“Holy Mother of God,” whispered St. Ives, staring in horror across the tops of the willows. A nebula of sparks whirled from the burst top of the distant silo, lighting a rain of shingles. The suddenly appearing rocket edged skyward, visible above the trees, threatening to soar into the heavens, to shoot away toward the winking stars. But it didn’t. It was almost stationary, as if it hung by a sky hook, and just before its nose dipped and the thing fell lifeless to the meadow, the spacecraft, the product of years of work, jumped from the end of the rocket as if shot from a child’s pop gun, and arched through the air over their heads, its gaslamps curiously lit within, its hatch flung back on its hinges.
It sailed several hundred yards toward town, stuttering out little jets of smoke and fire through motivator tubes, and making a foolish whistling noise that died out even as the two men watched the craft disappear beyond distant trees. A short, far-off crash sounded. St. Ives lurched. A wave of fear washed through him — fear that some local manor house had been destroyed by his craft, or worse, that people had been hurt, killed perhaps. The fear turned almost at once to anger, and he shouldered his rifle and fired both rounds at the moon, imagining briefly that it was the loathsome, pocked face of Willis Pule, who had, obviously, doubled back on them and launched St. Ives’ rocket out of spite.
Well
He shouted across the river, but had hardly begun when he noticed that the rowboat was already halfway across, skimming along behind a bow lantern that illuminated the astonished face of old Binger.
“Did you see it!” he cried, slamming up against the grassy hank. St. Ives said nothing, but merely clambered aboard. Hasbro followed, respectfully silent, considering, perhaps, that there was little but cliche to offer when a man’s work had gone up, literally, in smoke,
The old man carried on wildly. He’d seen the explosion, the tired flight of the rocket. And it had burst out of a silo too, that anyone would think would be filled with corn. Bang, out the top it came like some kind of bird. It gave a man a start, with all the talk of burglars and such. Did St. Ives suppose it was his man in the river that did it, that set it off? St. Ives did. That beat all, said the old man. He’d seen the little ball pop off and sail away. It was the damnedest thing. He and Mrs. Langley went up to the attic, and there the damned thing went over the trees like a duck and smashed Lord Kelvin’s barn to splinters. Right through the roof.
The old man dropped an oar in order to illustrate his story with helpful gestures, sailing his hand in a little arch while he whistled through the gap in his front teeth, then disappearing the hand between his knees, which, St. Ives supposed darkly, represented Lord Kelvin’s barn. “Pow!” shouted old Binger, throwing his knees apart to demonstrate the barn’s going to bits. He wheezed out a sort of laugh and had another go at his knees. Meanwhile the little rowboat rocked dangerously and slipped downstream. St. Ives gritted his teeth. It
St. Ives lurched forward as the rowboat ran up onto the bank, nearly dumping his fowling piece into the river. Off to the north, coming along the highroad, was a scattering of waving lights, flickering against the dark night. They bounced and flared — torches, evidently, carried by any number of people. A murmuring reached them on the breeze. St. Ives was struck suddenly by the ominous implication of the approaching people — a mob, perhaps. What were they about? Did they carry hay forks? Guns?
He’d never seen any profit in advertising his experimentations. Rumors filtered out now and again. He’d been suspected of vivisection and of the building of infernal devices. Men from the metalworks no doubt alerted the populace to his having contracted for the shell of the craft and odd parts. But no one, certainly, besides Hasbro and certain friends — the Trismegistus Club specifically — knew that an hour earlier a launchable space vehicle had been moored in the silo.
He climbed the little rise atop which sat his house, lit, now, like Christmas, Mrs. Langley having apparently decided that an abundance of lights would frighten off villains. Perhaps she was right. The blasted silo sat dark and silent on its meadow, lit only by a little sliver of moon that slipped in a low arc above the horizon. It was impossible at the moment to see that the silo was roofless — a relief, certainly.
The torchbearers approached. St. Ives recognized an old farmer — McNally, it was, and his two pudding- faced sons. And there behind them was Stooton from the post office, and Brinsing, the Scandinavian baker. There were a dozen more, generally speaking, and the lot of them seemed to be in a collective terror; they didn’t at all bear accusatory looks. Old Binger, seeing that he had lucked upon a comparatively vast audience, started in on the subject of the sailing bat thing, using hand gestures and grimaces to good effect.
