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?'
