He plodded on and on.  He had to make a march of not less than twenty miles from the Park’s beginning.  He journeyed on foot because there were terror beams to pass and automobile engines did not run when his protective device operated.  He could not arm himself from the cars that ditched, because all chemical explosive weapons and their ammunition blew at the same time.  He was a minute figure among the mountains, marching alone upon a winding highway, moving resolutely to destroy—­alone—­the invaders from outer space and the men who worked with them for the conquest of earth.  For his purpose he carried the strangest of equipment, a device made of a pocket radio and a cheese grater.

He had food in his pockets, but he could not eat.  During the afternoon he became impatient of its weight and threw it away.  But he thirsted often.  More than once he drank from small streams over which the highway builders had made small concrete bridges.

At three in the afternoon a truck came up from behind.  Here he trudged between steep cliffs which made him seem almost a midget.  The highway went through a crevice between adjoining mountainsides.  There was no place for him to conceal himself.  When he heard the engine, he stopped and faced it.  The truck had picked up many men from wrecked cars along its route.  There were scorched and scratched and wounded men, hurt by the explosion of their firearms.  The truck brought them along and overtook Lockley.

He waited very calmly since it did not seem likely that they would realize that one man had caused the crashes.  The driver of the truck with the picked-up men did not even think of such a thing.  Lockley seemed much more likely the victim of still another wreck.

The overtaking truck slowed down.  There would be no strangers in Boulder Lake Park.  There would only be the task force aiding the monsters, as Lockley reasoned it out.  So the truck slowed, preparatory to taking Lockley aboard.

At a hundred and twenty-five yards from Lockley, weapons in the truck cab blew themselves violently apart.  The engine, stopped in gear, acted as a violently applied brake.  The truck swerved off the highway.  It turned over and was still.

Lockley turned and walked on.  He considered coldly that it was perfectly safe for him to go on.  There were no weapons left behind him.  The men themselves were shaken up.  They would attempt to make no trouble beyond a report of their situation and a plea for help.  The report could be made by the radio, which was not smashed.

Half an hour later, Lockley felt the tingling which meant that his instrument was protecting him from a terror beam.  The tingling lasted only a short time, but fifteen minutes later it came back.  Then it returned at odd intervals.  Five minutes—­eight—­ten—­three—­six—­one.  Each time the terror beam should have paralyzed him and caused intense suffering.  A man with no protective device would have had his nerves shattered by torment coming so violently at unpredictable intervals.