She didn't like that, but then neither did I. She turned her own coffee mug in circles on the table top. "But if you're right, or even only half right, and if this thing can take control of our minds-"
"It can't," I said, trying to sound utterly confident even while remembering how perilously close the thing had come to taking control of mine. "It tried that with me, but it didn't succeed. We can resist it."
"But what else might it be able to do?"
"I don't know. Nothing else. Anything else."
"It might have a ray gun," Toby said enthusiastically.
"Even that's possible," I said. "As I said before, we'll just have to wait and see."
"This is really exciting," Toby said, not disturbed in the least by our helplessness.
"Maybe we won't see anything more of it," I said.
"Maybe it will just go away."
But none of us believed that.
We talked about the situation for quite some time, examining all the possibilities, trying to prepare ourselves for any contingency, until there wasn't anything more to say that we hadn't already said a half a dozen times. Weary of the subject, we went on to more mundane affairs, as I washed the coffee and cocoa mugs while Connie began to prepare supper. It seemed odd, yet it was rather comforting, that we were able to deal with every-day affairs in the face of our most extraordinary circumstances. Only Toby was unable to get back to more practical matters; all he wanted to do was stand at the window, watch the forest, and wait for the
"monster" to appear.
We allowed him to do as he wished, perhaps because we knew that there was no chance of our getting him interested in anything else, especially not in his lessons. Or perhaps both Connie and I felt that it wasn't really such a bad idea to have a sentry on duty.
As I was drying and shelving the mugs, Connie said, "What are we going to do about old Kate?"
"I forgot all about her!" I said. "After I found Betty dead and Blueberry missing, I didn't take time to feed and water her."
"That's the least of her problems," Connie said. "Even well fed and watered, she's not going to be safe out there tonight."
I thought about that for a moment and then said, "I'll bring her in on the sun porch for the night."
"That'll be messy."
"Yes, but at least we can watch over her and see she doesn't come to any harm."
"There's no heat on the sun porch."
"I'll move a space heater in from the barn. Then I'll be able to switch off the heat in the barn and let the temperature drop below freezing out there. That'll keep the dead horse from decomposing and becoming a health hazard."
I bundled up in coat, scarf, gloves, and boots once more and went out into the howling storm which was, by now, every bit as fierce as the storm we had suffered the previous day. Wind-whipped snow stung my face, and I squinted like an octogenarian trying to read a newspaper without his bifocals. Slipping, stumbling, wind-milling my arms, I managed to stay on my feet for the length of the path which I had opened this morning but which had already drifted most of the way shut.
In the new snow around the barn door, I found fresh examples of the strange eight-holed prints.
I began to sweat in spite of the bitterly cold air.
My hands shaking uncontrollably, I slid back the bolt and threw open the door and staggered into the barn. I knew what I would find. But I could not simply turn away and run back to the house without being absolutely certain that
I was correct.
The barn was full of warm odors: hay, straw, manure, horse linament, the tang of well-used leather saddles, the dusty aroma of the grain in the feed bins-and most of all, ammonia, dammit, sweet ammonia, so thick that it gagged me.
Kate was gone.
Her stall door stood open.
I ran down the stable row to Betty's stall and opened the half-door. The dead horse was where it had been, staring with glassy eyes: the yellow-eyed animal was apparently only interested in fresh meat.
Now what?
Before the scouring wind and the heavily falling snow could erase the evidence, I went outside to study the tracks again. This time, on closer inspection, I saw that Kate had left the barn under her own power: her hoof prints led down toward the forest. But of course! If the alien-yes, even as awkward as that sounded, it was still the only proper word-if the alien could come so close to seizing control of a human mind, how simple for it to mesmerize a dumb animal. Denied will power, the horse had gone off with the alien.
When I looked closer and after I followed the trail for a few yards, I corrected myself and added an "s" to the noun: aliens. Clearly, there had been at least two of them, probably three.
Numbed, I went back into the barn and turned off the heaters in order to keep the dead horse from decomposing. When I left I locked the door, although that was a pointless gesture now.
I looked at the tracks for a long while. Nightmarish thoughts passed through my mind like a magician's swords passing through the lady in a magic cabinet: Blueberry hadn't been supper, but lunch. Kate was their supper. What would they want for breakfast?
Me? Connie? Toby? All three of us?
No.
Ridiculous.
Would the first encounter between man and alien be played out like some simple-minded movie, like a cheap melodrama, like a hack science fiction writer's inept plot: starman the gourmand, man the hapless meal?
We had to make sure that it did not go like that. We had to establish a communications bridge between these creatures and ourselves, a bridge to understanding.
Unless they didn't want to understand, didn't want to bother, didn't want anything from us except the protein that we carried in our flesh and blood I went back to the house, wondering if I were, indeed, out of my mind.
9
Connie and I agreed to take turns standing guard duty during the night.
