Invasion

14

I didn't see it, of course. I cannot know. I can't retell it with perfect confidence in the tale. Never theless, it must have happened something like this:

A small herd of deer was sheltered in the forest where the snow didn't drift to such heights as it reached out in the open fields. They fed on the tough but juicy leaves of winter brush, on crow's foot and holly, on cold weather berries, of various sorts, on tender bark, and on those mushrooms that had survived far enough into the autumn to be quick-frozen by a sudden change in the seasons.

One buck fed at the edge of the herd. He nibbled on strips of peeling birch bark.

The wind was high above the trees, a distant howling like wolves held at bay by mounted hunters.

Now and again one of the deer would look up into the darkness overhead, never with fear but with curiosity.

The pine boughs-for this part of the forest was mostly pines-protected the deer from the worst of the storm.

The alien moved noiselessly through the trees.

The buck paused in his meal.

The alien came closer.

The buck stopped chewing, blew steam, drew breath, tilted his magnificent head, listened, snorted, went back to the birch bark.

The alien closed in on him.

Suddenly aware of the foul odor of ammonia, the buck finally raised its proud head. It sniffed and shook its antlers and let a half-chewed mouthful of bark drop to the ground.

Some of the other deer turned to watch it.

The buck sniffed again.

By now all twenty-odd members of the herd had caught the ripe scent. None of them were interested in food any longer. They were motionless, except for their long eye lashes which trembled and except for their nostrils which, beaded with moisture, also trembled. They were waiting for the worst, hearts racing, ears pricked up

The alien stopped ten yards away.

Snowflakes melted on the buck's nose.

The wind moaned. It seemed a bit louder than it had been a moment ago.

The buck stood very still for a while until it saw the huge yellow eyes that were fixed on it. It froze for an instant, then panicked.

The alien moved in quickly.

The buck snorted and reared up on its hind legs — and the alien reached out and took full control of the simple animal mind.

One of the does squealed.

Then another: contagion.

The herd thundered away down the forest trail, white tails puffed up behind them, their hoofbeats silenced by the blanket of snow that misted up around them.

Only the buck remained.

The alien came out from the deep brush, shoving aside the jagged brambles and blackberry vines, snow pluming up from its many legs. It stepped onto the narrow path between the pines and approached the deer.

The buck blinked, quivered.

The other being immediately soothed it. Standing before the animal, the alien carefully examined it for all of half a minute, as if learning the uses of the beast, then turned away and lumbered down the trail in the direction that the herd had gone.

Head lowered, large brown eyes wide, the buck followed without hesitation. Its tongue lolled between its lips. Its tail was tucked down now: brilliant white side concealed, dull gray-brown side re vealed.

The two creatures eventually left the woods and came out on a long slope where five other yellow-eyed beings were waiting for them.

The buck snorted when it saw the others.

Its heart thundered, threatened to burst.

The alien responded quickly, stilled the terror, slowed the heart-and kept rigid control.

Silently, they climbed the hill.

The buck was forced to jump through a number of deep drifts that nearly proved too much for it. It kicked and heaved. Its thick haunch and shoulder muscles bunched painfully. Steam spurted from its black nostrils.

Steam rose, too, from the broad, dark, slanted, shiny backs of the six aliens.

Shortly, a house came into sight atop the hill.

A farmhouse.

Timberlake

Farm.

The attack had begun.

15

I took a quick, hot shower, sluicing away some of the chill which had curled like a segmented worm of ice deep inside of me. The worm had anchored it self with a thousand tendrils and could not be entirely torn loose. When I came out of the shower, I discovered that Connie had left a double shot of whiskey, neat, in a squat glass tumbler on the edge of the sink. I sipped at the first shot while I toweled off and dressed. Just before I went downstairs, I finished the second shot in one fiery gulp that scorched my throat and made my eyes water.

However, not even the whiskey-although it brought a bright flush to my face-could burn out every segment of the ice worm.

Connie and Toby were in the kitchen. They had both eaten earlier, but she was re-heating some homemade vegetable soup for me. Toby was sitting at the table, intently studying a large, half-completed jigsaw puzzle; I winced when I saw that it was a snow scene.

