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sphere revolving in an opposite direction to its fellow spheres.
Enoch reached out and picked it up. His fingers carefully explored the
base upon which the spheres were set, seeking something-some lever, some
indentation, some trip, some button-by which it might be turned either on or
off. But there was nothing he could find. He should have known, he told
himself, that there would be nothing. For he had looked before. And yet
yesterday Lucy had done something that had set it operating and it still was
operating. It had operated for more than twelve hours now and no results had
been obtained. Check that, he thought-no results that could be recognized.
He set it back on the table on its base and stacked the cups, one
inside the other, and picked them up. He stooped to lift the coffeepot off
the floor. But his eyes never left the pyramid of spheres.
It was mapening, he told himself. There was no way to turn it on and
yet, somehow, Lucy had turned it on. And now there was no way to turn it
off-although it probably did not matter if it were off or on.
He went back to the sink with the cups and coffeepot.
The station was quiet-a heavy, oppressive quietness; although, he told
himself, the impression of oppressiveness probably was no more than his
imagination.
He crossed the room to the message machine and the plate was blank.
There had been no messages during the night. It was silly of him, he
thought, to expect there would be, for if there were, the auditory signal
would be functioning, would continue to sound off until he pushed the lever.
Was it possible, he wondered, that the station might already have been
abandoned, that whatever traffic that happened to be moving was being
detoured around it? That, however, was hardly possible, for the abandonment
of Earth station would mean, as well that those beyond it must also be
abandoned. There were no shortcuts in the network extending out into the
spiral arm to make rerouting possible. It was not unusual for many hours,
even for a day, to pass without any traffic. The traffic was irregular and
had no pattern to it. There were times when scheduled arrivals bad to be
held up until there were facilities to take care of them, and there were
other times when there would be none at all, when the equipment would sit
idle, as it was sitting now.
Jumpy, he thought. I am getting jumpy.
Before they closed the station, they would let him know. Courtesy, if
nothing else, would demand that they do that.
He went back to the stove and started the coffeepot. In the
refrigerator he found a package of mush made from a cereal grown on one of
the Draconian jungle worlds. He took it out, then put it back again and took
out the last two eggs of the dozen that Wins, the mailman, had brought out
from town a week or so ago.
He glanced at his watch and saw that he had slept later than he
thought. It was almost time for his daily walk.
He put the skillet on the stove and spooned in a chunk of butter. He
waited for the butter to melt, then broke in the eggs.
Maybe, he thought, he'd not go on the walk today. Except for a time or
two when a blizzard had been raging, it would be the first time he had ever
missed his walk. But because he always did it, he told himself,
contentiously, was no sufficient reason that he should always take it. He'd
just skip the walk and later on go down and get the mail. He could use the
time to catch up on all the things he'd failed to do yesterday. The papers
still were piled upon his desk, waiting for his reading. He'd not written in
his journal, and there was a lot to write, for he must record in detail
exactly what had happened and there had been a good deal happening.
It had been a rule he'd set himself from the first day, that the
station had begun its operation-that he never skimped the journal. He might
be a little late at times in getting it all down, but the fact that he was
late or that he was pressed for time had never made him put down one word
less than he had felt might be required to tell all there was to tell.
He looked across the room at the long rows of record books that were
crowded on the shelves and thought, with pride and satisfaction, of the
completeness of that record. Almost a century of writing lay between the
covers of those books and there was not a single day that he had ever
skipped.
Here was his legacy, he thought; here was his bequest to the world,
here would be his entrance fee back into the human race; here was all he'd
seen and heard and thought for almost a hundred years of association with
those alien peoples of the galaxy.
Looking at the rows of books, the questions that he had shoved aside
came rushing in on him and this time there was no denying them. For a short
space of time he had held them off, the little time he'd needed for his
brain to clear, for his body to become alive again He did not fight them now
He accepted them, for there was no dodging them.
He slid the eggs out of the skillet onto the waiting plate He got the
coffeepot and sat down to his breakfast.
He glanced at his watch again.
There still was time to go on his daily walk.
The ginseng man was waiting at the spring.
Enoch saw him while still some distance down the trail and wondered,
with a quick flash of anger, if he might be waiting there to tell him that
he could not return the body of the Hazer, that something had come up, that
he had run into unexpected difficulties.
And thinking that, Enoch remembered how he'd threatened the night
before to kill anyone who held up the return of the body. Perhaps, he told
himself, it had not been smart to say that. Wondering whether he could bring
himself to kill a man-not that it would be the first man he had ever killed.
But that had been long ago and it had been a matter then of kill or being
killed.
He shut his eyes for a second and once again could see that slope below
him, with the long lines of men advancing through the drifting smoke,
knowing that those men were climbing up the ridge for one purpose only, to
kill himself and those others who were atop the ridge.
And that had not been the first time nor had it been the last, but all
the years of killing boiled down in essence to that single moment-not the
time that came after, but that long and terrible instant when he had watched
the lines of men purposefully striding up the slope to kill him.
It had been in that moment that he had realized the insanity of war,
the futile gesture that in time became all but meaningless, the unreasoning
rage that must be nursed long beyond the memory of the incident that had
caused the rage, the sheer illogic that one man, by death of misery, might
prove a right or uphold a principle.
Somewhere, he thought, on the long backtrack of history, the human race
had accepted an insanity for a principle and had persisted in it until today
that insanity-turned-principle stood ready to wipe out, if not the race
itself, at least all of those things, both material and immaterial, that had
been fashioned as symbols of humanity through many hard-won centuries.
Lewis had been sitting on a fallen log and now, as Enoch neared, he
rose.
"I waited for you here," he said. "I hope you don't mind."
Enoch stepped across the spring.
"The body will be here sometime in early evening," Lewis said.
"Washington will fly it out to Madison and truck it here from there."
Enoch noped. "I am glad to hear that."
"They were insistent," Lewis said, "that I should ask you once again
what the body is."
"I told you last night," said Enoch, "that I can't tell you anything. I
wish I could. I've been figuring for years how to get it told, but there's
no way of doing it."
"The body is something from off this Earth," said Lewis. "We are sure
of that."
"You think so," Enoch said, not making it a question.
"And the house," said Lewis, "is something alien, too."
"The house," Enoch told him, shortly, "was built by my father."
"But something changed it," Lewis said. "It is not the way be built
it."
"The years change things," said Enoch.
"Everything but you."
Enoch grinned at him. "So it bothers you," he said. "You figure it's
indecent."
Lewis shook his head. "No, not indecent. Not really anything. After
watching you for years, I've come to an acceptance of you and everything
about you. No understanding, naturally, but complete acceptance. Sometimes I
tell myself I'm crazy, but that's only momentary. I've tried not to bother
you. I've worked to keep everything exactly as it was. And now that I've met
you, I am glad that is the way it was. But we're going at this wrong. We're
acting as if we were enemies, as if we were strange dogs-and that's not the
way to do it. I think that the two of us may have a lot in common. There's
something going on and I don't want to do a thing that will interfere with
it."
"But you did," said Enoch. "You did the worst thing that you could when
you took the body. If you'd sat down and planned how to do me harm, you
couldn't have done worse. And not only me. Not really me, at all. It was the
human race you harmed."
"I don't understand," 'said Lewis. "I'm sorry, but I don't understand.
There was the writing on the stone ..."
"That was my fault," said Enoch. "I should never have put up that
stone. But at the time it seemed the thing to do. I didn't think that anyone
would come snooping around and ..."
"It was a friend of yours?"
"A friend of mine? Oh, you mean the body. Well, not actually. Not that
particular person."
"Now that it's done," Lewis said, "I'm sorry."
"Sorry doesn't help," said Enoch.
"But isn't there something-isn't there anything that can be done about
it? More than just bringing back the body?"
"Yes," Enoch told him, "there might be something. I might need some
help."
"Tell me," Lewis said quickly. "If it can be done ..."
"I might need a truck," said Enoch. "To haul away some stuff. Records
and other things like that. I might need it fast."
"I can have a truck," said Lewis. "I can have it waiting. And men to
help you load."
"I might want to talk to someone in authority. High authority. The
President. Secretary of State. Maybe the U.N. I don't know. I have to think
it out. And not only would I need a way to talk to them, but some measure of
assurance that they would listen to what I had to say."
"I'll arrange," said Lewis, "for mobile short-wave equipment. I'll have
it standing by."
"And someone who will listen?"
"That's right," said Lewis. "Anyone you say."
"And one thing more."
"Anything," said Lewis.
"Forgetfulness," said Enoch. "Maybe I won't need any of these things.
Not the truck or any of the rest of it. Maybe I'll have to let things go
just as they're going now. And if that should be the case, could you and
everyone else concerned forget I ever asked?"
"I think we could," said Lewis. "But I would keep on watching."
"I wish you would," said Enoch. "Later on I might need some help. But
no further interference."
