descended the fifty-foot cliff by the crevices and the single protruding rock-point that had helped him get up. It was much easier going down. In his state of mind it was also more dangerous. He moved in a sort of robot-like composure.
He moved toward the girl, trying to make words come out of his throat, when a small rock came clattering down the cliff. He looked up. Dillon was in the act of swinging to the first part of the descent. He came down, very confident and assured. He had two camera-cases slung from his shoulders. Coburn stared at him, utterly unable to believe what he’d seen ten minutes before.
Dillon reached solid ground and turned. He smiled wryly. His shirt was buttoned. His tie was tied.
“I hoped,” he said ruefully to Janice Ames, “that the Bulgars would toddle off. But they left a guard in the village. We can’t hope to take an easier trail. We’ll have to go back the way you came. We’ll get you safe to Salonika, though.”
The girl smiled, uneasily but gratefully.
“And,” added Dillon, “we’d better get started.”
He gallantly helped the girl remount her donkey. At the sight, Coburn was shaken out of his numbness. He moved fiercely to intervene. But Janice settled herself in the saddle and Dillon confidently led the way. Coburn grimly walked beside her as she rode. He was convinced that he wouldn’t leave her side while Dillon was around. But even as he knew that desperate certitude, he was filled with confusion and a panicky uncertainty.
When they’d traveled about half a mile, another frightening thought occurred to Coburn. Perhaps Dillon— passing for human—wasn’t alone. Perhaps there were thousands like him.
Invaders! Usurpers, pretending to be men. Invaders, obviously, from space!
II
They made eight miles. At least one mile of that, added together, was climbing straight up. Another mile was straight down. The rest was boulder-strewn, twisting, donkey-wide, slanting, slippery stone. But there was no sign of anyone but themselves. The sky remained undisturbed. No planes. They saw no sign of the raiding force from across the border, and they heard no gunfire.
Coburn struggled against the stark impossibility of what he had seen. The most horrifying concept regarding invasion from space is that of creatures who are able to destroy or subjugate humanity. A part of that concept was in Coburn’s mind now. Dillon marched on ahead, in every way convincingly human. But he wasn’t. And to Coburn, his presence as a non-human invader of Earth made the border-crossing by the Bulgarians seem almost benevolent.
They went on. The next hill was long and steep. Then they were at the hill crest. They looked down into a village called Naousa. It was larger than Ardea, but not much larger. One of the houses burned untended. Figures moved about. There were tanks in sight, and many soldiers in the uniform that looked dark-gray at a distance. The route by which Dillon had traveled had plainly curved into the line-of-march of the Bulgarian raiding force.
But the moving figures were not soldiers. The soldiers were still. They lay down on the grass in irregular, sprawling windrows. The tanks were not in motion. There were two-wheeled carts in sight—reaching back along the invasion-route—and they were just as stationary as the men and the tanks. The horses had toppled in their shafts. They were motionless.
The movement was of civilians—men and women alike. They were Greek villagers, and they moved freely among the unmilitarily recumbent troops, and even from this distance their occupation was clear. They were happily picking the soldiers’ pockets. But there was one figure which moved from one prone figure to another much too quickly to be looting. Coburn saw sunlight glitter on something in his hand.
Dillon noticed the same thing Coburn did at the same instant. He bounded forward. He ran toward the village and its tumbled soldiers in great, impossible leaps. No man could make such leaps or travel so fast. He seemed almost to soar toward the village, shouting. Coburn and Janice saw him reach the village. They saw him rush toward the one man who had been going swiftly from one prone soldier to another. It was too far to see Dillon’s action, but the sunlight glittered again on something bright, which this time flew through the air and dropped to the ground.
The villagers grouped about Dillon. There was no sign of a struggle.
“What’s happened?” demanded Janice uneasily. “Those are soldiers on the ground.”
Coburn’s fright prevented his caution. He shouted furiously. “He’s not a man! You saw it! No man can run so fast! You saw those jumps! He’s not human! He’s—something else!”
Janice jerked her eyes to Coburn in panic. “What did you say?”
Coburn panted: “Dillon’s no man! He’s a monster from somewhere in space! And he and his kind have killed those soldiers! Murdered them! And the soldiers are men! You stay here. I’ll go down there and—”
“No!” said Janice, “I’m coming too.”
He took the donkey’s halter and led the animal down to the village, with Janice trembling a little in the saddle. He talked in a tight, taut, hysterical tone. He told what he’d found up on the cliffside. He described in detail the similitude of a man’s body he’d found deflated beside a stunted bush.
He did not look at Janice as he talked. He moved doggedly toward the village, dragging at the donkey’s head. They neared the houses very slowly, and Coburn considered that he walked into the probability of a group of other creatures from unthinkable other star systems, disguised as men. It did not occur to him that his sudden outburst about Dillon sounded desperately insane to Janice.
They reached the first of the fallen soldiers. Janice looked, shuddering. Then she said thinly: “He’s breathing!”
He was. He was merely a boy. Twenty or thereabouts. He lay on his back, his eyes closed. His face was upturned like a dead man’s. But his breast rose and fell rhythmically. He slept as if he were drugged.
But that was more incredible than if he’d been dead. Regiments of men fallen simultaneously asleep….
Coburn’s flow of raging speech stopped short. He stared. He saw other fallen soldiers. Dozens of them. In coma-like slumber, the soldiers who had come to loot and murder lay like straws upon the ground. If they had been dead it would have been more believable. At least there are ways to kill men. But this…
Dillon parted the group of villagers about him and came toward Coburn and Janice. He was frowning in a remarkably human fashion.
“Here’s a mess!” he said irritably. “Those Bulgars came marching down out of the pass. The cavalry galloped on ahead and cut the villagers off so they couldn’t run away. They started to loot the village. They weren’t pleasant. Women began to scream, and there were shootings—all in a matter of minutes. And then the looters began to act strangely. They staggered around and sat down and went to sleep!”
He waved his hands in a helpless gesture, but Coburn was not deceived.
“The tanks arrived. And they stopped—and their crews went to sleep! Then the infantry appeared, staggering as it marched. The officers halted to see what was happening ahead, and the entire infantry dropped off to sleep right where it stood!
“It’s bad! If it had happened a mile or so back… The Greeks must have played a trick on them, but those cavalrymen raised the devil in the few minutes they were out of hand! They killed some villagers and then keeled over. And now the villagers aren’t pleased. There was one man whose son was murdered, and he’s been slitting the Bulgars’ throats!”
He looked at Coburn, and Coburn said in a grating voice: “I see.”
Dillon said distressedly: “One can’t let them slit the throats of sleeping men! I’ll have to stay here to keep them from going at it again. I say, Coburn, will you take one of their staff cars and run on down somewhere and tell the Greek government what’s happened here? Something should be done about it! Soldiers should come to keep order and take charge of these chaps.”
“Yes,” said Coburn. “I’ll do it. I’ll take Janice along, too.”
“Splendid!” Dillon nodded as if in relief. “She’d better get out of the mess entirely. I fancy there’d have been a full-scale massacre if we hadn’t come along. The Greeks have no reason to love these chaps, and their intentions