She would sleep-or try to sleep-from ten o'clock until four the next morning, and then I would sleep-maybe-from around four until whatever time I woke up. We also agreed that we were basically a couple of real ninnies, that we were being overly cautious, that such an extreme safety measure as this was probably not necessary- yet neither of us suggested that we forget about the guard duty and just sleep together, unprotected, as we would have done any other night.
I helped her put Toby to bed shortly before ten, kissed her goodnight, and went to sit at the head of the stairs, in the precisely precribed circle of light from a tensor lamp. One table lamp was burning down in the living room, a warm yellow light that threw softly rounded shadows. The loaded pistol was at my side.
I was ready.
Outside, the storm wind fluted under the eaves and made the rafters creak.
I picked up a paperback novel and tried to get interested in a sympathetic professional thief who was masterminding a bank robbery in New
Orleans. It seemed to be an exciting, well told story; my eyes fled along the lines of print; the pages passed quickly; but I didn't retain more than five percent of what I read. Still, I stayed with it, for there was no better way to get through the next six hours.
The trouble came sooner than I had expected.
Twenty-three minutes past eleven o'clock. I knew the precise time because I had just looked at my wristwatch. I was no more than one-third of the way through the paperback novel, having absorbed little or nothing of it, and I was getting bored.
Gentle, all but inaudible footsteps sounded in the second-floor hallway behind me, and when I turned around Toby was there in his bare feet and fire engine-red pajamas.
"Can't you sleep?" I asked.
He said something: an incoherent gurgle, as if someone were strangling him.
"Toby?"
He came down onto the first step, as if he were going to sit beside me-but instead of that he slipped quickly past me and kept right on going.
"What's up?" I asked, thinking that he was headed for the refrigerator to get a late-night snack.
He didn't
answer.
He didn't stop.
"Hey!"
He started to run down the last of the steps.
I stood up.
"Toby!"
At the bottom of the stairs he glanced up at me. And I realized that there was no expression whatsoever in his eyes. Just a watery emptiness, a vacant gaze, a lifeless stare. He seemed to be looking through me at the wall beyond, as if I were only a spirit drifting on the air.
One of the aliens had control of him.
Why had it never occurred to me that the aliens might find a child's mind much more accessible, much more controllable than the mind of an adult?
As Toby ran across the living room, I started down the stairs, taking them two at a time, risking a twisted ankle and a broken neck. As I ran I shouted at him, hoping that somehow my voice would snap him out of the trance.
He kept going.
Bones bones a horse's bones, a complete skeleton bones in a forest clearing
I almost fell coming off the steps, avoided disaster by a slim margin, and plunged across the living room. I reached the kitchen in time to hear the outer sun porch door slam behind him: a flat, solid, final sound.
Bones in a forest clearing white bones lying in white snow
I didn't stop for my gloves, boots, or coat.
A horse's bones, a skeleton picked clean
I ran across the kitchen, striking a chair with my hip and knocking it over in my wake.
Toby's bones, Toby's skeleton picked clean
I crossed the sun porch in three long strides, bounding like an antelope.
Picked clean
I tore open the door and went out into the black and snow-filled night.
Bones
"Toby!"
The cold slammed into me and rocked me badly, as if sharp icicles had been thrust deep into my joints, between muscle and sheath, through arteries and veins. That was the "one" of a one-two punch that Nature had for me. The "two" was the wind which was seething up the hill at better than fifty miles an hour: a mallet to drive the icicles deeper.
"Toby!"
No answer.
For four or five or six seconds, as I desperately searched the bleak night ahead, I couldn't see him. Then suddenly I got a glimpse of his bright red pajamas outlined against the snow and flapping like a flag in the wind.
"Toby, stop!"
He didn't obey, of course. And now he was nearly out of sight, for visibility was just about nil.
Bones
In the knee-deep snow-which was more likely hip-deep for him-I was able to make much better time than he did. Within a few seconds I reached him and caught him by the shoulder and pulled him around.
He struck me in the face with one small fist.
Surprised more than hurt by the blow, I tumbled backwards into a drift.
He pulled loose and turned and started down toward the woods once more.
Hundreds of big bear traps began to go off all around me: snapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnap! And then I realized that I was only hearing my teeth chattering. I was half-frozen although
I had spent no more than a minute in these sub-zero temperatures, lashed by this ferocious wind. Toby would have to be in even worse shape than I was, for his cotton pajamas offered less protection from the elements than did my jeans and thick flannel hunting shirt.
I pushed up and went after him, weaving like a drunkard in anxious pursuit of a rolling wine bottle. In a dozen steps I caught
Toby by the shoulder and stopped him and pulled him all the way around.
He swung at me a second time.
I ducked the blow.
As he pulled back to swing again, gazing through me with lifeless eyes, I threw both arms around him and lifted him off the ground.
He kicked me in the stomach.
The breath rushed out of me like air exploding from a pin-pricked balloon. I lost my balance, and we both collapsed in a heap.
He pulled loose and scrambled away.
I went after him on my hands and knees, which felt like four blocks of ice. I saw him, closed the gap, lunged, and brought him down with a tackle. I rolled with him, holding him close, holding him tightly so that he couldn't get hurt-and so he couldn't kick and punch.
