“I did an article once on how—­Hello!  Serena calling.  I have a very important message for the military officer in command of the cordon.  Will you route me through, please?”

Her manner was convincingly professional.  She looked up and smiled shakily at Lockley.  She spoke again into the mouthpiece before her.  Then she said, “One moment, please.”  She covered the mouthpiece with her hand.

“I can’t get the general,” she said.  “His aide will take the message and if it’s important enough—­”

“It is,” said Lockley.  “Give me the phone.”

She vacated the chair and handed him the operator’s instrument with its light weight earphones and a mouthpiece that rested on his chest.

“My name’s Lockley,” said Lockley evenly.  “I was in the Park on a Survey job the morning the thing came down from the sky.  I relayed Vale’s message describing the landing and the creatures that came out of the—­object.  I was talking to him by microwave when he was seized by them.  I reported that via Sattell of the Survey.  You probably know of these reports.”

A tinny voice said with formal cordiality that he did, indeed.

“I’ve just managed to get out of the park,” said Lockley.  “I’ve had a chance to experiment with a stationary terror beam.  I’ve information of some importance about detecting those beams before they strike.”

The tinny voice said hastily that Lockley should speak to the general himself.  There were clickings and a long wait.  Lockley shook his head impatiently.  When a new voice spoke, he said, “I’m at Serena.  I was brought here by a Wild Life Control trailer-truck which picked us up just outside the Park.  I mention that because the driver says he’s driving it for the Army, now.  The information I have to pass on is....”

Curtly and succinctly, he began to give exact information about the terror beam.  Its detection so that one need not enter it.  The total lack of effectiveness of a Faraday cage to check it.  Its use to block highways and its one use against a low-flying plane.  The failure to search him out with that terror beam was to be noted.  There was other evidence that the monsters were not monsters at all—­

The new voice interrupted sharply.  It asked him to wait.  His information would be recorded.  Lockley waited, biting his lips.  The voice returned after an unconscionably long wait.  It told him to go ahead.

The driver of the truck was taking a long time to make contact with the military.  He’d have done better by telephone instead of short wave.

The new voice repeated sharply for Lockley to go on with his story.  And very, very carefully Lockley explained the contradictions in the behavior of the invaders.  The blindfolds.  The fact that it had been absurdly easy for four human prisoners in a compost pit shell to escape—­almost as if it were intended for them to get away and report that their captors regarded men as on a par with game birds and rabbits and porcupines.  True aliens would not have bothered to give such an impression.  But men cooperating with aliens would contrive every possible trick to insist that only aliens operated at Boulder Lake.