Even a stranger, stepping into that room without knowing anything about our situation, could have seen that we were living under siege conditions. The curtains had been drawn tightly over the window, and the sun porch door was closed, locked, and chained. The rifle lay on a chair near the table, and the loaded pistol was beside the water glass at the place Connie had set for me. But most of all there was an air of expectancy, a thinly masked tension in all of us.

I sat down, and she put a bowl of soup before me. I drew a deep breath of the fragrant steam and sighed. I had not been very hungry until the food was before me; and now I was ravenous.

While I ate Connie dried, dismantled, and oiled the shotgun which had taken a beating in the blizzard.

Toby looked up from his puzzle and said, "Hey, Dad, you know what happened?"

"Tell me."

"Mom put a spell on me."

"A spell?"

"Yeah."

I looked at Connie. She was trying to suppress a smile, but she didn't glance up from the shotgun on which she was working. I asked Toby: "What sort of spell?"

"She made me sleep all day," he said.

"Is that so. After you slept all the night before?"

"Yeah. But you know what else?"

"What else?"

"I don't believe it was a spell at all."

Now Connie looked up from her gun.

I said, "It wasn't a spell?"

Toby shook his head: no. "I think she slipped me one of her sleeping capsules in my breakfast orange juice."

"Why, Toby!"

Connie said.

"It's okay, Mom," he said. "I know why you did it. You thought as long as I was asleep the aliens couldn't get me to run away again. You made me sleep to protect me."

I started to laugh.

"Boy child," Connie said to him,

"you're really too much for me. You know that?"

He grinned, blushed, and turned back to me. "You going to tell us some more about what all you found over at the

Johnson farm?"

The only thing I had told them thus far was that the aliens had been there ahead of me and that Ed and Molly were dead.

Connie quickly said,

"Let your father eat his dinner, Toby. He can tell us later."

When I'd finished three bowls of soup, I told them about the skeletons at the Johnson farm and about the dead bull lying in the generator shed. I tried to stay calm, tried to leave out most of the adjectives and adverbs, but now and then I let the tale become too vivid, so vivid that they recoiled slightly from me.

After I had finished Toby said, "Then I guess we have to hold them off all by ourselves. We can do it."

Connie said, "I'm not so sure of that, general."

She looked at me, crow's feet of worry around her lovely eyes. "What are we going to do?"

I had been doing a great deal of thinking about that. "Just one thing we can do. Get out of here."

"And go where?"

"East."

"The county road?"

"That's right."

"You think it's been plowed open?"

"No."

She screwed up her lovely face. "Then you intend to walk to the nearest house?"

"We're all going to walk to the nearest house," I said. "The big white frame place in toward Barley."

"That house is four miles from here."

"I know."

"We already discussed that possibility-"

"We did?" Toby asked.

"Last night," she told him patiently, "when you were sleeping on the couch."

"I miss the interesting stuff," he said.

She said to me: "Toby can't walk four miles on snowshoes in this weather."

"I'm tough," he said.

"I know you are," she said. "But this is a blizzard. You aren't that tough."

The hall clock struck midnight.

Toby thought about it as the chimes rang, then nodded hi agreement. "Well, yeah… Maybe I'm not quite that tough. But almost."

"And we can't carry him," she reminded me. "Neither one of us has had enough sleep. And after your trek to the Johnson farm… We'd never get through alive if we had to carry him."

"He'll walk as far as he can, and then we'll carry him the rest of the way," I said. "We don't have any choice. If we stay here we'll end up like Ed and Molly."

"Hey," Toby said, "you won't have to carry me. I can ride on a sled!"

16

While Connie and Toby and I talked about escape, there was movement outside, the first stages of the attack.

The continuation of that unhuman scene:

There was no light other than the vague, pearly phosphorescence of the deep snow fields, a ghostly glow like the skin of an albino in a dark room.

Snow and tiny granules of ice sheeted on the wind.

Drifts rose to dunelike peaks.

