The thing which nobody saw moved comfortably over the ground between the park and Maplewood.  In the center of the weapon field there was a something which generated the terror beam and probably carried passengers.  Whatever it was, it moved onward and into Maplewood and for seven miles in every direction troops watched for it to move out again.  Artillerymen had guns ready to fire upon it if they ever got firing coordinates and permission to go into action.  Planes were ready to drop bombs if they ever got leave to do so.  And a few miles away there were rockets ready to prove their accuracy and devastating capacity if only given a launching command.  But nothing happened.  Not even a flare was permitted to be dropped by the planes far up in the sky.  A flare might be taken for hostility.

The thing from the Park stayed in Maplewood for two hours.  At the end of that time it moved deliberately back toward the Park.  It left the town untouched save for certain curious burglaries of hardware stores and radio shops and a garage or two.  It looked as if intensely curious not-human beings had moved from their redoubt—­Boulder Lake—­to find out what civilization human beings had attained.  They could guess at it by the buildings and the homes, but most notably in the technical shops of the inhabitants.

It went slowly and deliberately back into the Park.  Humans moved cautiously back into the area that had been emptied.  Not many, but enough to be sure that the thing had really returned to the place from which it had come.  Soldiers were tentatively entering the again-abandoned town of Maplewood when the unseen thing changed the range of its weapon bearing on that little city.  It was then presumably not less than seven miles on its way back to Boulder Lake.  The military had congratulated themselves on what they’d learned.  The beam projectors at the lake had a range of much more than seven miles, but this movable, unidentifiable thing carried a lesser armament.  From it, men and animals seven miles away were safe.  This was notable news.

Then the unseen object did something.  The terror beam that flicked back and forth doubled in intensity.  The soldiers just reentering Maplewood smelled foulness and saw bright lights.  Bellowings deafened them.  They fell with every muscle rigid in spasm.  Beyond them other men were paralyzed.  For five minutes the invaders’ mobile weapon paralyzed all living things for a distance of fifteen miles.  Then for thirty seconds it paralyzed living things for a distance of thirty miles.  For a bare instant it convulsed men and animals for a greater distance yet.  And all these victims of the terror beam knew, thereafter, an invincible horror of the beam.

The thing from the Park which nobody had seen went back into the Park.  And then men were permitted to return to exactly the same places they’d been allowed to occupy before the thing began its excursion.