He bit me.
Hard.
But that was all right with me because I pretty much had been expecting it and had steeled myself against both the pain and the surprise of it. As he chewed viciously at my shoulder, surely drawing blood but making no sound whatsoever, I clambered laboriously to my feet, still holding on to him.
A thin crust of snow had frozen in my eyelashes, welding them into a pair of brittle plates. Every time I blinked it felt as if two heavy wooden shutters were crashing into place. Furthermore, my face was numb, and my lips felt as if they had cracked and were bleeding.
I took several uncertain steps through the soft drifts until I grasped that I was moving downhill rather than up-and thus away from the farmhouse. I searched for the house, for the light in the living room-and saw, instead, a dozen or more radiant eyes, amber eyes, glowing at me from thirty yards away, strange circles of warm light that pulsed like beacons through the blizzard. Crying out involuntarily, I whirled and ran uphill as fast as I could lift and put down my ice-caked legs.
Toby squirmed against me, stopped biting, tried to use his knees and elbows to injure me. But I was holding him too tightly for him to get any leverage.
A familiar pressure bloomed suddenly around my head, sought entrance, quickly found a way in to me, and danced over the surface of my brain
No!
I resisted the contact.
Bones.. think of bones
I picked up speed.
Fear welled up in me as the pressure increased inside my skull; and it was a hideously potent fear, that biological terror that had made a raging madman of me in the forest earlier in the day. But I couldn't afford to lose my wits now. If I began to run blindly in circles, shouting and throwing punches at the empty air, the aliens would capture Toby and me; and before long they would go into the house and get Connie as well. Now that they had attempted to steal Toby from us, I was prepared to give serious consideration to that melodramatic and trite science fiction concept which I previously had found, if not impossible, highly improbable: that they viewed us as nothing more than a rich and convenient source of protein. Our survival, therefore, might well depend upon two things: how successfully I could resist the insistent mental probes-and how successfully I could cope with the disabling fear, the shattering terror, which the probes sparked in me.
Toby continued to struggle.
Clutching him against my chest, I managed to keep going.
The alien tried to sink thought-fingers into my mind, but I pinched and jabbed and scratched at his mental front, resisted and resisted and resisted.
Mindless fear slammed at me like hurricane seas, like gigantic waves battering a seawall. I held against them.
I kept running.
Lights were switched on ahead of me.
I could see the house, the sun porch.
Fifty feet. Maybe less.
I was winning.
Then I fell.
Still holding Toby-who had quieted considerably over the last few seconds I sat up in the snow and looked down the hill toward the forest. The amber eyes were closer than they had been only half a minute ago, no more than thirty or thirty-five feet away from us now.
Images formed behind my eyes, fragments of light and brilliant colors, alien scenes
No! Stay out of me!
Fear crushing fear terror things in my head spiders in my skull, things eating away in my brain
I had to fight it and I did fight it and I was nonetheless sure that I was losing where I had been winning an instant ago.
I started to get up. My feet slipped out from under me. I fell again and saw that the amber eyes were even closer, twenty feet away and moving rapidly in on me, and I saw that I was not going to get away and I started to cry and -
— and then Connie appeared beside me, stepping like a stage actress through the snow curtain. She was carrying the pistol that I had left at the head of the stairs. She was wearing a coat over her night gown, and her long hair was matted with snow that was crystalizing into ice. Bracing herself against the wind, holding the pistol with both hands, she fired at the approaching creatures.
The wind swallowed most of the sound of the shot.
Although none of the aliens appeared to have been wounded, they seemed to realize that they were being fired upon, and they seemed to view the pistol as a very real danger. After she got off her second shot- again hitting nothing-they stopped where they were and stared at us with those huge, unblinking eyes. Apparently, there was at least one blessing for which we could be grateful: these things were evidently not all-powerful, not invincible and unstoppable, as years of horror movies had conditioned me to think they would be.
The pressure abruptly evaporated in my skull. The mental probes were discontinued.
Squinting, I tried to see what sort of beings lay behind the amber eyes-however, the darkness and the snow defeated me. For all that I could tell, they consisted only of eyes, great disembodied discs of light adrift on the wind.
Shouting in order to be heard above the storm, Connie said, "Are you all right?"
"Good enough!" I shouted back at her.
"Toby?"
"He's okay, I think."
I got up.
The aliens stayed where they were.
"Do you want the gun?" she asked.
"You keep it," I said. "Let's get moving. But don't turn your back on them."
I was half-frozen. My muscles felt as if they were on fire although the flames were icy, and my joints were arthritic from the fierce cold. Each step was a miracle and an agony.
As if we were playing a child's game, we backed slowly toward the farmhouse. We kept our eyes on the alien eyes, and we tested the treacherous ground behind us before committing ourselves to each step. Gradually, a gap opened between us and our otherworldly visitors. We stepped into the square of wan light that spilled out through the sun porch windows — and in no more than two minutes we were safely inside.
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