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: