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.