

These were natural kindsa waves, pursued the driver. Lightning madethem. Static was them, and sparks from running motors and blown fuses. Waves like that were generated whenever an electric circuit was madeor broken besides their occurrence from purely natural causes. 

"We can't feel 'em, " said the driver expansively. "We're used to waveslike that. Animals couldn't do anything about 'em and didn't need tobefore there was men. So when we come along, we couldn't notice 'emany more than we notice air pressure on our skin. We're used to it!But these scientists say there's waves that ain't natural. They ain'tlike ripples. They're like storm waves with foam on 'em. And that'sthe kind of waves we can notice. Like storm waves with sharp edges. Wecan notice them because they do things to us! These Martians make 'emdo things. But now we know what kinda waves they are, we're gonna messthem up! And I'm savin' up a special kick for one o' those Martianswhen they're licked just as soon as I can find out which end of him iswhich an' suited to that kinda attention!"

Lockley found himself suspicious and was annoyed. Jill was safe now. This driver was well-informed, but probably everybody waswell-informed now. They had reason to become so!

The truck trundled through the night. High overhead, a squadron ofplanes arrived to take its place in the ever-moving patrol around thePark. Another squadron, relieved, went away to the southwest. Therewas a deep-toned, faraway roaring from the engines aloft. All the skybehind the trailer seemed to mutter continuously. But the roof ofstars ahead was silent. 

Lockley stayed tense and was weary of his tenseness, Jill was safe. Hetried to reason his uneasiness away. The cab of the truck wobbled andswayed. The feel of the vehicle was entirely unlike the feel of apassenger car. It felt tail-heavy. The driver had ceased to talk. Heseemed to be musing as he drove. He'd asked about the invaders butseemed almost indifferent to any adventures Jill and Lockley mighthave had on their way out. He didn't ask what they'd done for food. Hewas thinking of something else. 

Lockley found himself questioning the driver's statements just afterthey got in. Driving for the Army. The Army kept track of where theterror beams existed, and notified this truck by truck radio, and hedodged all such road barriers. That was what he said. It seemedplausible, but--

"One thing strikes me funny, " said the driver, musingly. "Thosecritters blindfoldin' you and those other guys. What' you think theydid it for?"

"To keep us from seeing them, " said Lockley, curtly. 

"But why'd they want to do that?"

"Because, " said Lockley, "they might not have been Martians. Theymight not have been critters. They might have been men. "

On the instant he regretted bitterly that he'd said it. It was aguess, only, with all the evidence against it. The driver visiblyjumped. Then he turned his head. 

"Where'd you get that idea?" he demanded. "What's the evidence? Whyd'you think it?"

"They blindfolded me, " said Lockley briefly. 

A pause. Then the driver said vexedly, "That's a funny thing to makeyou think they was men! Hell! Excuse me, ma'm!--they coulda had allkindsa reasons for blindfoldin' you! It coulda been part of theirreligion!"

"Maybe, " said Lockley. He was angry with himself for having saidsomething which was needlessly dramatic. 

"Didn't you have any other reason for thinkin' they were men?"demanded the driver curiously. "No other reason at all?"

"No other at all, " said Lockley. 

"It's a crazy reason, if you ask me!"

"Quite likely, " conceded Lockley. 

He'd been indiscreet, but no more. He'd said what he thought, perhapsbecause he was tired of watching all the country round him for amenace to Jill, and then watching every word he spoke to keep her fromabandoning hope for Vale. 

Jill said, "Where are we headed for? I hope I can get to a telephone. I want to ask about somebody. .. . He wants to tell the soldierssomething. "

"We're headed for a army supply dump, " said the driver comfortably, "to load up with stuff for the guys that're watching all around thePark. We'll be goin' through Serena presently. Funny. Everybody movedout by the Army. A good thing, too. The folks in Maplewood couldn'tha' been got out last night before the Martians got there. "

The trailer-truck went on through the night. The driver lounged in hisseat, keeping a negligent but capable eye on the road ahead. Theheadlights showed a place where another road crossed this one andthere was a filling station, still and dark, and four or fivedwellings nearby with no single sign of life about them. Then thecrossroads settlement fell behind. A mile beyond it Jill saidstartledly, "Lights! There's a town. It's lighted. "

"It's Serena, " said the driver. "The street lights are on because theelectricity comes from far away. With the lights on it's a marker forthe planes, too, so they can tell exactly where they are and the Parktoo. They can't see the ground so good at night, from away up there. "

The white street lamps seemed to twinkle as the trailer-truck rumbledon. A single long line of them appeared to welcome the big vehicle. Itwent on into the town. It reached the business district. There wereside streets, utterly empty, and then the main street divided. Thetruck bore to the right. There were three and four-story buildings. Every window was blank and empty, reflecting only the white streetlamps. No living thing anywhere. There had been no destruction, butthe town was dead. Its lights shone on streets so empty that it wouldhave seemed better to leave them to the kindly dark. 

Jill exclaimed, "Look! That window!"

And ahead, in the dead and lifeless town, a single window glowed fromelectric light inside it, and it looked lonelier than anything else inthe world. 

"I'm gonna look into that!" said the driver. "Nobody's supposed to behere. "

The truck came to a stop. The driver got out. There was a stirring, behind, and the small man who'd given his place to Jill and Lockleypopped out of the trailer body. Lockley saw the name of a localtelephone company silhouetted on the lighted windowpane. He opened thedoor. Jill followed him instantly. The four of them--driver, helper, Lockley and Jill--crowded into the building hallway to investigatethe one lighted room in a town where twenty thousand people weresupposed to live. 

There was a door with a frosted glass top through which light showed. The driver turned the door-knob and marched in. The room had analcoholic smell. A man with sunken cheeks slept heavily in a chair, his head forward on his chest. 

The driver shook him. 

"Wake up, guy!" he said sternly. "Orders are for all civilians toclear outa this town. You wanna soldier to come by an' take you for alooter an' bump you off?"

He shook again. The cadaverous man blinked his eyes open. The smell ofalcohol was distinct. He was drunk. He gazed ferociously up at thedriver of the truck. 

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded belligerently. 

The driver spoke sternly, repeating what he'd said before. The drunkassumed an air of outraged dignity. 

"If I wanna stay here, that's my business! Who th' hell are youanyways, disturbin' a citizen tax-payer on his lawful occasions? Areyou Martians? I wouldn't put it pasht you!"

He sat down and went back to sleep. 

The driver said fretfully, "He oughtn't to be here! But we ain't gotroom to carry him. I'm gonna use the truck radio an' ask what to do. Maybe they'll send a Army truck to get him outa here. He could set thewhole town on fire!"

He went out. The small man who was his helper followed him. He hadn'tspoken a word. Lockley growled. Then Jill said breathlessly, "Theswitch-board has some long distance lines. I know how to connect them. Shall I try?"

Lockley agreed emphatically. Jill slipped into the operator's chairand donned the headset. She inserted a plug and pressed a switch. 

"I did an article once on how--Hello! Serena calling. I have a veryimportant message for the military officer in command of the cordon. Will you route me through, please?"

Her manner was convincingly professional. She looked up and smiledshakily at Lockley. She spoke again into the mouthpiece before her. Then she said, "One moment, please. " She covered the mouthpiece withher hand. 

"I can't get the general, " she said. "His aide will take the messageand if it's important enough--"

"It is, " said Lockley. "Give me the phone. "

She vacated the chair and handed him the operator's instrument withits light weight earphones and a mouthpiece that rested on his chest. 

"My name's Lockley, " said Lockley evenly. "I was in the Park on aSurvey job the morning the thing came down from the sky. I relayedVale's message describing the landing and the creatures that came outof the--object. I was talking to him by microwave when he was seizedby them. I reported that via Sattell of the Survey. You probably knowof these reports. "

A tinny voice said with formal cordiality that he did, indeed. 

"I've just managed to get out of the park, " said Lockley. "I've had achance to experiment with a stationary terror beam. I've informationof some importance about detecting those beams before they strike. "

The tinny voice said hastily that Lockley should speak to the generalhimself. There were clickings and a long wait. Lockley shook his headimpatiently. When a new voice spoke, he said, "I'm at Serena. I wasbrought here by a Wild Life Control trailer-truck which picked us upjust outside the Park. I mention that because the driver says he'sdriving it for the Army, now. The information I have to pass on is. .. . "

Curtly and succinctly, he began to give exact information about theterror beam. Its detection so that one need not enter it. The totallack of effectiveness of a Faraday cage to check it. Its use to blockhighways and its one use against a low-flying plane. The failure tosearch him out with that terror beam was to be noted. There was otherevidence that the monsters were not monsters at all--

The new voice interrupted sharply. It asked him to wait. Hisinformation would be recorded. Lockley waited, biting his lips. Thevoice returned after an unconscionably long wait. It told him to goahead. 

The driver of the truck was taking a long time to make contact withthe military. He'd have done better by telephone instead of shortwave. 

The new voice repeated sharply for Lockley to go on with his story. And very, very carefully Lockley explained the contradictions in thebehavior of the invaders. The blindfolds. The fact that it had beenabsurdly easy for four human prisoners in a compost pit shell toescape--almost as if it were intended for them to get away and reportthat their captors regarded men as on a par with game birds andrabbits and porcupines. True aliens would not have bothered to givesuch an impression. But men cooperating with aliens would contriveevery possible trick to insist that only aliens operated at BoulderLake. 

"I'm saying, " said Lockley carefully, "that they do not act likealiens making a first landing on earth. Apparently their ship isdesigned to land in deep water. On a first landing, they should havechosen the sea. But they knew Boulder Lake was deep enough to cushiontheir descent. How did they know it? They didn't kill us local animalsfor study, but they dropped in other local animals to convince us thatthey wouldn't mind. Why try to fill us with horror--and then let usescape?"

The voice at the other end said sharply, "_What do you infer from allthis?_"

"They've been briefed, " said Lockley. "They know too much about thisplanet and us humans. Somebody has told them about human psychologyand suggested that they conquer us without destroying our cities orour factories or our usefulness as slaves. We'll be much more valuableif captured that way! I'm saying that they've got humans advising andcooperating with them! I'm suggesting that those humans have made adeal to run earth for the aliens, paying them all the tribute they candemand. I'm saying that we're not up against an invasion only byaliens, but by aliens with humans in active cooperation and acting notonly as advisers but probably as spies. I'm--"

"_Mr. Lockley!_" said the voice at the other end of the wire. It wasstartled and shocked. It became pompous. "_Mr. Lockley, what has beenyour training?_" The voice did not wait for an answer. "_Where haveyou become qualified to offer opinions contradicting all theinformation and all the decisions of scientists and military menalike? Where do you get the authority to make such statements? Theyare preposterous! You have wasted my time! You--_"

Lockley reached over and flipped back the switch he'd seen Jill flipover. He carefully put down the headset. He stood up. 