(Von Daniken, visionary or true crazy, would certainly have appreciated the other element of this special night: six yellow-eyed gods-or devils-although the look of them would have blown most of his theories into dust. Somehow the gods who are supposed to have driven von Daniken's "chariots" all come off as very Nordic types, blond and handsome and clear-eyed and obviously cut out for movie stardom; but in reality, the universe does not repeat its own designs, and it has a few insane jokes up its sleeve as well…)

Five of the aliens stopped on the brow of the hill, just thirty yards from the farmhouse. They studied the door of the sun porch, studied the curtained kitchen window, studied the bright lamps that burned behind the living room windows

Snow fell on them-however, it did not melt from their flesh as quickly as it would have melted from human skin. Indeed, the snow clung to them as it would have clung to fence posts or rocks or any cool, inanimate objects. A thin layer of snow sheathed them and quickly formed into a brittle crust. The crust turned to ice before it finally and gradually slid away in delicate, thin, transparent sheets-to be replaced by a new crust of snow that was still in the process of turning to ice.

Nevertheless, the steam rose from the pores on their broad and shiny backs.

The sixth creature stalked off toward the stable, away from its companions.

The buck followed the lone alien. It leaped out of a four-foot drift and fell into even deeper snow. It heaved and it twisted, its eyes bulging with the effort that it had to expend to free itself.

The alien turned and stared.

The buck struggled.

The alien calmed it, made it more purposeful.

The buck broke loose, wheezing.

The alien continued toward the stable. At the stable door it stopped again, slipped the bolt, pushed the door open, and quickly stepped out of the way.

The buck toddled forward, unsteady, not unlike a fawn first finding its legs.

The alien allowed it to rest for a moment, then gave it new purpose.

Having regained some of its strength, the buck entered the building in much the same sort of trance that had afflicted poor Blueberry when she had walked out of there on her way to becoming a pile of bones.

There were no lights inside the barn. And only one rather small window admitted the minuscule light of the snow fields.

This did not seem to bother the buck. Its eyes had been designed to insure survival when the big northern wolves prowled by night.

The alien-amber eyes aglow, emitting some light of their own-was not disturbed by the darkness either. It watched the buck through the open door.

There was no wind in the barn, but the long gallery was cold, for the electric heaters had been switched off over twenty-four hours ago.

The buck sniffed the dead air-and sensed the body of the horse that lay within one of the stalls on the right-hand side. Its tightly controlled mind turned over like a sick stomach, and rebellion flickered in it.

The alien clamped down hard.

The buck staggered sideways, stumbled, and fell onto its forelegs; bleating in pain.

The alien waited.

The buck was still.

At last the alien eased up on the mental reins.

The buck knelt where it was, dazed.

The alien gave it instructions: quick, silent pulses of thought.

The animal got its forelegs under it again, and it walked down the stable row.

To the generator.

It sniffed.

The generator hummed.

The buck backed up a few feet and lowered its antlers.

17

"A sled?" Connie asked.

"My Red Runner out on the sun porch," Toby said.

She took hold of his hand and gently squeezed it. "That's good thinking, honey." Then she looked at me and said, "That would work, wouldn't it? A sled?"

Toby was excited and pleased with himself. "I could walk some of the way.

Maybe a whole mile. And then when I just couldn't walk one step more, you could take turns pulling my sled until I got rested up real good. That wouldn't be so hard as carrying me. Hey, Dad? What do you think?"

"The runners are going to sink through the drifts and get bogged down," I said.

Toby said, "Bet they won't."

"They will," I assured him. "But that doesn't mean that your idea is a bad one. A sled's the perfect answer. We just have to use the right kind of sled- one without runners."

"Without runners?" Toby said.

"A length of heavy plastic with ropes tied to it. You could lie down on the plastic, flat out on your belly, spreading your weight over a larger area than a pair of runners.. "

"Great!" Toby said.

"You really think it'll work?" Connie asked.

"I really do."

"Fantastic!"

Connie leaned forward, propped her arms on the table, and said, "Where do we get a sheet of plastic?"

"We could use the bags that we get our clothes in from the dry cleaners," Toby suggested.

"No, no," I said. "That's much too thin. That would tear to pieces before we'd towed you a hundred feet."

"Oh, yeah." He frowned at his own suggestion and began to look around the room for a source of sturdy plastic.