"Are you sure," asked Lewis, "that there is nothing else?"
Enoch shook his head. "Nothing else. All the rest of it I must do
myself."
Perhaps, he thought, he'd already talked too much. For how could he be
sure that he could trust this man? How could he be sure he could trust
anyone?
And yet, if he decided to leave Galactic Central and cast his lot with
Earth, he might need some help. There might be some objection by the aliens
to his taking along his records and the alien gadgets. If he wanted to get
away with them, he might have to make it fast.
But did he want to leave Galactic Central? Could he give up the galaxy?
Could he turn down the offer to become the keeper of another station on some
other planet? When the time should come, could he cut his tie with all the
other races and all the mysteries of the other stars?
Already he had taken steps to do those very things. Here, in the last
few moments, without too much thought about it, almost as if he already had
reached his decision, he had arranged a setup that would turn him back to
Earth.
He stood there, thinking, puzzled at the steps he'd taken.
"There'll be someone here," said Lewis. "Someone at this spring. If not
myself, then someone else who can get in touch with me."
Enoch noped absent-mindedly.
"Someone will see you every morning when you take your walk," said
Lewis. "Or you can reach us here any time you wish."
Like a conspiracy, thought Enoch. Like a bunch of kids playing cops and
robbers.
"I have to be getting on," he said. "It's almost time for mail. Wins
will be wondering what has happened to me."
He started up the hill.
"Be seeing you," said Lewis.
"Yeah," said Enoch. "I'll be seeing you."
He was surprised to find the warm glow spreading in him-as if there had
been something wrong and now it was all right, as if there had been
something lost that now had been recovered.
Enoch met the mailman halfway down the road that led into the station.
The old jalopy was traveling fast, bumping over the grassy ruts, swishing
through the overhanging bushes that grew along the track.
Wins braked to a halt when he caught sight of Enoch and sat waiting for
him.
"You got on a detour," Enoch said, coming up to him. "Or have you
changed your route?"
"You weren't waiting at the box," said Wins, "and I had to see you."
"Some important mail?"
"Nope, it isn't mail. It's old Hank Fisher. He is down in Millville,
setting up the drinks in Epie's tavern and shooting off his face."
"It's not like Hank to be buying drinks."
"He's telling everyone that you tried to kidnap Lucy."
"I didn't kidnap her," Enoch said. "Hank had took a bull whip to her
and I hid her out until he got cooled down."
"You shouldn't have done that, Enoch."
"Maybe. But Hank was set on giving her a beating. He already had hit
her a lick or two."
"Hank's out to make you trouble."
"He told me that he would."
"He says you kidnapped her, then got scared and brought her back. He
says you had her bid out in the house and when he tried to break in and get
her, he couldn't do it. He says you have a funny sort of house. He says he
broke an ax blade on a window pane."
"Nothing funny about it," Enoch said. "Hank just imagines things."
"It's all right so far," said the mailman. "None of them, in broad
daylight and their right senses, will do anything about it. But come night
they'll be liquored up and won't have good sense. There are some of them
might be coming up to see you."
"I suppose he's telling them I've got the devil in me."
"That and more," said Wins. "I listened for a while before I started
out."
He reached into the mail pouch and found the bundle of papers and
handed them to Enoch.
"Enoch, there's something that you have to know. Something you may not
realize. It would be easy to get a lot of people stirred up against you-the
way you live and all. You are strange. No, I don't mean there's anything
wrong with you-I know you and I know there isn't-but it would be easy for
people who didn't know you to get the wrong ideas. They've let you alone so
far because you've given them no reason to do anything about you. But if
they get stirred up by all that Hank is saying..."
He did not finish what he was saying. He left it hanging in midair.
"You're talking about a posse," Enoch said.
Wins noped, saying nothing.
"Thanks," said Enoch. "I appreciate your warning me."
"Is it true," asked the mailman, "that no one can get inside your
house9"
"I guess it is," admitted Enoch. "They can't break into it and they
can't burn it down. They can't do anything about it."
"Then, if I were you, I'd stay close tonight. I'd stay inside. I'd not
go venturing out."
"Maybe I will. It sounds like a good idea."
"Well," said Wins, "I guess that about covers it. I thought you'd ought
to know. Guess I'll have to back out to the road. No chance of turning
around."
"Drive up to the house. There's room there."
"It's not far back to the road," said Wins. "I can make it easy."
The car started backing slowly.
Enoch stood watching.
He lifted a hand in solemn salute as the car began rounding a bend that
would take it out of sight. Wins waved back and then the car was swallowed
by the scrub that grew close against both sides of the road.
Slowly Enoch turned around and ploped back toward the station.
A mob, he thought-good God, a mob!
A mob howling about the station, hammering at the doors and windows,
peppering it with bullets, would wipe out the last faint chance-if there
still remained a chance-of Galactic Central standing off the move to close
the station. Such a demonstration would ap one more powerful argument to the
demand that the expansion into the spiral arm should be abandoned.
Why was it, he wondered, that everything should happen all at once? For
years nothing at all had happened and now everything was happening within a
few hours' time. Everything, it seemed, was working out against him.
If the mob showed up, not only would it mean that the fate of the
station would be sealed, but it might mean, as well, that he would have no
choice but to accept the offer to become the keeper of another station. It
might make it impossible for him to remain on Earth, even if he wished. And
he realized, with a start, that it might just possibly mean that the offer
of another station for him might be withdrawn. For with the appearance of a
mob howling for his blood, he, himself, would become involved in the charge
of barbarism now leveled against the human race in general.
Perhaps, he told himself, he should go down to the spring and see Lewis
once again. Perhaps some measures could be taken to hold off the mob. But if
he did, he knew, there'd be an explanation due and he might have to tell too
much. And there might not be a mob. No one would place too much credence in
what Hank Fisher said and the whole thing might peter out without any action
being taken.
He'd stay inside the station and hope for the best. Perhaps there'd be
no traveler in the station at the time the mob arrived-if it did arrive-and
the incident would pass with no galactic notice. If he were lucky it might
work out that way. And by the law of averages, he was owed some luck.
Certainly he'd had none in the last few days.
He came to the broken gate that led into the yard and stopped to look
up at the house, trying for some reason he could not understand, to see it
as the house he had known in boyhood.
It stood the same as it had always stood, unchanged, except that in the
olden days there had been ruffled curtains at each window. The yard around
it had changed with the slow growth of the years, with the clump of lilacs
thicker and more rank and tangled with each passing spring, with the elms
that his father had planted grown from six-foot whips into mighty trees,
with the yellow rose bush at the kitchen corner gone, victim of a
long-forgotten winter, with the flower beds vanished and the small herb
garden, here beside the gate, overgrown and smothered out by grass.
The old stone fence that had stood on each side of the gate was now
little more than a humpbacked mound. The heaving of a hundred frosts, the
creep of vines and grasses, the long years of neglect, had done their work
and in another hundred years, he thought, it would be level, with no trace
of it left. Down in the field, along the slope where erosion had been at
work, there were long stretches where it had entirely disappeared.
All of this had happened and until this moment he had scarcely noticed
it. But now he noticed it and wondered why he did. Was it because he now
might be returning to the Earth again-he who had never left its soil and sun
and air, who had never left it physically, but who had, for a longer time
than most men had allotted to them, walked not one, but many planets, far
among the stars?
He stood there, in the late summer sun, and shivered in the cold wind
that seemed to be blowing out of some unknown dimension of unreality,
wondering for the first time (for the first time he ever had been forced to
wonder at it) what kind of man he was. A haunted man who must spend his days
neither completely alien nor completely human, with divided loyalties, with
old ghosts to tramp the years and miles with him no matter which life he
might choose, the Earth life or the stars? A cultural half-breed,
understanding neither Earth nor stars, owing a debt to each, but paying
neither one? A homeless, footless, wandering creature who could recognize
neither right nor wrong from having seen so many different (and logical)
versions of the right and wrong?
He had climbed the hill above the spring, filled with the rosy inner
glow of a regained humanity, a member of the human race again, linked in a
boy-like conspiracy with a human team. But could he qualify as human-and if
he qualified as human, or tried to qualify, then what about the implied
hundred years' allegiance to Galactic Central? Did he, he wondered, even
want to qualify as human?
He moved slowly through the gate, and the questions still kept
hammering in his brain, that great, ceaseless flow of questions to which
there were no answers. Although that was wrong, he thought. Not no answers,
but too many answers.
Perhaps Mary and David and the rest of them would come visiting tonight
and they could talk it over-then he supenly remembered.
They would not be coming. Not Mary, not David, nor any of the others.
They had come for years to see him, but they would come no longer, for the
magic had been dimmed and the illusion shattered and he was alone.