The driver and the small man came back. They picked up the sleepingdrunk and moved toward the door. Something fell out of the drunk'spocket. It was a wallet. They did not notice. They went out, carryingthe drunk. Jill stooped and recovered it. She looked at Lockley'sface. 

"What--"

"I'm trying, " said Lockley in a grating voice, "to figure out what todo next. That didn't work. "

"I'll be right back, " said Jill. 

She went out to deliver the wallet to the driver, who had apparentlybeen ordered to put the drunk in the trailer body and deliver himsomewhere. 

Lockley swore explosively when she was gone. He clenched andunclenched his hands. He paced the length of the room. 

Jill came back, her face white. 

"They opened the door of the trailer to pass him in, " she said in a thin, strained voice. "And there were other men back there. Several of them! Andmachinery! Not cages for animals but engines--generators--electricalthings! I'm frightened!"

"And I, " said Lockley, "am a fool. I should have known it! Lookhere--"

The frosted-glass door opened. The driver came back. He had a revolverin his hand. 

"Too bad!" he said calmly. "We should've been more careful. But thelady saw too much. Now--"

The revolver bore on Lockley. Jill flung herself upon it. Lockleyswung, with every ounce of his strength. He connected with thedriver's jaw. The driver went limp. Lockley had the revolver almostbefore he reached the floor. 

"Quick!" he snapped. "Where was the machinery? Front or back part ofthe trailer?"

"All of it, " panted Jill. "Mostly front. What--"

"The hall again, " Lockley snapped. "Hunt for a back door!"

He thrust her out. She fumbled toward the back of the building whilehe went to the street entrance. The trailer-truck loomed huge. Thedriver's helper came out of it. Another man followed him. Stillanother. .. . 

Lockley fired from the doorway. One bullet through the front part ofthe truck. One near the middle. Then a third halfway between the firsttwo. The three men dived to the ground, thinking themselves histargets. But Jill called inarticulately from the back of the darkhall. Lockley raced back to her. He saw starlight. She waited, shivering. They went out and he closed the door softly behind him. 

He took her hand and they ran through the night. Overhead there was aluminous mistiness because of the street light, but here were abysmaldarknesses between vague areas on which the starlight fell. Lockleysaid evenly, "We've got to be quiet. Maybe I hit some of themachinery. Maybe. If I didn't, it's all over!"

The back of a building. An alleyway. They ran down it. There was astreet with trees, where the street lights cast utterly black shadowsin between intolerable glare. They ran across the street. On the otherside were residences--the business district was not large. Lockleyfound a gate, and opened it quietly and as quietly closed it behindthem. They ran into a lane between two dead, dark, dreary structuresin which people had lived but from which all life was now gone. 

A back yard. A fence. Lockley helped Jill get over it. Another lane. Another street. But this street was not crossed--not here, anyhow--byanother which led back to the street of the telephone office. A mancould not look from there and see them running under the lights. 

The blessed irregularity of the streets continued. They ran and ranuntil Jill's breath came in pantings. Lockley was drenched in sweatbecause he expected at any instant to smell the most loathesome ofall possible combinations of odors, and then to see flashing lightsoriginating in his own eyes, and sounds which would exist only in thenerves of his ears, and then to feel all his muscles knot in total andhorrible paralysis. 

They heard the truck motor rumble into life when they were many blocksaway. They heard the clumsy vehicle move. It continued to growl, andthey knew that it was moving about the streets with its occupantstrying to sight fleeing figures under the darknesses which were trees. 

"I hit--I hit the generator, " panted Lockley. "I must have! Elsethey'd swing a beam on us!"

He stopped. Here they were in a district where many large homes pooledtheir lawns in block-long stretches of soft green. The street lightscast arbitrary patches of brightness against the houses, but theirwindows were blank and dark. This street, like most in this smalltown, was lined with trees on either side. There were the fragrancesof flowers and grass. 

"We aren't safe now, " said Lockley, "but I just found out there maynot be any safety anywhere. "

Jill's teeth chattered. 

"What will we do? What was that machinery? I felt--frightened becauseit wasn't what he said was back there. So I told you. But what wasit?". 

"At a guess, " said Lockley, "a terror beam generator. The invadersmust have human friends. To us they're spies. They're cooperating withthe monsters. Apparently they're even trusted with terror beamprojectors. "

He stood still, thinking, while in the distance the trailer-truckground and rumbled about the streets. It was not a very promisingmethod for finding two fugitives. They could hide if it turned onto astreet they used. It could not continue the search indefinitely. Themost likely final course would be to leave some of the unknown numberof men in its trailer to search the town on foot. Even that might notbe successful. But it wouldn't be a good idea for Lockley and Jill toremain here, either. 

"We look for two-car garages, " said Lockley. "It's not a good chance, but it's all we've got. _If_ somebody had two cars, they might haveleft one behind when they evacuated. I can jump an ignition switch ifnecessary. Meanwhile we'll be moving out of town, which is a good ideaeven if we do it on foot!"

They ceased to use the streets with their dramatic contrast of vividlights with total shadows. They moved behind a row of what would beconsidered mansions in Serena, Colorado. Sometimes they stumbled overflower beds, and once there was a hose over which Jill tripped, andonce Lockley barked his shin on a garden wheelbarrow. Most of thegarages were empty or contained only tools and garden equipment. 

Then something made Lockley look up. A slender, truss-braced, mastliketower rose skyward. It began on the lawn of a house with wide porches. There was a two-car garage with one wide door open. 

"A radio ham, " said Lockley. "I wonder--"

But he looked first in the garage. There was a car. It looked allright. He climbed in and opened the door. The dome light came on. Thekey was still in the ignition. He turned it and the gauge showed thatthe gas tank was three-quarters full. This was unbelievable goodfortune. 

"They probably intended to use this and then changed their minds, "said Lockley. "I'll get the door open and attempt a little burglary. Just one burglary with a prayer that he used a storage battery forhis power!"

Breaking in was simple. He tried the windows opening on the main wideporch. One window slid up. He went inside, Jill following. 

The ham radio outfit was in the cellar. Like most radio hams, this onehad battery-powered equipment as a matter of public responsibility. Incase of storm or disaster when power lines are down, the ham operatorsof the United States can function as emergency communication systems, working without outside power. This operator was equipped asmembership in the organization required. 

Lockley warmed up the tubes. He tuned to a general call frequency. Hebegan to say, "May Day! May Day! May Day!" in a level voice. Thisemergency call has precedence over all other calls but S. O. S. , whichhas an identical meaning. But "May Day" is more distinct andunmistakable when heard faintly. 

There were answers within minutes. Lockley snapped for them to staytuned while he called for others. He had half a dozen hams waitingcuriously when he began to broadcast what he wanted the world to know. 

He told it as briefly and as convincingly as he could. Then he said, "Over" and threw the reception switch for questions. 

There were no questions. His broadcast had been jammed. Some otherstation or stations were transmitting pure static with deafeningvolume, evidently from somewhere nearby. Lockley could not tell whenit had begun. It could have been from the instant he began to speak. It was very likely that not one really useful word had been heardanywhere. 

But a direction finder could have betrayed his position. 

CHAPTER 8

It was a ticklish job getting the car out of the garage and into thestreet. Lockley was afraid that starting the motor would make a noisewhich in the silence of the town's absolute abandonment could be heardfor a long way. The grinding of the starter, though, lasted only forseconds. It might make men listen, but they could hardly locate itbefore the motor caught and ran quietly. Also, the trailer-truck wasstill in motion and making its own noise. Of course it was probablyposting watchers and listeners here and there to try to find Lockleyand Jill. 

So Lockley backed the car into the street as silently as was possible. He did not turn on the lights. He stopped, headed away from the areain which the truck rumbled. He sent the car forward at a crawl. Thenan idea occurred to him and cold chills ran down his spine. It ispossible to use a short wave receiver to pick up the ignition sparksof a car. Normally such sparkings are grounded so the car's own radiowill work. But sometimes a radio is out of order. It wascharacteristic of Lockley's acquired distrust of luck and chance thathe thought of so unlikely a disaster. 

He eased the car into motion, straining his ears for any sign that thetruck reacted. Then he moved the car slowly away from the businessdistrict. It required enormous self-control to go slowly. While amongthe lighted streets the urge to flee at top speed was strong. But heclenched his teeth. A car makes much less noise when barely in motion. He made it drift as silently as a wraith under the trees and thestreet lamps. 

They got out of town. The last of the street lamps was behind them. There was only starlight ahead, and an unknown road with many turnsand curves. Sometimes there were roadsigns, dimly visible asuninformative shapes beside the highway. They warned of curves andother driving hazards, but they could not be read because Lockleydrove without lights. He left the car dark because any glare wouldhave been visible to the men of the trailer-truck for a very long way. 

Starlight is not good for fast driving, and when a road passes througha wooded space it is nerve-racking. Lockley drove with foreboding, every sense alert and every muscle tense. But just after a painfulprogress through a series of curves with high trees on either sidewhich he managed by looking up at the sky and staying under the middleof the ribbon of stars he could see, Lockley touched the brake andstopped the car. 

"What's the matter?" asked Jill, as he rummaged under the instrumentpanel. 

"I think, " said Lockley, "that I must have damaged something in thattruck. Otherwise they'd have turned their beam on us just to get even. 

"But maybe they'll be able to make a repair. In any case there areother beams. Those are probably stationary and the truck knows wherethey are and calls by truck radio to have them shut off when it wantsto go by. That would work. Using the Wild Life truck was really veryclever. "

He wrenched at something. It gave. He pulled out a length of wire andstarted working on one end of it. 

"If they guess we got a car, " he observed, "they'll expect us to runinto a road block beam that would wreck the car and paralyze us. I'mtaking a small precaution against that. Here. " He put the wire's endinto her hand. "It's the lead-in from this car's radio antenna. Itought to warn us of beams across the road as my watch spring did inthe hills. Hold it. "

"I will, " said Jill. 

