by Allen Wold
"It's in the car," Mark said.
"Then maybe we should be going. It's kind of the long way round, and you'll want to be able to see something when we get there."
He got his big flashlight, and they left the house. The others waited while Mark went to the car and came back with an attache case. Then, keeping his house between them and the Thurston place, Durk led them across the fields toward the river.
At the bank he turned them north and they went up through the low undergrowth under the occasional trees. "Watch your step going down," he cautioned as he started down the bank. He went slowly so that the others would be able to follow in the growing dark.
When they were all safely in the mine tunnel, he turned on his light and led them toward the mine head. "Can't get lost," he said as they passed an occasional side tunnel, "if you just keep going straight. No turns at all between the river and the ladder."
They had to go up the ladder one at a time, since it wasn't strong enough to bear two of them at once. Durk went first, to make sure the coast was clear, and as each of the others got to the surface, he made them lie down among the weeds and vines.
There were plenty of lights on at the Visitors' house, but the driveway and yard were dark. No lights burned in either of the two barns.
"The near barn," Durk said softly, "is where the other animals are kept. The barn in back is their garage and machine shop, I think."
"Let's go down and take a look," Anne said. She got to her feet—crawling would take too long, be too noisy, and would leave her too vulnerable should she have to flee—and started down the gentle slope. Mark and Steve immediately followed suit. Durk hesitated a moment, finding it a bit difficult to digest the fact of Anne's leadership. He remembered his condescending question back at the house and felt acute embarrassment. Then he too, with Arnold beside him, started down toward the barn.
They kept the barn between them and the house the whole way, but the door to the barn was within plain sight of the house and whoever might be looking out. Whispering to the others to stay where they were, Anne slid along the front of the barn to the door and tried the latch. Apparently it wasn't locked, since she slid the door open at once, just far enough for her to slip inside. As she did so, the other four quickly followed. When they were all in, Anne slid the door shut again but left a finger-wide crack through which they could watch for sudden arrivals.
Durk heard a small clicking, like a latch being undone, and then saw Mark holding a flashlight which had been carefully taped so that only a dim glow emanated from its lens. Mark snapped the attache case back shut, and they looked around at the rows of cages stacked to the ceiling.
"What are they?" Steve asked.
"I don't know," Durk said, "but they feed them to the crivits, and they eat them themselves, I think." There was very little animal smell in the place, and Durk found that most disturbing.
"They're vegetarians," Arnold said, going from cage to cage. "Mammals, obviously. Their feet look like they're good at climbing. They're being bred, see? All the cages have two adults, but those with infants have been divided to keep the male away from the litter."
"I'd guess," Mark said as he and the others followed along behind Arnold, "that this animal was the Visitors' main food supply on their ships."
"Quite possible. I can't tell from such a hurried look, but I think they probably breed rather quickly and reach maturity quickly. And can eat almost any vegetable matter."
"This is all very interesting," Anne said, "but we'd better get those bugs on their communications lines."
They made their way back to the door where Anne stood a moment, peering through the crack. Then she put her ear up to it and listened.
"We're clear," she said as Mark turned off the light. Anne opened the door and as Steve went through, whispered something to him. He nodded and, moving quickly in a low crouch, went to the wall of the house and pressed himself against it, between two windows. Mark followed and did the same, as did Arnold and Durk. Anne, the last one out, paused only to slide the barn door shut before joining the others.
They were fortunate in that both the power and the phone lines were connected at this side of the house. Mark opened his case again, relying on the light of the windows without actually moving into it, and handed Steve several items.
"Keep an eye on the front of the house," Anne whispered to Durk. "I'll watch toward the back."
"Somebody ought to look into that other barn," Mark murmured.
"I'll do it," Arnold said, and moved off in that direction.
