THE SALIVA TREE

Brian W. Aldiss

Here is the story which fought Zelazny’s “He Who Shapes” to a standstill for the novella award. It is set not in the far future or even in the familiar present, but in that curiously bright and timeless late-Victorian world, glimpsed as if through the wrong end of a telescope, in which the wonderful events of H. G. Wells’ stories take place.

The author of this brilliant pastiche was born in the mid-twenties into the East Anglia depicted as background to “The Saliva Tree,” where many farms still had their own little electricity generators. He has been Literary Editor of the Oxford Mail for eight years. He made a happy second marriage in 1965, now lives in a beautiful old sixteenth-century thatched house in Oxfordshire, “seeing slightly crazy visions.”

Nebula Award, Best Novella 1965 (tied with “He Who Shapes,” by Roger Zelazny)

There is neither speech nor language: but their voices are heard among them.

Psalm xix.

“You know, I’m really much exercised about the Fourth Dimension,” said the fair-haired young man, with a suitable earnestness in his voice.

“Um,” said his companion, staring up at the night sky. “It seems very much in evidence these days. Do you not think you catch a glimpse of it in the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley?”

“Um,” said his companion.

They stood together on a low rise to the east of the sleepy East Anglian town of Cottersall, watching the stars, shivering a little in the chill February air. They are both young men in their early twenties. The one who is occupied with the Fourth Dimension is called Bruce Fox; be is tall and fair, and works as junior clerk in the Norwich firm of lawyers, Prendergast and Tout. The other, who has so far vouchsafed us only an urn or two, although he is to figure largely as the hero of our account, is by name Gregory Rolles. He is tall and dark, with gray eyes set in his handsome and intelligent face. He and Fox have sworn to Think Large, thus distinguishing themselves, at least in their own minds, from all the rest of the occupants of Cottersall in these last years of the nineteenth century. “There’s another!” exclaimed Gregory, breaking at last from the realm of monosyllables. He pointed a gloved finger up at the constellation of Auriga the Charioteer. A meteor streaked across the sky like a runaway flake of the Milky Way, and died in mid-air.

“Beautiful!” they said together.

“It’s funny,” Fox said, prefacing his words with an oft-used phrase, “the stars and men’s minds are so linked together and always have been, even in the centuries of ignorance before Charles Darwin. They always seem to play an ill-defined role in man’s affairs. They help me think large too, don’t they you, Greg?”

“You know what I think1 think that some of those stars may be occupied. By people, I mean.” He breathed heavily, overcome by what he was saying. “People whoperhaps they are better than us, live in a just society, wonderful people . . .”

“I know, socialists to a man!” Fox exclaimed. This was one point on which he did not share his friend’s advanced thinking. He had listened to Mr. Tout talking in the office, and thought he knew better than his rich friend how these socialists, of which one heard so much these days, were undermining society. “Stars full of socialists!”

“Better than stars full of Christians! Why, if the stars were full of Christians, no doubt they would already have sent missionaries down here to preach their Gospel.”

“I wonder if there ever will be planetary journeys as predicted by Nunsowe Greene and Monsieur Jules Verne” Fox said, when the appearance of a fresh meteor stopped him in mid-sentence.

Like the last, this meteor seemed to come from the general direction of Auriga. It traveled slowly, and it glowed red, and it sailed grandly towards them. They both exclaimed at once, arid gripped each other by the arm. The magnificent spark burned in the sky, larger now, so that its red aura appeared to encase a brighter orange glow. It passed overhead (afterwards, they argued whether it had not made a slight noise as it passed), and disappeared below a clump of willow. They knew it had been near. For an instant, the land had shone with its light. Gregory was the first to speak.

“Bruce, Bruce, did you see that? That was no ordinary fireball!”

“It was so big! What was it?”

“Perhaps our heavenly visitor has come at last!”

“Hey, Greg, it must have landed by your friend’s farmthe Grendon placemustn’t it?”

“You’re right! I must pay old Mr. Grendon a visit tomorrow and see if he or his family saw anything of this.” They talked excitedly, stamping their feet as they exercised their lungs. Their conversation was the conversation of optimistic young men, and included much speculative matter that began “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if” or “Just supposing” Then they stopped and laughed at their own absurd beliefs. Fox said slyly, “So you’ll be seeing all the Grendon family tomorrow?”

“It seems probable, unless that red-hot planetary ship has already borne them off to a better world.”

“Tell us true, Gregyou really go to see that pretty Nancy Grendon, don’t you?”

Gregory struck his friend playfully on the shoulder. “No need for your jealousy, Bruce! I go to see the father, not the daughter. Though the one is female, the other is progressive, and that must interest me more just yet. Nancy has beauty, true, but her fatherah, her father has electricity!” Laughing, they cheerfully shook hands and parted for the night.

On Grendon’s farm, things were a deal less tranquil, as Gregory was to discover.

Gregory Rolles rose before seven next morning as was his custom. It was while he was lighting his gas mantle, and wishing Mr. Fenn (the baker in whose house Gregory lodged) would install electricity, that a swift train of thought led him to reflect again on the phenomenal thing in the previous night’s sky. He let his mind wander luxuriously over all the possibilities that the “meteor” illuminated. He decided that he would ride out to see Mr. Grendon within the hour.

He was lucky in being able, at this stage in his life, to please himself largely as to how his days were spent, for his father was a person of some substance. Edward Rolles had had the fortune, at the time of the Crimean War, to meet Escoffier, and with some help from the great chef had brought onto the market a baking powder, “Eugenol,” that, being slightly more palatable and less deleterious to the human system than its rivals, had achieved great commercial success. As a result, Gregory had attended one of the Cambridge colleges. Now, having gained a degree, he was poised on the verge of a career. But which career? He had acquiredmore as a result of his intercourse with other students than with those officially deputed to instruct himsome understanding of the sciences; his essays had been praised and some of his poetry published, so that he inclined toward literature; and an uneasy sense that life for everyone outside the privileged classes contained too large a proportion of misery led him to think seriously of a political career. In Divinity, too, he was well-grounded; but at least the idea of Holy Orders did not tempt him. While he wrestled with his future, he undertook to live away from home, since his relations with his father were never smooth. By rusticating himself in the heart of East Anglia, he hoped to gather material for a volume tentatively entitled “Wanderings with a Socialist Naturalist,” which would assuage all sides of his ambitions. Nancy Grendon, who had a pretty hand with a pencil, might even execute a little emblem for the title page . . . Perhaps he might be permitted to dedicate it to his author friend, Mr. Herbert George Wells. . . He dressed himself warmly, for the morning was cold as well as dull, and went down to the baker’s stables. When he had saddled his mare, Daisy, he swung himself up and set out along a road that the horse knew well.

The land rose slightly towards the farm, the area about the house forming something of a little island amid marshy ground and irregular stretches of water that gave back to the sky its own dun tone. The gate over the little bridge was, as always, open wide; Daisy picked her way through the mud to the stables, where Gregory left her to champ oats contentedly. Cuff and her pup, Lardie, barked loudly about Gregory’s heels as usual, and he patted their heads on his way over to the house. Nancy came hurrying out to meet him before he got to the front door.

“We had some excitement last night, Gregory,” she said. He noted with pleasure she had at last brought herself to use .his first name.

“Something bright and glaring!” she said. “I was retiring, when this noise come and then this light, and I rush to look out through the curtains, and there’s this here great thing like an egg sinking into our pond.” In her speech, and particularly when she was excited, she carried the lilting accent of Norfolk. “The meteor!” Gregory exclaimed. “Bruce Fox and I were out last night, as we were the night before, watching for the lovely Aurigids that arrive every February, when we saw an extra big one. I said then it was coming over very near here.”

“Why, it almost landed on our house,” Nancy said. She looked very pleasing this morning, with her lips red, her cheeks shining, and her chestnut curls all astray. As she spoke, her mother appeared in apron and cap, with a wrap hurriedly thrown over her shoulders.

“Nancy, you come in, standing freezing like that! You ent daft, girl are you? Hello, Gregory, how be going on? I didn’t reckon as we’d see you today. Come in and warm yourself.”

“Good-day to you, Mrs. Grendon. I’m hearing about your wonderful meteor of last night.”

“It was a falling star, according to Bert Neckland. I ent sure what it was, but it certainly stirred up the animals, that I do know.”

“Can you see anything of it in the pond?” Gregory asked.

“Let me show you,” Nancy said.

Mrs. Grendon returned indoors. She went slowly and grandly, her back straight and an unaccustomed load before her. Nancy was her only daughter; there was a younger son, Archie, a stubborn lad who had fallen at odds .with his father and now was apprenticed to a blacksmith in Norwich; and no other children living. Three infants had not survived the mixture of fogs alternating with bitter east winds that comprised the typical Cottersall winter. But now the farmer’s wife was unexpectedly gravid again, and would bear her husband another baby when the spring came in. As Nancy led Gregory over to the pond, he saw Grendon with his two laborers working in the West Field, but they did not wave.

“Was your father not excited by the arrival last night?”

“That he waswhen it happened! He went out with his shotgun, and Bert Neckland with him. But there was nothing to see but bubbles in the pond and steam over it, and this morning he wouldn’t discuss it, and said that work must go on whatever happen.”

They stood beside the pond, a dark and extensive slab of water with rushes on the farther bank and open country beyond. As they looked at its ruffled surface, they stood with the windmill black and bulky on their left hand. It was to this that Nancy now pointed.

Mud had been splashed across the boards high up the sides of the mill; some was to be seen even on the top of the nearest white sail. Gregory surveyed it all with interest. Nancy, however, was still pursuing her own line of thought. “Don’t you reckon Father works too hard, Gregory? When he’s not outside doing jobs, he’s in reading his pamphlets and his electricity manuals. He never rests but when he sleeps.”

“Um. Whatever went into the pond went in with a great smack! There’s no sign of anything there now, is there? Not that you can see an inch below the surface.”

“You being a friend of his. Mum thought perhaps as you’d say something to him. He don’t go to bed till ever so latesometimes it’s near midnight, and then he’s up again at three and a half o’clock. Would you speak to him? You know Mother dassent.”

“Nancy, we ought to see whatever it was that went in the pond. It can’t have dissolved. How deep is the water? Is it very deep?”

“Oh, you aren’t listening, Gregory Rolles! Bother the old meteor!”

“This is a matter of science, Nancy. Don’t you see”

“Oh, rotten old science, is it? Then I don’t want to hear. I’m cold, standing out here. You can have a good look if you like but I’m going in before I gets froze. It was only an old stone out of the sky, because I heard Father and Bert Neckland agree to it.”

“Fat lot Bert Neckland knows about such things!” he called to her departing back.

He looked down at the dark water. Whatever it was that had arrived last night, it was here, only a few feet from him. He longed to discover what remained of it. Vivid pictures entered his mind: his name in headlines in “The Morning Post,” the Royal Society making him an honorary member, his father embracing him and pressing him to return home. Thoughtfully, he walked over to the barn. Hens ran clucking out of his way as he entered and stood looking up, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. There, as he remembered it, was a little rowing boat. Perhaps in his courting days old Mr. Grendoii had taken his prospective wife out for excursions on the Oast in it. Surely it had not been used in years. He dragged the boat from the barn and launched it in the shallows of the pond. It floated. The boards had dried, and water leaked through a couple of seams, but not nearly enough to deter him, Climbing delicately in among the straw and filth, he pushed off. When he was over the approximate center of the pond, he shipped his oars and peered over the side. There was an agitation in the water, and nothing could be seen, although he imagined much.

As he stared over the one side, the boat unexpectedly tipped to the other. Gregory swung round. The boat listed heavily to the left, so that the oars rolled over that way. He could see nothing. Yethe heard something. It was a sound much like a hound slowly panting. And whatever made it was about to capsize the boat.

“What is it?” he said, as all the skin prickled up his back and skull.

The boat lurched, for all the world as if someone invisible were trying to get into it. Frightened, he grasped the oar, and, without thinking, swept it over that side of the rowing boat. It struck something solid where there was only air. Dropping the oar in surprise, he put out his hand. It touched something yielding. At the same time, his arm was violently struck.

His actions were then entirely governed by instinct. Thought did not enter the matter. He picked up the oar again and smote the thin air with it. It hit something. There was a splash, and the boat righted itself so suddenly he was almost pitched into the water. Even while it still rocked, he was rowing frantically for the shallows, dragging the boat from the water, and running for the safety of the farmhouse.

Only at the door did he pause. His reason returned, his heart began gradually to stop stammering its fright. He stood looking at the seamed wood of the porch, trying to evaluate what he had seen and what had actually happened. But what had happened?

Forcing himself to go back to the pond, he stood by the boat and looked across the sullen face of the water. It lay undisturbed, except by surface ripples. He looked at the boat A quantity of water lay in the bottom of it. He thought, all that happened was that I nearly capsized, and I let my idiot fears run away with me. Shaking his head, he pulled the boat back to the barn.

Gregory, as he often did, stayed to eat lunch at the farm, but he saw nothing of the farmer till milking time. Joseph Grendon was in his late forties, and a few years older than his wife. He bad a gaunt solemn face and a heavy beard that made him look older than he was. For all his seriousness, he greeted Gregory civilly enough. They stood together in the gathering dusk as the cows swung behind them into their regular stalls. Together they walked into the machine house next door, and Grendon lit the oil burners that started the steam engine into motion that would turn the generator that would supply the vital spark.