"One more item, " he said. He got out of the car and closed the doorquickly. He went to the back. There was the sound of breaking glass. He returned, saying, "No brake lights will go on now. I'll try to dosomething about that dome light. " With a sharp blow he shattered it. "Now we could be as hard to trail as that Wild Life truck was theother night. "

Jill groped as the car got into motion again. 

"You mean it was--Oh!"

"Most likely, " agreed Lockley, "it was the thing that went out of thepark and occupied Maplewood, flinging terror beams in all directions. Some of the truck's crew would have had footgear to make hoofprints. They committed a token burglary or two. And there was the illusion ofaliens studying these queer creatures, men. "

They went on at not more than fifteen miles an hour. The car wasalmost soundless. They heard insects singing in the night. There was asteady, monotonous rumbling high above where Air Force planespatrolled outside the Park. After a time Jill said, "You seemeddiscouraged when you talked to that general. "

"I was, " said Lockley. "I am. He played it safe, refused to admit thatanybody in authority over him could possibly be mistaken. That's soundpolicy, and I was contradicting the official opinion of his superiors. I've got to find somebody of much lower rank, or much higher. Maybe--"

Jill said in a strained voice, "Stop!"

He braked. She said unsteadily, "Holding the wire, I smell thathorrible smell. "

He put his hand on the wire's end. He shared the sensation. 

"Terror beam across the highway, " he said calmly. "Maybe on ouraccount, maybe not. But there was a side road a little way back. "

He backed the car. He'd smashed the backing lights, too. He guidedhimself by starlight. Presently he swung the wheel and faced the carabout. He drove back the way he had come. A mile or so, and there wasanother hard-surface road branching off. He took it. Half an hourlater Jill said quickly, "Brakes!"

The road was blocked once more by an invisible terror beam, into whichany car moving at reasonable speed must move before its driver couldreceive warning. 

"This isn't good, " he said coldly. "They may have picked some goodplaces to block. We have to go almost at random, just picking roadsthat head away from the Park. I don't know how thoroughly they cancage us in, though. "

There was a flicker of light in the sky. Lockley jerked his headaround. It flashed again. Lightning. The sky was clouding up. 

"It's getting worse, " he said in a strained voice. "I've been takingevery turn that ought to lead us away from the Park, but I've had touse the stars for direction. I didn't think that soldiers would keepus from getting away from here. I was almost confident. But what willI do without the stars?"

He drove on. The clouds piled up, blotting out the heavens. OnceLockley saw a faint glow in the sky and clenched his teeth. He turnedaway from it at the first opportunity. The glow could be Serena, andhe could have been forced back toward it by the windings of thehighway he'd followed without lights. Twice Jill warned him of beamsacross the highway. Once, driven by his increasing anxiety, his brakesalmost failed to stop him in time. When the car did stop, he was awareof faint tinglings on his skin. There were erratic flashings in hiseyes, too, and a discordant composite of sounds which by associationwith past suffering made him nauseated. Perhaps this extra leakagefrom the terror beam was through the metal of the car. 

When he got out of that terror beam the sky was three-quarters blackedout and before he was well away from the spot there was only a tinypatch of stars well down toward the horizon. There were lightningflickers overhead. After a time he depended on them to show him theroad. 

Then the rain came. The lightning increased. The road twisted andturned. Twice the car veered off onto the road's shoulders, but eachtime he righted it. As time passed conditions grew worse. It wasurgent that he get as far as possible from Serena, because of the WildLife truck which could seize Jill and himself if its beam generatorswere repaired, and whose occupants could murder them if they weren't. But it was most urgent that he get away beyond the military cordon tofind men who would listen to his information and see that use was madeof it. Yet in driving rain and darkness, without car lights and daringto drive only at a crawl, he might be completely turned around. 

"I think, " he said at last, "I'll turn in at the next farm gate thelightning shows us. I'll try to get the car into a barn so it won'tshow up at daybreak. We might be heading straight back into the Park!"

He did turn, the next time a lightning flash showed him a turn-offbeside a rural free delivery mailbox. There was a house at the end ofa lane. There was a barn. He got out and was soaked instantly, but heexplored the open space behind the wide, open doors. He backed the carin. 

"So, " he explained to Jill, "if we have a chance to move we won't haveto back around first. "

They sat in the car and looked out at the rain-filled darkness. Therewas no light anywhere except when lightning glittered on the rain. Insuch illuminations they made out the farmhouse, dripping floods ofwater from its eaves. There was a chicken house. There were fences. They could not see to the gate or the highway through the fallingwater, but there had been solid woodland where they turned off intothe lane. 

"We'll wait, " said Lockley distastefully, "to see if we are in a tightspot in the morning. If we're well away--and I've no real idea wherewe are--we'll go on. If not, we'll hide till dark and hope for starsto steer by when we go. "

Jill said confidently, "We'll make it. But where to?"

"To any place away from Boulder Lake Park, and where I'm a human beinginstead of a crackpot civilian. To where I can explain some things topeople who'll listen, if it isn't too late. "

"It's not, " said Jill with as much assurance as before. 

There was a pause. The rain poured down. Lightning flashed. Thunderroared. 

"I didn't know, " said Jill tentatively, "that you believed theinvaders--the monsters--had people helping them. "

"The overall picture isn't a human one, " he told her. "But there's adesign that shows somebody knows us. For instance, nobody's beenkilled. At least not publicly. That was arranged by somebody whounderstood that if there was a massacre, we'd fight to the end of ourlives and teach our children to fight after us. "

She thought it over. "You'd be that way, " she said presently. "But noteverybody. Some people will do anything to stay alive. But youwouldn't. "

The rain made drumming sounds on the barn roof. Lockley said, "Butwhat's happened isn't altogether what humans would devise. Humans whoplanned a conquest would know they couldn't make us surrender to them. If this was a sort of Pearl Harbor attack by human enemies--and youcan guess who it might be--they might as well start killing us on thelargest possible scale at the beginning. If monsters with noinformation about us landed, they might perpetrate some massacres withthe entirely foolish idea of cowing us. But there haven't been anymassacres. So it's neither a cold war trick nor an unadvised landingof monsters. There's another angle in it somewhere. Monster-humancooperation is only a guess. I'm not satisfied, but it's the bestanswer so far. "

Jill was silent for a long time. Then she said irrelevantly, "You musthave been a good friend of . .. Of. .. . "

"Vale?" Lockley said. "No. I knew him, but that's all. He only joinedthe Survey a few months ago. I don't suppose I've talked to him adozen times, and four of those times he was with you. Why'd you thinkwe were close friends?"

"What you've done for me, " she said in the darkness. 

He waited for a lightning flash to show him her expression. She waslooking at him. 

"I didn't do it for Vale, " said Lockley. 

"Then why?"

"I'd have done it for anyone, " said Lockley ungraciously. 

In a way it was true, of course. But he wouldn't have gone up to theconstruction camp to make sure that anyone hadn't been left behind. The idea wouldn't have occurred to him. 

"I don't think that's true, " said Jill. 

He did not answer. If Vale was alive, Jill was engaged to him;although if matters worked out, Lockley would not be such a fool as toplay the gentleman and let her marry Vale by default. On the otherhand, if Vale was dead, he wouldn't be the kind of fool who'd try towin her for himself before she'd faced and recovered from Vale'sdeath. A girl could forgive herself for breaking her engagement to aliving man, but not for disloyalty to a dead one. 

"I think, " said Lockley deliberately, "that we should change thesubject. I will talk about why I went to the Lake after you wheneverything has settled down. I had reasons. I still have them. I willexpress them, eventually, whether Vale likes it or not. But not now. "

There was a long silence, while rain fell with heavy drumming noisesand the world was only a deep curtain of lightning-lighted droplets offalling water. 

"Thanks, " said Jill very quietly. "I'm glad. "

And then they sat in silence while the long hours went by. Eventuallythey dozed. Lockley was awakened by the ending of the rain. It wasthen just the beginning of gray dawn. The sky was still filled withclouds. The ground was soaked. There were puddles here and there inthe barnyard, and water dripped from the barn's eaves, and from thenow vaguely visible house, and from the two or three trees beside it. 

Lockley opened the car door and got out quietly. Jill did not waken. He visited the chicken house, and horrendous squawkings came out ofit. He found eggs. He went to the house, stepping gingerly from grasspatch to grass patch, avoiding the puddles between them. He foundbread, jars of preserves and cans of food. He inspected the lane. Thecar's tracks had been washed out. He nodded to himself. 

He went back to the barn. There was still only dusky half-light. Hepulled the doors almost shut behind him, leaving only a four-inch gapto see through. Now the car was safely out of sight and there was nosign that any living being was near. 

"You closed the doors, " said Jill. "Why?"

He said reluctantly, "I'm afraid we're as badly off as we were at thebeginning. Unless I'm mistaken, we got turned around in that rainstormon those twisty roads, and the Park begins nearby. This isn't thehighway I drove up on to find you, the one where my car's wrecked. This is another one. I don't think we're more than twenty miles fromthe Lake, here. And that's something I didn't intend!"

He began to unload his pockets. 

"I got something for us to eat. We'll just have to lie low until nightand fumble our way out toward the cordon, with the stars to guide us. "

There was silence, save for the lessened dripping of water. Lockleywas filled with a sort of baffled impatience with himself. He feltthat he'd acted like an idiot in trying to escape the evacuated areaby car. But there'd been nothing else to do. Before that he'd stupidlybeen unsuspicious when the Wild Life truck came down a highway thathe'd known was blocked by a terror beam. And perhaps he'd been a foolto refuse to discuss why he'd gone up to the construction camp to seeto her safety when by all the rules of reason it was none of hisbusiness. 

The gray light paled a little. Through the gap between the barn doors, he could see past the house. Then he could see the length of the laneand the trees on the far side of the highway. 

He was laying out the food when suddenly he froze, listening. Thestillness of just-before-dawn was broken by the distant rumble of aninternal-combustion engine. It was a familiar kind of rumbling. Itdrew nearer. Except for the singularly distinct impacts of drippingsfrom leaves and roof to the ground below, it was the only sound in allthe world. 

It became louder. Jill clenched her hands unconsciously. 