Durk went toward the front corner of the house. Kneeling low to the ground, he peered around it until he could see the front porch. There was nobody there. He looked back over his shoulder and saw Mark at the phone connection, fiddling with something, while Steve worked at the power lines. He turned away, and instead of watching, unfocused his eyes and concentrated on listening to the night.
He could just barely hear subtle bumps and hums, footsteps and conversation, coming from somewhere in the house. That was as it should be. Once or twice there were other sounds, mechanical or electrical, which he couldn't identify. That was okay too. He could also hear an occasional snip or tap from where Mark and Steve were working. Unless they struck the walls of the house, the Visitors inside should not notice.
A "pssst" coming from behind him brought him around sharply.
"We've got company," he heard Mark whisper. He saw Anne and Arnold coming from the back of the house, moving quickly and low, near the wall. Durk left his post and went to join them.
"What is it?" Durk asked.
"Somebody coming back from that compound you saw the other night," Arnold said. "Wasn't it at about this time that you saw them feeding the crivits?"
"Damn poor timing," Mark muttered. "At least I got the tap in."
"Me too," Steve said, "but I may not have it hooked up right."
"Can't worry about that now," Anne said. "Let's get out of here." One by one, swiftly and as quietly as they could, they moved to the north side of the barn, past a kerosene tank up on stanchions, and to the far side away from the house.
All except Arnold, who moved instead to the door and went inside.
"What the hell's he doing?" Mark whispered angrily. Durk could hear two Visitors talking casually to each other as they approached from the crivit compound.
"Probably getting a sample," Anne said. The two crivit feeders neared, and Durk, flat on his stomach to look around the corner of the barn, saw them coming from behind the garage and shop building. The door of the barn started to slide open but moved less than an inch before it stopped. The two Visitors went up to the back door of the porch, and without entering talked to someone inside. Arnold took that moment when their eyes were adjusted to brighter light and their attention directed to whomever was inside to slip out of the barn and close the door behind him. He did not run, for fear of making noise or falling, but slid quickly along the front of the barn to the corner. Durk got to his feet as the veterinary surgeon came around.
"Damn fool," Mark hissed.
"Got 'em," Arnold whispered triumphantly, holding two of the small animals.
"Let's go!" Anne whispered. Durk took the lead and they followed him away from the barn toward the slope and the woods. Again, they did not run, deeming it more important to be silent than swift. Behind them, they could hear the Visitors' heavy footfalls as they approached the barn, the grate as the door slid open, and a moment later light beamed from the back windows.
One of the beams shone squarely upon them. Someone on the back porch of the house, from which they were no longer concealed, shouted.
"That's it," Mark said. "Let's move."
Durk ran up the slope toward the mine head. Behind him he could hear his companions following and behind them the Visitors in pursuit. He stopped suddenly when he realized that he'd lost the top of the mine shaft.
"Be carerful," he told the others. "If you step on it, you'll fall through."
&nb
sp; "But they're coming," Steve said, and indeed they were—not running but moving with purposefulness, aided by strong flashlights. Durk looked back at the house, then the barn, then moved toward the oncoming Visitors and a bit to the right. When his perspective of house and barn were correct, he went to his knees.
"Here," he called softly. The others came even as the first beams of the flashlights played around them. Durk helped Steve into the hole, then Mark, Arnold next, and last Anne. When he slipped in himself the whole area was illuminated, and shouts from the Visitors told him he'd been seen.
The ladder creaked under their weight but did not break. Durk dropped the last few feet, grabbed the bottom of the ladder, and jerked it away so that it half fell, half slid into the main tunnel.
"That will hold them for a little bit," he said even as strong lights speared down from the top of the shaft. An alien handgun snapped, and a bolt of energy struck the floor by his foot, leaving the stone glowing red.
"They won't be held up for long," Arnold said as they hurried down the tunnel.
And it wasn't long enough. Whether the Visitors jumped or had some kind of ladder with them, they never knew, but they'd gone only a few hundred feet when light speared down the tunnel after them, followed by more shots.