As he had always been alone, he told himself, with a bitter taste
inside his brain. It all had been illusion; it never had been real. For
years he'd fooled himself-most eagerly and willingly he had fooled himself
into peopling the little corner by the fireplace with these creatures of his
imagination. Aided by an alien technique, driven by his loneliness for the
sight and sound of humankind, he had brought them into a being that defied
every sense except the solid sense of touch.
And defied as well every sense of decency.
Half-creatures, he thought. Poor pitiful half-creatures, neither of the
shadow or the world.
Too human for the shadows, too shadowy for Earth.
Mary, if I had only known - if I had known, I never would have started.
I'd have stayed with loneliness.
And he could not mend it now. There was nothing that would help.
What is the matter with me? he asked himself.
What has happened to me?
What is going on?
He couldn't even think in a straight line any more. He'd told himself
that he'd stay inside the station to escape the mob that might be showing
up-and he couldn't stay inside the station, for Lewis, sometime shortly
after dark, would be bringing back the Hazer's body.
And if the mob showed up at the same time Lewis should appear, bringing
back the body, there'd be unsheeted hell to pay.
Stricken by the thought, he stood undecided.
If he alerted Lewis to the danger, then he might not bring the body.
And he had to bring the body. Before the night was over the Hazer must be
secure within the grave.
He decided that he would have to take a chance. The mob might not show
up. Even if it did, there had to be a way that he could handle it.
He'd think of something, he told himself.
He'd have to think of something.
The station was as silent as it had been when he'd left it. There had
been no messages and the machinery was quiet, not even muttering to itself,
as it sometimes did.
Enoch laid the rifle across the desk top and dropped the bundle of
papers beside it. He took off his jacket and hung it on the back of the
chair.
There were still the papers to be read, not only today's, but
yesterday's as well, and the journal to be gotten up, and the journal, he
reminded himself, would take a lot of time. There would be several pages of
it, even if he wrote it close, and he must write it logically and
chronologically, so that it would appear he had written the happenings of
yesterday yesterday and not a full day late. He must include each event and
every facet of each happening and his own reactions to it and his thoughts
about it. For that was the way he'd always done and that was the way he must
do it now. He'd always been able to do it that way because he had created
for himself a little special niche, not of the Earth, nor of the galaxy, but
in that vague condition which one might call existence, and he had worked
inside the framework of that special niche as a medieval monk had worked
inside his cell. He had been an observer only, an intensely interested
observer who had not been content with observance only, but who had made an
effort to dig into what he had observed, but still basically and essentially
an observer who was not vitally nor personally involved in what had gone on
about him. But in the last two days, he realized, he had lost that observer
status. The Earth and the galaxy had both intruded on him, and his special
niche was gone and he was personally involved. He had lost his objective
viewpoint and no longer could command that correct and coldly factual
approach which had given him a solid basis upon which to do his writing.
He walked over to the shelf of journals and pulled out the current
volume, fluttering its pages to find where he had stopped. He found the
place and it was very near the end. There were only a few blank pages left,
perhaps not enough of them to cover the events of which he'd have to write.
More than likely, he thought, he'd come to an end of the journal before he
had finished with it and would have to start a new one.
He stood with the journal in his hand and stared at the page where the
writing ended, the writing that he'd done the day before yesterday. Just the
day before yesterday and it now was ancient writing; it even had a faded
look about it. And well it might, he thought, for it had been writing done
in another age. It had been the last entry he had made before his world had
come crashing down about him.
And what, he asked himself, was the use of writing further? The writing
now was done, all the writing that would matter. The station would be closed
and his own planet would be lost-no matter whether he stayed on or went to
another station on another planet, the Earth would now be lost.
Angrily he slammed shut the book and put it back into its place upon
the shelf. He walked back to the desk.
The Earth was lost, he thought, and he was lost as well, lost and angry
and confused. Angry at fate (if there were such a thing as fate) and at
stupidity. Not only the intellectual stupidity of the Earth, but at the
intellectual stupidity of the galaxy as well, at the petty bickering which
could still the march of the brotherhood of peoples that finally had
extended into this galactic sector. As on Earth, so in the galaxy, the
number and complexity of the gadget, the noble thought, the wisdom and
erudition might make for a culture, but not for a civilization. To be truly
civilized, there must be something far more subtle than the gadget or the
thought.
He felt the tension in him, the tension to be doing something - to
prowl about the station like a caged and pacing beast, to run outside and
shout incoherently until his lungs were empty, to smash and break, to work
off, somehow, his rage and disappointment.
He reached out a hand and snatched the rifle off the desk. He pulled
out a desk drawer where he kept the ammunition, and took out a box of it,
tearing it apart, emptying the cartridges in his pocket.
He stood there for a moment, with the rifle in his hand, and the
silence of the room seemed to thunder at him and he caught the bleakness and
the coldness of it and he laid the rifle back on the desk again.
With childishness, he thought, to take out his resentment and his rage
on an unreality. And' when there was no real reason for resentment or for
rage. For the pattern of events was one that should be recognized and thus
accepted. It was the kind of thing to which a human being should long since
have become accustomed.
He looked around the station and the quietness and the waiting still
was there, as if the very structure might be marking time for an event to
come along on the natural flow of time.
He laughed softly and reached for the rifle once again.
Unreality or not, it would be something to occupy his mind, to 'snatch
him for a while from this sea of problems which was swirling all about him.
And he needed the target practice. It had been ten days or more since
he'd been on the rifle range.
The basement was huge. It stretched out into a dim haze beyond the
lights which he had turned on, a place of tunnels and rooms, carved deep
into the rock that folded up to underlie the ridge.
Here were the massive tanks filled with the various solutions for the
tank travelers; here the pumps and the generators, which operated on a
principle alien to the human manner of generating electric power, and far
beneath the floor of the basement itself those great storage tanks which
held the acids and the soupy matter which once had been the bodies of those
creatures which came traveling to the station, leaving behind them, as they
went on to some other place, the useless bodies which then must be disposed
of.
Enoch moved across the floor, past the tanks and generators, until he
came to a gallery that stretched out into the darkness. He found the panel
and pressed it to bring on the lights, then walked down the gallery. On
either side were metal shelves which had been installed to accommodate the
overflow of gadgets, of artifacts, of all sorts of gifts which had been
brought him by the travelers. From floor to ceiling the shelves were jammed
with a junkyard accumulation from all the corners of the galaxy. And yet,
thought Enoch, perhaps not actually a junkyard, for there would be very
little of this stuff that would be actual junk. All of it was serviceable
and had some purpose, either practical or aesthetic, if only that purpose
could be learned. Although perhaps not in every instance a purpose that
would be applicable to humans.
Down at the end of the shelves was one section of shelving into which
the articles were packed more systematically and with greater care, each one
tagged and numbered, with cross-filing to a card catalogue and certain
journal dates. These were the articles of which he knew the purpose and, in
certain instances, something of the principles involved. There were some
that were innocent enough and others that held great potential value and
still others that had, at the moment, no connection whatsoever with the
human way of life-and there were, as well, those few, tagged in red, that
made one shuper to even think upon.
He went down the gallery, his footsteps echoing loudly as he trod
through this place of alien ghosts.
Finally the gallery widened into an oval room and the walls here were
paped with a thick gray substance that would entrap a bullet and prevent a
ricochet.
Enoch walked over to a panel set inside a deep recess sunk into the
wall. He reached in and thumbed up a tumbler, then stepped quickly out into
the center of the room.
Slowly the room began to darken, then supenly it seemed to flare and he
was in the room no longer, but in another place, a place he had never seen
before.
He stood on a little hillock and in front of him the land sloped down
to a sluggish river bordered by a width of marsh. Between the beginning of
the marsh and the foot of the hillock stretched a sea of rough, tall grass.
There was no wind, but the grass was rippling and he knew that the rippling
motion of the grass was caused by many moving bodies, foraging in the grass.
Out of it came a savage grunting, as if a thousand angry hogs were fighting
for choice morsels in a hundred swill troughs. And from somewhere farther
off, perhaps from the river, came a deep, monotonous bellowing that sounded
hoarse and tired.
Enoch felt the hair crawling on his scalp and he thrust the rifle out
and ready. It was puzzling. He felt and knew the danger and as yet there was
no danger. Still, the very air of this place-wherever it might be-seemed to
crawl with danger.
He spun around and saw that close behind him the thick, dark woods
climbed down the range of river hills, stopping at the sea of grass which
flowed around, the hillock on which he found himself. Off beyond the hills,
dark purple in the air, loomed a range of mighty mountains that seemed to
fade into the sky, but purple to their peaks, with no sign of snow upon
them.
Two things came trotting from the woods and stopped at the edge of it.
They sat down and grinned at him, with their tails wrapped neatly round
their feet. They might have been wolves or dogs, but they were neither one.
