day long, working in the garden, and I got a fine tan and put on some weight. Mom said I never looked so well. She went into town in the jalopy twice a month to get me books from the county library, and I had all kinds of interesting things to read.
The only thing that bothered me—and it didn’t really bother me, at that—was that I couldn’t contact any other hams with my station. I never got a single signal from anyone. I don’t know what the trouble was, really— what it looked like was that radio waves couldn’t get into or out of the valley. I did everything I could to soup up my equipment. I had Mom get me a dozen books from the county library, and I stayed up half the night studying them. I tore my equipment down and built it up again eight or ten times and put in all sorts of fancy stuff. No thing helped. I might as well have held a rock to my ear and listened to it.
But outside of that, as I say, I thought Hidden Valley was wonderful. I was glad Mom had made me and Donnie go there. Everything was doing fine, until Donnie fell in the cave.
It happened when he went out after lunch to hunt for his kitten—it was Saturday—and he didn’t come back and he didn’t come back. At last Mom, getting worried, sent me out to look for him.
I went to all the usual places first, and then, not finding him, went farther away. At last, high up on a hillside, I found a big, fresh-looking hole. It was about five feet across, and from the look of the grass on the edges, the earth had just recently caved in. It seemed to be six or seven feet deep. Could Donnie be down in there? If there’s a hole to fall in, a kid will fall in it.
I put my ear over the edge and listened. I couldn’t see anything when I looked. After a moment I heard a sound like sobbing, pretty much muffled.
“Donnie!” I yelled. “Oh, Donnie!” There wasn’t any answer, but the sobbing seemed to get louder. I figured if he was down there, he was either hurt or too scared to answer my call.
I hobbled back to the house as quick as I could and got a stepladder. I didn’t tell Mom—no use in worrying her any more. I managed to get the ladder to the hole and down inside. Then I went down myself. I’ve got lots of strength in my arms.
Donnie wasn’t at the bottom. Some light was coming in at the top, and I could see that the cave went on sloping down. I listened carefully and heard the crying again.
The slope was pretty steep, about twenty degrees. I went forward carefully, feeling my way along the side and listening. Everything was as dark as the inside of a cow. Now and then I’d yell Donnie’s name.
The crying got louder. It did sound like Donnie’s voice. Pretty soon I heard a faint “Eddie!” from ahead.
And almost at the same moment I saw a faint gleam.
When I got up to it, Donnie was there. I could just make him out silhouetted against the dim yellowish glow. When I said his name this time, he gulped and swallowed. He crawled up to me as quick as he could and threw his arms around my legs.
“Ooooh, Eddie,” he said, “I’m so glad you came! I fell in and hurt myself. I didn’t know how to get out. I crawled away down here. I’ve been awful scared.”
I put my arms around him and patted him. I certainly was glad to see him. But my attention wasn’t all on him. Part of it was fixed on the egg.
It wasn’t really an egg, of course. Even at the time I knew that. But it looked like a reptile’s egg, somehow, a huge, big egg. It was about the size of a cardboard packing box, oval-shaped, and it seemed to be covered over with a tough and yet gelatinous skin. It glowed faintly with a pale orange light, as if it were translucent and the light were coming through it from behind. Shadows moved slowly inside.
Donnie was holding onto my legs so tightly I was afraid he’d stop the circulation. I could feel his heart pounding against me, and when I patted him his face was wet with tears. “I’m awful glad you came, Eddie,” he said again. “You know that ol’ egg there? It’s been making me see all sorts of things. I was awful scared.”
Donnie never lies. “It’s all right now, kid,” I said, looking at the egg. “We won’t let it show you any more bad things.”
“Oh, they weren’t bad!” Donnie drew away from me. “The egg’s bad, but the things weren’t! They were awful nice.”
I knew I ought to get him out, but I was curious. I was so curious I couldn’t stand it. I said, “What kind of things, Quack-quack?” (That’s his pet name, because his name is Donald.) “Oh…” Donnie’s voice was dreamy. His heartbeat was calming down. “Books and toys and candy. A great big Erector set. A toy farm and fire truck and a cowboy suit. And ice cream—I wish you could have some of the ice cream, Eddie. I had sodas and malteds and Eskimo bars and Cokes. Oh, and I won first prize in the spelling contest. Mom was awful glad.”
“You mean— the egg let you have all these things?” I asked, feeling dazed.
“Naw.” Donnie’s tone held disgust. “But I could have ‘em, all that and a lot more, if I’d do what the egg wanted.”
“Oh.”
“But I wouldn’t do it.” Donnie’s voice was virtuous. “I said no to ‘em. That egg’s bad.”
“What did the egg want you to do?”
“Aw, they wouldn’t tell me.” Donnie’s tone was full of antagonism. “They never did say. Cm on, let’s get out of here. You help me, I don’t like it here.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. The egg… was showing me things.
What sort of things? The things I wanted most, just as it had with Donnie. Things I wanted so much I wouldn’t even admit to wanting them. I saw myself healthy and normal and strong, with a straight back and powerful limbs. I was going to college, I was captain of the football team. I made the touchdown that won the big game. I was graduated with honors while Mom and my girl friend—such a pretty, jolly girl—looked on, their faces bright with pride. I got an important research job in radio. And so on—foolish ambitions, impossible hopes. Crazy dreams.
But they weren’t dreams when the egg was showing them to me. They were real, they weren’t something I had to hide or laugh at any longer. And all the time a voice inside my brain was saying, “You can have this. You can have all this.
“Won’t you help us, won’t you please help us? We’re harmless, we’re trapped and hurt. We came here from our own place to colonize, and we can’t get out and we can’t get back.
“It would be easy for you to help us. And we’ll be grateful. We’ll give you all you saw. And more. All you have to do…”
I took a step forward. Of course I wanted what they had shown me. I wanted them very much. And besides, I felt sorry for the things, the harmless things imprisoned in the egg. I’ve known what it is to feel helpless and trapped.
Donnie was beating on my thigh with his fists and screaming. I tried to shake him off so I could go on listening to the other voice. He hung on, pummeling me, and finally, in desperation, grabbed at my hand and bit it hard with his sharp little teeth. “Eddie, Eddie, Eddie! Come out of it, please come out of it!”
That roused me. I looked at him, dazed and resentful. Why wouldn’t he let me listen so I could help the poor things in the egg? “Be quiet, Quack-quack,” I mumbled to him.
“You gotta listen, Eddie! Don’t let them get you! ‘Member what happened to Uncle Albert? ‘Member how we felt when we first came to the farm?”
The words penetrated. My normal caution was waking up. “But they say they don’t mean us any harm,” I argued weakly. I was talking to Donnie just like he was grown up.
“Aw, they’re big liars. They can’t help hurting us. It’s something they put into the air, like, by just being alive. They can stop it for a while, if they try hard. But that’s the way they really are. Like poison oak or a rattlesnake. ‘Sides, I think they like it. They like being the way they are.”
Poison oak and rattlers, I translated to myself, aren’t consciously evil. They don’t will their nature. But it’s their nature to be poisonous. If Donnie was right in thinking that the things in the egg gave out, as a part of their metabolism, a vibration which was hostile to human life… Uncle Albert had committed suicide by blowing himself up with dynamite.
“We’d better get rid of the egg, Quack-quack,” I said.
“Yes, Eddie.”
I helped him up the shaft to the mouth of the cave. He’d sprained his ankle. On the way I asked, “What are the things in the egg like, Donnie?” I had an idea, but I wanted to check it with him. I felt his young mind and senses were keener and more reliable in this than mine.