I folded my hands around a coffee cup and thought and couldn't find a solution. I was tired and stiff and sore. I wanted to sleep.

After three or four minutes of silence, Connie said, "Does it have to be plastic?"

"I guess not."

"Wouldn't a length of heavy canvas do the job just as well?"

"Sure," I said.

"Well, all that stuff the owners have stored in the basement-it's all wrapped up in canvas tarps. We can unwrap something. If the tarp's too large, we can cut it down."

"Perfect," I said.

"Where will you get the rope?"

I thought a moment. Then: "Wire will be just as good as rope. There's a big roll of that down in the tool cabinet."

"When do we leave?"

"Now?" Toby asked.

"We'd get lost in the dark," I said.

"You didn't get lost when you came home in the dark from the Johnson!s," he said.

"Dumb luck."

"I think you're great, Dad."

That compliment lifted my spirits higher than I can say. For the first time I realized that, because of this ordeal, I had the chance to prove myself to Toby, to erase his memories of the way I had looked in the hospital, much faster than I could have done without the current crisis. "Thank you," I said. "You're not too bad yourself, chief."

He grinned broadly, blushed brightly, and looked down at his jigsaw puzzle.

"Maybe by morning," Connie said,

"the wind and the snow will have stopped."

"Maybe. But don't count on it. We'll leave at first light, and we'll expect the weather to be against us every step of the way."

"What about sleep?" Connie asked.

"I'm not sleepy," Toby said. "I slept last night, and then Mom doped me up this morning. I'm just getting awake."

"Well, you'll have to try to sleep anyway," I said. "When we start out tomorrow, you'll need to be refreshed." I turned to Connie, who, like me, had bags under her eyes. She'd had only one hour of sleep in the last thirty-six hours, and I had not had much more than that, perhaps three hours. We were both on the verge of collapse. "We'll sleep in shifts again," I told her. "You go first. I'll go down to the basement and see about the tarp."

"Can I come along?"

Toby asked.

Getting up from the table, I said, "Sure. You've got to give me a hand with this job."

Connie got up, came into my arms, and hugged me for a moment. Then she kissed my neck and stepped back, turned, started toward the living room arch.

"I'll wake you in three hours," I said.

She turned. "Sooner than that. You've had a rougher time of it than I have. Besides, you've always needed more sleep than me."

"Three hours, and don't argue," I said. "Go hurry up and sleep. Morning's coming too fast."

18

This method has become compulsive: this careful step-by-step breakdown of that most crucial hour of my life, this prolonged narrative of events which certainly moved much more swiftly than this in real life. (Yes, in fact it had all happened much too fast.) But there is no other way that I can tell it, obsessed with it as I am, ruled by it as I am, broken and destroyed by it as I am… Once more, therefore, let the imagination flow, look outside the farmhouse and return to the barn where the alien now stands at the open door looking inside:

The buck lowered its antlers. It snorted and pawed at the earthen floor much like a bull will stroke the arena as a warning to the matador.

The generator hummed.

The buck charged the machinery.

The collision was solid, brutal, and noisy: a loud, reverberating gong.

The buck rebounded. It fell backwards on its haunches and made a miserable noise.

The alien soothed the animal mind.

The buck rose. It shook its head.

The generator was still functioning.

The buck charged again. The gong sounded. A piece of the magnificent antlers broke off and fell on top of the machinery.

The generator hummed.

(If the aliens understood the purpose of the generator-and it is clear that they must have understood it, for they knew exactly why it must be destroyed-then why couldn't they grasp the fact that we were members of an intelligent race and not merely dumb beasts like the buck? Why? In all the science fiction novels I read when I was a kid, the aliens and the humans always recognized the intelligence in each other, no matter what physical differences they might have had. In those books the aliens and the humans worked together to build better universes-or they fought each other for control of the galaxies-or they struggled to at least live together in mutual tolerance or- Well, why wasn't it like that in real life, when the first beings from the stars met the first men (us)? Well, that's easy to answer, Hanlon. They might have known what a generator was- and yet not think of it as the product of a civilized culture.

To them it might seem unbelievably crude, the symbol of a culture as primitive to them as apes are to us. The generator, obviously, did not make us worthy of their concern. And is that so difficult to grasp? Don't the ants build elaborate cities, stage trials of their "criminals", and elect queens? Hasn't that been studied and recorded by hundreds of entomologists? Sure. But we step on them all the same, don't we? We crush them by the tens of thousands with no thought given to their tiny civilization.)

Turning to face the stable door, the buck put its back to the machinery. It began to kick out like a bronco, slamming its hooves into the metal housing that protected the moving parts.

The sheet steel bent.

The glass face of a gauge shattered.

Something went ping! like a ricocheting bullet.

The animal kicked out again.

The metal clanged! and buckled.

Another kick.

No effect.

And another.

Rivets popped.

Yet another.

A second gauge broke.

Hooves drummed on steel.

Yet the generator hummed.

The buck stopped kicking. It turned around, faced the purring machinery once more, lowered its head, and plowed straight into the two heavy, pine stands — like troughs on legs-that held the four big storage batteries.

The left antler snapped off at the base. Blood erupted from the flesh around it, streamed down to join with the blood that leaked from the animal's injured left eye.

The battery stands rocked wildly back and forth. A nail screeched as it was forced out of the wood. But the stands did not collapse.

The buck was dying. Blood poured from half a dozen cuts, but it was the eye injury that was serious.

Sensing the nearness of death, the animal panicked and tried to regain control of itself, tried to run. But the alien held its mind as tightly as a miser's fist might grip an extremely valuable gold coin.

The buck charged the battery stands again.

A battery fell to the ground. A cap popped from it. Acid gurgled across the barn floor.

Once again the buck threw himself into the stands, and once again dislodged a battery. But this time he also tore loose a live cable. Bam! Sparks exploded. Something went fitzzz! As the twisted end of the cable fell into the battery acid, the deer danced up onto its hind legs, twirled around in a full circle, at the mercy of the burst of current. But then the current was drained away, the generator finished at last, and the proud animal collapsed with an awful crash. Dead.

19

Toby and I were halfway down the cellar steps, on our way to see about using the tarp for a sled, when the lights went off. Surprised, I grabbed hold of the railing to keep from falling in the darkness. "Something's happened to the generator."

Behind me Toby said, "You think those guys busted it up, Dad?

Those guys from space?"

My first thought had been that the fuel supply was depleted or that the equipment had malfunctioned. But when Toby asked that question, I knew that those yellow-eyed bastards had gotten to the machinery and had mined it. I remembered the dead bull and the battered generator on the

Johnson farm, and I knew I could rule out the idea of a natural failure of the equipment.

(I should have foreseen all of that! For god's sake, there was that bull at the Johnson farm. How could I overlook the possibility? But I'd been so weary, propped up by hot showers and shots of whiskey and bowls of vegetable soup and hope, too weary to think clearly. Yet… Even if I had realized the danger, what could I have done about it? Come on, Hanlon, quit the breast beating. It's useless. I couldn't have stood guard in the barn all night, for they could have gotten to me too easily.)

"Dad?"

"You all right, son?"

"Sure.

You okay?"

"Fine."

The darkness was absolute. I closed my eyes, squeezed them tight shut, opened them: still nothing.

"What next?" Toby said.

"We've got to get upstairs right away." As I heard him getting turned around on the steps above me, I said, "Be careful you don't trip and fall in the dark."

Connie was in the kitchen. "Don?"

"I'm here."

"I can't see you."

"I can't see you either."

"Where's Toby?"

"I'm okay, Mom."

I was feeling around with my hands, like a blind man.

Connie said, "Did they do it?"

"I'm afraid so,"

"What's going to happen?"

"I don't know. Where are the guns?"

"The rifle's on a chair," she said. "The pistol's still on the table unless you have it."

"I don't."

"I've got the shotgun," she said.

"Here's the rifle," Toby said.

I stumbled toward him.

"Don't touch that!"

"I just have my hand on the butt," he said. "I won't pick it up, Dad."

I found the table and then the pistol and then Toby. I picked up the loaded rifle.

"I'll find some candles," Connie said.

I said, "Maybe we should wait for them in the dark."