They were nothing he had ever seen or heard of. Their pelts glistened in the
weak sunshine, as if they had been greased, but the pelts stopped at their
necks, with their skulls and faces bare. Like evil old men, off on a
masquerade, with their bodies draped in the hides of wolves. But the
disguise was spoiled by the lolling tongues which spilled out of their
mouths, glistening scarlet against the bone-white of their faces.
The woods was still. There were only the two gaunt beasts sitting on
their haunches. They sat and grinned at him, a strangely toothless grin.
The woods was dark and tangled, the foliage so dark green that it was
almost black. All the leaves had a shine to them, as if they had been
polished to a special sheen.
Enoch spun around again, to look back towards the river, and crouched
at the edge of the grass was a line of toadlike monstrosities, six feet long
and standing three feet high, their bodies the color of a dead fish belly,
and each with a single eye, or what seemed to be an eye, which covered a
great part of the area just above the snout. The eyes were faceted and
glowed in the dim sunlight, as the eyes of a hunting cat will glow when
caught in a beam of light.
The hoarse bellowing still came from the river and in between the
bellowing there was a faint, thin buzzing, an angry and malicious buzzing,
as if a mosquito might be hovering for attack, although there was a sharper
tone in it than in the noise of a mosquito.
Enoch jerked up his head to look into the sky and far in the depths of
it he saw a string of dots, so high that there was no way of knowing what
kind of things they were.
He lowered his head to look back at the line of squatting, toadlike
things, but from the corner of his eye he caught the sense of flowing motion
and swung back toward the woods.
The wolf-like bodies with the skull-like heads were coming up the hill
in a silent rush. They did not seem to run. There was no motion of their
running. Rather they were moving as if they had been squirted from a tube.
Enoch jerked up his rifle and it came into his shoulder, fitting there,
as if it were a part of him. The bead settled in the rear-sight notch and
blotted out the skull-like face of the leading beast. The gun bucked as he
squeezed the trigger and, without waiting to see if the shot had downed the
beast, the rifle barrel was swinging toward the second as his right fist
worked the bolt. The rifle bucked again and the second wolf-like being
somersaulted and slid forward for an instant, then began rolling down the
hill, flopping as it rolled.
Enoch worked the bolt again and the spent brass case glittered in the
sun as he turned swiftly to face the other slope.
The toadlike things were closer now. They had been creeping in, but as
he turned they stopped and squatted, staring at him.
He reached a hand into his pocket and took out two cartridges, cramming
them into the magazine to replace the shells he'd fired.
The bellowing down by the river had stopped, but now there was a
honking sound that he could not place. Turning cautiously, he tried to
locate what might be making it, but there was nothing to be seen. The
honking sound seemed to be coming from the forest, but there was nothing
moving.
In between the honking, he still could hear the buzzing and it seemed
louder now. He glanced into the sky and the dots were larger and no longer
in a line. They had formed into a circle and seemed to be spiraling
downward, but they were still so high that he could not make out what kinds
of things they were.
He glanced back toward the toadlike monsters and they were closer than
they had been before. They had crept up again.
Enoch lifted the rifle and, before it reached his shoulder, pressed the
trigger, shooting from the hip. The eye of one of the foremost of them
exploded, like the splash a stone would make if thrown into water. The
creature did not jump or flop. It simply settled down, flat upon the ground,
as if someone had put his foot upon it and had exerted exactly force enough
to squash it flat. It lay there, flat, and there was a big round hole where
the eye had been and the hole was filling with a thick and ropy yellow fluid
that may have been the creature's blood.
The others backed away, slowly, watchfully. They backed all the way off
the hillock and only stopped when they reached the grass edge.
The honking was closer and the buzzing louder and there could be no
doubt that the honking was coming from the hills.
Enoch swung about and saw it, striding through the sky, coming down the
ridge, stepping through the trees and honking dolefully. It was a round and
black balloon that swelled and deflated with its honking, and jerked and
swayed as it walked along, hung from the center of four stiff and spindly
legs that arched above it to the joint that connected this upper portion of
the leg arrangement with the downward-sprapling legs that raised it high
above the forest. It was walking jerkily, lifting its legs high to clear the
massive treetops before putting them down again. Each time it put down a
foot, Enoch could hear the crunching of the branches and the crashing of the
trees that it broke or brushed aside.
Enoch felt the skin along his spine trying to roll up his back like a
window shade, and the bristling of the hair along the base of his skull,
obeying some primordial instinct in its striving to raise itself erect into
a fighting ruff.
But even as he stood there, almost stiff with fright, some part of his
brain remembered that one shot he had fired and his fingers dug into his
pocket for another cartridge to fill the magazine.
The buzzing was much louder and the pitch had changed. The buzzing was
now approaching at tremendous speed.
Enoch jerked up his head and the dots no longer were circling in the
sky, but were plunging down toward him, one behind the other.
He flicked a glance toward the balloon, honking and jerking on its
stilt-like legs. It still was coming on, but the plunging dots were faster
and would reach the hillock first.
He shifted the rifle forward, outstretched and ready to slap against
his shoulder, and watched the falling dots, which were dots no longer, but
hideous streamlined bodies, each carrying a rapier that projected from its
head. A bill of sorts, thought Enoch, for these things might be birds, but a
longer, thinner, larger, more deadly bird than any earthly bird.
The buzzing changed into a scream and the scream kept mounting up the
scale until it set the teeth on edge and through it, like a metronome
measuring off a beat, came the hooting of the black balloon that strode
across the hills.
Without knowing that he had moved his arms, Enoch had the rifle at his
shoulder, waiting for that instant when the first of the plunging monsters
was close enough to fire.
They dropped like stones out of the sky and they were bigger than he
had thought they were-big and coming like so many arrows aimed directly at
him.
The rifle thuped against his shoulder and the first one crumpled, lost
its arrow shape, folding up and falling, no longer on its course. He worked
the bolt and fired again and the second one in line lost its balance and
began to tumble-and the bolt was worked once more and the trigger pressed.
The third skiped in the air and went off at a slant, limp and ragged,
fluttering in the wind, falling toward the river.
The rest broke off their dive. They made a shallow turn and beat their
way up into the sky, great wings that were more like windmill vanes than
wings thrashing desperately.
A shadow fell across the hillock and a mighty pillar came down from
somewhere overhead, driving down to strike to one side of the hillock. The
ground trembled at the tread and the water that lay hipen by the grass
squirted high into the air.
The honking was an engulfing sound that blotted out all else and the
great balloon was zooming down, cradled on its legs.
Enoch saw the face, if anything so grotesque and so obscene could be
called a face. There was a beak and beneath it a sucking mouth and a dozen
or so other organs that might have been the eyes.
The legs were like inverted V's, with the inner stroke somewhat shorter
than the outer and in the center of these inner joints hung the great
balloon that was the body of the creature, with its face on the underside so
that it could see all the hunting territory that might lie beneath it.
But now auxiliary joints in the outer span of legs were bending to let
the body of the creature down so it could seize its prey.
Enoch was not conscious of putting up the rifle or of operating it, but
it was hammering at his shoulder and it seemed to him that a second part of
him stood off, apart, and watched the firing of the rifle-as if the figure
that held and fired the weapon might be a second man.
Great gouts of flesh flew out of the black balloon and jagged rents
supenly tore across it and from these rents poured out a cloud of liquid
that turned into a mist, with black droplets raining from it.
The firing pin clicked on an empty breech and the gun was empty, but
there was no need of another shot. The great legs were folding, and
trembling as they folded, and the shrunken body shivered convulsively in the
heavy mist that was pouring out of it. There was no hooting now, and Enoch
could hear the patter of the black drops falling from that cloud as they
struck the short grass on the bill.
There was a sickening odor and the drops, where they fell on him, were
sticky, running like cold oil, and above him the great structure that had
been the stilt-like creature was toppling to the ground.
Then the world faded swiftly and was no longer there.
Enoch stood in the oval room in the faint glow of the bulbs. There was
the heavy smell of powder and all about his feet, glinting in the light, lay
the spent and shining cases that had been kicked out of the gun.
He was back in the basement once again. The target shoot was over.
Enoch lowered the rifle and drew in a slow and careful breath. It
always was like this, he thought. As if it were necessary for him to ease
himself, by slow degrees, back to this world of his after the season of
unreality.
One knew that it would be illusion when he kicked on the switch that
set into motion whatever was to happen and one knew it had been illusion
when it all had ended, but during the time that it was happening it was not
illusion. It was as real and substantial as if it all were true.
They had asked him, he remembered, when the station had been built, if
he had a hobby-if there was any sort of recreational facility they could
build into the station for him. And he had said that he would like a rifle
range, expecting no more than a shooting gallery with ducks moving on a
chain or clay pipes rotating on a wheel. But that, of course, would have
been too simple for the screwball architects, who had designed, and the
slap-happy crew of workmen who had built the station.