"I don't think there are any car tracks at the turn-off where we camein, " said Lockley in a level voice. "The rain should have washed themout. It's not likely they're looking for us here anyhow. But I've onlygot three bullets left in the pistol. Maybe you'd better go off andhide in the cornfield. Then if things go wrong they'll believe I leftyou somewhere. "

"No, " said Jill composedly, "I'd leave tracks in the ploughed ground. They'd find me. "

Lockley ground his teeth. He got out the pistol he'd taken from thetruck driver in the lighted room in Serena. He looked at it grimly. Itwould be useless, but. .. . 

Jill came and stood beside him, watching his face. 

The rumbling of the truck was still nearer and louder. It diminishedfor a moment where a curve in the road took the vehicle behind sometrees that deadened its noise. But then the sound increased suddenly. It was very loud and frighteningly near. 

Lockley watched through the gap between the barn doors. He stayedwell back lest his face be seen. 

The trailer-truck with the Wild Life Control markings on it rumbledpast. It growled and roared. The noise seemed thunderous. Its wheelssplashed as they went through a puddle close by the gate. 

It went away into the distance. Jill took a deep breath of relief. Lockley made a warning gesture. 

He listened. The noise went on steadily for what he guessed to be amile or more. Then they heard it stop. Only by straining his earscould Lockley pick up the sound of an idling motor. Maybe that wasimagination. Certainly at any other less silent time he could notpossibly have heard it. Jill whispered, "Do you think--"

He gestured for silence again. The distant heavy engine continued toidle. One minute. Two. Three. Then the grinding of gears and the roarof the engine once more. The truck went on. Its sound diminished. Itfaded away altogether. 

"They got to a place where the road's blocked with a terror beam, "said Lockley evenly. "They stopped and called by short wave and thebeam was cut off, then they went past the block-point and undoubtedlythe beam was turned on again. "

He debated a decision. 

"We'll have breakfast, " he said shortly. "We'll have to eat the eggs raw, but we need to eat. Then we'll figure things out. It may be that we'd besensible to forget about cars and try to get to the cordon on foot, robbing farmhouses of food on the way. There can't be too many . .. Collaborators. And we could keep out of sight. "

He opened a jar of preserves. 

"But it would be better for you to be travelling by car, if tonight'sclear and there's starlight to drive by. "

Jill said practically, "There might be some news. .. . "

Her hands shook as she put the pocket radio on the hood of the car. Lockley noticed it. He felt, himself, the strain of their long marchthrough the wilderness with danger in every breath they drew. And hewas shaken in a different way by the proof that humans werecooperating fully with the invading monsters. It was unthinkable thatanybody could be a traitor not only to his own country but to all thehuman race. He felt incredulous. It couldn't be true! But it obviouslywas. 

The radio made noises. Lockley turned it in another direction. Therewas music. Jill's face worked. She struggled not to show how she felt. 

The radio said, "_Special news bulletin! Special news bulletin! ThePentagon announces that for the first time there has been practicallycomplete success in duplicating the terror beam used by the spaceinvaders at Boulder Lake! Working around the clock, teams of foreignand American scientists have built a projector of what is an entirelynew type of electronic radiation which produces every one of thephysiological effects of the alien terror beam! It is low-power, sofar, and has not produced complete paralysis in experimental animals. Volunteers have submitted themselves to it, however, and report thatit produces the sensations experienced by members of the militarycordon around Boulder Lake. A crash program for the development of theprojector is already under way. At the same time a crash program todevelop a counter to it is already showing promising results. Theauthorities are entirely confident that a complete defense against theno longer mysterious weapon will be found. There is no longer anyreason to fear that earth will be unable to defend itself against theinvaders now present on earth, or any reinforcements they mayreceive!_"

The newscast stopped and a commercial called the attention oflisteners to the virtues of an anti-allergy pill. Jill watchedLockley's face. He did not relax. 

The broadcast resumed. With this full and certain hope of a defenseagainst the invasion weapon, said the announcer, it remained importantnot to destroy the alien ship if it could be captured for study. Theuse of atom bombs was, therefore, again postponed. But they would beused if necessary. Meanwhile, against such an emergency, the areas ofevacuation would be enlarged. People would be removed from additionalterritory so if bombs were used there would be no humans near to beharmed. 

Another commercial. Lockley turned off the radio. 

"What do you think?" asked Jill. 

"I wish they hadn't made that broadcast, " said Lockley. "If there wereonly monsters involved and they didn't understand English, it would beall right. But with humans helping them, it sets a deadline. If we'regoing to counter their weapon, they have to use it before we finishthe job. "

After a moment he said bitterly, "There was a time, right after thelast big war, when we had the bomb and nobody else did. There couldn'tbe a cold war then! There were years when we could destroy others andthey couldn't have fought back. Now somebody else is in that position. They can destroy us and we can't do a thing. It'll be that way for aweek, or maybe two, or even three. It'll be strange if they don't takeadvantage of their opportunity. "

Jill tried to eat the food Lockley had laid out. She couldn't. Shebegan to cry quietly. Lockley swore at himself for telling her theworst, which it was always his instinct to see. He said urgently, "Hold it! That's the worst that could happen. But it's not the mostlikely!"

She tried to control her tears. 

"We're in a fix, yes!" he said insistently. "It does look like theremay be a flock of other space ship landings within days. But themonsters don't want to kill people. They want a world with peopleworking for them, not dead. They've proved it. They'll avoidmassacres. They won't let the humans who're their allies destroy thepeople they want alive and useful. "

Jill clenched her fists. "But it would be better to be dead than likethat!"

"But wait!" protested Lockley. "We've duplicated the terror beam. Doyou think they'll leave it at that? The men who know how to do it willbe scattered to a dozen or a hundred places, so they can't possiblyall be found, and they'll keep on secretly working until they've madethe beams and a protection against them and then something more deadlystill! We humans can't be conquered! We'll fight to the end of time!"

"But you yourself, " said Jill desperately, "you said there couldn't bea defense against the beam! You said it!"

"I was discouraged, " he protested. "I wasn't thinking straight. Look!With no equipment at all, I found out how to detect the stuff beforeit was strong enough to paralyze us. You know that. The scientistswill have equipment and instruments, and now that they've got the beamthey'll be able to try things. They'll do better than I did. They cantry heterodyning the beam. They can try for interference effects. Theymay find something to reflect it, or they can try refraction. "

He paused anxiously. She sobbed, once. "But other weapons--"

"There may not be any. And there's bound to be some trick ofrefraction that'll help. It thins out at the edges now. That's how weget warning of it. It's refracted by ions in the air. That's why itisn't a completely tight beam. Ions in the air act like drops of mist;they refract sunshine and make rainbows after rain. And we got thesmell-effect first. That proves there's refraction. "

He watched her face. She swallowed. What he'd said was largely withoutmeaning. Actually, it wasn't even right. The evidence so far was thatthe nerves of smell were more sensitive than the optic nerves or theauditory ones, while nerves to bundles of muscle were less sensitivestill. But Lockley wasn't concerned with accuracy just now. He wantedto reassure Jill. 

Then his eyes widened suddenly and he stared past her. He'd beenspeaking feverishly out of emotion, while a part of his mind stoodaside and listened. And that detached part of his mind had heard himsay something worth noting. 

He stood stock-still for seconds, staring blankly. Then he said veryquietly, "You made me think, then. I don't know why I didn't, before. The terror beam does scatter a little, like a searchlight beam in thinmist. It's scattered by ions, like light by mist-droplets. That'sright!"

He stopped, thinking ahead. Jill said challengingly, "Go on!" Againwhat he'd said had little meaning to her, but she could see that hebelieved it important. 

"Why, a searchlight beam is stopped by a cloud, which is manymist-droplets in one place. It's scattered until it simply doesn'tpenetrate!" Lockley suddenly seemed indignant at his own failure tosee something that had been so obvious all along. "If we could make acloud of ions, it should stop the terror beam as clouds stop light! Wecould--"

Again he stopped short, and Jill's expression changed. She lookedconfident again. She even looked proud as she watched Lockleywrestling with his problem, unconsciously snapping his fingers. 

"Vale and I, " he said jerkily, "had electronic base-measuringinstruments. Some of their elements had to be buried in plasticbecause otherwise they ionized the air and leaked current like ashort. If I had that instrument now--No. I'd have to take the plasticaway and it couldn't be done without smashing things. "

"What would happen, " asked Jill, "if you made what you're thinkingabout?"

"I might, " said Lockley. "I just possibly might make a gadget thatwould create a cloud of ions around the person who carried it. And itmight reflect some of the terror beam and refract the rest so none gotthrough to the man!"

Jill said hopefully, "Then tonight we go into a deserted town andsteal the things you need. .. . "

Lockley interrupted in a relieved voice, "No-o-o-o. What I need, Ithink, is a cheese grater and the pocket radio. And there should be acheese grater in the house. "

He listened at the barn door gap, and then went out. Presently he wasback. He had not only a cheese grater but also a nutmeg grater. Bothwere made of thin sheet metal in which many tiny holes had beenpunched, so that sharp bits of torn metal stood out to make thegrating surface. Lockley knew that sharp points, when chargedelectrically, make tiny jets of ionized air which will deflect acandle flame. Here there were thousands of such points. 

He set to work on the car seat, pushing the pistol with its threeremaining bullets out of the way. The pistol was reserved for Jill incase of untoward events, when it would be of little or no practicalvalue. 

He operated on the tiny radio with his pocket-knife to establish acircuit which should oscillate when the battery was turned on. Therewas induction, to raise the voltage at the peaks and troughs of theoscillations. A transistor acted as a valve to make the oscillationsrepeated surges of current of one sign in the innumerable sharp pointsof the graters. And there was an effect he did not anticipate. Theion-forming points were of minutely different lengths and patterns, sothe radiation inevitably accompanying the ion clouds was of minutelyvarying wave lengths. The consequence of using the two graters was, ofcourse, that rather astonishing peaks of energy manifested themselvesin ultra-microscopic packages for a considerable distance from thedevice. But Lockley did not plan that. It happened because of thematerials he had to use in lieu of something better. 

When it was finished he told Jill, "I can only check ion productionhere. If it works, it ought to make a lighter-flame flicker when nearthe points. If it does that, I'll go up the road to where thetrailer-truck stopped. I've a pretty good idea that the road's blockedby a terror beam there. "

Absorbed, he threw the switch. And instantly there was a racking, deafening explosion. The pistol on the car seat blew itself to bits, smashing the windshield and ripping the cushion open. The threecartridges in its cylinder had exploded simultaneously. 