"I can't," she said. "I can't see anything, not anything at all-and I keep thinking they're already in the house, already in this room. I have to have light."

For an instant I expected to be touched by an inhuman hand-and then I realized that if the aliens were here with us in the kitchen, we would see their yellow eyes even in this pitch blackness. I said as much.

"I still have to have light," Connie said.

She fumbled through several drawers, found the matches, and struck up a flame.

She lit a candle.

Then two more.

We were alone.

For the moment.

20

Outside:

With its mission accomplished, the lone alien walked away from the barn in which the dead buck (symbol of something) lay in a bloody heap. The creature's spindly but terribly strong legs poked deep into the snow and thrust forward, unhindered by the drifts. The thing joined its five companions where they stood just thirty yards from the back of the farmhouse.

Seemingly oblivious of the vicious wind and the blinding snow and the cutting sub-zero cold, the six yellow-eyed creatures lined up in a row. They looked quite like soldiers facing their enemy's position and readying their well planned assault.

Which, in fact, is precisely what they were and what they were doing.

(Throughout our ordeal from the earliest moment of it, from the very minute that Toby found those strange tracks in the snow, from the instant I laid eyes on them-I had understood the symbology — both natural and psychological-that was operating in this affair. I had seen the parallels between these events in northern Maine and certain things I had endured in Southeast Asia. Perhaps I haven't commented in enough detail on this aspect of the matter; perhaps I haven't made the war analogy as obvious to you as it was to me, the war analogy and the Asian analogy. It is even possible that I played down my observations because I thought that, by reading such complex and fundamentally crazy meanings into these events, I was stretching a point, belaboring a theory-or maybe even, well, maybe I thought that such observations, when committed to type, might be construed as evidence of some renewed madness in me. Whatever. But, first of all, I am quite sane. My mind is as clear as glacial ice. And as dead as glacial ice-or about to be, as I write this. How long until I die? Each word I type is one less minute of life left to me. But what I want to say is that I did understand the frame of reference, did see the symbology which a madhouse uni verse had thrust upon me, giggling as it rushed past. Oh, I surely saw it all, yes. Oh, yes. I am not a stupid man, you know, and in fact I was valedictorian of my graduating class at Penn State, before the war, like everything else that

I can think of in my life, before the war, before the stinking war… And yet.. Somehow I overlooked the most obvious and important link between these science fictional events and the war in Vietnam. How could I have missed it?

I've read all about Lieutenant Calley. I've read about My Lai and the massacres.

Culture shock. The lack of social interaction. Man's inability to understand his fellow man, especially when skin color, politics, religion, and history separate them. I knew all about that: I was educated: I was a liberal. And yet I missed the point of all I've thus far told to you. It was like the war! It was Vietnam.

It was, there in Maine, Vietnam all over again, the same pain, the same misunderstandings, the same mistakes, dammit!)

The yellow eyes glowed.

The aliens watched the house.

Were they frightened, so far away from home? Or were they, like arrogant American soldiers, sure of their right to dominate and destroy?

When ten minutes had passed, the creatures moved ten yards closer to the sun porch.

Then stopped.

And watched.

And waited.

And made ready.

21

Inside:

In spite of the eighteen-inch-thick stone walls and the solid

Revolutionary War construction which had been augmented by Twentieth Century fiberglas insulation, the farmhouse cooled rapidly once the heating system was knocked out of operation. There were six big fireplaces in the house, and the heat was sucked up and out of all of them while winter air rushed down the flues. Cold air rolled off all of the windows. Fifteen minutes after the lights went out, the air was decidedly chilly. Five minutes after that, the house was downright cold.

We dressed in woolen scarves, caps, gloves, and coats as soon as we realized that we should capture our body heat and hold on to as much of it as possible, before the house was like a refrigerator.

"Maybe we should build a fire," Connie said.

"Good idea."

"I'll help," Toby said.

"You stay with your mother." I shoved cordwood into the mammoth living room fireplace and packed starter material-wood shavings, paper, and sawdust — beneath the logs. I was about to light the paper when I had a sudden revelation. "My God!"

Connie whirled away from the windows, raising the rifle that she held in both hands.