At first they had not been certain what he meant by a rifle range and
Enoch reached out and picked it up. His fingers carefully explored the
base upon which the spheres were set, seeking something-some lever, some
indentation, some trip, some button-by which it might be turned either on or
off. But there was nothing he could find. He should have known, he told
himself, that there would be nothing. For he had looked before. And yet
yesterday Lucy had done something that had set it operating and it still was
operating. It had operated for more than twelve hours now and no results had
been obtained. Check that, he thought-no results that could be recognized.
He set it back on the table on its base and stacked the cups, one
inside the other, and picked them up. He stooped to lift the coffeepot off
the floor. But his eyes never left the pyramid of spheres.
It was mapening, he told himself. There was no way to turn it on and
yet, somehow, Lucy had turned it on. And now there was no way to turn it
off-although it probably did not matter if it were off or on.
He went back to the sink with the cups and coffeepot.
The station was quiet-a heavy, oppressive quietness; although, he told
himself, the impression of oppressiveness probably was no more than his
imagination.
He crossed the room to the message machine and the plate was blank.
There had been no messages during the night. It was silly of him, he
thought, to expect there would be, for if there were, the auditory signal
would be functioning, would continue to sound off until he pushed the lever.
Was it possible, he wondered, that the station might already have been
abandoned, that whatever traffic that happened to be moving was being
detoured around it? That, however, was hardly possible, for the abandonment
of Earth station would mean, as well that those beyond it must also be
abandoned. There were no shortcuts in the network extending out into the
spiral arm to make rerouting possible. It was not unusual for many hours,
even for a day, to pass without any traffic. The traffic was irregular and
had no pattern to it. There were times when scheduled arrivals bad to be
held up until there were facilities to take care of them, and there were
other times when there would be none at all, when the equipment would sit
idle, as it was sitting now.
Jumpy, he thought. I am getting jumpy.
Before they closed the station, they would let him know. Courtesy, if
nothing else, would demand that they do that.
He went back to the stove and started the coffeepot. In the
refrigerator he found a package of mush made from a cereal grown on one of
the Draconian jungle worlds. He took it out, then put it back again and took
out the last two eggs of the dozen that Wins, the mailman, had brought out
from town a week or so ago.
He glanced at his watch and saw that he had slept later than he
thought. It was almost time for his daily walk.
He put the skillet on the stove and spooned in a chunk of butter. He
waited for the butter to melt, then broke in the eggs.
Maybe, he thought, he'd not go on the walk today. Except for a time or
two when a blizzard had been raging, it would be the first time he had ever
missed his walk. But because he always did it, he told himself,
contentiously, was no sufficient reason that he should always take it. He'd
just skip the walk and later on go down and get the mail. He could use the
time to catch up on all the things he'd failed to do yesterday. The papers
still were piled upon his desk, waiting for his reading. He'd not written in
his journal, and there was a lot to write, for he must record in detail
exactly what had happened and there had been a good deal happening.
It had been a rule he'd set himself from the first day, that the
station had begun its operation-that he never skimped the journal. He might
be a little late at times in getting it all down, but the fact that he was
late or that he was pressed for time had never made him put down one word
less than he had felt might be required to tell all there was to tell.
He looked across the room at the long rows of record books that were
crowded on the shelves and thought, with pride and satisfaction, of the
completeness of that record. Almost a century of writing lay between the
covers of those books and there was not a single day that he had ever
skipped.
Here was his legacy, he thought; here was his bequest to the world,
here would be his entrance fee back into the human race; here was all he'd
seen and heard and thought for almost a hundred years of association with
those alien peoples of the galaxy.
Looking at the rows of books, the questions that he had shoved aside
came rushing in on him and this time there was no denying them. For a short
space of time he had held them off, the little time he'd needed for his
brain to clear, for his body to become alive again He did not fight them now
He accepted them, for there was no dodging them.
He slid the eggs out of the skillet onto the waiting plate He got the
coffeepot and sat down to his breakfast.
He glanced at his watch again.
There still was time to go on his daily walk.
The ginseng man was waiting at the spring.
Enoch saw him while still some distance down the trail and wondered,
with a quick flash of anger, if he might be waiting there to tell him that
he could not return the body of the Hazer, that something had come up, that
he had run into unexpected difficulties.
And thinking that, Enoch remembered how he'd threatened the night
before to kill anyone who held up the return of the body. Perhaps, he told
himself, it had not been smart to say that. Wondering whether he could bring
himself to kill a man-not that it would be the first man he had ever killed.
But that had been long ago and it had been a matter then of kill or being
killed.
He shut his eyes for a second and once again could see that slope below
him, with the long lines of men advancing through the drifting smoke,
knowing that those men were climbing up the ridge for one purpose only, to
kill himself and those others who were atop the ridge.
And that had not been the first time nor had it been the last, but all
the years of killing boiled down in essence to that single moment-not the
time that came after, but that long and terrible instant when he had watched
the lines of men purposefully striding up the slope to kill him.
It had been in that moment that he had realized the insanity of war,
the futile gesture that in time became all but meaningless, the unreasoning
rage that must be nursed long beyond the memory of the incident that had
caused the rage, the sheer illogic that one man, by death of misery, might
prove a right or uphold a principle.
Somewhere, he thought, on the long backtrack of history, the human race
had accepted an insanity for a principle and had persisted in it until today
that insanity-turned-principle stood ready to wipe out, if not the race
itself, at least all of those things, both material and immaterial, that had
been fashioned as symbols of humanity through many hard-won centuries.
Lewis had been sitting on a fallen log and now, as Enoch neared, he
rose.
"I waited for you here," he said. "I hope you don't mind."
Enoch stepped across the spring.
"The body will be here sometime in early evening," Lewis said.
"Washington will fly it out to Madison and truck it here from there."
Enoch noped. "I am glad to hear that."
"They were insistent," Lewis said, "that I should ask you once again
what the body is."
"I told you last night," said Enoch, "that I can't tell you anything. I
wish I could. I've been figuring for years how to get it told, but there's
no way of doing it."
"The body is something from off this Earth," said Lewis. "We are sure
of that."
"You think so," Enoch said, not making it a question.
"And the house," said Lewis, "is something alien, too."
"The house," Enoch told him, shortly, "was built by my father."
"But something changed it," Lewis said. "It is not the way be built
it."
"The years change things," said Enoch.
"Everything but you."
Enoch grinned at him. "So it bothers you," he said. "You figure it's
indecent."
Lewis shook his head. "No, not indecent. Not really anything. After
watching you for years, I've come to an acceptance of you and everything
about you. No understanding, naturally, but complete acceptance. Sometimes I
tell myself I'm crazy, but that's only momentary. I've tried not to bother
you. I've worked to keep everything exactly as it was. And now that I've met
you, I am glad that is the way it was. But we're going at this wrong. We're
acting as if we were enemies, as if we were strange dogs-and that's not the
way to do it. I think that the two of us may have a lot in common. There's
something going on and I don't want to do a thing that will interfere with
it."
"But you did," said Enoch. "You did the worst thing that you could when
you took the body. If you'd sat down and planned how to do me harm, you
couldn't have done worse. And not only me. Not really me, at all. It was the
human race you harmed."
"I don't understand," 'said Lewis. "I'm sorry, but I don't understand.
There was the writing on the stone ..."
"That was my fault," said Enoch. "I should never have put up that
stone. But at the time it seemed the thing to do. I didn't think that anyone
would come snooping around and ..."
"It was a friend of yours?"
"A friend of mine? Oh, you mean the body. Well, not actually. Not that
particular person."
"Now that it's done," Lewis said, "I'm sorry."
"Sorry doesn't help," said Enoch.
"But isn't there something-isn't there anything that can be done about
it? More than just bringing back the body?"
"Yes," Enoch told him, "there might be something. I might need some
help."
"Tell me," Lewis said quickly. "If it can be done ..."
"I might need a truck," said Enoch. "To haul away some stuff. Records
and other things like that. I might need it fast."
"I can have a truck," said Lewis. "I can have it waiting. And men to
help you load."
"I might want to talk to someone in authority. High authority. The
President. Secretary of State. Maybe the U.N. I don't know. I have to think
it out. And not only would I need a way to talk to them, but some measure of
assurance that they would listen to what I had to say."
"I'll arrange," said Lewis, "for mobile short-wave equipment. I'll have
it standing by."
"And someone who will listen?"
"That's right," said Lewis. "Anyone you say."
"And one thing more."
"Anything," said Lewis.
"Forgetfulness," said Enoch. "Maybe I won't need any of these things.
Not the truck or any of the rest of it. Maybe I'll have to let things go
just as they're going now. And if that should be the case, could you and
everyone else concerned forget I ever asked?"
"I think we could," said Lewis. "But I would keep on watching."
"I wish you would," said Enoch. "Later on I might need some help. But
no further interference."