Lockley seized a pitchfork. He stood savagely, ready for anything. Powder smoke drifted through the barn. Nothing else happened. 

After long, tense moments, Lockley said slowly, "That could be anotherweapon the monsters have turned on. It's been imagined. They could beusing a broadcast or a beam we haven't suspected to disarm the troopsof the cordon. They could have a detonator beam that sets offexplosives at a distance. It's possible. And if that's what they'returning on they only have to sweep the sky and the bombers aloft willbe wiped out. "

But there were no sounds other than the slowly diminishing drip ofwater from the barn roof, and the house eaves, and the few trees inthe barnyard. 

"Anyhow they've ruined our only weapon, " said Lockley coldly. "Itwould be a detonation beam setting off the cartridges. That would be aperfect protection against atomic bombs, if the chemical explosivethat makes them go off could be triggered from a distance. Cleverpeople, these monsters!"

Then he said abruptly, "Come on! It's ten times more necessary for usto get to where somebody can make use of our information!"

"Go where?" asked Jill, shaken once more. 

"We take to the woods until dark, " said Lockley, "and meanwhile I'llcheck this supposedly promising gadget--though it looks pretty feebleif the monsters have a detonating beam--against the road blocking beamup yonder. Come on!"

He stuffed his pockets with food. He led the way. 

The morning had now arrived. The sun was visible, red at the easternhorizon. 

"Walk on the grass!" commanded Lockley. 

There was no point in leaving footprints, though there was no reasonto believe the explosion on the car seat had been heard. Lockley, indeed, considered that if the aliens had just used a previouslyundisclosed weapon, there would be explosions of greater or lesserviolence all over the evacuated territory and all other areas withinits range. There wouldn't be many farmhouses without a shotgun putaway somewhere. There would be shotgun shells, too. If the aliens hada detonator beam as well as one that produced the terror beam'seffects, then all hope of resistance was probably gone. 

They crossed to the house and moved alongside it. They went withinstinctive furtiveness out of the lane and quickly into the woodlandon the farther side. They were soaked almost immediately. Fallenleaves clung to their shoes. Drooping branches smeared them withwetness. Lockley went barely out of sight of the highway and thentrudged doggedly in the direction the Wild Life Control trailer-truckhad taken. He handed Jill the ribbon of bronze that had been themainspring of his watch. 

"We might pick up the beam from the wetness underfoot, " he said, "butwe'll play it safe and use this too. "

They went on for a long way. Lockley fumed, "I don't like this! Weought to be there--"

"I think, " said Jill, "I smell it. "

"I'll try it, " said Lockley. 

He detected the jungle smell and its concomitant revolting odors. Heled Jill back. 

"Wait here, by this big tree stump. I'll be able to find you andyou're safe enough from the beam. "

He turned away. Jill said pleadingly, "Please be careful!"

"A little while ago, " he told her gloomily, "I felt that I had toomuch useful information to take any chances with my life, let aloneyours. I'm not so sure of my importance now. But I think you stillneed somebody else around. "

"I do!" said Jill. "And you know it! I'd much rather--"

"I'll be back, " he repeated. 

He went away, trailing the watch spring. 

He was extra cautious now. The smell recurred and grew stronger. Hebegan to feel the first faint flashes of light in his eyes. It was thesymptom which followed the smell when approaching a terror beam. Thena faint, discordant murmur, originating in his own ears. He turned onthe device made of two graters and the elements of a pocket radio. Thesmell ceased. The faint flashes of light stopped. There was no longera raucous sound. 

He turned off the ion producing device. The symptoms returned. Heturned it on and off. He took a step forward. He tested again. Thecloud of ions from the innumerable jagged points was invisible, butsomehow it refracted or reflected--in any case, neutralized--theweapon of the beings at Boulder Lake. He went on and presently he feltthe very faintest possible tingling of his skin and heard the barestwhisper of a sound, and smelled the jungle reek as something sodiluted that he was hardly sure he smelled it. 

He went on, and those faint sensations ceased. Presently, impatient ofhis own timorousness, he turned the device off again. He had walkedthrough the terror beam. 

He started back with the device turned on once more and at the pointwhere he'd felt the beam's manifestations faintly, he stopped to savorhis now seemingly useless triumph. If the monsters had a detonatingbeam this meant nothing. Yet it could have meant everything. He paidclose attention and distinctly but weakly experienced the effect ofthe terror beam. 

Then he didn't. Not at all. The sensations were cut off. 

He heard Jill cry out shrilly. He plunged toward the place where hehad left her. He raced. He leaped. Once he fell, and frantically sworeat the wet stuff that had caused him to slip. He reached the treestump and Jill was not there. He saw the saucer-sized tracks her feethad made on the saturated fallen leaves. They led toward the road. 

He heard a car door slam and a motor roar. He plunged onward moredesperately than before. 

The motor raced away. And Lockley got out on the highway only in timeto see the rear of a brown-painted, military-marked car some threehundred yards away. It swept around a curve of the highway and wasgone. It was going through the space where the road was blocked by aterror beam, headed obviously for Boulder Lake. 

What had happened was self-evident. From her place beside the hugestump she'd seen a military car approaching. And she and Lockley hadbeen trying to reach the cordon of troops around Boulder Lake. Therewas no reason to distrust men in uniform or in a military car. She'drun to flag it down. She had. By a coincidence, it was undoubtedlywhere a carload of collaborating humans would have stopped to have theroad-blocking beam cut off by their monster allies. She'd approachedthe stopped car. And something frightened her. She screamed. 

But she'd been pulled into the car, which went on before the beamcould come on again to stop it. 

CHAPTER 9

It was very likely that at that moment Lockley despised himself morebitterly than any other man alive. He blamed himself absolutely forJill's capture. If there were humans acting with the alien invaders, her fate would unquestionably be more horrible than at the hands ofthe monsters alone. After all, there was one nation most likely todeal with extra-terrestrial creatures to help them in the conquest ofearth, and its troops were not notorious for their kindly behavior tocivilians. 

And Jill was their captive. He'd been carried past the place where aterror beam blocked the road. The military markings might mean the carwas stolen, or that its markings and paint were counterfeit. It seemedcertain that Jill had gone up to it in confidence that there couldonly be American soldiers in such a car, and when near it found outher mistake too late. 

These were not things that Lockley thought out in detail at thebeginning. He ran after the car like a mad man, unable to feelanything but horror and so terrible a fury that it should have killedits objects by sheer intensity. 

Presently he heard hoarse, gasping sounds. He realized that the soundswere the breath going in and out of his own throat, while Jill wascarried farther and farther away from him in a car which traveled tenyards to his one. He sobbed then, and suddenly he was strangely andunnaturally calm. He was able to think quite coolly. The onlydifference between this and normal thinking was that now he couldonly think about one thing--full and complete and terrible revenge forthe crimes committed and to be committed against Jill. She would betaken to Boulder Lake. So he would go to Boulder Lake, and somehow, insome manner, he would destroy utterly all living beings there andevery trace of their coming. 

Which, of course, was both natural and unreasonable. But reason wouldhave been unnatural at such a time as this. 

He moved along the highway in a passion of ultimate resolve. In therest of the world, time passed without knowledge of his emotionalstate. The rest of the world was suffering emotional agonies of itsown. 

The United States had become popular among peoples who disliked allthings American except those they were given free, and who continuedto dislike the givers. Now though, the United States had been invadedfrom space by creatures using weapons of unprecedented type andeffect. If the United States were conquered, there was no other nationlikely to remain free. So a great deal of anti-Americanism faded underpressure of an ardent desire for America to be successful in itsself-defense. 

Moreover, anticipating other alien landings which could take placeanywhere, the United States offered to share its stock of atom bombswith any nation so invaded. American popularity increased. The factthat the USSR made no such proposal also had its effect. The UnitedStates invited scientists of every country to help in solving themenace of the terror beam, and committed itself to share anydiscoveries for defense against it with all the world. Again there wasan improvement in the public image of the United States abroad. 

But Lockley knew nothing of this. His pocket radio no longer existedto give him news. It had been rebuilt into something else, whose mostconspicuous parts were cheese and nutmeg graters, slung over hisshoulder as he marched. But if he had known of changes in thepopularity of his country, he wouldn't have been interested. He couldfix his mind only on one subject and matters related to it. 

He tramped along the highway, possessed by a cold demon of hatred. Hewas on foot for lack of a car. He was unarmed. At the moment hebelieved that all the rest of humanity was disarmed, in effect if notin fact. So he had no plans, only an infinite hatred. 

But because he would have to pass through terror beams to get at thosehe meant to destroy, he realized that it was necessary to make surethat he would be able to pass through them, that his equipment forreaching Boulder Lake was in good order. It was still turned on. Heturned it off to be economical of its batteries. He went on, thinkingof only one subject, examining every possibility for revenge with apassionate patience, undiscouraged because one idea after another wasplainly impossible, but continuing obsessively to think of others. 

He smelled the foetid odor, which cut through his absorption becauseof its connotations. He turned on his device and went doggedly ahead. He knew he had entered a terror beam by the faint perceptions whichcame through the cloud of ions his instrument produced. Then theyceased. He knew that the beam had been cut off. He heard a motor revup. A car or truck had stopped beyond the road-blocking beam andwaited for it to be cut off, as it had been. 

Lockley stepped into the woods hating the vehicle bitterly as itapproached, but wanting to save destruction for those where Jill hadbeen taken. 

He was hidden when the car appeared. It was a perfectly commonplacecar with a whip aerial at its rear. It came confidently along thehighway. A hundred yards from him, there were explosions. Smoke cameout of the open windows. The engine stopped and the car bucked crazilyand went into the ditch beside the highway. A man plunged out, slapping at his leg. A revolver in its holster had exploded all itsshells. The leather holster had saved him from serious injury, but hisclothing was on fire. Other men, two of them, got out hastily. Thingshad exploded in the back of the car, too. The three men sworeagitatedly. 

Then one of them said something which stimulated the others to franticflight down the highway away from the ditched car. The third manlimped anxiously after the faster-moving two. 