“I smell the future in here,” Gregory said, smiling. By now, he had forgotten the shock of the morning.

“The future will have to get on without me. I shall be dead by then.” The farmer spoke as he walked, putting each word reliably before the next.

“That is what you always say. You’re wrongthe future is rushing upon us.”

“You ent far wrong there. Master Gregory, but I won’t have no part of it, I reckon. I’m an old man now. Here she come!” The last exclamation was directed at a flicker of light in the pilot bulb overhead. They stood there contemplating with satisfaction the wonderful machinery. As steam pressure rose, the great leather belt turned faster and faster, and the flicker in the pilot bulb grew stronger. Although Gregory was used to a home lit by both gas and electricity, he never felt the excitement of it as he did here, out in the wilds, where the nearest incandescent bulb was probably in Norwich, a great part of a day’s journey away.

Now a pale flickering radiance illuminated the room. By contrast, everything outside looked black. Grendon nodded in satisfaction, made some adjustments to the burners, and they went outside.

Free from the bustle of the steam engine, they could hear the noise the cows were making. At milking time, the animals were usually quiet; something had upset them. The farmer ran quickly into the milking shed, with Gregory on his heels;

The new light, radiating from a bulb hanging above the stalls, showed the beasts of restless demeanor and rolling eye. Bert Neckland stood as far away from the door as possible, grasping his stick and letting his mouth hang open. “What in blazes are you staring at, bor?” Grendon asked.

Neckland slowly shut his mouth.

“We had a scare,” he said. “Something come in here.”

“Did you see what it was?” Gregory asked. “No, there weren’t nothing to see. It was a ghost, that’s what it was. It came right in here and touched the cows. It touched me too. It was a ghost.”

The farmer snorted. “A tramp more like. You couldn’t see because the light wasn’t on.”

His man shook his head emphatically. “Light weren’t that bad. I tell you, whatever it was, it come right up to me and touched me.” He stopped, and pointed to the edge of the stall. “Look there! See, I weren’t telling you no lie, master. It was a ghost, and there’s its wet hand-print.”

They crowded round and examined the worn and chewed timber at the corner of the partition between two stalls. An indefinite patch of moisture darkened the wood. Gregory’s thoughts went back to his experience on the pond, and again he felt the prickle of unease along his spine. But the farmer said stoutly, “Nonsense, it’s a bit of cowslime. Now you get on with the milking, Bert, and let’s have no more hossing about, because I want my tea. Where’s Cuff?”

Bert looked defiant.

“If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe the bitch. She saw whatever it was and went for it. It kicked her over, but she ran it out of here.”

“I’ll see if I can see her,” Gregory said. He ran outside and began calling the bitch. By now it was almost entirely dark. He could see nothing moving in the wide space of the front yard, and so set off in the other direction, down the path towards the pig sties and the fields, calling Cuff as he went. He paused. Low and savage growls sounded ahead, under the elm trees. It was Cuff. He went slowly forward. At this moment, he cursed that electric light meant lack of lanterns, and wished too that he had a weapon. “Who’s there?” he called.

The farmer came up by his side. “Let’s charge ‘em!” They ran forward. The trunks of the four great elms were clear against the western sky, with water glinting leadenly be-hind them. The dog became visible. As Gregory saw Cuff, she sailed into the air, whirled round, and flew at the farmer. He flung up his arms and warded off the body. At the same time, Gregory felt a rush of air as if someone unseen had run past him, and a stale muddy smell filled his nostrils. Staggering, he looked behind him. The wan light from the cowsheds spread across the path between the outhouses and the farmhouse. Beyond the light, more distantly, was the silent countryside behind the grain store. Nothing untoward could be seen. “They killed my old Cuff,” said the farmer. Gregory knelt down beside him to look at the bitch. There was no mark of injury on her, but she was dead, her fine head lying limp.

“She knew there was something there,” Gregory said. “She went to attack whatever it was and it got her first. What was it? Whatever in the world was it?”

“They killed my old Cuff,” said the farmer again, unhearing. He picked the body up in his arms, turned, and carried it towards the house. Gregory stood where he was, mind and heart equally uneasy.

He jumped violently when a step sounded nearby. It was Bert Neckland.

“What, did that there ghost kill the old bitch?” he asked. “It killed the bitch certainly, but it was something more terrible than a ghost.”

“That’s one of them ghosts, bor. I seen plenty in my time. I ent afraid of ghosts, are you?”

“You looked fairly sick in the cowshed a minute ago.” The farmhand put his fists on his hips. He was no more than a couple of years older than Gregory, a stocky young man with a spotty complexion and a snub nose that gave him at once an air of comedy and menace. “Is that so, Master Gregory? Well, you looks pretty funky standing there now.”

“I am scared. I don’t mind admitting it. But only because we have something here a lot nastier than any specter.” Neckland came a little closer.

“Then if you are so tilooming windy, perhaps you’ll be staying away from the farm in the future.” ‘ “Certainly not.” He tried to edge back into the light, but the laborer got in his way.

“If I was you, I, should stay away.” He emphasized his point by digging an elbow into Gregory’s coat. “And just remember that Nancy was interested in me long afore you come’along, bor.”

“Oh, that’s it, is iti I think Nancy can decide for herself in whom she is interested, don’t you?”

“I’m telling you who she’s interested in, see? And mind you don’t forget, see?” He emphasized the words with another nudge. Gregory pushed his arm away angrily. Neckland shrugged his shoulders and walked off. As he went, he said, “You’re going to get worse than ghosts if you keep hanging round here.”

Gregory was shaken. The suppressed violence in the man’s voice suggested that he had been harboring malice for some time. Unsuspectingly, Gregory had always gone out of his way to be cordial, had regarded the sullenness as mere slow-wittedness and done his socialist best to overcome the barrier between them. He thought of following Neckland and trying to make it up with him; but that would look too feeble. Instead, he followed the way the farmer had gone with his dead bitch, and made for the house.

Gregory Rolles was too late back to Cottersall that night to meet his friend Fox. The next night, the weather became exceedingly chill and Gabriel Woodcock, the oldest inhabitant, was prophesying snow before the winter was out (a not very venturesome prophecy to be fulfilled within forty-eight hours, thus impressing most of the inhabitants of the village, for they took pleasure in being impressed and exclaiming and saying “Well I never!” to each other). The two friends met in “The Wayfarer,” where the fires were bigger, though the ale was weaker, than in “The Three Poachers” at the other end of the village.

Seeing to it that nothing dramatic was missed from his account, Gregory related the affairs of the previous day, omitting any reference to Neckland’s pugnacity. Fox listened fascinated, neglecting both his pipe and his ale. “So you see how it is, Bruce,” Gregory concluded. “In that deep pond by the mill lurks a vehicle of some sort, the very one we saw in the sky, and in it lives an invisible being of evil intent. You see how I fear for my friends there. Should I tell the police about it, do you think?”

“I’m sure it would not help the Grendons to have old Farrish bumping out there on his pennyfarthing,” Fox said, referring to the local representative of the law. He took a long draw first on the pipe and then on the glass. “But I’m not sure you have your conclusions quite right, Greg. Understand, I don’t doubt the facts, amazing though they are. I mean, we were more or less expecting celestial visitants. The world’s recent blossoming with gas and electric lighting in its cities at night must have been a signal to half the nations of space that we are now civ-ilized down here. But have our visitants done any deliberate harm to anyone?”

“They nearly drowned me and they killed poor Cuff. I don’t see what you’re getting at. They haven’t begun in a very friendly fashion, have they now?”

“Think what the situation must seem like to them. Suppose they come from Mars or the Moonwe know their world must be absolutely different from Earth. They may be terrified. And it can hardly be called an unfriendly act to try and get into your rowing boat. The first unfriendly act was yours, when you struck out with the oar.”

Gregory bit his lip. His friend had a point. “I was scared.”

“It may have been because they were scared that they killed Cuff. The dog attacked them, after all, didn’t she? I feel sorry for these creatures, alone in an unfriendly world.”

“You keep saying ‘these!’ As far as we know, there is only one of them.”

“My point is this, Greg. You have completely gone back on your previous enlightened attitude. You are all for killing these poor things instead of trying to speak to them. Remember what you were saying about other worlds being full of socialists? Try thinking of these chaps as invisible socialists and see if that doesn’t make them easier to deal with.”

Gregory fell to stroking his chin. Inwardly, he acknowledged that Bruce Fox’s words made a great impression on him. He had allowed panic to prejudice his judgment; as a result, he had behaved as immoderately as a savage in some remote corner of the Empire, confronted by his first steam locomotive. “I’d better get back to the farm and sort things out as soon as possible,” he said. “If these things really do need help, I’ll help them.”

“That’s it. But try not to think of them as ‘things.’ Think of them asas1 know, as The Aurigans.”

“Aurigans it is. But don’t be so smug, Bruce. If you’d been in that boat-”

“I know, old friend. I’d have died of fright.” To this monument of tact, Fox added, “Do as you say, go back and sort things out as soon as possible. I’m longing for the ne)rt install-ment of this mystery. It’s quite the joUiest thing since Sheriock Holmes.”

Gregory Rolles went back to the farm. But the sorting out of which Bruce had spoken took longer than he expected. This was chiefly because the Aurigans seemed to have settled quietly into their new home after the initial day’s troubles. They came forth no more from the pond, as far as he could discover; at least they caused no more disturbance. The young graduate particularly regretted this since he had taken his friend’s words much to heart, and wanted to prove how enlightened and benevolent he was towards this strange form of life. After some days, he came to believe the Aurigans must have left as unexpectedly as they arrived. Then a minor incident convinced him otherwise; and that same night, in his snug room over the baker’s shop, he described it to his correspondent in Worcester Park, Surrey.

Dear Mr. Wells,

I must apologize for my failure to write earlier, owing to lack of news concerning the Grendon Farm affair. Only today, the Aurigans showed themselves again!If in-deed “showed” is the right word for invisible creatures. Nancy Grendon and I were in the orchard feeding the hens. There is still much snow lying about, and everywhere is very white. As the poultry came running to Nancy’s tub, I saw a disturbance further down the orchardmerely some snow dropping from an apple bough, but the movement caught my eye, and then I saw a procession of falling snow proceed towards us from tree to tree. The grass is long there, and I soon noted the stalks being thrust aside by an unknown agency! I directed Nancy’s attention to the phenomenon. The motion in the grass stopped only a few yards from us. Nancy was startled, but I determined to acquit myself more like a Briton than I had previously. Accordingly, I advanced and said, “Who are you? What do you want? We are your friends if you are friendly.”

No answer came. I stepped forward again, and now the grass again fell back, and I could see by the way it was pressed down that the creature must have large feet. By the movement of the grasses, I could see he was running. I cried to him and ran too. He went round the side of the house, and then over the frozen mud in the farmyard. I could see no further trace of him. But instinct led me forward, past the barn to the pond. Surely enough, I then saw the cold, muddy water rise and heave, as if engulfing a body that slid quietly in. Shards of broken ice were thrust aside, and by an outward motion, I could see where the strange being went. In a flurry and a small whirlpool, he was gone, and I have no doubt dived down to the mysterious star vehicle.

These thingspeople1 know not what to call themmust be aquatic; perhaps they live in the canals of the Red Planet. But imagine, Siran invisible mankind! The idea is almost as wonderful and fantastic as something from your novel, “The Time Machine.”

Pray give me your comment, and trust in my sanity and accuracy as a reporter!

Yours in friendship,

Gregory Rolles.

What he did not tell was the way Nancy had clung to him after, in the warmth of the parlor, and confessed her fear. And he had scorned the idea that these beings could be hostile, and had seen the admiration in her eyes, and had thought that she was, after all, a dashed pretty girl, and perhaps worth braving the wrath of those two very different people for: Edward Rolles, his father, and Bert Neckland, the farm laborer. It was at lunch a week later, when Gregory was again at the farm, taking with him an article on electricity as a pretext for his visit, that the subject of the stinking dew was first discussed. Grubby was the first to mention it in Gregory’s hearing. Grubby, with Bert Neckland, formed the whole strength of Joseph Grendon’s labor force; but whereas Neckland was considered couth enough to board in the farmhouse (he had a gaunt room in the attic), Grubby was fit only to sleep in a little flint-and-chalk hut well away from the farm buildings. His “house,” as he dignified the miserable hut, stood below the orchard and near the sties, the occupants of which lulled Grubby to sleep with their snorts.

“Reckon we ent ever had a dew like that before, Mr. Grendon,” he said, his manner suggesting to Gregory that he had made this observation already this morning; Grubby never ventured to say anything original.

“Heavy as an autumn dew,” said the farmer firmly, as if there had been an argument on the point.

Silence fell, broken only by a general munching and, from Grubby, a particular guzzling, as they all made their way through huge platefuls of stewed rabbit and dumplings. “It weren’t no ordinary dew, that I do know,” Grubby said after a while.

“It stank of toadstools,” Neckland said. “Or rotten pond water.”

More munching.

“It may be something to do with the pond,” Gregory said.

“Some sort of freak of evaporation.”

Neckland snorted. From his position at the top of the table, . the farmer halted his shovelling operations to point a fork at Gregory.

“You may well be right there. Because I tell you what, that there dew only come down on our land and property. A yard the other side of the gate, the road was dry. Bone dry it was.”

“Right you are there, master,” Neckland agreed. “And while the West Field was dripping with the stuff, I saw for myself that the bracken over the hedge weren’t wet at all. Ah, it’s a rum go!”

“Say what you like, we ent ever had dew like it,” Grubby said. He appeared to be summing up the feeling of the company.

The strange dew did not fall again. As a topic of conversa-tion, it was limited, and even on the farm, where there was little new to talk about, it was forgotten in a few days. The Feb-ruary passed, being neither much worse nor much better than most Februaries, and ended in heavy rainstorms. March came, letting in a chilly spring over the land. The animals on the farm began to bring forth their young.

They brought them forth in amazing numbers, as if to over-turn all the farmer’s beliefs in the unproductiveness of his land. “I never seen anything like it!” Grendon said to Gregory. Nor had Gregory seen the taciturn farmer so excited. He took the young man by the arm and marched him into the barn. There lay Trix, the nannie goat. Against her flank huddled three little brown and white kids, while a fourth stood nearby, wobbling on its spindly legs.

“Four on ‘em! Have you ever heard of a goat throwing off four kids? You better write to the papers in London about this. Gregory! But just you come down to the pig sties.” The squealing from the sties was louder than usual. As they marched down the path towards them, Gregory looked up at the great elms, their outlines dusted in green, and thought he detected something sinister in the noises, something hysterical that was perhaps matched by an element in Grendon’s own bearing.

The Grendon pigs were mixed breeds, with a preponderance of Large Blacks. They usually gave litters of something like ten piglets. Now there was not a litter without fourteen in it; and one enormous black sow had eighteen small pigs swarming about her. The noise was tremendous and, standing looking down on this swarming life, Gregory told himself that he was foolish to imagine anything uncanny in it; he knew so little about farm life. After he had eaten with Grendon and the men Mrs. Grendon and Nancy had driven to town in the trap-Gregory went by himself to look about the farm, still with a deep and (he told himself) unreasoning sense of disturbance inside him.

A pale sunshine filled the afternoon. It could not penetrate far down into the water of the pond. But as Gregory stood by the horse trough staring at the expanse of water, he saw that it teemed with young tadpoles and frogs. He went closer. What he had regarded as a sheet of rather stagnant water was alive with small swimming things. As he looked, a great beetle surged out of the depths and seized a tadpole. The tadpoles were also providing food for two ducks that, with their young, were swimming by the reeds on the far side of the pond. And how many young did the ducks have? An armada of chicks was there, parading in and out of the rushes. For a minute, he stood uncertainly, then began to walk slowly back the way he had come. Crossing the yard, Gregory went over to the stable and saddled Daisy. He swung himself up and rode away without bidding goodbye to anyone. Riding into Cottersall, he went straight to the market place. He saw the Grendon trap, with Nancy’s little pony, Hetty, between the shafts, standing outside the grocer’s shop. Mrs. Grendon and Nancy were just coming out. Jumping to the ground, Gregory led Daisy over to them and bid them good day.

“We are going to call on my friend Mrs. Edwards and her daughters,” Mrs. Grendon said.

“If you would be so kind, Mrs. Grendon, I would be very obliged if I might speak privately with Nancy. My landlady, Mrs. Fenn, has a little downstairs parlor at the back of the shop, and I know she would let us speak there. It would be quite respectable.”

“Drat respectable! Let people think what they will, I say.” All the same, she stood for some time in meditation. Nancy remained by her mother with her eyes on the ground. Gregory looked at her and seemed to see her anew. Under her blue coat, fur-trimmed, she wore her orange-and-brown squared gingham dress; she had a bonnet on her head. Her complexion was pure and blemishless, her skin as firm and delicate as a plum, and her dark eyes were hidden under long lashes. Her lips were steady, pale, and clearly defined, with appealing tucks at each corner. He felt almost like a thief, stealing a sight of her beauty while she was not regarding him.

“I’m going on to Mrs. Edwards,” Marjorie Grendon declared at last. “I don’t care what you two do so long as you behavebut I shall, mind, if you aren’t with me in a half-hour, Nancy, do you hear?”

“Yes, Mother.”

The baker’s shop was in the next street. Gregory and Nancy walked there in silence. Gregory shut Daisy in the stable and they went together into the parlor through the back door. At this time of day, Mr. Fenn was resting upstairs and his wife looking after the shop, so the little room was empty. Nancy sat upright in a chair and said, “Well, Gregory, what’s all this about? Fancy dragging me off from my mother like that in the middle of town!”

“Nancy, don’t be cross. I had to see you.” She pouted. “You come out to the old farm often enough and don’t show any particular wish to see me there.”

“That’s nonsense. I always come to see youlately in particular. Besides, you’re more interested in Bert Neckland, aren’t you?”

“Bert Neckland, indeed! Why should I be interested in him?

Not that it’s any of your business if I am.”

“It is my business, Nancy. I love you, Nancy!” He had not meant to blurt it out in quite that fashion, but now it was out, it was out, and he pressed home bis disadvantage by crossing the room, kneeling at her feet, and taking her hands in his. “Nancy, darling Nancy, say that you like me just a little. Encourage me somewhat.”

“You are a very fine gentleman, Gregory, and I feel very kind towards you, to be sure, but . . .”

“But?”

She gave him the benefit of her downcast eyes again. “Your station in life is very different from mine, and besideswell, you don’t do anything.”

He was shocked into silence. With the natural egotism of youth, he had not seriously thought that she could have any firm objection to him; but in her words he suddenly saw the truth of his position, at least as it was revealed to her. “Nancy1well, it’s true I do not seem to you to be working at present. But I do a lot of reading and studying here, and I write to several important people in the world. And all the time I am coming to a great decision about what my career will be. I do assure you I am no loafer, if that’s what you think.”

“No. I don’t think that. But Bert says you often spend a convivial evening in that there ‘Wayfarer.’ “

“Oh, he does, does he? And what business is it of his if I door of yours, come to that? What damned cheek!” She stood up. “If you have nothing left to say but a lot of swearing, I’ll be off to join my mother, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, by Jove, I’m making a mess of this!” He caught her wrist. “Listen, my sweet thing. I ask you only this, that you try and look on me favorably. And also that you let me say a word about the farm. Some strange things are happening there, and I seriously don’t like to think of you being there at night. All these young things being born, all these little pigsit’s uncanny!”

“I don’t see what’s uncanny no more than my father does. I know how hard he works, and he’s done a good job rearing his animals, that’s all. He’s the best farmer round Cottersall by a long chalk.”

“Oh, certainly. He’s a wonderful man. But he didn’t put seven or eight eggs into a hedge sparrow’s nest, did he? He didn’t fill the pond with tadpoles and newts till it looks like a broth, did he? Something strange is happening on your farm this year, Nancy, and I want to protect you if I can.” The earnestness with which he spoke, coupled perhaps with his proximity and the ardent way he pressed her hand, went a good way towards mollifying Nancy.

“Dear Gregory, you don’t know anything about farm life, I don’t reckon, for all your books. But you’re very sweet to be concerned.”

“I shall always be concerned about you, Nancy, you beautiful creature.”

“You’ll make me blush!”

“Please do, for then you look even lovelier than usual!” He put an arm around her. When she looked up at him, he caught her up close to his chest and kissed her fervently. She gasped and broke away, but not with too great haste.

“Oh, Gregory! Oh, Gregory! I must go to Mother now!”

“Another kiss first! I can’t let you go until I get another.” He took it, and stood by the door trembling with excitement as she left. “Come and see us again soon,” she whispered. “With dearest pleasure,” he said. But the next visit held more dread than pleasure.

The big cart was standing in the yard full of squealing piglets when Gregory arrived. The farmer and Neckland were bustling about it. The former greeted Gregory cheerfully. “I’ve a chance to make a good quick profit on these little chaps. Old sows can’t feed them, but sucking pig fetches its price in Norwich, so Bert and me are going to drive over to Heigham and put them on the train.”

“They’ve grown since I last saw them!”

“Ah, they put on over two pounds a day. Bert, we’d better get a net and spread over this lot, or they’ll be diving out. They’re that lively!”

The two men made their way over to the barn, clomping through the mud. Mud squelched behind Gregory. He turned. In the muck between the stables and the cart, footprints ap-peared, two parallel tracks. They seemed to imprint themselves with no agency but their own. A cold flow of acute super-natural terror overcame Gregory, so that he could not move. The scene seemed to go gray and palsied as he watched the tracks come towards him.

The carthorse neighed uneasily, the prints reached the cart, the cart creaked, as if something had climbed aboard. The piglets squealed with terror. One dived clear over the wooden sides. Then aterrible silence fell.

Gregory still could not move. He heard an unaccountable sucking noise in the cart, but his eyes remained rooted on the muddy tracks. Those impressions were of something other than a man: something with dragging feet that were in outline something like a seal’s flippers. Suddenly he found his voice. “Mr. Grendon!” he cried.

Only as the farmer and Bert came running from the barn with the net did Gregory dare look into the cart. One last piglet, even as he looked, seemed to be deflating rapidly, like a rubber balloon collapsing. It went limp and lay silent a,mong the other little empty bags of pig skin. The cart creaked. Something splashed heavily off across the farmyard in the direction of the pond.

Grendon did not see. He had run to the cart and was staring like Gregory in dismay at the deflated corpses. Neckland stared too, and was the first to find his voice. “Some sort of disease got ‘em all, just like that! Must be one of them there new diseases from the Continent of Europe!”

“It’s no disease,” Gregory said. He could hardly speak, for his mind had just registered the fact that there were no bones left in or amid the deflated pig bodies. “It’s no diseaselook, the pig that got away is still alive.”

He pointed to the animal that had jumped from the cart. It had injured its leg in the process, and now lay in the ditch some feet away, panting. The farmer went over to it and lifted it out. “It escaped the disease by jumping out,” Neckland said. “Master, we better go and see how the rest of them is down in the sties.”

“Ah, that we had,” Grendon said. He handed the pig over to Gregory, his face set. “No good taking one alone to market. 111 get Grubby to unharness the horse. Meanwhile, perhaps you’d be good enough to take this little chap in to Marjorie. At least we can all eat a bit of roast pig for dinner tomorrow.”

“Mr. Grendon, this is no disease. Have the veterinarian over from Heigham and let him examine these bodies.”

“Don’t you tell me how to run my farm, young man. I’ve got trouble enough.”

Despite this rebuff, Gregory could not keep away. He had to see Nancy, and he had to see what occurred at the farm. The morning after the horrible thing happened to the pigs, he received a letter from his most admired correspondent, Mr. H. G. Wells, one paragraph of which read: “At bottom, I think I am neither optimist nor pessimist. I tend to believe both that we stand on the threshold of an epoch of magnificent progresscertainly such an epoch is within our graspand that we may have reached the ‘fin du globe’ prophesied by our gloomier fin de siecle prophets. I am not at all surprised to hear that such a vast issue may be resolving itself on a remote farm near Cottersall, Norfolkall unknown to anyone but the two of us. Do not think that I am in other than a state of terror, even when I cannot help exclaiming “What a lark!’ “ Too preoccupied to be as excited over such a letter as he would ordinarily have been, Gregory tucked it away in his jacket pocket and went to saddle up Daisy. Before lunch, he stole a kiss from Nancy, and planted another on her over-heated left cheek as she stood by the vast range in the kitchen. Apart from that, there was little pleasure in the day. Grendon was reassured to find that none of the other piglets had fallen ill of the strange shrinking disease, but he remained alert against the possibility of it striking again. Meanwhile, another miracle had occurred. In the lower pasture, in a tumbledown shed, he had a cow that had given birth to four calves during the night. He did not expect the animal to live, but the calves were well enough, and being fed from a bottle by Nancy.

The farmer’s face was dull, for he had been up all night with the laboring cow, and he sat down thankfully at the head of the table as the roast pig arrived on its platter. It proved uneatable. In no time, they were all flinging down their implements in disgust. The flesh had a bitter taste for which Neckland was the first to account.

“It’s diseased!” he growled. “This here animal had the dis-ease all the time. We didn’t ought to eat this here meat or we may all be dead ourselves inside of a week.” They were forced to make a snack on cold salted beef and cheese and pickled onions, none of which Mrs. Grendon could face in her condition. She retreated upstairs in tears at the thought of the failure of her carefully prepared dish, and Nancy ran after her to comfort her.

After the dismal meal, Gregory spoke to Grendon. “I have decided I must go to Norwich tomorrow for a few days, Mr. Grendon,” he said. “You are in trouble here, I believe. Is there anything, any business I can transact for you in the city? Can I find you a veterinary surgeon there?” Grendon clapped his shoulder. “I know you mean well, and I thank ‘ee for it, but you don’t seem to realize that vetinaries cost a load of money and aren’t always too helpful when they do come.”

“Then let me do something for you, Joseph, in return for all your kindness to me. Let me bring a vet back from Norwich at my own expense, just to have a look round, nothing more.”

“Blow me if you aren’t stubborn as they come. I’m telling you, same as my dad used to say, if I finds any person on my land -I didn’t ask here. I’m getting that there shotgun of mine down and I’m peppering him with buckshot, same as I did with them two old tramps last year. Fair enough?”

“I suppose so.”

“Then I must go and see to the cow. And stop worrying about what you don’t understand.”

The visit to Norwich (an uncle had a house in that city) took up the better part of Gregory’s next week. Consequently, apprehension stirred in him when he again approached the Grendon farm along the rough road from Cottersall. He was surprised to see how the countryside had altered since he was last this way. New foliage gleamed everywhere, and even the heath looked a happier place. But as he came up to the farm, he saw how overgrown it was. Great ragged elder and towering cow parsley had shol up, so that at first they hid all the buildings. He fancied the farm had been spirited away until, spurring Daisy on, he saw the black mill emerge from behind a clump of nearby growth. The South Meadows were deep in rank grass. Even the elms seemed much shaggier than before and loomed threateningly over the house.

As he clattered over the flat wooden bridge and through the open gate into the yard, Gregory noted huge hairy nettles craning out of the adjoining ditches. Birds fluttered every-where. Yet the impression he received was one of death rather than of life. A great quiet lay over the place, as if it were under a curse that eliminated noise and hope.

He realized this effect was partly because Lardie, the young bitch collie who had taken the place of Cuff, was not running up barking as she generally did with visitors. The yard was deserted. Even the customary fowls had gone. As he led Daisy into the stables, he saw a heavy piebald in the first stall and recognized it as Dr. Crouchorn’s. His anxieties took more definite shape.

Since the stable was now full, he led his mare across to the stone trough by the pond and hitched her there before walking over to the house. The front door was open. Great ragged dandelions grew against the porch. The creeper, hitherto somewhat sparse, pressed into the lower windows. A movement in the rank grass caught his eye and he looked down, drawing back his riding boot. An enormous toad crouched under weed, the head of a still writhing grass snake in its mouth. The toad seemed to eye Gregory fixidly, as if trying to determine whether the man envied it its gluttony. Shuddering in disgust, he hurried into the house.

Muffled sounds came from upstairs. “The stairs curled round the massive chimneypiece, and were shut from the lower rooms by a latched door. Gregory had never been invited upstairs, but he did .not hesitate. Throwing the door open, he started up the stairwell, and almost at once ran into a body. Its softness told him that this was Nancy; she stood in the dark weeping. Even as he caught her and breathed her name, she broke from his grasp and ran from him up the stairs. He could bear noises more clearly now, and the sound of cryingthough at the moment he was not listening. Nancy ran to a door on the landing nearest to the top of the stairs, burst into the room beyond, and closed it. When Gregory tried the latch, he heard the bolt slide to on the other side. “Nancy!” he called. “Don’t hide from me! What is it?

What’s happening?”

She made no answer. As he stood there baffled against the door, the next door along the passage opened and Doctor Crouchorn emerged, clutching his little black bag. He was a tall, somber man, with deep lines on his face that inspired such fear into his patients that a remarkable percentage of them did as he bid and recovered. Even here, he wore the top hat that, simply by remaining constantly in position, contributed to the doctor’s fame in the neighborhood.

“What’s the trouble. Doctor Crouchorn?” Gregory asked, as the medical man shut the door behind him and started down the stairs. “Has the plague struck this house, or something equally terrible?”

“Plague, young man, plague? No, it is something much more unnatural than that.”

He stared at Gregory unsmilingly, as if promising himself inwardly not to move a muscle again until Gregory asked the obvious.

“What did you call for. Doctor?”

“The hour of Mrs. Grendon’s confinement struck during the night,” he said.

A wave of relief swept over Gregory. He had forgotten Nancy’s mother! “She had her baby? Was it a boy?” The doctor nodded in slow motion. “She bore two boys, young man.” He hesitated, and then a muscle in his face twitched and he said in a rush, “She also bore seven daughters. Nine children! And they allthey all live.” Gregory found Grendon round the corner of the house. The farmer had a pitchfork full of hay, which he was carrying over his shoulder into the cowsheds. Gregory stood in his way but he pushed past.

“I want to speak to you, Joseph.”

“There’s work to be done. Pity you can’t see that.”

“I want to speak about your wife.”

Grendon made no reply. He worked like a demon, tossing the hay down, turning for more. In any case, it was difficult to talk. The cows and calves, closely confined, seemed to set up a per-petual uneasy noise of lowing and uncow-like grunts. Gregory followed the farmer round to the hayrick, but the man walked like one possessed. His eyes seemed sunk into his head, his mouth was puckered until his lips were invisible. When Gregory laid a hand on his arm, he shook it off. Stabbing up another great load of hay, he swung back towards the sheds so violently that Gregory had to jump out of his way. Gregory lost his temper. Following Grendon back into the cowshed, he swung the bottom of the two-part door shut, and bolted it on the outside. When Grendon came back, he did not budge.

“Joseph, what’s got into you? Why are you suddenly so heartless? Surely your wife needs you by her?” His eyes had a curious blind look as he turned them at Gregory. He held the pitchfork before him in both hands almost like a weapon as he said, “I been with her all night, bor, while she brought forth her increase.”

“But now”

“She got a nursing woman from Dereham Cottages with her now. I been with her all night. Now I got to see to the farm-things keep growing, you know.”

“They’re growing too much, Joseph. Stop and think”

“I’ve no time for talking.” Dropping the pitchfork, he elbowed Gregory out of the way, unbolted the door, and flung it open. Grasping Gregory firmly by the biceps of one arm, he began to propel him along to the vegetable beds down by the South Meadows.

The early lettuce were gigantic here. Everything bristled out of the ground. Recklessly, Grendon ran among the lines of new green, pulling up fistfuls of young radishes, carrots, spring onions, scattering them over his shoulder as fast as he plucked them from the ground.

“See, Gregoryall bigger than you ever seen ‘cm, and weeks early! The harvest is going to be a bumper. Look at the fields! Look at the orchard!” With wide gesture, he swept a hand towards the lines of trees, buried in the mounds of snow-and-pink of their blossom. “Whatever happens, we got to take advantage of it. It may not happen another year. Whyit’s like a fairy story!”

He said no more. Turning, he seemed already to have forgotten Gregory. Eyes down at the ground that had suddenly achieved such abundance, he marched back towards the sheds. Nancy was in the kitchen. Neckland had brought her in a stoup of fresh milk, and she was supping it wearily from a ladle.

“Oh, Greg, I’m sorry I ran from you. I was so upset.” She came to him, still holding the ladle but dangling her arms over his shoulders in a familiar way she had not used before. “Poor Mother, I fear her mind is unhinged withwith bearing so many children. She’s talking such strange stuff as I never heard before, and I do believe she fancies as she’s a child again.”

“Is it to be wondered at?” he said, smoothing her hair with his hand. “She’ll be better once she’s recovered from the shock.” They kissed each other, and after a minute she passed him a ladleful of milk. He drank and then spat it out in disgust. “Ugh! What’s got into the milk? Is Neckland trying to poison you or something? Have you tasted it? It’s as bitter as sloes!”

She pulled a puzzled face. “I thought it tasted rather strange, but not unpleasant. Here, let me try again.”

“No, it’s too horrible. Some Sloane’s Liniment must have got mixed in it.”

Despite his warning, she put her lips to the metal spoon and sipped, then shook her head. “You’re imagining things, Greg. It does taste a bit different, ‘tis true, but there’s nothing wrong with it. You’ll stay to take a bite with us, I hope?”

“No, Nancy, I’m off now. I have a letter awaiting me that I must answer; it arrived when I was in Norwich. Listen, my lovely Nancy, this letter is from Dr. Hudson-Ward, an old aquaintance of my father’s. He is headmaster of a school in Gloucester, and he wishes me to join the staff there as a teacher on most favorable terms. So you see I may not be idle much longer!”

Laughing, she clung to him. “That’s wonderful, my darling! What a handsome schoolmaster you will make. But Gloucester that’s over the other side of the country. I suppose we shan’t be seeing you again once you get there,”

“Nothing’s settled yet, Nancy.”

“You’ll be gone in a week and we shan’t never see you again. Once you get to that there old school, you will never think of your Nancy no more.”

He cupped her face in his hands. “Are you my Nancy? Do you care for me?”

Her eyelashes came over her dark eyes. “Greg, things are so muddled here1 meanyes, I do care, I dread to think I’d not see you again.”

Recalling her saying that, he rode away a quarter of an hour later very content at heartand entirely neglectful of the dangers to which he left her exposed.

Rain fell lightly as Gregory Rolles made his way that evening to “The Wayfarer” inn. His friend Bruce Fox was already there, ensconced in one of the snug seats of the inglenook. On this occasion. Fox was more interested in purveying details of his sister’s forthcoming wedding than in listening to what Gregory had to tell, and since some of his future brother-in-law’s friends soon arrived, and had to buy and be bought libations, the evening became a merry and thoughtless one. And in a short while, the ale having its good effect, Gregory also forgot what he wanted to say and began whole-heartedly to enjoy the company.

Next morning, he awoke with a heavy head and in a dismal state of mind. The day was too wet for him to go out and take exercise. He sat moodily in a chair by the window, delaying an answer to Dr. Hudson-Ward, the headmaster. Lethargically, he returned to a small leather-bound volume on serpents that he had acquired in Norwich a few days earlier. After a while, a passage caught his particular attention:

“Most serpents of the venomous variety, with the exception of the opisthoglyphs, release their victims from their fangs after striking. The victims die in some cases in but a few seconds, while in other cases the onset of moribundity may be delayed by hours or days. The saliva of some of the serpents contains not only venom but a special digestive virtue. The deadly Coral Snake of Brazil, though attaining no more than a foot in length, has this virtue in abundance. Accordingly, when it bites an animal or a human being, the victim not only dies in profound agony in a matter of seconds, but his interiors parts are then dissolved, so that even the bones become no more than jelly. Then may the little serpent suck all of the victim out as a kind of soup or broth from the original wound in its skin, which latter alone remains intact.”

For a long while, Gregory sat where he was in the window, with the book open in his lap, thinking about the Grendon farm, and about Nancy. He reproached himself for having done so little for his friends there, and gradually resolved on a plan of action the next time he rode out; but his visit was to be delayed for some days: the wet weather had set in with more determination than the end of April and the beginning of May generally allowed.

Gregory tried to concentrate on a letter to the worthy Dr. Hudson-Ward in the county of Gloucestershire. He knew he should take the job, indeed he felt inclined to do so; but first he knew he had to see Nancy safe. The indecisions he felt caused him to delay answering the doctor until the next day, when he feebly wrote that he would be glad to accept the post offered at the price offered, but begged to have a week to think about it. When he took the letter down to the post-woman in “The Three Poachers,” the rain still fell. One morning, the rains were suddenly vanished, the blue and wide East Anglian skies were back, and Gregory saddled up Daisy and rode .out along the mirey track he had so often taken. As he arrived at the farm. Grubby and Neckland were at work in the ditch, unblocking it with shovels. He saluted them and rode in. As he was about to put the mare into the stables, he saw Grendon and Nancy standing on the patch of waste ground under the windowless east side of the house. He went slowly to join them, noting as he walked how dry the ground was here, as if no rain had fallen in a fortnight. But this observation was drowned in shock as he saw the nine little crosses Grendon was sticking into nine freshly turned mounds of earth.

Nancy stood weeping. They both looked up as Gregory approached, but Grendon went stubbornly on with his task. “Oh, Nancy, Joseph, I’m so sorry about this!” Gregory exclaimed. “To think that they’ve allbut where’s the parson? Where’s the parson, Joseph? Why are you burying them, with-out a proper service or anything?”

“I told Father, but he took no heedl” Nancy exclaimed. Grendon had reached the last grave. He seized the last crude wooden cross, lifted it above his head, and stabbed it down into the ground as if he would pierce the heart of what lay under it. Only then did he straighten and speak.

“We don’t need a parson here. I’ve got no time to waste with parsons. I have work to do if you ent.”

“But these are your children, Joseph! What has got into you?”

“They are part of the farm now, as they always was.” He turned, rolling his shirt sleeves further up his brawny arms, and strode off in the direction of the ditching activities. Gregory took Nancy in his arms and looked at her tear-stained face. “What a time you must have been having these last few days!”

“I1 thought you’d gone to Gloucester, Greg! Why didn’t you come? Every day I waited for you to cornel”

“It was so wet and flooded.”

“It’s been lovely weather since you- were last here. Look how everything has grown!”

“It poured with rain every single day in Cottersall.”

“Well, I never! That explains why there is so much water flowing in the Oast and in the ditches. But we’ve had only a few light showers.”

“Nancy, tell me, how did these poor little mites die?”

“I’d rather not say, if you don’t mind.”

“Why didn’t your father get in Parson Landon? How could he be so lacking in feeling?”

“Because he didn’t want anyone from the outside world to know. You seeoh, I must tell you, my dearit’s Mother. She has gone completely off her head, completely! It was the evening before last, when she took her first turn outside the back door.”

“You don’t mean to say she”

“Ow, Greg, you’re hurting my arms! Sheshe crept upstairs when we weren’t noticing and sheshe stifled each of the babies in turn, Greg, under the best goose feather pillow.” He could feel the color leaving his cheeks. Solicitously, she led him to the back of the house. They sat together on the orchard railings while he digested the words in silence. “How is your mother now, Nancy?”

“She’s silent. Father had to bar her in her room for safety.

Last night she screamed a lot. But this morning she’s quiet.” He looked dazedly about him. The appearance of everything was speckled, as if the return of his blood to his head somehow infected it with a rash. The blossom had gone almost entirely from the fruit trees in the orchard and already the embryo apples showed signs of swelling. Nearby, broad beafas bowed under enormous pods. Seeing his glance, Nancy dipped into her apron pocket and produced a bunch of shining crimson radishes as big as tangerines.

“Have one of these. They’re crisp and wet and hot, just as they should be.”

Indifferently, he accepted and bit the tempting globe. At once he had to spit the portion out. There again was that vile bitter flavor!

“Oh, but they’re lovely!” Nancy protested. “Not even ‘rather strange’ nowsimply lovely’? Nancy, don’t you see, something uncanny and awful is taking place here. I’m sorry, but I can’t see otherwise. You and your father should leave here at once.”

“Leave here, Greg? Just because you don’t like the taste of these lovely radishes? How can we leave here? Where should we go? See this here house? My granddad died here, and his father before him. It’s our place. We can’t just up and off, not even after this bit of trouble. Try another radish.”

“For heaven’s sake, Nancy, they taste as if the flavor was intended for creatures with a palate completely different from ours . . . Oh . . .” He stared at her. “And perhaps they are.

Nancy, I tell you”

He broke off, sliding from the railing. Neckland had come up from one side, still plastered in mud from his work in the ditch, his collariess shirt flapping open. In his hand, he grasped an ancient and military-looking pistol.

“I’ll fire this if you come nearer,” he said. “It goes okay, never worry, and it’s loaded. Master Gregory. Now you’re a-going to listen to me!”

“Bert, put that thing away!” Nancy exclaimed. She moved forward to him, but Gregory pulled her back and stood before her.

“Don’t be a bloody idiot, Neckland. Put it away!”

“I’ll shoot you, bor, I’ll shoot you, I swear, if you mucks about.” His eyes were glaring, and the look on his dark face left no doubt that he meant what he said. “You’re going to swear to me that you’re going to clear off of this farm on that nag of yours and never come back again.”

“I’m going straight to tell my father, Bert,” Nancy warned.

The pistol twitched.

“If you move, Nancy, I warn you I’ll shoot this fine chap of yours in the leg. Besides, your father don’t care about Master Gregory anymorehe’s got better things to worry him.”

“Like finding out what’s happening here?” Gregory said. “Listen, Neckland, we’re all in trouble. This farm is being run by a group of nasty little monsters. You can’t see them because they’re invisible” The gun exploded. As he spoke, Nancy had attempted to run off. Without hesitating, Neckland fired down at Gregory’s knees. Gregory felt the shot pluck his trouser leg and knew himself unharmed. With knowledge came rage. He flung himself at Neckland and hit him hard over the heart. Falling back, Neckland dropped the pistol and swung his fist wildly. Gregory struck him again. As he did so, the other grabbed him and they began furiously hitting each other. When Gregory broke free, Neckland grappled with him again. There was more pummeling of ribs.

“Let me go, you swine!” Gregory shouted. He hooked his foot behind Neckland’s ankle, and they both rolled over onto the grass. At this point, a sort of flood bank had been raised long ago between the house and low-lying orchard. Down this the two men rolled, fetching up sharply against the stone wall of the kitchen. Neckland got the worst of it, catching his head on the corner, and lay there stunned. Gregory found himself looking at two feet encased in ludicrous stockings. Slowly, he rose to his feet, and confronted Mrs. Grendon at less than a yard’s distance. She was smiling.

He stood there, and gradually straightened his back, looking at her anxiously.

“So there you are, Jackie, my Jackalums,” she said. The smile was wider now and less like a smile. “I wanted to talk to you. You are the one who knows about the things that walk on the lines, aren’t you?”

“I don’t understand, Mrs. Grendon.”

“Don’t call me that there daft old name, sonnie. You know all about the little gray things that aren’t supposed to be there, don’t you?”

“Oh, those . . . Suppose I said I did know?”

“The other naughty children will pretend they don’t know what I mean, but you know, don’t you? You know about the little gray things.”

The sweat stood out on his brow. She had moved nearer. She stood close, staring into his eyes, not touching him; but he was acutely conscious that she could touch him at any moment. From the corner of his eye, he saw Neckland stir and crawl away from the house, but there were other things to occupy him.

“These little gray things,” he said. “Did you save the nine babies from them?”

“The gray things wanted to kiss them, you see, but I couldn’t let them. I was clever. I hid them under the good feather pillow and now even / can’t find them!” She began to laugh, making a horrible low whirring sound in her throat. “They’re small and gray and wet, aren’t they?” Gregory said sharply. “They’ve got big feet, webbed like frogs, but they’re heavy and short, aren’t they, and they have fangs like a snake, haven’t they?”

She looked doubtful. Then her eye seemed to catch a move-ment. She looked fixedly to one side. “Here comes one now, the female one,” she said.

Gregory turned to look where she did. Nothing was visible.

His mouth was dry. “How many are there, Mrs. Grendon?” Then he saw the short grass stir, flatten, and raise near at hand, and let out a cry of alarm. Wrenching off his riding boot, he swung it in an arc, low above the ground. It struck something concealed in thin air. Almost at once, he received a terrific kick in the thigh, and fell backwards. Despite the hurt, fear made him jump up almost at once.

Mrs. Grendon was changing. Her mouth collapsed as if it would run off one corner of her face. Her head sagged to one side. Her shoulders fell. A deep crimson blush momentarily suffused her features, then drained, and as it drained she dwindled like a deflating rubber balloon. Gregory sank to his knees, whimpering, buried his face in his hands, and pressed his hands to the grass. Darkness overcame him. His senses must have left him only for a moment. When he pulled himself up again, the almost empty bag of women’s clothes was still settling slowly to the ground. “Joseph! Joseph!” he yelled. Nancy had fled. In a distracted mixture of panic and fury, he dragged his boot on again and rushed round the house towards the cowsheds. Neckland stood halfway between barn and mill, rubbing his skull. In his rattled state, the sight of Gregory apparently in full pursuit made him run away.

“Neckland!” Gregory shouted. He ran like mad for the other. Neckland bolted for the mill, jumped inside, tried to pull the door to, lost his nerve, and ran up the wooden stairs. Gregory bellowed after him.

The pursuit took them right to the top of the mill. Neckland had lost enough wit even to kick over the bolt of the trapdoor. Gregory, burst it up and climbed out panting. Throughly cowed, Neckland backed towards the opening until he was almost out on the little platform above the sails. “You’ll fall out, you idiot,” Gregory warned. “Listen, Neckland, you have no reason to fear me. I want no enmity between us. There’s a bigger enemy we must fight. Look!” He came towards the low door and looked down at the dark surface of the pond. Neckland grabbed the overhead pulley for security and said nothing.

“Look down at the pond,” Gregory said. “That’s where the -Aurigans live. My GodBert, look, there one goes!” The urgency in his voice made the farmhand look down where he pointed. Together, the two men watched as a depression slid over the black water; an overlapping chain of ripples swung back from it. At approximately the middle of the pond, the depression became a commotion. A small whirlpool formed and died, and the ripples began to settle. “There’s your ghost, Bert,” Gregory gasped. “That must have been the one that got poor Mrs. Grendon. Now do you be-lieve?”

“I never heard of a ghost as lived under water,” Neckland gasped.

“A ghost never harmed anyonewe’ve already had a sample of what these terrifying things can do. Come on, Bert, shake hands, understand I bear you no hard feelings. Oh, come on, man! I know how you feel about Nancy, but she must be free to .make her own choice in life.”

They shook hands and grinned rather foolishly at each other. “We better go and tell the farmer what we seen,” Neckland said. “I reckon that thing done what happened to Lardie last evening.”

“Lardie? What’s happened to her? I thought I hadn’t seen her today.”

“Same as happened to the little pigs. I found her just inside the barn. Just her coat was left, that’s all. No insides! Like she’d been sucked dry.”

It took Gregory twenty minutes to summon the council of war on which he had set his mind. The party gathered in the farmhouse,, in the parlor. By this time, Nancy had somewhat recovered from the shock of her mother’s death, and sat in an armchair with a shawl about her shoulders. Her father stood nearby with his arms folded, looking impatient, while Bert Neckland lounged by the door. Only Grubby was not present. He had been told to get on with the ditching. “I’m going to have another attempt to convince you all that you are in very grave danger,” Gregory said. “You won’t see it for yourselves. The situation is that we’re all animals together at present. Do you remember that strange meteor that fell out of the sky last winter, Joseph? And do you remember that ill-smelling dew early in the spring? They were not unconnected, and they are connected with all that’s happening now. That meteor was a space machine of some sort, I firmly believe, and it brought in it a kind of life thatthat is not so much hostile to terrestrial life as indifferent to its quality. The creatures from that machine1 call them Aurigansspread the dew over the farm. It was a growth accelerator, a manure or fertilizer, that speeds growth in plants and animals.”

“So much better for us!” Grendon said.

“But it’s not better. The things grow wildly, yes, but the taste is altered to suit the palates of those things out there. You’ve seen what happened. You can’t sell anything. People won’t touch your eggs or milk or meatthey taste too foul.”

“But that’s a lot of nonsense. We’ll sell in Norwich. Our produce is better than it ever was. We eat it, don’t we?”

“Yes, Joseph, you eat it. But anyone who eats at your table is doomed. Don’t you understandyou are all ‘fertilized’ just as surely as the pigs and chickens. Your place has been turned into a superfarm, and you are all meat to the Aurigans.” That set a silence in the room, until Nancy said in a small voice, “You don’t believe such a terrible thing.”

“I suppose these unseen creatures told you all this?”

Grendon said truculently.

“Judge by the evidence, as I do. Your wife1 must be brutal, Josephyour wife was eaten, like the dog and the pigs. As everything else will be in time. The Aurigans aren’t even cannibals. They aren’t like us. They don’t care whether we have souls or intelligences, any more than we really care whether bullocks have.”

“No one’s going to eat me,” Neckland said, looking decidedly white about the gills.

“How can you stop them? They’re invisible, and I think they can strike like snakes. They’re aquatic and I think they may be oftly two feet tall. How can you protect.yourself?” He turned to the farmer. “Joseph, the danger is very great, and not only to us here. At first, they may have offered us no harm while they got the measure of usotherwise I’d have died in your rowing boat. Now there’s no longer doubt of their hostile intent. I beg you to let me go to Heigham and telephone to the chief of police in Norwich, or at least to the local militia, to get them to come and help us.”

The farmer shook his head slowly, and pointed a finger at Gregory.

“You soon forgot them talks we had, bor, all about the coming age of socialism and how the powers of the state was going to wither away. Directly we get a bit of trouble, you want to call in the authorities. There’s no harm here a few savage dogs like my old Cuff can’t handle, and I don’t say as I ent going to get a couple of dogs, but you’m a fule if you reckon I’m getting the authorities down here. Fine old socialist you turn out to be!”

“You have no room to talk about that!” Gregory exclaimed. “Why didn’t you let Grubby come here? If you were a socialist, you’d treat the men as you treat yourself. Instead, you leave him out in the ditch. I wanted him to hear this discussion.” The farmer leant threateningly across the table at him. “Oh, you did, did you? Since when was this your farm? And Grubby can come and go as he likes when it’s his, so put that in your pipe and smoke it, bor! Who do you just think you are?” He moved closer to Gregory, apparently happy to work off his fears as anger. “You’re trying to scare us all off this here little old bit of ground, ent you? Well, the Grendons ent a scaring sort, see! Now I’ll tell you something. See that shotgun there on the wall? That be loaded. And if you ent off this farm by midday, that shotgun ont be on that wall no more. It’ll be here, bor, right here in my two hands, and I’ll be letting you have it right where you’ll feel it most.”

“You can’t do that. Father,” Nancy said. “You know Greg-ory is a friend of ours.”

“For God’s sake, Joseph,” Gregory said, “see where your enemy lies. Bert, tell Mr. Grendon what we saw on the pond, go on!”

Neckland was far from keen to be dragged into this argument. He scratched his head, drew a red-and-white spotted kerchief from round his neck to wipe his face, and muttered, “We saw a sort of ripple on the water, but I didn’t see nothing really, Master Gregory. I mean, it could have been the wind, couldn’t it?”

“Now you be warned, Gregory,” the farmer repeated. “You be off my land by noon by the sun, and that mare of yours, or I ont answer for it.” He marched out into the pale sunshine, and Neckland followed.

Nancy and Gregory stood staring at each other. He took her hands, and they were cold.

“You believe what I was saying, Nancy?”

“Is that why the food did at one point taste bad to us, and then soon tasted well enough again?”

“It can only have been that at that time your systems were not fully adjusted to the poison. Now they are. You’re being fed up, Nancy, just like the livestockI’m sure of it! I fear for you, darling love, I fear so much. What are we to do? Come back to Cottersall with me! Mrs. Fenn has another fine little drawing room upstairs that I’m sure she would rent.”

“Now you’re talking nonsense, Greg! How can I? What would people say? No, you go away for now and let the tempest of Father’s wrath abate, and if you could come back tomorrow, you will find he will be milder for sure, because I plan to wait on him tonight and talk to him about you. Why, he’s half daft with grief and doesn’t know what he says.”

“All right, my darling. But stay inside as much as you can. The Aurigans have not come indoors yet, as far as we know, and it may be safer here. And lock all the doors and put the shutters over the windows before you go to bed. And get your father to take that shotgun of his upstairs with him.” The evenings were lengthening with confidence towards summer now, and Bruce Fox arrived home before sunset. As he jumped from his bicycle this evening, he found his friend Gregory impatiently awaiting him.

They went indoors together, and while Fox ate a large tea, Gregory told him what had been happening at the farm that day.

“You’re in trouble,” Fox said. “Look, tomorrow’s Sunday. I’ll skip church and come out with you. You need help.”

“Joseph may shoot me. He’ll be certain to if I bring along a stranger. You can help me tonight by telling me where I can purchase a young dog straightaway to protect Nancy.”

“Nonsense, I’m coming with you. I can’t bear hearing all this at secondhand anyhow. We’ll pick up a pup in any eventthe blacksmith has a litter to be rid of. Have you got any plan of action?”

“Plan? No, not really.”

“You must have a plan. Grendon doesn’t scare too easily, does he?”

“I imagine he’s scared well enough. Nancy says he’s scared. He just isn’t imaginative enough to see what he can do but carry on working as hard as possible.”

“Look, I know these farmers. They won’t believe anything till you rub their noses in it. What we must do is show him an Aurigan.”

“Oh, splendid, Bruce! And how do you catch one?”

“You trap one.”

“Don’t forget they’re invisiblehey, Bruce, yes, by Jove, you’re right! I’ve the very idea! Look, we’ve nothing more to worry about if we can trap one. We can trap the lot, however many there are, and we can kill the little horrors when we have trapped them.”

Fox grinned over the top of a chunk of cherry cake. “We’re agreed, I suppose, that these Aurigans aren’t socialist Utopians any longer?”

~

It helped a great deal, Gregory thought, to be able to visualize roughly what the alien life form looked like. The volume on serpents had been a happy find, for not only did it give an idea of how the Aurigans must be able to digest their prey so rapidly”a kind of soup or broth”but presumably it gave a clue to their appearance. To live in a space machine, they would probably be fairly small, and they seemed to be semi-aquatic. It all went to make up a picture of a strange being: skin perhaps scaled like a fish, great flipper feet like a frog, barrel-like diminutive stature, and a tiny he’ad with two great fangs in the jaw. There was no doubt but that the invisibility cloaked a really ugly-looking dwarf! As the macabre image passed through his head, Gregory and Bruce Fox were preparing their trap. Fortunately, Grendon had offered no resistance to their entering the farm; Nancy had evidently spoken to good effect. And he had suffered another shock. Five fowls had been reduced to little but feathers and skin that morning almost before his eyes, and he was as a result sullen and indifferent of what went on. Now he was out in a distant field working, and the two young men were allowed to carry out their plans unmolestedthough not without an .oc-casional anxious glance at the pondwhile a worried Nancy looked on from the farmhouse window.

She had with her a sturdy young mongrel dog of eight months, which Gregory and Bruce had brought along, called Gyp. Grendon had obtained two ferocious hounds from a distant neighbor. These wide-mouthed brutes were secured on long running chains that enabled them to patrol from the horse trough by the pond, down the west side of the house, almost to the elms and the bridge leading over to West Field. They barked stridently most of the time and seemed to cause a general unease among the other animals, all of which gave voice restlessly this forenoon.

The dogs would be a difficulty, Nancy had said, for they refused to touch any of the food the farm could provide. It was hoped they would take it when they became hungry enough. Grendon had planted a great board by the farm gate and on the board had painted a notice telling everyone to keep away. Armed with pitchforks, the two young men carried flour sacks out from the mill and placed them at strategic positions across the yard as far as the gate. Gregory went to the cowsheds and led out one of the calves there on a length of binder twine under the very teeth of the barking dogshe only hoped they would prove as hostile to the Aurigans as they seemed to be to human life.

As he was pulling the calf across the yard. Grubby appeared. “You’d better stay away from us. Grubby. We’re trying to trap one of the ghosts.”

“Master, if I catch one, I shall strangle him, straight I will.”

“A pitchfork is a better weapon. These ghosts are dangerous little beasts at close quarters.”

“I’m strong, bor, I tell ‘ee! I’d strangle un!” To prove his point, Grubby rolled his striped and tattered sleeve even further up his arm and exposed to Gregory and Fox his enormous biceps. At the same time, he wagged his great heavy head and lolled his tongue out of his mouth, perhaps to demonstrate some of the effects of strangulation. “It’s a very fine arm,” Gregory agreed. “But, look. Grubby, we have a better idea. We are going to do this ghost to death with pitchforks. If you want to join in, you’d better get a spare one from the stable.”

Grubby looked at him with a sly-shy expression and stroked his throat. “I’d be better at strangling, bor. I’ve always wanted to strangle someone.”

“Why should you want to do that, Grubby?” The laborer lowered his voice. “I always wanted to see how difficult it would be. I’m strong, you see. I got my strength up as a lad by doing some of this here stranglingbut never men, you know, just cattle.”

Backing away a pace, Gregory said, “This time, Grubby, it’s pitchforks for us.” To settle the issue, he went into the stables, got a pitchfork, and returned to thrust it into Grubby’s hand. “Let’s get on with it,” Fox said.

They were all ready to start. Fox and Grubby crouched down in the ditch on either side of the gate, weapons at the ready. Gregory emptied one of the bags of flour over the yard in a patch just before the gate, so that anyone leaving the farm would have to walk through it. Then he led the calf towards the pond.

The young animal set up an uneasy mooing, and most of the beasts nearby seemed to answer. The chickens and hens scattered about the yard in the pale sunshine as if demented. Gregory felt the sweat trickle down his back, although his skin was cold with the chemistries of suspense. With a slap on its rump, he forced the calf into the water of the pond. It stood there unhappily, until he led it out again and slowly back across the yard, past the mill and the grain store on his right, past Mrs. Grendon’s neglected flowerbed on his left, towards the gate where his allies waited. And for all his determination not to do so, he could not stop himself looking backwards at the leaden surface of the pond to see if anything followed him. He led the calf through the gate and stopped. No tracks but his and the calf’s showed in the strewn flour.

“Try it again,” Fox advised. “Perhaps they are taking a nap down there.”

Gregory went through the routine again, and a third and fourth time, on each occasion smoothing the flour after he had been through it. Each time, he saw Nancy watching helplessly from the house. Each time, he felt a little more sick with tension.

Yet when it happened, it took him by surprise. He had got the calf to the gate for a fifth time when Fox’s shout joined the chorus of animal noises. The pond had shown no special ripple, so the Aurigan had come from some dark-purposed prowl of the farmsuddenly, its finned footsteps were marking the flour.

Veiling with excitement, Gregory dropped the rope that led the calf and ducked to one side. Seizing up an opened bag of flour by the gatepost, he flung its contents before the advancing figure.

The bomb of flour exploded all over the Aurigan. Now it was revealed in chalky outline. Despite himself, Gregory found himself screaming in sheer fright as the ghastliness was revealed in whirling white. It was especially the size that frightened: this dread thing, remote from human form, was too big for earthly natureten feet high, perhaps twelve! Invincible, and horribly quick, it came rushing at him with unnumbered arms striking out towards him. Next morning, Dr. Crouchorn and his silk hat appeared at Gregory’s bedside, thanked Mrs. Fenn for some hot water, and dressed Gregory’s leg wound.

“You got off lightly, considering,” the old man said. “But if you will take a piece of advice from me, Mr. Rolles, you will cease to visit the Grendon farm. It’s an evil place and you’ll come to no good there.”

Gregory nodded. He had told the doctor nothing, except that Grendon had run up and shot him in the leg; which was true enough, but that it omitted most of the story. “When will I be up again, doctor?”

“Oh, young flesh heals soon enough, or undertakers would be rich men and doctors paupers. A few days should see you right as rain. But I’ll be visiting you again tomorrow, until then you are to stay flat on your back and keep that leg motionless.”

“I suppose I may write a letter, doctor?”

“I suppose you may, young man.”

Directly Dr. Crouchorn had gone, Gregory took pen and paper and addressed some urgent lines to Nancy. They told her that he loved her very much and could not bear to think of her remaining on the farm; that he could not get to see her for a few days because of his leg wound; and that she must immediately come away on Hetty with a bag full of her things and stay at “The Wayfarer,” where there was a capital room for which he would pay. That if she thought anything of him, she must put the simple plan into action this very day, and send him word round from the inn when she was established there. With some .satisfaction, Gregory read this through twice, signe’d it, and added kisses, and summoned Mrs. Fenn with the aid of a small bell she had provided for that purpose. He told her that the delivery of the letter was a matter of extreme urgency. He would entrust it to Tommy, the baker’s boy, to deliver when his morning round was over, and would give him a shilling for his efforts. Mrs. Fenn was not enthusiastic about this, but with a little flattery was persuaded to speak to Tommy; she left the bedroom clutching both letter and shilling.

At once, Gregory began another letter, this one to Mr. H. G. Wells. It was some while since he had last addressed his correspondent, and so he had to make a somewhat lengthy report; but eventually he came to the events of the previous day.

So horrified was I by the sight of the Aurigan (he wrote), that I stood where I was, unable to move, while the flour blew about us. And how can I now convey to youwho are perhaps the most interested person in this vital subject in all the British Isleswhat the monster looked like, outlined in white? My impressions were, of course, both brief and indefinite, but the main handicap is that there is nothing on Earth to liken this weird being to!

It appeared, I suppose, most like some horrendous goose, but the neck must be imagined as almost as thick as the bodyindeed, it was almost all body, or all neck, whichever way you look at it. And on top of this neck was no head but a terrible array of various sorts of arms, a nest of writhing cilia, antennae, and whips, for all the world as if an octopus were entangled with a Portuguese man-o’-war as big as itself, with a few shrimp and starfish legs thrown in. Does this sound ludicrous? I can only swear to you that as it bore down on me, perhaps twice my own height or more, I found it something almost too terrifying for human eyes to look onand yet I did not see it, but merely the flour that adhered to it! That repulsive sight would have been the last my eyes ever dwelt on had it not been for Grubby, the simple farmhand I have had occasion to mention before.

As I threw the flour. Grubby gave a great cry and rushed forward, dropping the pitchfork. He jumped at the creature as it turned on me. This put out our plan, which was that he and Bruce Fox should pitchfork the creature to death. Instead, he grasped it as high as he possibly might and commenced to squeeze with full force of his mighty muscles. What a tetrifying contest! What a fear-fraught combat!

Collecting his wits, Bruce charged forward and attacked with his pitchfork. It was his battle cry that brought me back from my paralysis into action. I ran and seized Grubby’s pitchfork and also charged. That thing had arms for us all! It struck out, and I have no doubt that several arms held poisoned needle teeth, for I saw one come towards me gaping like a snake’s mouth. Need I stress the dangerparticularly when you recall that the effect of the flour cloud was only partial, and there were still invisible arms flailing around us! Our saving was that the Aurigan was cowardly. I saw Bruce jab it hard, and a second later, I rammed my pitchfork right through its foot. At once it had had enough. Grubby fell to the ground as it retreated. It moved at amazing speed, back to-wards the pool. We were in pursuit! And all the beasts of the barnyard uttered their cries to it.

As it launched itself into the water, we both flung our pitchforks at its form. But it swam out strongly and then dived below the surface, leaving only ripples and a scummy trail of flour.

We stood staring at the water for an instant, and then with common accord ran back to Grubby. He was dead. He lay face up and was no longer recognizable. The Aurigan must have struck him with its poisoned fangs as soon as he attacked. Grubby’s skin was stretched tight and glistened oddly. He had turned a dull crimson. No longer was he more than a caricature of human shape. All his internal substance had been transformed to liquid by the rapid-working venoms of the Aurigan; he was like a sort of giant man-shaped rotten haggis. There were wound marks across his neck and throat and what had been his face, and from these wounds his substance drained, so that he slowly deflated into his trampled bed of flour and dust. Perhaps the sight of fabled Medusa’s head, that turned men to stone, was no worse than this, for we stood there utterly paralyzed. It was a blast from Farmer Grendon’s shot-gun that brought us back to life.

He had threatened to shoot me. Now, seeing us despoiling his flour sacks and apparently about to make off with a calf, he fired at us. We had no choice but to run for it. Grendon was in no explaining mood. Good Nancy came running out to stop him, but Neckland was charging up too with the pair of savage dogs’ growling at the ends of their chains. . Bruce and I had ridden up on my Daisy. I had left her saddled. Bringing her out of the stable at a trot, I heaved Bruce up into the saddle and was about to climb on myself when the gun went off again and I felt a burning pain in my leg. Bruce dragged me into the saddle and we were off1 half unconscious.

Here I lie now in bed, and should be about again in a couple of days. Fortunately, the shot did not harm any bones. So you see how the farm is now a place of the damned! Once, I thought it might even become a new Eden, growing the food of the gods for men like gods. Insteadalas! the first meeting between humanity and beings from another world has proved disastrous, and the Eden is become a battleground for a war of worlds. How can our anticipations for the future be anything other than gloomy?

Before I close this over-long account, I must answer a query in your letter and pose another to you, more personal than yours to me.

First, you question if the Aurigans are entirely invisible and sayif I may quote your letter”Any alteration in the refrac-tive index of the eye lenses would make vision impossible, but without such alteration the eyes would be visible as glassy globules. And for vision it is also necessary that there should be visual purple behind the retina and an opaque cornea. How then do your Aurigans manage for vision?” The answer must be that they do without eyesight as we know it, for I think they naturally maintain a complete invisibility. How they “see” I know not, but whatever sense they use, it is effective. How they communicate I know notour fellow made not the slightest sound when I speared his foot!yet it is apparent they must communicate effectively. Perhaps they tried originally to communicate with us through a mysterious sense we do not possess and, on receiving no answer, assumed us to be as dumb as our dumb animals. If so, what a tragedy! Now to my personal inquiry. I know, sir, that you must grow more busy as you grow more famous; but I feel that what transpires here in this remote corner of East Anglia is of momentous import to the world and the future. Could you not take it upon yourself to pay us a visit here? You would be comfortable at one of our two inns, and the journey here by railway is efficient if tediousyou can easily ‘get a regular wagon from Heigham station here, a distance of only eight miles. You could then view Grendon’s farm for yourself, and perhaps one of these interstellar beings too. I feel you are as much amused as concerned by the accounts you receive from the undersigned, but I swear not one detail is exaggerated. Say you can come!

If you need persuasion, reflect on how much delight it will

give to

Your sincere admirer,

Gregory Rolles.

Reading this long letter through, scratching out two superfluous adjectives, Gregory lay back in some satisfaction. He had the feeling he was still involved in the struggle although temporarily out of action.

But the later afternoon brought him disquieting news. Tommy, the baker’s boy, had gone out as far as the Grendon farm. Then the ugly legends circulating in the village about the place had risen in his mind, and he had stood wondering whether he should go on. An unnatural babble of animal noise came from the farm, mixed with hammering, and when Tommy crept forward and saw the farmer himself looking as black as a puddle and building a great thing like a gibbet in the yard, he had lost his nerve and rushed back the way he came, the letter to Nancy undelivered.

Gregory lay on the bed worrying about Nancy until Mrs. Fenn brought up supper on a tray. At least it was clear now why the Aurigans had not entered the farmhouse; they were far too large to do so. She was safe as long as she kept indoorsas far as anyone on that doomed plot was safe. He fell asleep early that night. In the early hours of the morning, nightmare visited him. He was in a strange city where all the buildings were new and the people wore shining clothes. In one square grew a tree. The Gregory in the dream stood in a special relationship to the tree: he fed it. It was a job to push people who were passing by the tree against its surface. The tree was a saliva tree. Down its smooth bark ran quantities of saliva from red lips like leaves up in the boughs. It grew enor-mous on the people on which it fed. As they were thrown against it, they passed into the substance of the tree. Some of the saliva splashed on to Gregory. But instead of dissolving him, it caused everything he touched to be dissolved. He put his arms about the girl he loved, and as his mouth went towards hers, ter skin peeled away from her face. . He woke weeping desperately and fumbling blindly for the ring of the gas mantle.

Dr. Crouchom came late next morning and told Gregory he should have at least three more days complete rest for the recovery of the muscles of his leg. Gregory lay there in a state of acute dissatisfaction with himself. Recalling the vile dream, he thought how negligent he had been towards Nancy, the girl he loved. His letter to her still lay undelivered by his bedside. After Mrs. Fenn had brought up his dinner, he determined that he must see Nancy for himself. Leaving the food, he pulled himself out of bed and dressed slowly.

The leg was more painful than he had expected, but he got himself downstairs and out to the stable without too much trouble. Daisy seemed pleased to see him. He rubbed her nose and rested his head against her long cheek in sheer pleasure at being with her again.

“This may be the last time you have to undertake this particular journey, my girl,” he said.

Saddling her was comparatively easy. Getting into the saddle involved much bodily anguish. But eventually he was comfortable and they turned along the familiar and desolate road to the domain of the Aurigans. His leg was worse than he had bargained for. More than once, he had to get the mare to stop while he let the throbbing subside. He saw he was losing blood plentifully.

As he approached the farm, he observed what the baker’s boy had meant by saying Grendon was building a gibbet. A pole had been set up in the middle of the yard. A cable ran to the top of it, and a light was rigged there, so that the expanse of the yard could be illuminated by night.

Another change had taken place. A wooden fence had been built behind the horse trough, cutting off the pond from the farm. But at one point, ominously, a section of it had been broken down and splintered and crushed, as if some monstrous thing had walked through the barrier unheeding. A ferocious dog was chained just inside the gate, and barking its head off, to the consternation of the poultry. Gregory dared not enter. As he stood wondering the best way to tackle this fresh problem, the door of the farmhouse opened fractionally and Nancy peeped out. He called and signalled frantically to her.

Timidly, she ran across and let him in, dragging the dog back. Gregory kissed her cheek, soothed by the feel of her sturdy body in his arms.

“Where’s your father?”

“My dearest, your leg, your poor leg! It’s bleeding yet!”

“Never mind my leg. Where’s your father?”

“He’s down in South Meadow, I think.”

“Good! I’m going to speak with him. Nancy, I want you to go indoors and pack some belongings. I’m taking you away with me.”

“I can’t leave Father!”

“You must. I’m going to tell him now.” As he limped across the yard, she called fearfully, “He has that there gun of his’n with him all the timedo be careful!”

The two dogs on a running chain followed him all the way down to- the side of the house, nearly choking in their efforts to get at him, their teeth flashing uncomfortably close to his ankles. He noticed Neckland below Grubby’s little hut, busy sawing wood; the farmer was not with him. On impulse, Gregory turned into the sties.

It was gloomy there. In the gloom, Grendon worked. He dropped his bucket when he saw Gregory there, and came forward threateningly.

“You came back? Why don’t you stay away? Can’t you see the notice by the gate? I don’t want you here no more, bor. I know you mean well, and I intend you no harm, but I’ll kill ‘ee, understand, kill ‘ee if you ever come here again. I’ve plenty of worries without you to add to them. Now then, get you going!” Gregory stood his ground.

“Mr. Grendon, are you as mad as your wife was before she died? Do you understand that you may meet Grubby’s fate at any moment? Do you realize what you are harboring in your pond?”

“I ent a fule. But suppose them there things do eat everything, humans included? Suppose this is now their farm? They still got to have someone to tend it. So I reckon they ent going to harm me. So long as they sees me work hard, they ent going to harm me.”

“You’re being fattened, do you understand? For all the hard work you do, you must have put on a stone this last month. Doesn’t that scare you?”

Something of the farmer’s pose broke for a moment. He cast a wild look round. “I ent saying I ent scared. .I’m saying I’m doing what I have to do. We don’t own our lives. Now do me a favor and get out of here.”

Instinctively, Gregory’s glance had followed Grendon’s. For the first time, he saw in the dimness the size of the pigs. Their great broad black backs were visible over the top of the sties. They were the size of young oxen.

“This is a farm of death,” he said.

“Death’s always the end of all of us, pig or cow or man alike.”

“Right-ho, Mr. Grendon, you can think like that if you like. It’s not my way of thinking, nor am I going to see your dependents suffer from your madness. Mr. Grendon, sir, I wish to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage.” For the first three days that she was away from her home, Nancy Grendon lay in her room in “The Wayfarer” near to death. It seemed as if all ordinary food poisoned her. But gradually under Doctor Crouchorn’s ministrationterrified perhaps by the rage she suspected he would vent upon her should she fail to get bettershe recovered her strength. “You look so much better today,” Gregory said, clasping her hand. “You’ll soon be up and about again, once your system is free of all the evil nourishment of the farm.”

“Greg, dearest, promise me you will not go to the farm again.

You have no need to go now I’m not there.” He cast his eyes down and said, “Then you don’t have to get me to promise, do you?”

“I just want to be sure we neither of us go there again. Father, I feel sure, bears a charmed life. It’s as if I was now coming to my senses againbut I don’t want it to be as if you was losing yours! Supposing those things followed us here to Cottersall, those Aurigans?”

“You know, Nancy, I’ve wondered several times why’ they remain on the farm as’ they do. You would think that once they found they could so easily defeat human beings, they would attack everyone, or send for more of their own kind and try to invade us. Yet they seem perfectly content to remain in that one small space.”

She smiled. “I may not be very clever compared with you, but I can tell ‘ee the answer to that one. They ent interested in going anywhere. I think there’s just two of them, and they come to our little old world for a holiday in their space machine, same as we might go to Great Yarmouth for a couple of days for our honeymoon. Perhaps they’re on their honeymoon.”

“On honeymoon! What a ghastly idea!”

“Well, on holiday then. That was Father’s ideahe says as there’s just two of them, treating Earth as a quiet place to stay. People like to eat well when they’re on holiday, don’t they?”

He stared at Nancy aghast.

“But that’s horrible! You’re trying to make the Aurigans out to be pleasant!”

“Of course I ent, you silly ha’p’orth! But I expect they seem pleasant to each other.”

“Well, I prefer to think of them as menaces.”

“All the more reason for you to keep away from them!”

But to be out of sight was not to be out of mind’s reach. Gregory received another letter from Dr. Hudson-Ward, a kind and encouraging one, but he made no attempt to answer it. He felt he could not bear to take up any work that would remove him from the neighborhood, although the need to work, in view of his matrimonial plans, was now pressing; the modest allowance his father made him would not support two in any comfort. Yet he could not bring his thoughts to grapple with such practical problems. It was another letter he looked for, and the horrors of the farm that obsessed him. And the next night, he dreamed of the saliva tree again. In the evening, he plucked up enough courage to tell Fox and Nancy about it. They met in the little snug at the back of “The Wayfarer’s” public bar, a discreet and private place with red plush on the seats. Nancy was her usual self again, and had been out for a brief walk in the afternoon sunshine. “People wanted to give themselves to the saliva tree. And although I didn’t see this for myself, I had the distinct feeling that perhaps they weren’t actually killed so much as changed into something elsesomething less human maybe. And this time, I saw the tree was made of metal of some kind and was growing bigger and bigger by pumpsyou could see through the saliva to big armatures and pistons, and out of the branches steam was pouring.”

Fox laughed, a little unsympathetically. “Sounds to me like the shape of things to come, when even plants are grown by machinery. Events are preying on your mind, Greg! Listen, my sister is going to Norwich tomorrow, driving in her uncle’s trap. Why don’t the two of you go with her? She’s going to buy some adornments for her bridal gown, so that should interest you, Nancy-Then you could stay with Greg’s uncle for a couple of days. I assure you I will let you know immediately the Aurigans invade Cottersall, so you won’t miss anything.” Nancy seized Gregory’s arm. “Can we please, Gregory, can we? I ent been to Norwich for long enough and it’s a fine city.”

“It would be a good idea,” he said doubtfully. Both of them pressed him until he was forced to yield. He broke up the little party as soon as he decently could, kissed Nancy good-night, and walked hurriedly back down the street to the baker’s. Of one thing he was certain: if he must leave the district even for a short while, he had to have a look to see what was happening at the farm before he went. The farm looked in the summer’s dusk as it had never done before. Massive wooden screens nine feet high had been erected and hastily creosoted. They stood about in forlorn fashion, intended to keep the public gaze from the farm, but lending it unmeaning. They stood not only in the yard but at irregular intervals along the boundaries of the land, inappro-priately among fruit trees, desolately amid bracken, irrelevantly in swamp. A sound of furious hammering, punctuated by the unwearying animal noises, indicated that more screens were still being built.

But what lent the place its unearthly look was the lighting. The solitary pole supporting the electric light now had five companions: one by the gate, one by the pond, one behind the house, one outside the engine house, one down by the pig sties. Their hideous yellow glare reduced the scene to the sort of unlikely picture that might be found and puzzled over in the eternal midnight of an Egyptian tomb.

Gregory was too wise to try and enter by the gate. He hitched Daisy to the low branches of a thorn tree and set off over waste land, entering Grendon’s property by the South Meadow. As he walked stealthily towards the distant out-houses, he could see how the farm land differed from the territory about it. The corn was already so high it seemed in the dark almost to threaten by its ceaseless whisper of movement. The fruits had ripened fast. In the strawberry beds were great strawberries like pears. The marrows lay on their dunghill like bloated bolsters, gleaming from a distant shaft of light. In the orchard, the trees creaked, weighed down by distorted footballs that passed for apples; with a heavy autumnal thud one fell over-ripe to the ground. Everywhere on the farm,, there seemed to be slight movement and noise, so much so that Gregory stopped to listen.

A wind was rising. The sails of the old mill shrieked like a gull’s cry as they began to turn. In the engine house, the steam engine pumped out its double unfaltering note as it gen-erated power. The dogs still raged, the animals added their un-easy chorus. He recalled the saliva tree; here as in the dream, it was as if agriculture had become industry, and the impulses of nature swallowed by the new god of Science. In the bark of the trees rose the dark steam of novel and unknown forces. He talked himself into pressing forward again. He moved carefully through the baffling slices of shadow and illumination created by the screens and lights, and arrived near the back door of the farmhouse. A lantern burnt in the kitchen window. As Gregory hesitated, the crunch of broken glass came from within.

Cautiously, he edged himself past the window and peered in through the doorway. From the parlor, he heard the voice of Grendon. It held a curious muffled tone, as if the man spoke to himself.

“Lie there! You’re no use to me. This is a trial of strength. Oh God, preserve me, to let me prove myself! Thou has made my land barren till nownow let me harvest it! I don’t know what You’re doing. I didn’t mean to presume, but this here farm is my life. Curse ‘em, curse ‘em all! They’re all enemies.” There was more of it; the man was muttering like one drunk. With horrid fascination, Gregory was drawn forward till he had crossed the kitchen flags and stood on the verge of the larger room. He peered round the half open door until he could see the farmer, standing obscurely in the middle of the room. A candle stood in the neglected hearth, its flickering flame glassily reflected in the cases of maladroit animals. Evidently the house electricity had been cut off to give additional power to the new lights outside.

Grendon’s back was to Gregory. One gaunt and unshaven cheek was lit by candle-light. His back seemed a little bent by the weight of what he imagined his duties, yet looking at that leather-clad back now Gregory experienced a sort of reverence for the independence of the man, and for the mystery that lay under his plainness. He watched as Grendon moved out through the front door, leaving it hanging wide, and passed into the yard, still muttering to himself. He walked round the side of the house and was hidden from view as the sound of his tread was lost amid the renewed barking of dogs. The tumult did not drown a groan from near at hand. Peering into the shadows, Gregory saw a body lying under the table. It-rolled over, crunching broken glass as it did so, and exclaimed in a dazed way. Without being able to see clearly, Gregory knew it was Neckland. He climbed over to the man and propped his head up, kicking away a stuffed fish as he did so.

“Don’t kill me, bor! I only want to get away from here.”

“Bert? It’s Greg here. Bert, are you badly hurt?” He could see some wounds. The fellow’s shirt had been practically torn from his back, and the flesh on his side and back was cut from where he had rolled in the glass. More serious was a great weal over one shoulder, changing to a deeper color as Gregory looked at it.

Wiping his face and speaking in a more rational voice, Neckland said, “Gregory? I thought as you was down Cotter-sail? What you doing here? He’ll kill you proper if he finds you here!”

“What happened to you, Bert? Can you get up?” The laborer was again in possession of his faculties. He grabbed Gregory’s forearm and said imploringly, “Keep your voice down, for Christ’s sake, or he’ll hear Us and come back and settle my hash for once for all! He’s gone clean off his head, says as these pond things are having a holiday here. He nearly knocked my head off my shoulder with that stick of his! Lucky I got a thick head!”

“What was the quarrel about?”

“I tell you straight, bor, I have got the wind up proper about this here farm. They things as live in the pond will eat me and suck me up like they done Grubby if I stay here any more. So I run off when Joe Grendon weren’t looking, and I come in here to gather up my traps and my bits and leave here at once. This whole place i evil, a bed of evil, and it ought to be destroyed. Hell can’t be worse than this here farm!” As he spoke, he pulled himself to his feet and stood, keeping his balance with Gregory’s aid. Grunting, he made his way over to the staircase.

“Bert,” Gregory said, “supposing we rush Grendon and lay him out. We can then get him in the cart and all leave together.”

Neckland turned to stare at him, his face hidden in shadows, nursing his shoulder with one hand.

“You try it!” he said, and then he turned and went steadily up the stairs.

Gregory stood where he was, keeping one eye on the window. He had come to the farm without any clear notion in his head, but now that the idea had been formulated, he saw that it was up to him to try and remove Grendon from his farm. He felt obliged to do it; for although he had lost his former regard for Grendon, a sort of fascination for the man held him, and he was incapable of leaving any human being, however perverse, to face alone the alien horrors of the farm. It occurred to him that he might get help from the distant houses, Dereham Cottages, if only the farmer were rendered in one way or another unable to pepper the intruders with shot. The machine house possessed only one high window, and that was barred. It was built of brick and had a stout door which could be barred and locked from the outside. Perhaps it would be possible to lure Grendon into there; outside aid could then be obtained.

Not without apprehension, Gregory went to the open door and peered out into the confused dark. He stared anxiously at the ground for sight of a footstep more sinister than the farmer’s, but there was no indication that the Aurigans were active. He stepped into the yard.

He had not gone two yards before a woman’s screams rang out. The sound seemed to clamp an icy grip about Gregory’s ribs, and into his mind came a picture of poor mad Mrs. Grendon. Then he recognized the voice, in its few shouted words, as Nancy’s. Even before the sound cut off, he began to pelt down the dark side of the house as fast as he could run. Only later did he realize how he seemed to be running against a great army of animal cries. Loudest was the babel of the pigs; every swine seemed to have some message deep and nervous and indecipherable to deliver to an unknown source; and it was to the sties that Gregory ran, swerving past the giant screens under the high and sickly light.

The noise in the sties was deafening. Every animal was attacking its pen with its sharp hooves. One light swung over the middle pen. With its help, Gregory saw immediately how terrible was the change that had come over the farm since his last visit. The sows had swollen enormously and their great ears clattered against their cheeks like boards. Their hirsute backs curved almost to the rafters of their prison. Grendon was at the far entrance. In his arms he held the unconscious form of his daughter. A sack of pig feed lay scattered by his feet. He had one pen gate half open and was trying to thrust his way in against the flank of a pig whose mighty shoulder came almost level with his. He turned and stared at Gregory with a face whose blankness was more terrifying than any expression of rage.

There was another presence in the place. A pen gate near Gregory swung open. The two sows wedged in the narrow sty gave out a terrible falsetto squealing, clearly scenting the presence of an unappeasable hunger. They kicked out blindly, and all the other animals plunged with a sympathetic fear. Struggle was useless. An Aurigan was there; the figure of Death itself, with its unwearying scythe and unaltering smile of bone, was as easily avoided as this poisoned and unseen presence. A rosy flush spread over the back of one of the sows. Almost at once, her great bulk began to collapse; in a moment, her substance had been ingested.

Gregory did not stay to watch the sickening action. He was running forward, for the farmer was again on the move. And now it was clear what he was going to do. He pushed into the end sty and dropped his daughter down into the metal food trough. At once, the sows turned with smacking jaws to deal with this new fodder. His hands free, Grendon moved to a bracket set in the wall. There lay his gun. Now the uproar in the sties had reached its loudest. The sow whose companion had been so rapidly ingested broke free, and burst into the central aisle. For a moment she stoodmercifully, for otherwise Gregory would have been trampledas if dazed by the possibility of liberty. The place shook and the other swine fought to get to her. Brick crumbled, pen gates buckled. Gregory jumped aside as the second pig lumbered free, and next moment the place was full of grotesque fighting bodies, fighting their way to liberty.

He had reached Grendon, but the stampede caught them even as they confronted each other. A hoof stabbed down on Grendon’s instep. Groaning, he bent forward, and was at once swept underfoot by his creatures. Gregory barely had time to vault into the nearest pen before they thundered by. Nancy was trying pitifully to climb out of the trough as the two beasts to which she had been offered fought to kick their way free. With a ferocious strengthwithout reasonalmost without con-sciousnessGregory hauled her up, jumped until ‘he swung up on one of the overhead beams, wrapped a leg round the beam, hung down till he grasped Nancy, pulled her up with him.

They were safe, but the safety was not permanent. Through the din and dust, they could see that the gigantic beasts were wedged tightly in both entrances. In the middle was a sort of battlefield, where the animals fought to reach the opposite end of the building; they were gradually tearing each other to piecesbut the sties too were threatened with demolition. “I had to follow you,” Nancy gasped. “But Father1 don’t think he even recognized me!”

At least, Gregory thought, she had not seen her father trampled underfoot. Involuntarily glancing in that direction, he saw the shotgun that Grendon had never managed to reach still lying across a bracket on the wall. By crawling along a traverse beam, he could reach it easily. Bidding Nancy sit where she was, he wriggled along the beam, only a foot or two above the heaving backs of the swine. At least the gun should afford them some protection: the Aurigan, despite all its ghastly differences from humanity, would hardly be immune to lead. As he grasped the old-fashioned weapon and pulled it up, Gregory was suddenly filled with an intense desire to kill one of the invisible monsters. In that instant, he recalled an earlier hope he had had of them: that they might be superior beings, beings of wisdom and enlightened power, coming from a better society where higher moral codes directed the activities of its citizens. He had thought that only to such a civilization would the divine gift of traveling through interplanetary space be granted. But perhaps the opposite held true: per-haps such a great objective could be gained only by species ruthless enough to disregard more humane ends. As soon as he thought it, his mind was overpowered with a vast diseased vision of the universe, where such races as dealt in love and kindness and intellect cowered forever on their little globes, while all about them went the slayers of the universe, sailing where they would to satisfy their cruelties and their endless appetites.

He heaved his way back to Nancy above the bloody porcine fray.

She pointed mutely. At the far end, the entrance had crumbled away, and the sows were bursting forth into the night. But one sow fell and turned crimson as it fell, sagging over the floor like a shapeless bag. Another, passing the same spot, suffered the same fate.

Was the Aurigan moved by anger? Had the pigs, in their blind charging, injured it? Gregory raised the gun and aimed. As he did so, he saw a giant hallucinatory column in the air; enough dirt and mud and blood had been thrown up to spot the Aurigan and render him partly visible. Gregory fired. The recoil nearly knocked him off his perch. He shut his eyes, dazed by the noise, and was dimly aware of Nancy clinging to him, shouting, “Oh, you marvellous man, you marvellous man] You hit that old bor right smack on target!”

He opened his eyes and peered through the smoke and dust. The shade that represented the Aurigan was tottering. It fell. It fell among the distorted shapes of the two sows it had killed, and corrupt fluids splattered over the paving. Then it rose again. They saw its progress to the broken door, and then it had gone.

For a minute, they sat there, staring at each other, triumph and speculation mingling on both their faces. Apart from one badly injured beast, the building was clear of pigs now. Gregory climbed to the floor and helped Nancy down beside him. They skirted the loathsome messes as best they could and staggered into the fresh air.

Up beyond the orchard, strange lights showed in the rear windows of the farmhouse.

“It’s on fire! Oh, Greg, our poor home is afire! Quick, we must gather what we can! All Father’s lovely cases” He held her fiercely, bent so that he spoke straight into her face. “Bert Neckland did this! He did it! He told me the place ought to be destroyed and that’s what he did.”

“Let’s go, then”

“No, no, Nancy, we must let it burn! Listen! There’s a wounded Aurigan loose here somewhere. We didn’t kill him. If those things feel rage, anger, spite, they’ll be set to kill us now don’t forget there’s more than one of *em! We aren’t going that way if we want to live. Daisy’s just across the meadow here, and she’ll bear us both safe home.”

“Greg, dearest, this is my home!” she cried in her despair. The flames were leaping higher. The kitchen windows broke in a shower of glass. He was running with her in the opposite direction, shouting wildly, “I’m your home now! I’m your home now!”

Now she was running with him, no longer protesting, and they plunged together through the high rank grass. When they gained the track and the restive mare, they paused to take breath and look back.

The house was well ablaze now. Clearly nothing could save it. Sparks had carried to the windmill, and one of the sails was ablaze. About the scene, the electric lights shone spectral and pale on the tops of their poles. An occasional running figure of a gigantic animal dived about its own purposes. Suddenly, there was a flash of lightning and all the electric lights went out. One of the stampeding animals had knocked down a pole; crashing into the pond, it short-circuited the system. “Let’s get away,” Gregory said, and he helped Nancy on to the mare. As he climbed up behind her, a roaring sound developed, grew in volume, and altered in pitch. Abruptly it died again. A thick cloud of steam billowed above the pond. From it rose the space machine, rising, rising, rising, suddenly a sight to take the heart in awe. It moved up into the soft night sky, was lost for a moment, began dully to glow, was seen to be already tremendously far away.

Desperately, Gregory looked for it, but it had gone, already beyond the frail confines of the terrestrial atmosphere. An awful desolation settled on him, the more awful for being irrational, and then he thought, and cried his thought aloud, “Perhaps they were only holiday-makers here! Perhaps they enjoyed themselves here, and will tell their friends of this little globe! Perhaps Earth has a future only as a resort for millions of the Aurigan kind!”

The church clock was striking midnight as they passed the first cottages of Cottersall.

“We’ll go first to the inn,” Gregory said. “I can’t well disturb Mrs. Fenn at this late hour, but your landlord will fetch us food and hot water and see that your cuts are bandaged.”

“I’m right as rain, love, but I’d be glad of your company.”

“I warn you, you shall have too much of it from now on!” The door of the inn was locked, but a light burned inside, and in a moment the landlord himself opened to them, all eager to hear a bit of gossip he could pass on to his custom. “So happens as there’s a gentleman up in Number Three wishes to speak with you in the morning,” he told Gregory. “Very nice gentleman come on the night train, only got in here an hour past, off the wagon.”

Gregory made a wry face.

“My father, no doubt.”

“Oh, no, sir. His name is a Mr. Wills or Wells or Wallshis signature was a mite difficult to make out.”

“Wells! Mr. Wells! So he’s come!” He caught Nancy’s hands, shaking them in his excitement. “Nancy, one of the greatest men in England is here! There’s no one more profitable for such a tale as ours! I’m going up to speak with him right away.” Kissing her lightly on the cheek, he hurried up the stairs and knocked on the door of Number Three.