It seemed that nothing was changed, but everything was changed.  If there were mobile carriers of the invasion weapon, then victory could not be had by a single atom bomb fired into Boulder Lake.  There might be a dozen separate mobile terror beam generators scattered through the Park.  Any atomic attack would need to be multiplied in its violence to be certain of results.  Instead of one bomb there might be a need for fifty.  They would have to destroy the Park utterly, even its mountains.  And the fallout from so many atom bombs simply could not be risked.  The invaders were effectively invulnerable.

While this undesirable situation was being demonstrated, Jill slept heavily between two roots of a very large tree, and Lockley dozed against a nearby tree trunk.  He believed that he guarded Jill most vigilantly.

He awoke at dawn with the din of bird song in his ears.  Jill opened her eyes at almost the same instant.  She smiled at him and tried to get up.  She was stiff and sore from the hardness of the ground on which she’d slept.  But it was a new day, and there was breakfast.  It was porcupine cooked the night before.

“Somehow,” said Jill as she nibbled at a bone, “somehow I feel more cheerful than I did.”

“That’s a mistake,” Lockley told her.  “Start out with a few premonitions and the day improves as they turn out wrong.  But if you start out hoping, the day ends miserably with most of your hopes denied.”

“You’ve got premonitions?” she asked.

“Definitely,” he said.

It was true.  As yet he knew nothing of last night’s temporary occupation of a human town, but he believed he knew how the terror beam worked even if he couldn’t figure out a way to generate it.  He could imagine no defense against it.  But if Jill had awakened feeling cheerful, there was no reason to depress her.  She’d have reason enough to be dejected later, beginning with proof of Vale’s death and going on from there.

“We might listen to the news,” she suggested.  “A premonition or two might be ruled out right away!”

Silently, he turned on the little radio.  Automatically, he set it for the lowest volume they could hear distinctly.

The main item in the news was a baldly factual but toned-down report of the thing from the lake which had left the park and examined a small human town in detail and then had returned to the Park.  There were reports of peculiar hoofprints found where the invaders had been.  They were not the hoofprints of any earthly animal.  There was an optimistic report from the scientists at work on the problem of the beam.  Someone had come up with an idea and some calculations which seemed to promise that the beam would presently be duplicated.  Once it was duplicated, of course a way to neutralize it could be found.

Lockley grunted.  The broadcast was enthusiastic in its comments on the scientists.  It talked gobbledegook which sounded as if it meant something but was actually nonsense.  It barely touched on the fact that human beings were now ordered out of a much larger space than had been evacuated before.  There was a statement from an important official that panic buying of food was both unnecessary and unwise.  Lockley grunted again when the newscast ended.