Lockley, watching and hating with undivided attention, knew when theterror beam came on again. He felt it, very faint because of hisprotection, but quite distinct. The explosions had taken place whenthe car was in the area now covered again by the terror beam. The menin the car, astonished and scorched, had fled because the beam was dueto come back on and they didn't want to be caught in it. 

Lockley noted that the human confederates of the monsters had noprotection against the beam to match his own. Perhaps the monstersthemselves were protected only near the projectors. This was an itemaffecting his plans of revenge for Jill. He stored it away in hismind. Then he realized that the weapons in the car had exploded justlike the pistol on his own seat cushion. The explosion was notassociated with the terror beam. There'd been no beam in action whenhis own pistol blew up. It did not seem reasonable that if themonsters possessed a detonation beam that they'd turn it on their ownconfederates. 

No. Rational beings would do nothing so self-contradictory. 

Then Lockley looked down at the cheese grater-pocket radio device ofhis own manufacture. He considered the fact that his own pistol hadexploded the instant he'd turned the gadget on. The weapons in theother car detonated when that car was near him. 

He plodded onward thinking very clearly and precisely about thematter. He even remembered to turn off his gadget because he wouldneed it to avenge Jill. But when he tried to think of any subjectunconnected with revenge, his mind became confused and agitated. 

Two miles along the highway, which had not yet turned to head intoward Boulder Lake, there was a farmhouse. Lockley walked heavily tothe abandoned building. He found the door locked. Without consciousthought, he forced it. He searched the closets. He found a shotgun andhalf a box of shells. He considered them, then left the gun and allthe shells but three. He went out. Presently he laid a shotgun shelldown on the road. He paced off twenty-five yards and dropped another. He dropped a third twenty-five yards farther on, and then carefullycounted off three hundred feet. The car had been just about that faraway when the explosions came. 

He turned on his device. Two of the three shells exploded smokily. Thefarthest away did not explode. 

He did not rejoice. He went on without elation, but it became a partof his painstaking search for vengeance that he knew he could set offexplosives within a hundred and twenty-five yards of himself. Therewas something about the device he'd constructed which made explosivesdetonate, up to a distance of a little over one hundred yards. He feltno curiosity about it, though it was simple enough. The heterodyningof extremely saw-toothed waves produced peaks of energy until thesaw-teeth began to smooth out. There were infinitesimal spots inwhich, for infinitesimal lengths of time, energy conditions comparableto sparks existed. This had not been worked out in advance, but thereason was clear. 

He came to the place where the main highway to Boulder Lake branchedoff from the road he was following. He turned into it, walkingdoggedly. 

Three miles toward the lake, an engine sounded from behind him. He gotoff the highway and turned the switch. A half-ton truck came trundlingopenly along the road. It came closer and closer. 

Small-arm ammunition exploded. The engine stopped and the light trucktoppled over onto its side. Lockley did not approach it. Its drivermight not be dead, and he would not find it possible to leave any manalive who was associated with Jill's captors. He passed the truck andwent on up the highway. 

Seven miles up the road a truck came down from Boulder Lake. Lockleyplaced himself discreetly out of sight. He turned on his instrument. Agun flew to pieces with a thunderous detonation. The truck crashed. Itwas interesting to Lockley that automobile engines invariably wentdead at about the time that explosives went off. The fact was, ofcourse, that ionized air is more or less conductive. In an ion cloudthe spark plugs shorted and did not fire in the cylinders. 

There were two other vehicles which essayed to pass Lockley as hewent on up the long way to the lake. Both came from the interior ofthe Park. He left them wrecked beside the highway. Between times, hewalked with a dogged grimness toward the place where Vale had been thefirst to report a thing come down from the sky. That had been how manydays ago? Three? Four?

Then Lockley had been a quiet and well-conducted citizen inclined topessimism about future events, but duly considerate of the rights ofothers. Now he'd changed. He felt only one emotion, which was hatredsuch as he'd never imagined before. He had only one motive, which wasto take total and annihilating vengeance for what had been done toJill. 

He plodded on and on. He had to make a march of not less than twentymiles from the Park's beginning. He journeyed on foot because therewere terror beams to pass and automobile engines did not run when hisprotective device operated. He could not arm himself from the carsthat ditched, because all chemical explosive weapons and theirammunition blew at the same time. He was a minute figure among themountains, marching alone upon a winding highway, moving resolutely todestroy--alone--the invaders from outer space and the men who workedwith them for the conquest of earth. For his purpose he carried thestrangest of equipment, a device made of a pocket radio and a cheesegrater. 

He had food in his pockets, but he could not eat. During the afternoonhe became impatient of its weight and threw it away. But he thirstedoften. More than once he drank from small streams over which thehighway builders had made small concrete bridges. 

At three in the afternoon a truck came up from behind. Here hetrudged between steep cliffs which made him seem almost a midget. Thehighway went through a crevice between adjoining mountainsides. Therewas no place for him to conceal himself. When he heard the engine, hestopped and faced it. The truck had picked up many men from wreckedcars along its route. There were scorched and scratched and woundedmen, hurt by the explosion of their firearms. The truck brought themalong and overtook Lockley. 

He waited very calmly since it did not seem likely that they wouldrealize that one man had caused the crashes. The driver of the truckwith the picked-up men did not even think of such a thing. Lockleyseemed much more likely the victim of still another wreck. 

The overtaking truck slowed down. There would be no strangers inBoulder Lake Park. There would only be the task force aiding themonsters, as Lockley reasoned it out. So the truck slowed, preparatoryto taking Lockley aboard. 

At a hundred and twenty-five yards from Lockley, weapons in the truckcab blew themselves violently apart. The engine, stopped in gear, acted as a violently applied brake. The truck swerved off the highway. It turned over and was still. 

Lockley turned and walked on. He considered coldly that it wasperfectly safe for him to go on. There were no weapons left behindhim. The men themselves were shaken up. They would attempt to make notrouble beyond a report of their situation and a plea for help. Thereport could be made by the radio, which was not smashed. 

Half an hour later, Lockley felt the tingling which meant that hisinstrument was protecting him from a terror beam. The tingling lastedonly a short time, but fifteen minutes later it came back. Then itreturned at odd intervals. Five minutes--eight--ten--three--six--one. Each time the terror beam should have paralyzed him and caused intensesuffering. A man with no protective device would have had his nervesshattered by torment coming so violently at unpredictable intervals. 

Lockley tried to reason out why this nerve-wracking application of theterror beam hadn't been used before. To an unprotected man it would beworse than continuous pain. No living man could remain able to resistany demand if exposed to such torture. 

The beam was evidently swung at random intervals, and the phenomenonlasted for an hour and a half. Anyone but Lockley behind a cloud ofions would have been reduced to shivering hysteria. Then, suddenly, the beamings stopped. But Lockley left his device in operation. 

Half an hour later still--close to five o'clock--it appeared that theinvaders assumed that any enemy should have been softened up forcapture. They sent an expedition to find out what had happened totheir trucks and cars. 

Lockley saw four cars and a light truck in close formation movingtoward him from the Lake. They were close, as if for mutualprotection. They moved steadily, as if inviting the fate that hadovertaken others. The short wave reports from smashed trucks seemedimprobable to them, but the expedition was equipped to investigateeven such unlikely happenings. 

The four cars in the lead contained five men each. Each man was armedwith a rifle containing a single cartridge in its chamber and none inits magazine. The rifles pointed straight up. There was moreammunition in the light truck behind, and it was in clips ready foruse, but the truck body was of iron. If that ammunition detonated, itcould do no harm. If it did not, it would be available for use againstthe single man mentioned by the driver of the last truck to bewrecked. 

But Lockley saw them coming. They came sedately down a long straightstretch of road. He climbed a rocky wall beside the highway to alittle ravine that led away from the road. He posted himself where hewas extremely unlikely to be seen. Then he waited. 

The cavalcade of cars appeared. It drove briskly toward Lockley atsomething like thirty miles an hour. Perhaps ten yards separated thelead car from the second. The truck was a trifle closer to the fourman-carrying vehicles. They swept along, every man alert. They wouldpass forty feet below Lockley. 

He did nothing. His device was already turned on. He watched indetached calm. 

The lead car stopped as if it had run into a brick wall, while riflesinside it blew holes in its top. The second car crashed into it, rifles detonating. The third car. The fourth. The truck piled into theothers with a gigantic flare and furious report, each separate brasscartridge case exploding in the same instant. The truck became scrapiron. 

Lockley went away along the small ravine. From now on he would avoidthe highway. He estimated that he would arrive at Boulder Lake itselfabout half an hour after dark. It occurred to him that then Jill wouldhave been a prisoner of the invaders for something more than twelvehours, at least ten of them at their headquarters. 

Before he began the climb that would take him to the invaders, Lockleystopped at a small stream. 

He drank thirstily. 

CHAPTER 10

There was a three-day-old moon in the sky when the last colors fadedin the west. When darkness fell it was already low. It gave littlelight; not much more than the stars alone. It did help Lockley whileit lasted however. He knew the terrain about Boulder Lake but not indetail. And it would not be wise for him to move openly to wreakdestruction on the enemies of his nation. 

He used the moonlight for his approach by the least practical route tothe lake. When it dimmed and went behind the mountains, he continuedto climb, sliding dangerously, then descend and climb again as therough going demanded. His mind was absorbed with reflections upon whathe meant to do. The wrecks on the highway would have given notice tothe invaders that he could do damage. They would take every possibleprecaution against him. 

It was typical of Lockley that he painstakingly imagined everyobstacle that might be put in his way. During the last half hour ofhis scrambling travel, for example, he was tormented by a measure hisenemies might have used to make him advertise his presence. If theysimply laid rifle cartridges on the ground at intervals of twenty-fiveor fifty yards, he could not cross that line with his device inoperation without blowing up those shells. It was a possiblecountermeasure that caused him to sweat with worry. 

But it wasn't thought of by anyone else. To contrive it, a man wouldhave to know how the detonation field worked and how far it extended. Nobody but Lockley knew. Therefore no one could contrive this defenseagainst him. 

He worked his way to Boulder Lake's back door through brushwood andover boulders. Presently he looked down upon his destination. To hisright and left rocky masses were silhouetted against the starry sky. He gazed down on the lake and the shoreline where the hotel would bebuilt, and the places where roads came out of the wilderness. 