The barrel gleamed in the candlelight. "What's the matter?"

"I just realized why these bastards knocked out our electric power," I said.

"Why, Dad?"

"Our oil furnace. It's sparked by an electric wick."

Connie said, "So?"

I was still thinking furiously. "And I think I know why they had to use a bull to destroy

Ed's generator."

"Don, tell us."

I looked up and grinned. "They can't tolerate warmth."

"Warmth?"

"Fire, heat, warm air," I said excitedly. "These creatures must come from an extremely cold planet. They can't live in a room that's warm enough to be comfortable for humans. Maybe they like sub-zero weather like this.

Maybe the temperature has to be below-oh, say freezing, before they can even tolerate a place. They had to send that bull in to wreck Ed's generator, because the tool shed on the Johnson farm was heated."

"We shouldn't have turned the heaters off in the barn," she said. "We gave them their chance."

"No," I said.

"They'd have found some animal to use, just like the bull."

(Later, when I found the dead buck, I realized that they had used an animal even though there had been no heat in the barn for many hours. However, when they had stolen the horses from us, the barn had been heated. And when they'd planned their attack on us, they could not have known I'd let the barn cool off."

"And now when it gets cold enough in here," Connie said, "they'll come after us."

We stared at each other for a long moment.

She said, "Better get that fire going."

I lit the paper, sawdust, and shavings.

"Can we keep them out with fire?" Toby asked.

"I don't know," I said "But we can darn sure try."

22

Outside:

The six aliens split up into two groups of three each. One group moved off to the east and disappeared around the corner of the farmhouse.

The others stayed where they were for another five minutes. Then they moved quickly toward the house.

The time had come.

23

The crumpled paper flared up at once and ignited, in turn, the sawdust.

In a few seconds the wood shavings began to catch, and then the dry bark of the cord wood smouldered and sparked. Gently fanning the growing flames, I smiled when the first vague trace of heat wafted out of the fireplace and across my face — and then the brief illusion of security and safety vanished as a pane of window glass shattered behind me, on the far side of the room.

Toby shouted.

Connie screamed.

Grabbing the shotgun off the flagstone hearth beside me, I rose, turned, and gasped involuntarily.

For the first time, by the light of the three candles, one of the aliens stood totally revealed. It was an insectlike being, and it was trying to smash its way through one of the three windows that opened onto the front porch. It looked somewhat like a praying mantis and a bit like a grasshopper-but it was really not like either of them.

In size, of course, it was like no insect that the earth had ever known: seven feet tall at the head, sloping back for perhaps six or eight feet, with a thick body section, two forelegs as big around as my arms, and six other legs as thick as broomsticks and with three joints each. The thing's head was a yard long and two-foot wide, with those saucer-sized amber eyes, a rippled horny ridge running from between the eyes to the tip of the pointed snout, and saw-edged mandibles that seemed to work constantly as if chewing a tasty morsel. Snow clung to the creature as it straggled through the broken window; and paper-thin pieces of ice dropped from its shiny brown-black carapace. It tore out the window struts which separated the window panes and which barred its progress; although it appeared to be quite delicate, it was a fiercely strong creature.

A window shattered in another corner of the room, toward the rear of the house.

"Don!"

I turned in that direction.

A second alien was trying to get into the living room from the back lawn. Two heavy, hair-prickled, snow-dusted legs came through the window, chitinous legs as hard as metal, and scrabbled for a foothold.

I glanced at the fire. It was building slowly, but it was not throwing off enough heat to compensate for the cold air pouring in at the violated windows.

Glass exploded behind me again.

The second of the three big porch windows had been knocked in, and a third alien was gradually thrusting through the oversized frame.

The first alien to attack was almost inside now. Its large forelegs were firmly planted on the carpet; and only four of the other six legs were still out on the porch. Its enormous head swiveled from Connie to Toby to me to Connie

I used both barrels of the shotgun on it, blew it backwards. Two of the smaller legs were torn off, and they clattered against the wall. The creature made a curious, keening noise and started toward me once more. By that time I had slipped two shells from my coat pocket and had reloaded. I used both shots on it, and it seemed to dissolve, tumbling through the window and onto the porch in a dozen pieces.