St. Ives was in a sweat to shut him up. It mustn’t be known that the imbroglio was sponsored by St. Ives. Hasbro, anticipating as much, silently and unheeded, shoved Binger’s rowboat out into the current with his foot, then stepped forward and shouted, “The boat!” in such a commanding and inflammatory tone that Binger stopped in midsentence, his hand having completed only half its customary flight, and bolted through the ferns along the riverbank, shouting at his mutinous boat.
St. Ives nodded appreciatively at Hasbro, and decided to give Binger twice what he owed him when he returned, for the old man would without a doubt be wet through before he found his way home that night to work the space vehicle gestures on his tired wife.
The mob — not one of whom was carrying a hayfork, to St. Ives’ immense relief — was full of an undefined fear. The spacecraft, apparently, played second fiddle to a more nefarious threat. An alien had been sighted. It bore, insisted Mr. Stooton, the rag headgear of Islam, and was taken to be a member of that tribe by Mrs. Stooton, who hadn’t, as yet, been apprised of the spacecraft that had just pulverized Lord Kelvin’s barn and smokehouse.
More sightings had occurred, always the same. A man wound with rags was abroad, a creature, surely, from a distant sun. Wasn’t the thing in Lord Kelvin’s barn a spacecraft? Could there be any doubt that this wrapped man had driven it? Mightn’t he be a very dangerous alien?
No doubt whatsoever, assented St. Ives. He was surely a dangerous villain, this rag man from a far-off galaxy. Beat him into submission first, suggested St. Ives; question him afterward — when he was malleable. The man had been sighted, went the rumor, on the road into Harrogate, fleeing the general area of Lord Kelvin’s manor. Two farmers had given chase, one of them managing to hit him in the back of the head with a hastily thrown rock, but the alien made away into the fields and disappeared.
“Toward Harrogate, did you say?” asked St. Ives.
“Right you are, sir,” said McNally. “Hoofing it into town like the devil was after him. And he was a bad ’un, too, I can tell you. He beat a dog, he did, on the road. Chased him with a stick long as your arm. A vicious thing, your space man. That was when old Dyke hit him with the rock — slam on the noodle, and away he went. And they’d have had him too, if it weren’t for the dog, poor beast. It’s thought this alien was going to eat it, raw, right there on the road.”
“I wouldn’t at all doubt it,” said St. Ives grimly, trudging up to the manor with Hasbro beside him and the crowd of men behind. “If I were you,” he said, “I’d set out after him with dogs. Run him down. I’m a man of science, you know. What we face here is a threat, and there’s no gainsaying it. Dogs are your man for tracking aliens of this sort. They have a distinct smell. Comes from travel through space. And they’re prodigious liars. I’ve studied it out. The first thing he’ll do is deny the whole business. But there’s his craft, isn’t it? And there he is wound up in lord knows what sort of filthy rags. Don’t let the creature deny his rotten origins; that’s the word from the scientific end. Loosen his tongue for him.”
St. Ives’ speech worked the mob up thoroughly. Along the road two hundred yards off came another dozen men, and St. Ives could see, in the direction of Kirk Hammerton, a procession of torchlights. By God, he thought, they’d have Pule yet! And if the populace made it warm for the scoundrel, fine. There was, apparently, no end to the man’s villainy. Beating a dog on the road! St. Ives fumed. He was suddenly anxious, however, to diminish his role in the night’s proceedings. He wondered if there were any identifying marks about the ruinous spacecraft that would give him away before he had a chance to think of something to do. He looked at Hasbro, who stood silently holding both rifles. Hasbro raised his eyebrows and nodded toward the house. This was, he seemed to indicate, no time to be chatting with local vigilantes.
“I’d like to know,” St. Ives said to McNally, “if you run this man down. Don’t kill him, mind you. Science will need to have a go at him — to study him. This sort of thing doesn’t happen every day, you know.”
The growing crowd of men agreed that it didn’t. They seemed to be waiting for some further word from St.