There were changes since the time he'd looked down from Vale's surveypost and before the terror beam captured him. He catalogued themmentally, but the sight before him was intolerable. Everything he saw, here where space monsters were believed to hold sway, was in realitythe work of men. Rage filled him at the sight. Hatred. Fury. .. . 

In the rest of the world an entirely different sort of emotion wasfelt about the subject of the invaders. The United States hadannounced to all the world that American and other scientists, workingtogether, had solved the mystery of the alien weapon. They hadproduced a duplicate of the terror beam. It was no less effective andno less an absolute weapon than the invaders'. And a defense had beenfound which was complete. It was being rushed into production. Theexperimental counter beam generators would be moved into position tofrustrate and defeat the monsters who had landed upon earth. Militarydetachments, protected by the counter generators, would move uponBoulder Lake at dawn. By sunset tomorrow the aliens would be dead orcaptive, and their ship would undoubtedly be in the hands ofscientists for study. 

Moreover, the United States would provide counter weapons for othernations. In no more than months every continent and nation on earthwould be equipped to defy any alien landing that might take place. The world would be able to defend itself. It would be equipped to doso. And this was the resolve of the United States because the worldcould not exist half free and half enslaved by creatures from adistant planet. The news poured out from all sources. The alien weaponwas understood and now could be defied. Soon all the world would beprovided with counter weapons. It was necessary for all the world tobe prepared and prepared it would be. 

This was the information which made all the world rejoice, though notyet at ease because aliens still occupied a tiny part of the earth. But all the world was eager for confirmation of the news it had justreceived. 

Lockley had no such soothing anticipations. He shook with fury becausewhat he saw before him was so appalling as to be almost unbelievable. 

It was not dark in the space he looked down upon. There were brightfloodlights placed here and there to drench a large area with light. There were few figures in sight. But what the floodlights showed madeLockley quiver with hatred. 

The floodlights were of typically human type. There were vehiclesparked on a level grassy space. They were of human manufacture. Therewas no space ship in the lake, but there was a three-stage rocket setup, ready for firing. It was of the kind used by humans to putartificial satellites into orbit. Lockley even knew its designation, and that it used the new solid fuels for propulsion. 

In the lair of the creatures from outer space there was nothing fromouter space. There was nothing in view which was alien or unearthly orextra-terrestrial. And Lockley made inarticulate growling soundsbecause he saw with absolute clarity and certainty that there neverhad been anything from outer space at this spot. 

There were no monsters. There never had been. And the truth was morehorribly enraging than the deception had been. 

Because this could mean the death of the world. This was an attempt tofight the last war on earth in disguise. Humans had posed as non-humanbeings so that America would fight against phantoms while its greatmilitary rival pretended to help and actually stabbed from behind. 

It was completely logical, of course. An admitted attack by terrorbeams in the form of death rays would involve retaliation by America. Against a human enemy great, roaring missiles could circle earth toplunge down upon that enemy's cities to turn them and theirinhabitants into incandescent gas. An attack known to be by humans andupon humans must touch off the world's last war in which every livingthing might die. No conceivable success at the beginning could preventfull retaliation. But if the attack were believed to be from space, then American weapons and valor would be spent against creatures whichwere no more than ghosts. 

Lockley moved forward. Only he could know the situation as itpresented itself here. Even vengeance for Jill should be put aside, ifit called for action irrelevant to this state of things. But it didnot. A full and terrible revenge for her required exactly the actionthe coolest of cold-blooded resolutions would suggest be taken now. And Lockley moved on and downward to take it. 

He began to crawl downhill toward the lights, unaware that there weresome gaps in his picture of the total scene. For example, these lightscould be detected by aircraft overhead. The fact did not occur toLockley. He was not given pause by the relaxation of the enemy'sdisguise so far as air observation was concerned. He didn't think ofit. He moved on. 

He drew near the lighted area. He did not walk, he crawled. He beganto listen with fury-sharpened ears. If he could get close to that hugerocket, close enough to detonate its solid fuel stores. .. . 

That would be at once revenge and expedience. If the rocket's fuelblew up instead of burning as intended, it would annihilate the camp. It would wipe out every living creature present. But there would befragments left by the explosion. There would be corpses. There wouldbe wreckage. And that wreckage and those corpses would be unmistakablyhuman. The last war on earth might not be avoided, but at the worst itwould be fought against America's actual enemy and not againstimaginary monsters. 

It was worth dying to accomplish even that. But Jill. .. . 

Lockley's progress was infinitely slow, but he needed to take thegreatest pains. He listened carefully. 

He heard the faint high roaring of the planes overhead. They were faraway. There were sounds of insects, and the cries of night birds, andthe rustling of leaves and foliage. 

There was another sound. A new sound. It was inexplicable. It was astrange and intermittent muttering. There was a certain irregularrhythm to it, a familiar rhythm. 

He crawled on. 

There was movement suddenly, off to his left. Then it stopped. Itcould be a man on watch against him simply shifting his position. Lockley froze, and then went on with even greater caution. He feltthe ground before him for small twigs that might crack under hisweight. 

The muttering continued. Presently Lockley realized that it was ahuman voice. It was resonant and with many overtones, but still toofaint for him to distinguish words. 

He crossed a slight rise that had much brushwood. The brushwood grewin clumps and he circled them with a patient caution foreign to hisfeelings. 

The muttering changed and went on. Lockley pressed himself to theground. Men went past him a hundred feet away. He saw them in outlineagainst the illuminated parked cars and trucks and in the space aroundthe huge rocket. They carried no rifles, probably no firearms at all. Lockley's march up the highway had warned them of the uselessness ofguns, at least at short range. They were watching for him now. Perhapsthese men were relieving other watchers on the hillside. 

He saw other men. They seemed to move restlessly around the lightedarea. 

The muttering was louder now. He could almost catch the words. He madeanother hundred yards toward the rocket and the voice changed again. Then he was dazed. The voice was speaking to him! Calling him by name!

_"Lockley! Lockley! Don't do anything crazy! Everything can beexplained! You'll recognize my voice. You talked to me on thetelephone from Serena!_"

Lockley did recognize the voice. It was that of the general who'dsounded pompous and indignant as he refused to listen to Lockley'sstatements. Now, coming out of many loudspeakers and echoing hollowlyfrom cliffs, it was the same voice but with an intonation that waspersuasive and forthright. 

"_You startled me_, " said the voice crisply. "_You'd found out therewere humans involved in this business. It was important that the factbe suppressed. I tried to browbeat you, which was a mistake. While Iwas talking to you your suspicion was reported on short wave by theWild Life driver. I tried to overawe you. You're the wrong kind of manfor that. But everything can be explained. Everything! Here's Vale toprove it!_"

There was only an instant's pause. Then Vale's voice came out of theloudspeakers spread all about. 

"_Lockley, this is Vale. The whole thing's faked. There's a goodreason for it, but you stumbled on the facts. They had to be keptsecret. I didn't even tell Jill. This isn't treason, Lockley. Wearen't traitors! Come out and I'll explain everything. Here'sSattell. _"

And Sattell's voice boomed against the hills. 

"_Vale's right, Lockley! I didn't know what was up. I was fooled asmuch as anybody. But it's all right! It's perfectly all right! Whenyou understand you'll realize that you had to be deceived just as Iwas. Come on out and everything will be explained to yoursatisfaction. I promise!_"

Lockley grimaced. How did Sattell get up here? And the general incommand of the cordon? More than that, why did they call his nameinstead of simply trying to kill him? Why post watchers on thehillsides if they were anxious to explain and not to murder? How couldthey hope to deceive him after Jill. .. . 

There was a pause, and then what was evidently considered a decisivemessage came. It was Jill's voice, weary and desperate. It said, "_Please come out and listen! Please come and let them explaineverything. They can do it. I understand and I believe them. It'strue. It's not treason. I--I beg you to come out and let them tellyou why all this has happened. .. . _"

Her voice trailed off. It had trembled. It was tense. It was strained. And Lockley cursed softly, shaking with rage. Then the first voicereturned, "_Lockley! Lockley! Don't do anything crazy! Everything canbe explained. You'll recognize my voice. You talked to me on thetelephone from Serena. _"

This voice repeated, word for word and intonation for intonation, exactly what it had said before. The other voices followed in the sameorder. They were taped. 

In Lockley's state of mind, the taping took away all authority fromthe voices. Jill, in particular, sounded as she might have if torturehad been used to break her will and force her to say what her captorswished. She could not put any warning into it, because she could havebeen forced to repeat and repeat the message until her captors weresatisfied. 

That would all be avenged now. All of it. And Jill would be gratefulto Lockley even if they never saw each other again; grateful for themonstrous blast that would wipe this place clean of living creatures. 

Lockley suddenly saw a way by which his vengeance could be increasedby just a little. It could be made even more satisfying and just. Hiding under brushwood while the voices tirelessly repeated theirrecorded persuasion, he made a very simple device. It switched ontothe instrument he carried. If his hand clenched, it would go on. Ifhis hand relaxed, it would go on. So if he could get within a hundredand twenty-five yards of the rocket he could show himself and let themknow what waited for them, and why. 

With infinite patience he got to a place almost near the circle ofunarmed guards about the rocket. He waited. The guards were tense. They did not like trying to protect something with no weapons. Theywere jumpy. The endlessly repeated messages booming into the nightfrayed their nerves. They were plainly on edge. 

Their tenseness made the oldest trick in the world serve Lockley'spurpose. He threw a stone from an especially dark shadow. It struckand bounced upon another stone, and it created a rustling of brushwoodat a place distant from Lockley. And the unarmed guards plunged forthat place to seize whatever or whoever had made the disturbance. 

They were too eager. They stumbled upon each other. 

And Lockley ran, and a voice cried out in terror. And then Lockleystood with his back to the rocket's lower parts, and he waved thecheese grater derisively and shouted. 

Then there was stillness. Only the booming voice from the speakerswent on. It happened to be Sattell's voice. 

"_ . .. All right. It's perfectly all right. When you understand you'llrealize that you had to be deceived as I was. It was necessary. Comeout and everything--_"

Somebody cut off the recorder. There was a moment of blank indecision, and then a man in uniform with two general's stars on his shoulderscame out of somewhere and walked to face Lockley. 

"Ah, Lockley!" he said briskly. "That's the thing you smash cars andexplode ammunition with, eh? Do you think it will blow the rocket?"

