Watkins said, “You put on leather gloves and try and yank that thing out, you’ll find out it’s got roots that go clear to China.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Yeager wrote another note. Back on Home, plants would have to suck up all the water they possibly could. It made sense for them to have roots like that. A lot of Earthly plants did, too. Sam suspected these would prove very efficient indeed.
Sheriff Watkins said, “Come on. These things are just the sideshow. You really want to see the animals, right?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said thoughtfully. “Do I? If these things start crowding out the stuff that used to grow here, what’ll the bugs and the kangaroo rats and the jackrabbits eat? If they don’t eat anything, what’ll the lizards and the bobcats eat? The more you look at things like this, the more complicated they get.” Remounting his horse proved pretty complicated, too, but he managed not to fall off the other side.
“Supposing you’re right,” Watkins said as they rode on toward the animals from Home. “Isn’t that reason enough to give the Lizards hell for what they’re doing to us? What they’re doing to Earth, I mean, not just to the USA.”
“They don’t want to listen,” Yeager answered. “They say we’ve got cows and sheep and dogs and cats and wheat and corn, and that’s what these things are to them: only natural they’ve brought ’em along.”
“Natural, my ass.” Watkins spat. “These critters are about the most unnatural-looking things I’ve seen in all my born days.” He pointed ahead. “Look for yourself. We’re close enough now.”
Sure enough, Sam could peer through the dust now and see what raised it. The Lizards’ domestic animals made him feel he’d been yanked back through seventy million years and was staring at a herd of dinosaurs. They weren’t as big as dinosaurs, and they had the Lizards’ turreted eyes, but that was the general impression. They were low-slung, went on all fours, and had, instead of horns, bony clubs on the ends of their tails. One of them whacked another in the side. The one that had been whacked bawled and trotted away.
“Those are zisuili,” Sam said. “The Lizards use them for meat and for their hides. Zisuili leather is top of the line, as far as they’re concerned.”
“Hot damn,” Watkins said sourly. “What do we do about ’em? Look how they eat everything right down to the ground. Worse’n goats, for Christ’s sake. There’s nothing but bare dirt left once they’ve gone through somewhere, and this land won’t take a whole hell of a lot of that.”
“I see what you’re saying,” Yeager answered. “It’s probably why they kick up so much dust.” He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “You were right, Sheriff-this is what I came to find out about, sure enough.”
“I’ve already found out more than I want,” Victor Watkins said. “Question is, like I said, what do we do about the goddamn things?”
The two men had no trouble getting close to the zisuili, though their horses didn’t much care for the alien animals’ smell. Neither odors nor sight of Earthly creatures and people bothered the beasts from Home. Noting that, Yeager said, “We shoot ’em whenever we see ’em. They aren’t shy of us, are they?”
“No, but when the shooting starts they run like hell,” Watkins replied. “A guy with a machine gun would get a lot more done than a guy with a rifle. Desert Center’s a rugged kind of place, but machine guns don’t exactly grow on trees around here.”
“Some machine guns can probably be arranged,” Sam said, but he wondered how many machine guns the USA would need from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, and for how many miles north of the border. And machine guns couldn’t do anything about plants from Home. What could? Nothing he saw, short of an army of people pulling them up by the roots.
The Lizards were making themselves at home on Earth. Sam had read plenty of science-fiction stories about people reshaping other planets to suit themselves, but never one about aliens reshaping Earth for their convenience. He didn’t need to read a story about that. By all the signs, he was living it.
Neither he nor Watkins had much to say as they rode back to Desert Center. They passed another couple of plants from Home. However the things propagated, they’d sure as hell got here.
“We’ll do everything we can,” Sam promised as he got down from his horse and, with more than a little relief, headed for his car.
“You’d better,” the sheriff said. He walked off toward his office, not looking back.
Another car was parked by the Buick. It hadn’t been there before. A couple of men in business suits came out of the little cafe across the street and walked briskly toward Sam. “Lieutenant Colonel Yeager?” one of them called. When Sam nodded, both men produced revolvers and pointed them at him. “You’d better come along with us, sir,” the first one said. “Orders. Sorry, pal, but that’s how it is.”