"Are you sure," asked Lewis, "that there is nothing else?"
Enoch shook his head. "Nothing else. All the rest of it I must do
myself."
Perhaps, he thought, he'd already talked too much. For how could he be
sure that he could trust this man? How could he be sure he could trust
anyone?
And yet, if he decided to leave Galactic Central and cast his lot with
Earth, he might need some help. There might be some objection by the aliens
to his taking along his records and the alien gadgets. If he wanted to get
away with them, he might have to make it fast.
But did he want to leave Galactic Central? Could he give up the galaxy?
Could he turn down the offer to become the keeper of another station on some
other planet? When the time should come, could he cut his tie with all the
other races and all the mysteries of the other stars?
Already he had taken steps to do those very things. Here, in the last
few moments, without too much thought about it, almost as if he already had
reached his decision, he had arranged a setup that would turn him back to
Earth.
He stood there, thinking, puzzled at the steps he'd taken.
"There'll be someone here," said Lewis. "Someone at this spring. If not
myself, then someone else who can get in touch with me."
Enoch noped absent-mindedly.
"Someone will see you every morning when you take your walk," said
Lewis. "Or you can reach us here any time you wish."
Like a conspiracy, thought Enoch. Like a bunch of kids playing cops and
robbers.
"I have to be getting on," he said. "It's almost time for mail. Wins
will be wondering what has happened to me."
He started up the hill.
"Be seeing you," said Lewis.
"Yeah," said Enoch. "I'll be seeing you."
He was surprised to find the warm glow spreading in him-as if there had
been something wrong and now it was all right, as if there had been
something lost that now had been recovered.
Enoch met the mailman halfway down the road that led into the station.
The old jalopy was traveling fast, bumping over the grassy ruts, swishing
through the overhanging bushes that grew along the track.
Wins braked to a halt when he caught sight of Enoch and sat waiting for
him.
"You got on a detour," Enoch said, coming up to him. "Or have you
changed your route?"
"You weren't waiting at the box," said Wins, "and I had to see you."
"Some important mail?"
"Nope, it isn't mail. It's old Hank Fisher. He is down in Millville,
setting up the drinks in Epie's tavern and shooting off his face."
"It's not like Hank to be buying drinks."
"He's telling everyone that you tried to kidnap Lucy."
"I didn't kidnap her," Enoch said. "Hank had took a bull whip to her
and I hid her out until he got cooled down."
"You shouldn't have done that, Enoch."
"Maybe. But Hank was set on giving her a beating. He already had hit
her a lick or two."
"Hank's out to make you trouble."
"He told me that he would."
"He says you kidnapped her, then got scared and brought her back. He
says you had her bid out in the house and when he tried to break in and get
her, he couldn't do it. He says you have a funny sort of house. He says he
broke an ax blade on a window pane."
"Nothing funny about it," Enoch said. "Hank just imagines things."
"It's all right so far," said the mailman. "None of them, in broad
daylight and their right senses, will do anything about it. But come night
they'll be liquored up and won't have good sense. There are some of them
might be coming up to see you."
"I suppose he's telling them I've got the devil in me."
"That and more," said Wins. "I listened for a while before I started
out."
He reached into the mail pouch and found the bundle of papers and
handed them to Enoch.
"Enoch, there's something that you have to know. Something you may not
realize. It would be easy to get a lot of people stirred up against you-the
way you live and all. You are strange. No, I don't mean there's anything
wrong with you-I know you and I know there isn't-but it would be easy for
people who didn't know you to get the wrong ideas. They've let you alone so
far because you've given them no reason to do anything about you. But if
they get stirred up by all that Hank is saying..."
He did not finish what he was saying. He left it hanging in midair.
"You're talking about a posse," Enoch said.
Wins noped, saying nothing.
"Thanks," said Enoch. "I appreciate your warning me."
"Is it true," asked the mailman, "that no one can get inside your
house9"
"I guess it is," admitted Enoch. "They can't break into it and they
can't burn it down. They can't do anything about it."
"Then, if I were you, I'd stay close tonight. I'd stay inside. I'd not
go venturing out."
"Maybe I will. It sounds like a good idea."
"Well," said Wins, "I guess that about covers it. I thought you'd ought
to know. Guess I'll have to back out to the road. No chance of turning
around."
"Drive up to the house. There's room there."
"It's not far back to the road," said Wins. "I can make it easy."
The car started backing slowly.
Enoch stood watching.
He lifted a hand in solemn salute as the car began rounding a bend that
would take it out of sight. Wins waved back and then the car was swallowed
by the scrub that grew close against both sides of the road.
Slowly Enoch turned around and ploped back toward the station.
A mob, he thought-good God, a mob!
A mob howling about the station, hammering at the doors and windows,
peppering it with bullets, would wipe out the last faint chance-if there
still remained a chance-of Galactic Central standing off the move to close
the station. Such a demonstration would ap one more powerful argument to the
demand that the expansion into the spiral arm should be abandoned.
Why was it, he wondered, that everything should happen all at once? For
years nothing at all had happened and now everything was happening within a
few hours' time. Everything, it seemed, was working out against him.
If the mob showed up, not only would it mean that the fate of the
station would be sealed, but it might mean, as well, that he would have no
choice but to accept the offer to become the keeper of another station. It
might make it impossible for him to remain on Earth, even if he wished. And
he realized, with a start, that it might just possibly mean that the offer
of another station for him might be withdrawn. For with the appearance of a
mob howling for his blood, he, himself, would become involved in the charge
of barbarism now leveled against the human race in general.
Perhaps, he told himself, he should go down to the spring and see Lewis
once again. Perhaps some measures could be taken to hold off the mob. But if
he did, he knew, there'd be an explanation due and he might have to tell too
much. And there might not be a mob. No one would place too much credence in
what Hank Fisher said and the whole thing might peter out without any action
being taken.
He'd stay inside the station and hope for the best. Perhaps there'd be
no traveler in the station at the time the mob arrived-if it did arrive-and
the incident would pass with no galactic notice. If he were lucky it might
work out that way. And by the law of averages, he was owed some luck.
Certainly he'd had none in the last few days.
He came to the broken gate that led into the yard and stopped to look
up at the house, trying for some reason he could not understand, to see it
as the house he had known in boyhood.
It stood the same as it had always stood, unchanged, except that in the
olden days there had been ruffled curtains at each window. The yard around
it had changed with the slow growth of the years, with the clump of lilacs
thicker and more rank and tangled with each passing spring, with the elms
that his father had planted grown from six-foot whips into mighty trees,
with the yellow rose bush at the kitchen corner gone, victim of a
long-forgotten winter, with the flower beds vanished and the small herb
garden, here beside the gate, overgrown and smothered out by grass.
The old stone fence that had stood on each side of the gate was now
little more than a humpbacked mound. The heaving of a hundred frosts, the
creep of vines and grasses, the long years of neglect, had done their work
and in another hundred years, he thought, it would be level, with no trace
of it left. Down in the field, along the slope where erosion had been at
work, there were long stretches where it had entirely disappeared.
All of this had happened and until this moment he had scarcely noticed
it. But now he noticed it and wondered why he did. Was it because he now
might be returning to the Earth again-he who had never left its soil and sun
and air, who had never left it physically, but who had, for a longer time
than most men had allotted to them, walked not one, but many planets, far
among the stars?
He stood there, in the late summer sun, and shivered in the cold wind
that seemed to be blowing out of some unknown dimension of unreality,
wondering for the first time (for the first time he ever had been forced to
wonder at it) what kind of man he was. A haunted man who must spend his days
neither completely alien nor completely human, with divided loyalties, with
old ghosts to tramp the years and miles with him no matter which life he
might choose, the Earth life or the stars? A cultural half-breed,
understanding neither Earth nor stars, owing a debt to each, but paying
neither one? A homeless, footless, wandering creature who could recognize
neither right nor wrong from having seen so many different (and logical)
versions of the right and wrong?
He had climbed the hill above the spring, filled with the rosy inner
glow of a regained humanity, a member of the human race again, linked in a
boy-like conspiracy with a human team. But could he qualify as human-and if
he qualified as human, or tried to qualify, then what about the implied
hundred years' allegiance to Galactic Central? Did he, he wondered, even
want to qualify as human?
He moved slowly through the gate, and the questions still kept
hammering in his brain, that great, ceaseless flow of questions to which
there were no answers. Although that was wrong, he thought. Not no answers,
but too many answers.
Perhaps Mary and David and the rest of them would come visiting tonight
and they could talk it over-then he supenly remembered.
They would not be coming. Not Mary, not David, nor any of the others.
They had come for years to see him, but they would come no longer, for the
magic had been dimmed and the illusion shattered and he was alone.