"I'm going to try it!" said Lockley. "Listen. " He showed how anythingthat could be done to him would close the switch one way or the other. "I wanted you to know before I blow it!" he said fiercely. "Where'sJill? Jill Holmes? One of your cars picked her up and brought herhere. Where is she?"

"We sent her, " said the general, "over to the construction camp, incase you managed to get in the exact situation you're in. In otherwords, she's safe. She'll be coming shortly, though. She was to benotified the instant you appeared--if the rocket didn't blast as yourgreeting. "

Lockley ground his teeth. 

"We'll have this settled before she gets here!"

Vale appeared. He walked forward and stood beside the general. 

"We did a job that was several times too good, Lockley, " he saidruefully. "I'd rehearsed my song-and-dance until we thought it wasperfect. What made you suspicious, Lockley? Did you notice we kept thecommunicator aimed right so you'd hear through to the end? A finepoint, that. We worried about it. "

The headlights of a car moved against a mountainside. 

"You see, " said Vale, "the thing had to be done this way! Sattellswore a blue streak when it was explained to him. He felt he'd beenmade a fool of. But there are some things that can't be handledforthrightly!"

Lockley felt physically ill. Jill had been--still was--engaged toVale. She'd been anxious about him. She'd been loyal to him. And hewas helping the invaders! He opened his mouth to speak bitterly, whenSattell appeared. He lined up beside the general and Vale. 

"They fooled me too, Lockley, " he said wryly. "But it's all right. They had to. They thought you were fooled. Those three men in the boxwith you the other day, they said you were fooled, too. And they'resharp secret service men!"

"You're very convincing, aren't you?" he raged. "But--"

"You believe, " said Sattell, "I've joined up with spies and traitors. You believe. .. . "

He outlined, with precision, exactly what Lockley did believe; thatphantom monsters were to be credited with waging war against Americawhile another nation actually murdered Americans. It was a remarkablyaccurate picture of Lockley's state of mind. 

"But that's all wrong!" insisted Sattell. "This is a quick trick byour own people for our own safety. For the benefit of all the world. It's a trick to forestall just what I described!"

The far away headlights drew nearer. But no car could have come fromthe construction camp as quickly as this. 

"The fact is, " said the general, "that our spies tell us that anothervery great nation has developed this beam we've been demonstrating toall the world. So did we. And we couldn't use it, but they would! Ifthey didn't use it against us, they'd use it for any sort of emergencydirty trick. So we made up this invasion to persuade every country onearth to arm itself against this particular weapon. Nothing less thanmonsters in space would justify arming, in the eyes of somepoliticians! Of course, they'll arm against us as well as--anybodyelse. "

He spoke matter-of-factly. A glance at Lockley's face would have toldhim that persuasiveness would not work. 

"This trick, with the defense we intended to reveal, " the generaladded, "should mean that a very nasty weapon won't ever be used, either to start or end a war. Maybe the war won't occur because we'vesaid there are monsters who fly around in space ships. "

Lockley had a confused impression that he was dreaming this. It wasnot the way things should happen! This was not true! When he squeezedor released the improvised switch in his hand, the rocket behind himwould disappear in a monstrous flame, and he and the three men whofaced him would, vanish, and there would be an explosion crater hereand a shattered mass of wrecked cars--

"It was an interesting job, " said Vale. "The Army dumped a hundredtons of high explosive into the lake. The two radars that reported aship in space were arranged to be operated by two special men, who gottheir orders directly from the President. We picked a day with fullcloud cover; the radar operators inserted their faked tapes and madetheir reports; and the Army set off the hundred-ton explosion in thelake. From there on, it was just a matter of using the terror beam. "

"I mention, " said the general mildly, "that not one human being hasbeen killed by anything we've done. Would you expect traitors to be socareful? Or spies?"

Lockley said thickly, "You stand there arguing. You're trying to makeme believe you. But there's Jill! What's happened to her? How did youmake her record that tape? Where's Jill? She won't tell me it's allright!"

Headlights swept up to the floodlit space. The car stopped. 

Jill came into view. She saw Lockley, standing against the rocket'sbase. She ran. 

She stood beside the general and Vale and Sattell. She looked worn anddesperately anxious. 

"What have they done to you?" demanded Lockley fiercely. 

She shook her head. 

"N-nothing. I couldn't stay at the camp when I was so sure you'd cometo try to help me. So I came here. I don't know what they've told youyet, but it's all right. We were fooled as the world has to be. Believe it! Please believe it!"

"What have they done to you?" he repeated terribly. 

"What have they done to the world?" demanded Jill. "They've made everynation look to us as the defender of their freedom. And we are!They've made everybody ready to fight against more monsters if theycome, and to fight against men if they try to enslave them with theterror beam or anything else! Would traitors have done that?"

Lockley knew that he had to decide. It was an unbearableresponsibility. He was not convinced, even by Jill. But he was nolonger certain that he'd been right. 

"Why didn't you kill me?" he demanded. "I could have been shot downfrom a distance. You didn't have to come close to talk to me. If therocket blew, what would it matter?"

"You've got a protection against the terror beam, " said the generalmatter-of-factly. "So have we. But ours weighs two tons. Yours can becarried without being a burden. And--" his eyes went to the unlikelycheese grater over Lockley's shoulder--"and yours detonatesexplosives. If we can equip the world with those, Lockley, we'll havepeace!"

Lockley thought of a decisive test. He grimaced. 

"You want me to risk being a traitor! All right, what's in it for me?What am I offered?"

The general shrugged, his eyes hardening. Vale spread out his hands. Sattell snorted. Jill moistened her lips. Lockley turned upon her. 

"You want me to believe, " he said harshly. "What do you offer if Iturn over the thing to these men you say are honest men and neitherspies or traitors. What do you offer?"

She stared at him. Then she said quietly, "Nothing. "

Lockley hesitated once more, for a long instant. But that was theright answer. Nobody who'd been bought or bribed or frightened intobeing a traitor would have thought of it. 

"That, " said Lockley, "by a strange coincidence happens to be myprice. "

He ripped away a wire. He flung the queer combination of pocket radioand cheese and nutmeg graters to the general. 

"I'll explain later how it works, " he said wearily, "--if I haven'tmade a mistake. "

 * * * * *

After a suitable time the general came to him. Lockley was convinced, now. The reaction of the men who'd been guards and truck drivers andthe like was conclusive. They regarded him with a certain cordialrespect which was not the reaction of either traitors or invaders. 

"We've been checking that little device, Lockley, " said the generalhappily. "It's perfect for our purposes! So much better than a two-tongenerator to interfere with and cancel the terror beams! Marvelous!And do you know what it means? With all the world believing we've beenattacked from space, and with our great show of taking back BoulderLake--"

"How will you manage that?" asked Lockley, without too much interest. 

"The rocket, " said the general, beaming. "When troops start into thePark, the rocket takes off. It heads for empty space. And we explainthat the aliens went away when they found their weapon useless and westarted to get rough with them!"

"Oh, " said Lockley listlessly. 

"But the really beautiful thing, " the general told him, "is yourgadget! They can be made by millions. Ridiculously cheap, they tellme. Everybody in the world will want one, and we'll pass them out. Nogovernment could stop that! Not even Russia! But--d'you see, Lockley?"

Lockley shook his head. He always had a tendency to look on the darkside of future events. The future did not look bright to him. 

"Don't you see?" demanded the general, chuckling. "They detonateexplosives, those little gadgets! There's no harm in that! Whereexplosives are used in industry you've only to make sure that nobodyturns one on too close. In nine-tenths of the world, anyhow, civiliansaren't allowed to have guns. But think of the consequences there!"

Lockley was weary. He was dejected. The general grinned from ear toear. 

"Why, when these are distributed, even the secret police can't goarmed! What price dictators then? For that matter, what pricesoldiers? The cold war ends, Lockley, because there couldn't be aconquering army in the modern sense. The tanks wouldn't run. The carswould stall. And the guns--An invasion would have to be made withhorse-drawn transport and the troops armed with bows and spears. Thatamounts to disarmament, Lockley! A consummation devoutly to be wished!I'm going to look forward to a ripe old age now. I never couldbefore!"

 * * * * *

Presently Lockley talked to Jill. She was constrained. She seemeduneasy. Lockley felt that there wasn't much to say, now that Vale wasalive and well and there was no more danger for her. He offered hishand to say good-bye. 

"I think, " she said with a little difficulty, "I think I should tellyou I'm not--engaged any longer. I--told him I--wouldn't want to bemarried to someone whose work made him keep secrets from me. "

Lockley tensed. He said incredulously, "You're not going to marryVale?"

She said nervously. 

"No-o-o. I've told him. "

Lockley swallowed. 

"What did he say?"

"He--didn't like it, " said Jill. "But he understood. I explainedthings. He said--he said to congratulate you. "

Lockley made an appropriate movement. She wept quietly, held close inhis arms. 

"I was so afraid you didn't--you wouldn't--"

Lockley took appropriate measures to comfort her and to assure herthat he did and he would, forever and ever. A very long time later heasked interestedly, "What did you say to Vale when he asked you tocongratulate me?"

"I said, " said Jill comfortably, "that I would if things worked outall right. And they have. I congratulate you, darling. Now how aboutcongratulating me?"

 * * * * *

The rocket took off and went away into emptiness. This was near dawn, when military announcements of the reoccupation of Boulder Lake werebeing passed out to the news media. As much of the public as was awakewas informed that the monstrous aliens had fled from earth, theirintentions frustrated by the work of scientists. It wasn't necessaryfor a large force to march in. A special detail took over at the lakeitself. Curiously enough, it seemed to be already there when thequestion arose. It would report a regrettable absence of alienartifacts by which the monsters might be kept in mind. 

But there would be reminders. Later bulletins would report that theUnited States was putting into quantity production the small, individual protective devices which defied the terror beam and wouldsupply them to all the world. There could not be greater friendshipthan that! The United States also proposed a world wide alliance fordefense against future attacks by space monsters, with pooled armamentand completely cooperative governments. 

The world, obviously, would unite against monsters. And people in aposture of defense against enemies from the stars obviously wouldn'tfight each other. 

And there were some people who were pleased. They knew about thepossibilities of the small gadgets, brought down in production to thesize of a pack of cigarettes. Knowing what they could do, they waitedvery interestedly to see what would happen in certain nations whensecret police couldn't carry firearms and soldiers could only be armedwith spears. 

They expected it to be very interesting indeed.