Walter Stone stared out through the window of the Lewis and Clark’s control room in considerable satisfaction. “Amazing what you can do with aluminized plastic, isn’t it?” he said.
“Not so bad,” Glen Johnson agreed. “You put out a big enough mirror, you pick up plenty of sunshine for power and for heat and for I don’t know what all else.”
Stone looked sly. “Are you sure you don’t?”
Johnson looked sly, too. “Who, me?” They both grinned. A mirror that focused a lot of light down to one small point was a splendid tool. It was also a weapon. If that point of light ever suddenly swung across a Lizard spy ship…
With a sigh, Stone said, “The only trouble is, that would mean war back home, which we can’t afford.”
“I know.” Johnson grimaced. “It’s not just that we can’t afford it, either. We’d damn well lose.”
“Are you sure?” the senior pilot asked.
“You bet your ass I am,” Johnson said, and tacked on an emphatic cough. “Don’t forget, I’m the guy who flew all those orbital missions. I know what the Race has got out there; hell, I know half that hardware by its first name. Push comes to shove, we get shoved.”
“Okay, okay.” Half to Glen’s relief, half to his disappointment, Stone didn’t want to argue with him. He liked arguments he wouldn’t have any trouble winning. Stone waved at the mirror again. “One of the reasons we’re out here is to complicate the Lizards’ lives in all sorts of ways they haven’t even thought about yet. Having plenty of power and energy available is a long step in that direction.”
“Did I say you were wrong?” Johnson asked, and then, “Say, what’s this I hear about another ship heading this way before too long?”
Walter Stone suddenly looked a lot less like a buddy and a lot more like a pissed-off colonel. “Goddamn radio room here leaks like a goddamn sieve,” he growled. “They open their mouths any wider, they’ll fall right in.”
“Yeah, well, probably,” answered Johnson, who hadn’t heard the rumor from any of the radio operators. “But come on. Now that I’ve got some of the word, give me the rest of it. It’s not like I’m going to send the Race a postcard or anything.”
“Bad security,” Stone said. Johnson gave him a look. It must have been an effective look, because the senior pilot turned red and muttered under his breath. At last, with very poor grace, he went on, “Yeah, it’s true. They’re building it out in orbit now. Next opposition, or somewhere fairly close to then, it’ll head out here, and we’ll see some new faces.”
“Good,” Johnson said. “I’m sick of seeing your old face.” That earned him a glare from Stone’s old face. Grinning, he probed some more: “How many people will they be sending out?”
“All I know is, the complement is supposed to be larger than the crew of the Lewis and Clark,” Stone answered. Johnson nodded, glad of the news; that was more than he’d known. Stone went on, “Two reasons. First, they won’t have as long a trip, so they can bring more people with the same resources. And second, they’ll have improved the design of the new ship.”
“How?” Johnson asked eagerly. This was the stuff he wanted to hear, all right.
But Stone said, “How? How the devil should I know? Matter of fact, I don’t know that for a fact.” He paused, listened to himself, and shook his head in annoyance before continuing, “I’m just assuming there will be. We’re not Lizards, after all; we don’t think our designs are set in cement.”
“Neither do they, not exactly,” Johnson said. “It’s just that we’ve been refining our designs for fifty years-a hundred, tops-and they’ve been doing it for fifty thousand. After that long, they don’t find the need to make a whole lot of changes.”
“Don’t teach your grandma to suck eggs,” Stone said irritably. “I know all that as well as you do, and you know I know it, too.”
“Yeah, but you’re cute when you’re angry,” Johnson said, which won him another glare from the senior pilot. He grinned again and went on, “With more people, we’ll be able to spread out a lot farther. The Lizards won’t be able to keep an eye on us so easy.”
“Which is the point of the exercise,” Stone said, as if to an idiot.
“No kidding.” Johnson grinned once more, refusing to let the other man get his goat. Then he let his imagination run away with him. “One of these days, maybe, we’ll have a regular fleet of ships going back and forth between Earth and the asteroid belt.” His eyes and voice went far away. “Maybe, one of these days, we will be able to go home again.”