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: