Jill said, “Oh-h-h-h!” Then, “Is there more for you?”

“Plenty!” he assured her.  “I hunted it down with my trusty club, and only got stuck a half-dozen times while I was skinning and cleaning it.”

She ate avidly, and when she’d finished he offered more, which she refused until he’d had a share.

They did not quite finish the whole porcupine, but it was an odd and companionable meal, there in the darkness with the barely-glowing coals well-hidden from sight.  Lockley said, “I’m sort of a news addict.  Shall we see what the wild radio waves are saying?”

“Of course,” said Jill.  She added awkwardly:  “Maybe it’s the sudden food, but—­I hope you’ll remain my friend after this is all over.  I don’t know anyone else I’d say that to.”

“Consider,” said Lockley, “that I’ve made an eloquent and grateful reply.”

But his expression in the darkness was not happy.  He’d fallen in love with Jill after meeting her only twice, and both times she had been with Vale.  She intended to marry Vale.  But on the evidence at hand Vale was either dead or a prisoner of the invaders; if the last, his chances of living to marry Jill did not look good, and if the first, this was surely no time to revive his memory.

He found a news broadcast.  He suspected that most radio stations would stay on the air all night, now that it was officially admitted that the object in Boulder Lake was a spaceship bringing invaders to earth.  The government releases spoke of them as “visitors,” in a belated use of the term, but the public was suspicious of reassurances now.  At the beginning the landing had seemed like another exaggerated horror tale of the kind that kept up newspaper circulations.  Now the public was beginning to believe it, and people might stop going to their offices and the trains might cease to ran on time.  When that happened, disaster would be at hand.

The news came in a resonant voice which revealed these facts: 

Four more small towns had been ordered evacuated because of their proximity to Boulder Lake.  The radiation weapon of the aliens had pushed back the military cordon by as much as five miles.  But the big news was that the aliens had broken radio silence.  Apparently they’d examined and repaired the short wave communicator from the helicopter they’d knocked down.

Shortly after sundown, said the news report, a call had come through on a military short wave frequency.  It was a human voice, first muttering bewilderedly and then speaking with confusion and uneasiness.  The message had been taped and now was released to the public.