As he had always been alone, he told himself, with a bitter taste
inside his brain. It all had been illusion; it never had been real. For
years he'd fooled himself-most eagerly and willingly he had fooled himself
into peopling the little corner by the fireplace with these creatures of his
imagination. Aided by an alien technique, driven by his loneliness for the
sight and sound of humankind, he had brought them into a being that defied
every sense except the solid sense of touch.
And defied as well every sense of decency.
Half-creatures, he thought. Poor pitiful half-creatures, neither of the
shadow or the world.
Too human for the shadows, too shadowy for Earth.
Mary, if I had only known - if I had known, I never would have started.
I'd have stayed with loneliness.
And he could not mend it now. There was nothing that would help.
What is the matter with me? he asked himself.
What has happened to me?
What is going on?
He couldn't even think in a straight line any more. He'd told himself
that he'd stay inside the station to escape the mob that might be showing
up-and he couldn't stay inside the station, for Lewis, sometime shortly
after dark, would be bringing back the Hazer's body.
And if the mob showed up at the same time Lewis should appear, bringing
back the body, there'd be unsheeted hell to pay.
Stricken by the thought, he stood undecided.
If he alerted Lewis to the danger, then he might not bring the body.
And he had to bring the body. Before the night was over the Hazer must be
secure within the grave.
He decided that he would have to take a chance. The mob might not show
up. Even if it did, there had to be a way that he could handle it.
He'd think of something, he told himself.
He'd have to think of something.
The station was as silent as it had been when he'd left it. There had
been no messages and the machinery was quiet, not even muttering to itself,
as it sometimes did.
Enoch laid the rifle across the desk top and dropped the bundle of
papers beside it. He took off his jacket and hung it on the back of the
chair.
There were still the papers to be read, not only today's, but
yesterday's as well, and the journal to be gotten up, and the journal, he
reminded himself, would take a lot of time. There would be several pages of
it, even if he wrote it close, and he must write it logically and
chronologically, so that it would appear he had written the happenings of
yesterday yesterday and not a full day late. He must include each event and
every facet of each happening and his own reactions to it and his thoughts
about it. For that was the way he'd always done and that was the way he must
do it now. He'd always been able to do it that way because he had created
for himself a little special niche, not of the Earth, nor of the galaxy, but
in that vague condition which one might call existence, and he had worked
inside the framework of that special niche as a medieval monk had worked
inside his cell. He had been an observer only, an intensely interested
observer who had not been content with observance only, but who had made an
effort to dig into what he had observed, but still basically and essentially
an observer who was not vitally nor personally involved in what had gone on
about him. But in the last two days, he realized, he had lost that observer
status. The Earth and the galaxy had both intruded on him, and his special
niche was gone and he was personally involved. He had lost his objective
viewpoint and no longer could command that correct and coldly factual
approach which had given him a solid basis upon which to do his writing.
He walked over to the shelf of journals and pulled out the current
volume, fluttering its pages to find where he had stopped. He found the
place and it was very near the end. There were only a few blank pages left,
perhaps not enough of them to cover the events of which he'd have to write.
More than likely, he thought, he'd come to an end of the journal before he
had finished with it and would have to start a new one.
He stood with the journal in his hand and stared at the page where the
writing ended, the writing that he'd done the day before yesterday. Just the
day before yesterday and it now was ancient writing; it even had a faded
look about it. And well it might, he thought, for it had been writing done
in another age. It had been the last entry he had made before his world had
come crashing down about him.
And what, he asked himself, was the use of writing further? The writing
now was done, all the writing that would matter. The station would be closed
and his own planet would be lost-no matter whether he stayed on or went to
another station on another planet, the Earth would now be lost.
Angrily he slammed shut the book and put it back into its place upon
the shelf. He walked back to the desk.
The Earth was lost, he thought, and he was lost as well, lost and angry
and confused. Angry at fate (if there were such a thing as fate) and at
stupidity. Not only the intellectual stupidity of the Earth, but at the
intellectual stupidity of the galaxy as well, at the petty bickering which
could still the march of the brotherhood of peoples that finally had
extended into this galactic sector. As on Earth, so in the galaxy, the
number and complexity of the gadget, the noble thought, the wisdom and
erudition might make for a culture, but not for a civilization. To be truly
civilized, there must be something far more subtle than the gadget or the
thought.
He felt the tension in him, the tension to be doing something - to
prowl about the station like a caged and pacing beast, to run outside and
shout incoherently until his lungs were empty, to smash and break, to work
off, somehow, his rage and disappointment.
He reached out a hand and snatched the rifle off the desk. He pulled
out a desk drawer where he kept the ammunition, and took out a box of it,
tearing it apart, emptying the cartridges in his pocket.
He stood there for a moment, with the rifle in his hand, and the
silence of the room seemed to thunder at him and he caught the bleakness and
the coldness of it and he laid the rifle back on the desk again.
With childishness, he thought, to take out his resentment and his rage
on an unreality. And' when there was no real reason for resentment or for
rage. For the pattern of events was one that should be recognized and thus
accepted. It was the kind of thing to which a human being should long since
have become accustomed.
He looked around the station and the quietness and the waiting still
was there, as if the very structure might be marking time for an event to
come along on the natural flow of time.
He laughed softly and reached for the rifle once again.
Unreality or not, it would be something to occupy his mind, to 'snatch
him for a while from this sea of problems which was swirling all about him.
And he needed the target practice. It had been ten days or more since
he'd been on the rifle range.
The basement was huge. It stretched out into a dim haze beyond the
lights which he had turned on, a place of tunnels and rooms, carved deep
into the rock that folded up to underlie the ridge.
Here were the massive tanks filled with the various solutions for the
tank travelers; here the pumps and the generators, which operated on a
principle alien to the human manner of generating electric power, and far
beneath the floor of the basement itself those great storage tanks which
held the acids and the soupy matter which once had been the bodies of those
creatures which came traveling to the station, leaving behind them, as they
went on to some other place, the useless bodies which then must be disposed
of.
Enoch moved across the floor, past the tanks and generators, until he
came to a gallery that stretched out into the darkness. He found the panel
and pressed it to bring on the lights, then walked down the gallery. On
either side were metal shelves which had been installed to accommodate the
overflow of gadgets, of artifacts, of all sorts of gifts which had been
brought him by the travelers. From floor to ceiling the shelves were jammed
with a junkyard accumulation from all the corners of the galaxy. And yet,
thought Enoch, perhaps not actually a junkyard, for there would be very
little of this stuff that would be actual junk. All of it was serviceable
and had some purpose, either practical or aesthetic, if only that purpose
could be learned. Although perhaps not in every instance a purpose that
would be applicable to humans.
Down at the end of the shelves was one section of shelving into which
the articles were packed more systematically and with greater care, each one
tagged and numbered, with cross-filing to a card catalogue and certain
journal dates. These were the articles of which he knew the purpose and, in
certain instances, something of the principles involved. There were some
that were innocent enough and others that held great potential value and
still others that had, at the moment, no connection whatsoever with the
human way of life-and there were, as well, those few, tagged in red, that
made one shuper to even think upon.
He went down the gallery, his footsteps echoing loudly as he trod
through this place of alien ghosts.
Finally the gallery widened into an oval room and the walls here were
paped with a thick gray substance that would entrap a bullet and prevent a
ricochet.
Enoch walked over to a panel set inside a deep recess sunk into the
wall. He reached in and thumbed up a tumbler, then stepped quickly out into
the center of the room.
Slowly the room began to darken, then supenly it seemed to flare and he
was in the room no longer, but in another place, a place he had never seen
before.
He stood on a little hillock and in front of him the land sloped down
to a sluggish river bordered by a width of marsh. Between the beginning of
the marsh and the foot of the hillock stretched a sea of rough, tall grass.
There was no wind, but the grass was rippling and he knew that the rippling
motion of the grass was caused by many moving bodies, foraging in the grass.
Out of it came a savage grunting, as if a thousand angry hogs were fighting
for choice morsels in a hundred swill troughs. And from somewhere farther
off, perhaps from the river, came a deep, monotonous bellowing that sounded
hoarse and tired.
Enoch felt the hair crawling on his scalp and he thrust the rifle out
and ready. It was puzzling. He felt and knew the danger and as yet there was
no danger. Still, the very air of this place-wherever it might be-seemed to
crawl with danger.
He spun around and saw that close behind him the thick, dark woods
climbed down the range of river hills, stopping at the sea of grass which
flowed around, the hillock on which he found himself. Off beyond the hills,
dark purple in the air, loomed a range of mighty mountains that seemed to
fade into the sky, but purple to their peaks, with no sign of snow upon
them.
Two things came trotting from the woods and stopped at the edge of it.
They sat down and grinned at him, with their tails wrapped neatly round
their feet. They might have been wolves or dogs, but they were neither one.