There was no choice but to duck into one of the side tunnels. Durk paused at the junction, and when the first Visitor, Gerald, came around, smashed him in the face. Gerald staggered back, his eyes wide, recognizing Durk even in his shock. Durk kicked him hard in the groin and then ran to join his friends.
He would have missed them if Mark hadn't turned on his flash for a moment to look into another side branch. At first they mistook him for a Visitor, and he barely avoided being struck down himself. They could hear the other Visitors behind them, and reflected light beams bounced off the walls.
"This way," Durk said. He thought he recognized his location by the tools left lying on the ground, but when they came to the next intersection, he was completely lost.
"Where are we?" Anne asked.
"I don't know," Durk said.
"Turn off the flash," Arnold suggested, and Mark did so. They were plunged into complete darkness. "Now listen," Arnold added, and fell silent. They listened. Somewhere far away they could hear Visitor voices calling back and forth.
They waited. After a while the voices faded away.
"Now," Arnold said, "I think it will be safe to try to find our way back."
They used the standard maze-following procedure of always turning in the same direction. Durk knew that the mines were not all that extensive, compared to those that had produced more gold, but there were more tunnels, intersections, and galleries than he had been aware of.
Mark used the flash only when necessary. Durk did not use his at all, in case they should need it later. Instead, they walked by feel, keeping their hands on the side wall, and sliding their feet forward to check for potholes and shafts. Only when they came to an intersection did they turn on the light briefly, in the hopes of finding themselves in a familiar place. They never did.
After about two hours Steve, who was taking the lead, saw a gray light coming up a side tunnel. They went to it, hoping it was the main tunnel to the riverbank, but when they got to it they found themselves instead in a place where the roof of the tunnel had collapsed. The light, brighter here, was only the reflected moonlight, which now shone down into the hole.
The cave-in had left rocks and dirt piled up high enough so that they were able, with some difficulty, to crawl up out of the ground. They now stood on the side of a thinly forested hill. Off one way they could see the headlights of a car perhaps a quarter mile away as it went down a road.
"Any ideas?" Anne asked.
"I think so," Durk said. He looked up at the moon. "What time is it?" Mark told him. "That would mean that's U.S. Fifty-six," Durk said, pointing to where they'd seen the car's headlights. "That way's east. We've come up on the north side."
"Can you get us back to your place from here?" Steve asked.
"It may take awhile," Durk said, "but at least we can't get lost."
"Then let's get going," Arnold said, shifting the animals in his arms. "These are getting heavy."
Morton Barnes had just settled down to rehearse his notes for his 9 A.M. class when the door of his office opened and three armed Visitors marched in.
"Professor Barnes," the one in the middle said, "will you come with us, please." It was not a question.
He was quickly taken downstairs to an all-white Visitor paddy wagon waiting in the parking lot. His guards did not talk with him as they drove through Chapel Hill toward the Eastgate shopping center. They did not talk to him as they took him from the paddywagon and led him into a skyfighter standing in the parking lot. He was put into a tiny cabin alone.
The flight did not take very long, but it gave him plenty of time to think, to feel sick, to wonder whether his arrest was because of his conversation with Jozef or because of something else he had said or done. His anxiety and his confusion made his head spin, and he was almost glad when the skyfighter landed and he could stop thinking.
He was taken from the skyfighter and down from the roof of a building into a large room where he was searched, questioned, and passed on. He left the building by another door and found himself in a compound, with barrackslike buildings along the sides, surrounded by a chain-link fence. Other people were standing around, their clothes rumpled, the men with growths of beard.
"Professor Barnes," someone said, and he looked around to see Dave Androvich and several other people walking toward him. "Welcome to Camp T-3." Dave's tone was eminently sardonic. "What did you do to deserve this honor?"
"I don't know, Dave. They haven't told me anything."
"And they won't either," a short, well-muscled, and very angry young man of Dave's age said. "We know why we're here, but only because they caught us red-handed."