I jammed more shells into the chambers.

I felt mental fingers reaching for me, pressing against my skull, slipping inside of me. I fought back with all of my will-fought against not only the control it sought but against the mindless, biological fear it produced. That fear could incapacitate me; it had paralyzed me before. And if I were driven half-mad with fear now, there would be no hope for us.

Bones

Connie used the rifle. It made a sharp, ear-splitting sound in the confines of the room.

I looked back and saw that the insect on her side of the room was three-quarters of the way inside and had not been stopped by the rifle fire.

Glass crashed.

A fourth alien was trying to come in from the third porch window. But that was of little consequence, for the creature at the second window was already inside and coming for me, its head swiveling, its amber eyes brighter than I have ever seen them, the big mandibles clacking noisily.

I raised the shotgun and pulled the first trigger without knowing if the thing was in my line of fire.

The alien halted, but it was not dead. It seemed stunned for an instant, but then it started forward once more.

I moved in close and discharged the second shot into its head, straight into the eyes.

Thankfully, it shuddered and toppled.

I groped for more shells, fed them into the gun, slammed the breach shut, and blasted the third alien out of the window and back onto the front porch.

The room was full of thunder. My ears ached.

Connie's rifle had been cracking repeatedly while I tended to the attackers on my side of the room, but she still had not been able to destroy the fourth alien. It seemed able to absorb the rifle bullets without damage-which meant that the shotgun was effective only because it packed considerably more wallop and spread it granulated charge over a broader area. As I reloaded my weapon, Connie dropped the rifle and ran to the fireplace, poked in the burning wood, and found a fairly long, slender piece of wood that was burning only at one end. She picked this up, turned, and ran back toward the beast.

"Connie, no!"

The thing was halfway across the room when she came upon it, and it backtracked the instant it saw the flames. Its mandibles made a snicking noise.

Suddenly one of the three slender legs on its right side reached up to a bandolier slung across its back; fingerlike claws grasped a tubular device clipped to the bandolier.

"Connie, it's reaching for a weapon!"

She threw the burning branch.

When the flames touched it, the alien shrieked, an ungodly sound that made me shiver. It stumbled backwards, eight legs akimbo, and fell heavily to the floor. It burnt like a gasoline-soaked torch. It rolled and heaved and kicked, trying to get to the window. The insufferable stench-ammonia, carbon, decay- was so intense that it made me feel ill.

I emptied my shotgun into the thing in order to put it out of its misery-then whirled around to see if any new beasts had come through the porch windows.

None had.

Everything was still, quiet.

Deafeningly quiet.

"Is it over?" Connie asked.

"Not that easily."

"There are more?"

"I'd bet on it."

"We can't hold out forever."

"We've done-"

We were both overcome with the same realization at the same instant, but she said it first: "My God, where's Toby?"

"He was here-"

"He isn't now!"

I ran out into the kitchen.

He wasn't there.

I heard her in the living room, shouting up the stairs.

The sun porch door was open. I hurried to it.

She rushed into the kitchen behind me.

I glanced back at her.

"Don, he doesn't answer me."

I went out onto the sun porch and found that the outer door was standing open. Snow was sweeping inside on the wind-and the snow just beyond the door was marked by a child's footprints and the eight-holed tracks I knew all too well.

Death is real.

Death is final.

"They've got him," she said.

The world is a madhouse.

"Their attack was only meant to distract us," she said dazedly. "While we were distracted, they took control of Toby's mind and marched him right out of the house."

I turned and went back into the kitchen.

She came after me. "But four of them died! Would they sacrifice four of their own to get one of us?"

Real, final, real, final

"Looks that way," I said, opening the box of shotgun shells that stood on the kitchen table. I began to fill my pockets.

She moaned softly.

"We've got to move fast," I told her. "Get your rifle and the box of ammunition. Hurry."

"We're going after them?"

"What else?"

She hesitated.

"Connie, hurry! We've got to catch the bastards before they

We've got to get Toby back from them!"

Leadenly: "What if he's already dead?"

"And what if he isn't?"

"Oh, God!"

"Exactly."

She ran to get the rifle.