They were nothing he had ever seen or heard of. Their pelts glistened in the
weak sunshine, as if they had been greased, but the pelts stopped at their
necks, with their skulls and faces bare. Like evil old men, off on a
masquerade, with their bodies draped in the hides of wolves. But the
disguise was spoiled by the lolling tongues which spilled out of their
mouths, glistening scarlet against the bone-white of their faces.
The woods was still. There were only the two gaunt beasts sitting on
their haunches. They sat and grinned at him, a strangely toothless grin.
The woods was dark and tangled, the foliage so dark green that it was
almost black. All the leaves had a shine to them, as if they had been
polished to a special sheen.
Enoch spun around again, to look back towards the river, and crouched
at the edge of the grass was a line of toadlike monstrosities, six feet long
and standing three feet high, their bodies the color of a dead fish belly,
and each with a single eye, or what seemed to be an eye, which covered a
great part of the area just above the snout. The eyes were faceted and
glowed in the dim sunlight, as the eyes of a hunting cat will glow when
caught in a beam of light.
The hoarse bellowing still came from the river and in between the
bellowing there was a faint, thin buzzing, an angry and malicious buzzing,
as if a mosquito might be hovering for attack, although there was a sharper
tone in it than in the noise of a mosquito.
Enoch jerked up his head to look into the sky and far in the depths of
it he saw a string of dots, so high that there was no way of knowing what
kind of things they were.
He lowered his head to look back at the line of squatting, toadlike
things, but from the corner of his eye he caught the sense of flowing motion
and swung back toward the woods.
The wolf-like bodies with the skull-like heads were coming up the hill
in a silent rush. They did not seem to run. There was no motion of their
running. Rather they were moving as if they had been squirted from a tube.
Enoch jerked up his rifle and it came into his shoulder, fitting there,
as if it were a part of him. The bead settled in the rear-sight notch and
blotted out the skull-like face of the leading beast. The gun bucked as he
squeezed the trigger and, without waiting to see if the shot had downed the
beast, the rifle barrel was swinging toward the second as his right fist
worked the bolt. The rifle bucked again and the second wolf-like being
somersaulted and slid forward for an instant, then began rolling down the
hill, flopping as it rolled.
Enoch worked the bolt again and the spent brass case glittered in the
sun as he turned swiftly to face the other slope.
The toadlike things were closer now. They had been creeping in, but as
he turned they stopped and squatted, staring at him.
He reached a hand into his pocket and took out two cartridges, cramming
them into the magazine to replace the shells he'd fired.
The bellowing down by the river had stopped, but now there was a
honking sound that he could not place. Turning cautiously, he tried to
locate what might be making it, but there was nothing to be seen. The
honking sound seemed to be coming from the forest, but there was nothing
moving.
In between the honking, he still could hear the buzzing and it seemed
louder now. He glanced into the sky and the dots were larger and no longer
in a line. They had formed into a circle and seemed to be spiraling
downward, but they were still so high that he could not make out what kinds
of things they were.
He glanced back toward the toadlike monsters and they were closer than
they had been before. They had crept up again.
Enoch lifted the rifle and, before it reached his shoulder, pressed the
trigger, shooting from the hip. The eye of one of the foremost of them
exploded, like the splash a stone would make if thrown into water. The
creature did not jump or flop. It simply settled down, flat upon the ground,
as if someone had put his foot upon it and had exerted exactly force enough
to squash it flat. It lay there, flat, and there was a big round hole where
the eye had been and the hole was filling with a thick and ropy yellow fluid
that may have been the creature's blood.
The others backed away, slowly, watchfully. They backed all the way off
the hillock and only stopped when they reached the grass edge.
The honking was closer and the buzzing louder and there could be no
doubt that the honking was coming from the hills.
Enoch swung about and saw it, striding through the sky, coming down the
ridge, stepping through the trees and honking dolefully. It was a round and
black balloon that swelled and deflated with its honking, and jerked and
swayed as it walked along, hung from the center of four stiff and spindly
legs that arched above it to the joint that connected this upper portion of
the leg arrangement with the downward-sprapling legs that raised it high
above the forest. It was walking jerkily, lifting its legs high to clear the
massive treetops before putting them down again. Each time it put down a
foot, Enoch could hear the crunching of the branches and the crashing of the
trees that it broke or brushed aside.
Enoch felt the skin along his spine trying to roll up his back like a
window shade, and the bristling of the hair along the base of his skull,
obeying some primordial instinct in its striving to raise itself erect into
a fighting ruff.
But even as he stood there, almost stiff with fright, some part of his
brain remembered that one shot he had fired and his fingers dug into his
pocket for another cartridge to fill the magazine.
The buzzing was much louder and the pitch had changed. The buzzing was
now approaching at tremendous speed.
Enoch jerked up his head and the dots no longer were circling in the
sky, but were plunging down toward him, one behind the other.
He flicked a glance toward the balloon, honking and jerking on its
stilt-like legs. It still was coming on, but the plunging dots were faster
and would reach the hillock first.
He shifted the rifle forward, outstretched and ready to slap against
his shoulder, and watched the falling dots, which were dots no longer, but
hideous streamlined bodies, each carrying a rapier that projected from its
head. A bill of sorts, thought Enoch, for these things might be birds, but a
longer, thinner, larger, more deadly bird than any earthly bird.
The buzzing changed into a scream and the scream kept mounting up the
scale until it set the teeth on edge and through it, like a metronome
measuring off a beat, came the hooting of the black balloon that strode
across the hills.
Without knowing that he had moved his arms, Enoch had the rifle at his
shoulder, waiting for that instant when the first of the plunging monsters
was close enough to fire.
They dropped like stones out of the sky and they were bigger than he
had thought they were-big and coming like so many arrows aimed directly at
him.
The rifle thuped against his shoulder and the first one crumpled, lost
its arrow shape, folding up and falling, no longer on its course. He worked
the bolt and fired again and the second one in line lost its balance and
began to tumble-and the bolt was worked once more and the trigger pressed.
The third skiped in the air and went off at a slant, limp and ragged,
fluttering in the wind, falling toward the river.
The rest broke off their dive. They made a shallow turn and beat their
way up into the sky, great wings that were more like windmill vanes than
wings thrashing desperately.
A shadow fell across the hillock and a mighty pillar came down from
somewhere overhead, driving down to strike to one side of the hillock. The
ground trembled at the tread and the water that lay hipen by the grass
squirted high into the air.
The honking was an engulfing sound that blotted out all else and the
great balloon was zooming down, cradled on its legs.
Enoch saw the face, if anything so grotesque and so obscene could be
called a face. There was a beak and beneath it a sucking mouth and a dozen
or so other organs that might have been the eyes.
The legs were like inverted V's, with the inner stroke somewhat shorter
than the outer and in the center of these inner joints hung the great
balloon that was the body of the creature, with its face on the underside so
that it could see all the hunting territory that might lie beneath it.
But now auxiliary joints in the outer span of legs were bending to let
the body of the creature down so it could seize its prey.
Enoch was not conscious of putting up the rifle or of operating it, but
it was hammering at his shoulder and it seemed to him that a second part of
him stood off, apart, and watched the firing of the rifle-as if the figure
that held and fired the weapon might be a second man.
Great gouts of flesh flew out of the black balloon and jagged rents
supenly tore across it and from these rents poured out a cloud of liquid
that turned into a mist, with black droplets raining from it.
The firing pin clicked on an empty breech and the gun was empty, but
there was no need of another shot. The great legs were folding, and
trembling as they folded, and the shrunken body shivered convulsively in the
heavy mist that was pouring out of it. There was no hooting now, and Enoch
could hear the patter of the black drops falling from that cloud as they
struck the short grass on the bill.
There was a sickening odor and the drops, where they fell on him, were
sticky, running like cold oil, and above him the great structure that had
been the stilt-like creature was toppling to the ground.
Then the world faded swiftly and was no longer there.
Enoch stood in the oval room in the faint glow of the bulbs. There was
the heavy smell of powder and all about his feet, glinting in the light, lay
the spent and shining cases that had been kicked out of the gun.
He was back in the basement once again. The target shoot was over.
Enoch lowered the rifle and drew in a slow and careful breath. It
always was like this, he thought. As if it were necessary for him to ease
himself, by slow degrees, back to this world of his after the season of
unreality.
One knew that it would be illusion when he kicked on the switch that
set into motion whatever was to happen and one knew it had been illusion
when it all had ended, but during the time that it was happening it was not
illusion. It was as real and substantial as if it all were true.
They had asked him, he remembered, when the station had been built, if
he had a hobby-if there was any sort of recreational facility they could
build into the station for him. And he had said that he would like a rifle
range, expecting no more than a shooting gallery with ducks moving on a
chain or clay pipes rotating on a wheel. But that, of course, would have
been too simple for the screwball architects, who had designed, and the
slap-happy crew of workmen who had built the station.
At first they had not been certain what he meant by a rifle range and