"This is Peter Frye," Dave said. "We tried to sabotage the lizards' headquarters on campus."
"I heard about that," Barnes said. "Weren't there some others?"
"Greta Saroyan," Peter said. "She's in there." He nodded at a building in a secondary compound. "Edna Knight—she's dead. Tried to run across the sand moat that surrounds the place. And Benny Mounds. They took him and Susan Green away last night." His voice was beginning to get frantic. "Apparently Benny and Susan did well on their tests. They're going to be converted."
"Oh, my God," Barnes said. He looked with shock at the other two men with Dave and Greta.
"Sorry, Professor," Dave said. "This is Cliff Upton and Bryan Ricardo. They've been helping us get used to this place."
Barnes did little more than nod in greeting. "At least," he said, "they haven't taken you off for conversion yet."
"That's just the point," Peter said, almost shouting. "Nobody knows for sure, but if you ask around, you can figure it out. Either you're useful and they convert you, or you're not—like us."
"Peter hasn't gotten used to the idea," Cliff Upton said. "I don't like it much myself, but it's that or try to make it across the crivit patch."
"I don't understand," Barnes said.
"The crivit patch," Upton started to explain. "That's that sandy area just outside the fence—"
"I don't mean that," Barnes interrupted. "What do they do to you if they don't convert you—make you slave labor?"
"For a while," Peter said, "until you're fat enough."
"And then they eat you," Bryan finished.
In spite of her exertions of the night before and only a few hours' sleep since, Anne Marino still had a division to supervise. She sat in her office now, trying to stay awake as she examined reports of work in progress. Data Tronix, in spite of the alien occupation, still did a lot of business, and it was up to Anne to see that part of it was done well, efficiently, and on time.
Her intercom buzzed. "Mark, here," the voice at the other end said. He sounded as tired as she felt. "Our silicon analysts are here. Can I brin
g them up?"
"Sure," she said, though it took her a moment to realize what he was talking about. She put her papers away and started making coffee in the machine in the corner of her office. The pot was half full when Mark came in with Penny Carmichal and JoAnn Hirakawa.
"I think we're going to have to destroy the crivit ranch right away," JoAnn said without preamble.
"But we've just installed the bugs," Anne protested.
"I know," Penny said, "and I think we'll have a few days before things start to get critical, but we've been comparing old reports, examining the adult that was brought in, and watching the eggs from it."
"They survived," JoAnn said, "and hatched. We've had them long enough now to ran a few simple tests. And even with infants, what we've learned is frightening."
"Young crivits," Penny said as Mark went to pour the coffee, "can eat up to their full body weight within two hours of catching their prey. Within a day they increase their size by twenty-five percent. They won't eat for a while after that—just how long we're not sure. If they're starved, they just lie in wait and lose very little weight in the process."
"The frightening part is," JoAnn said, "that they are sexually mature on hatching, or at least appear to be. The adult had a reservoir of semen in her body, and my guess is that on maturity, they start to develop eggs after each feeding, instead of continuing to increase in size."
"The net result is," Penny went on, "that one mature female crivit can produce ten offspring after each feeding. Offspring reach egg-laying age in what we estimate to be about three months, if they have sufficient food to grow continually during that time. Nine of the ten eggs we hatched were female, and incest doesn't seem to bother them. So at the end of three months you now have ten breeding females instead of one, and after six months you have a hundred."
"Given a sufficient quantity of food," JoAnn said. "And God knows, those crivits eat anything they can drag down. Snails, insects, rodents, earthworms."
"There's still a predator-prey ratio to be preserved," Penny said. "We estimate that prey mass must be at least one hundred to two hundred times the mass of the crivit population. That's not so bad, but in most environments, there are a number of predator species in competition, some prey is considered unsuitable, and natural prey has evolved strategies in their favor. With crivits, none of these apply."