Klippe in a carefully dry voice said, “The area of destruction extends in a five-mile radius around Walesville. There isn’t a paved road or a single structure left in that area. Everything has been reduced to... rubble. Additional personnel will be here before dawn. Washington wants the entire area sealed. I think we can safely relate the destruction of Walesville to the phenomenon we have been investigating. Are there any comments?”
Hassling moved forward, his face in shadow. “Just this, General,” he said. “When human understanding cannot comprehend the purpose, I am forced to assume that the agency at work is other than human. This was selective force. It was not a blind weapon. If an entire city, its buildings, books, generators, garbage trucks, bank vaults and its children can be reduced without explosion to fragments no larger than the end of my thumb, we cannot resist such a force or the technology behind it. Our purpose is to understand, to communicate.
“I am prepared to accept the assumption that the phenomenon we have been investigating is a living creature operating by a set of rules we do not know. We must communicate. We must understand its purpose in doing such a dreadful thing, and convince it that there is no reason to continue such destruction. I recommend that we get men who by training have the best chance of establishing communication.”
“Shouldn’t we first find the... the phenomenon again?” Grinder asked.
“We will find it,” Hassling said quietly.
And we did. Last week. Twenty-one miles from Columbus. The first problem was the evacuation of Columbus. It was discussed at high levels and abandoned. It was felt that you just can’t move everybody out of a city that size.
The Thing was behaving as it had when I had first seen it. But with a grotesque difference. It had settled at the edge of a farm. Instead of rocks it was full of farm equipment, cattle, fence posts. It was a sickening difference.
The communications experts went to work. They used movable billboards, commercial artists, models of the solar system and the galaxy. They were very busy little men. If it wasn’t so serious, I could have laughed at their frantic efforts to communicate with a big bubble full of floating farm equipment and smashed dead cattle. They could just as well have been trying to get an answer from the moon, or a dead tree. I think they suspected that. But they had their orders, and there was a lot of brass around to see that they kept hopping. Outside of becoming increasingly more opaque, as it had before, the Thing did not react. I don’t think anyone expected it to.
Why they condescended to communicate at all, no one will ever know. And we won’t be around to wonder too long, I guess. Unless somebody comes up with an idea.
It happened after the motion stopped. Klippe had lost weight. Our nerves were bad. Somebody had done some talking and a lot of people had moved out of Columbus. Had I any friends there I would have told them to get out. I suspect that’s what happened.
The communications people were working just as hard after all the motion stopped.
At two o’clock last Wednesday afternoon I heard the yelling and went running over. Everybody stood and gaped at the side of the Thing. It had grown a door. Fifty yards of it had become opaque and had grown a door. Had I guessed for some wild reason that it would grow a door, I would have thought it in terms of the fantastic — a door 90 feet high and made of gold or something.
But this was just a door. A nice white front door with the usual three-pane window and a brass knob. It even had a mail slot. All that was missing was a house number and a mat saying welcome. It was about three inches ajar. The inference was just too plain. Come on in. There were two ordinary steps, a shallow stoop and that front door.
I give Klippe a mark for guts, ft was his party. He didn’t wait over a minute. Nobody made any move to stop him. He looked very small as he walked toward the door. He didn’t hurry. He walked with a measured stride, went up the two steps, pulled the door open anti walked through into blackness without hesitation and pulled it shut behind him.
They timed Klippe. He was in there six minutes and 12 seconds. He came out and shut the door. He walked toward us. I couldn’t read his face. People tried to ask him questions. He pushed his way through the crowd, went directly to his tent, took an Army Colt .45, put it in his mouth and blew the back of his head off.
The door was ajar again.
Max Marker tried it. He walked with a swagger. It wasn’t as effective as Klippe’s steady pace. He was in there for four minutes. He came out with a mind that had been wiped utterly clean. He didn’t know his own name, or where he was. He walked with a small child’s aimless gait. He was incontinent and his square chin was shiny with saliva.
Swyth, to my surprise, was next. He came out looking as cold as ever. We gathered around him, waiting for the word. He looked at us. He started to cry. He wouldn’t tell us. He knew, but he wouldn’t tell us. I know why now. I know why it was that he couldn’t even begin to say the words.
Hassling came back out with his face purple. He was sweating heavily and breathing hard. His expression was one of truly gigantic indignation. He turned and pointed a shaking hand at the Thing and ripped at his collar with the other hand and said, “They... they say...” That’s as far as he got before the major artery burst close to his heart, dropping him dead at our feet.
I pitied Plover. He knew he had to do it. He didn’t want to. His face was the color of damp chalk. He was trembling all over. I let him get halfway to the door and then I found that I was running. I beat him to the door. He put up a token resistance. I went inside before I could change my mind.
It was complete black dark in there. That was the only impression I had time for. Then they started. It could have been just one. But the impression was clear that it was several.
Don’t be misled by bad guesses about telepathy. Once it has happened to you, you know that the thoughts don’t come sneaking in, you know it isn’t done with pictures. The thoughts come in like heavy silver spikes, driven deep into your head, a hard single stroke for each one. They are not simple thoughts. They are complex, complete explanations and ideas. They are just there. Understanding them is then like the memory process. You remember that you know because the ideas were driven so deeply.
I went back out the door into the world that had now become strange for me. I could not look at people the same way, nor at the familiar earth and sky. I’ll never look at any work of man the way I did before.
They gathered around me, several of them trying to ask questions at once. The body of Hassling had been taken away. I could not tell them. I had to have time to think. I looked at Swyth. We knew. We knew we knew. We looked away from each other, conscious of sharing a shameful secret.
Three days after Walesville was obliterated, the site was covered with a soft new carpet of green. It has been identified as a fast-growing, strong-rooted tropical plant which has mutated to survive in this climate. It apparently was sown at the same time destruction took place. That should give you a clue.
I can tell you, but words will not be as strong as what they told me. Why they bothered to tell, I don’t know. Maybe they were merely bored, and did it for amusement. It would be boring to be sent on such a routine job.
When I look at things from their angle, I see the earth like a ball, about the size of a basketball. It rotates slowly. I see the great forests, the quiet rivers, the shining ice caps. Then it changes. I see the sickness. I see the forests dwindle. I see the waste lands grow. I see sickness change the face of a world. I see the scabs that are cities. On the night side I see the infected glow of the cities. I see the pock marks of dry lakes, and the pustules of the mine headings.