“We’ve been cartin’ stuff for the soldiers,” explained the driver as Lockley closed the door behind him.  “They keep track of where that terror beam is workin’, and they tell us by truck radio, and we dodge it.  Ain’t had a bit of trouble.  Never thought I’d play games with Martians!  Did you see any of ’em?  What sort of critters are they?”

He slipped the truck into gear and gunned the motor.  Truck and trailer, together, began to roll down the highway.  Lockley was irritated with himself because he couldn’t relax and feel safe, as this development seemed to warrant.

Later, he would wonder why he hadn’t used his head in this as in other matters during the few days just past.

He plainly hadn’t.

CHAPTER 7

The driver was avidly curious about the area where supposedly no human being could survive.  He asked absorbed questions, especially and insistently about the aliens.  Jill said that she’d seen a few of them, but only at a distance.  They’d been investigating the evacuated construction camp.  They were about the size of men.  She couldn’t describe them, but they weren’t human beings.  He seemed to find it unthinkable that she hadn’t examined them in detail.

Lockley came to her rescue.  He observed that he’d been a prisoner of the invaders, and had escaped.  Then the driver’s curiosity became insatiable.  He wanted to know every imaginable detail of that experience.  He expressed almost incredulous disappointment that Lockley couldn’t give even a partial description of the creatures.  When convinced, he launched a detailed recital of the descriptions offered by the workmen from the camp.  He pictured the aliens as hoofed like horses, equipped with horns like antelopes, fitted with multiple arms like octopi and huge multi-faceted eyes like insects.

He seemed to contemplate this picture with vast satisfaction as the truck growled and rumbled through the night.

The headlights glared on ahead of the truck.  There were dark fields and darker mountains beyond them.  From time to time little side roads branched off.  They undoubtedly led to houses, but no speck of lamp light appeared anywhere.  This part of the world was empty, with the loneliness of a landscape from which every hint of human activity had been removed.

Jill asked a question.  The driver grew garrulous.  He gave a dramatic picture of terror throughout the world, the suspension of all ordinary antagonisms in the face of this menace to every man and nation on the earth.  There was peace even in the world’s trouble spots as appalled agitators saw how much worse things could be if the monsters took over the world to rule.  But the driver insisted that the United States was calm.  Us Americans, he assured Lockley, weren’t scared.  We were educated and we knew that them scientists would crack this nut somehow.  Like only yesterday a broadcast said this Belgian guy