“Like radio. Or ’lectricity.”
“Where did they come from?”
“Another— not like where we live. Everything’s different. It’s not like here. It’s right here beside us. An’ it’s a long way off.”
I nodded. I helped him up the ladder and left him sitting on the hillside. Then I went back to the house for my .22 and a can of kerosene.
Donnie watched me anxiously as I went down with them. I don’t mind admitting I was pretty nervous myself.
A.22 isn’t an elephant gun. Still, at a two-foot range it ought to have some penetrating power. It didn’t. The bullets just bounced off from the sides of the egg. I could hear them spatting against the walls of the cave. I used three clips before I gave up.
That left the kerosene. There hadn’t been any more attempts to show me pictures or bring me around. In a silence that seemed bitterly hostile I poured kerosene all over the egg. I used plenty. Then I stood back and tossed a match at it.
Heat boiled up. It got so hot I retreated nearly to where Donnie had fallen in. But when it cooled off enough so that I could go back, I found the egg sitting there as good as new. There wasn’t even any soot on it.
I was beaten. I couldn’t think of anything more to do. I went up the ladder with the empty kerosene can and my gun. Donnie seemed to know I’d failed. He was crying when I came up to him. “Don’t tell Mom,” I said, and he nodded dutifully.
Would the egg let it go at that? I didn’t think so. After supper I said to Mom, “You know, sometimes I think it would be nice to go back to the city for a while.”
She looked at me as if she couldn’t believe her ears. “Are you crazy, Eddie? We never had it so good before.” Her eyes narrowed and she began to get worried. “What’s the matter, honey? Aren’t you feeling well?”
I couldn’t tell her. I knew she’d believe me; that was just the trouble. If she knew there was a chance I could be cured, be made healthy and strong the way she wanted me to be, she’d make a dicker with the things in the egg, come hell or high water. It wouldn’t make any difference to her whether they were good or bad, if she thought they could help me. Mom’s like that.
“Oh, I feel fine,” I said as heartily as I could. “It was just an idea. How’s for seconds on the strawberry shortcake? It’s even better than usual, Mom.”
Her face relaxed. But I didn’t sleep much that night.
The breakfast Mom cooked next morning was punk. I wasn’t hungry, but I couldn’t help noticing. The toast was burned, the eggs were leathery and cold, the coffee was the color of tea. There was even a fly in the pitcher of orange juice. I thought she must be worried about Donnie. I had bandaged his foot according to the picture in the first-aid book, but the ankle had swelled up like a balloon, and it looked sore and bad.
After breakfast Mom said, “Eddie, you seem worn out. I think carrying Donnie so far was bad for you. I don’t want you to do any work today. You just sit around and rest.”
“I don’t feel like resting,” I objected.
“Well—” Her face brightened. “I know,” she said, sounding pleased. “Why don’t you see what you can get on your radio set? The cord’s long enough you could take it out on the side porch and be out in the fresh air. It’s been a long time since you worked with it. Maybe you could get some of the stations you used to get.”
She sounded so pleased with herself for having thought of the radio that I didn’t have the heart to argue with her. She helped me move the table and the equipment outside, and I sat down and began to fiddle with it. It was nice and cool out on the porch.
I didn’t get any signals, of course. Pretty soon Donnie came limping out. He was supposed to stay on the couch in the living room, but it’s hard for a kid to keep still.
“What’s the matter, Donnie?” I asked, looking at him. He was frowning, and his face was puckered up and serious. “Foot hurt?”
“Oh, some… But Eddie… you know that old egg?” I picked up my headphones and turned them a bit. “Urn,” I said.
“Well, I don’t think you should’a built that fire around it. It was a bad thing to do.”
I put the headphones down. I wanted to tell Donnie to shut up and not bother me; I know that was because I didn’t like what he was saying. “Why was it bad?” I asked.
“Because it stirred the things in the egg up. I kin feel it. It’s like you have a station with more juice, you can get farther. The fire gave them more juice.”
I didn’t know what to say. I figured he was right, and I felt scared. After a minute I made myself laugh. “Nothing to worry about, Quack-quack,” I said. “We can lick any old egg.”
His face relaxed a little. “I guess so,” he said. He sat down in the porch swing.
Mom stuck her head around the edge of the door. “Did you get anything on your radio, Eddie?” she asked.
“No,” I said a little shortly.
“That’s too bad.” She went back in the kitchen and hung her apron up, and then she came out on the porch. She was rubbing her forehead with the back of her hand as if her head ached.
To please her, I put on my headphones and twiddled the dials. No dice, of course. Mom frowned. She went around to the other side of the table and stood looking at the wiring, something I’d never seen her do before. “How would it be if you moved this from here to here?” she said. Her voice was a little high.
I leaned over to see what she was pointing at. “That would just burn out the tubes.”
“Oh.” She stood there for a moment. Then her hand darted out, and before I could stop her, before I even had any idea what she was up to, she moved the wire she’d been talking about.
“Hey!” I squawked, “Stop that!” I said it too late. There was a crackle and a flash and all the tubes burned out. My station was completely dead.
Mom rubbed her forehead and looked at me. “I don’t know what made me do that, Eddie,” she said apologetically. “It was just like something moved my hand! I’m awfully sorry, son.”
“Oh, that’s O.K.,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. The station wasn’t good for anything.”
“I know, but… My head’s been feeling queer all morning. I think it must be the weather. Doesn’t the air feel heavy and oppressive to you?”
The air did have a thick, discouraging feel, but I hadn’t noticed it before she burned out the radio tubes. I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could say it, Donnie yelled, “Look at Fluffie! She’s walking on the air!”
We both jerked around. There Fluffie was, about ten feet up, making motions with her paws as if she were trying to walk. She was mewing a blue streak. Now and then she’d slip down three or four feet and then go up to the former level, just as if a hand had caught at her. Her fur was standing up all over, and her tail was three times its usual size. Finally she went up about twenty feet and then came sailing down in a long curve. She landed on the ground with a thump. And that was the beginning of all the phenomena.
It wasn’t so much that we felt depressed at first, though we certainly did. But we could stand it; the depression wasn’t as bad as it had been when we first came to Hidden Valley. I guess that was because the things in the egg were more spread out now. Whether that was the reason or not, most of the phenomena were physical.
You could hardly get into the living room. It was like pushing your way through big wet bladders to go into it. If you sat on the sofa you had a sense of being crowded and pushed, and pretty soon you’d find yourself down at the far end of it, squeezed into a corner. When Mom struck matches to make a fire for lunch, the matches were twitched out of her hand and went sailing around the room. We had to eat cold things; she was afraid of burning down the place.
At first Mom tried to pretend there was nothing wrong; after all, you couldn’t see anything. But I went out in the kitchen at suppertime and found her crying quietly. She said it was because she’d been trying to cut bread for sandwiches and the knife in her hand kept rising up toward her throat. I knew that if Mom was crying it had been pretty bad. So I told her about the egg in the cave and all that.
“They’re out of the egg now,” she said unhappily when I had finished. “My burning out the tubes this morning let them out. We’ve got to go back to the city, Eddie. It’s the only thing to do.”
“And leave them loose?” I said sharply. “We can’t do that. If it was just a case of deserting the valley and
