«Wait,» said the sheriff. «It’s the Eater. We want to make sure of him.»
The Eater was climbing the knoll now and the man still stood there, although the calls had ceased.
«Why doesn’t the damn fool run?» cried the county agent.
But instead of running the man was walking down the knoll toward the Eater and to the ears of the waiting men came soft, cooing calls, the kind of talk a kind man reserves for his animals. As if the Eater might have been a pet the man was trying to coax home.
Both the man and the Eater stopped, only a few yards separating them, the man still making the coaxing, affectionate sounds. The Eater pawed the ground, arched his back. The man moved forward slowly, hands outstretched, still talking to the animal.
And then the Eater charged. The man turned, started to run, tripped and fell.
Chet was running forward, yelling, the gun pressed against his hip. The sheriff and county agent followed.
They saw the man flip over, roll away from the charge and struggle to his knees. The Eater skidded to turn, was charging back. But the man had something in his hand, was aiming it at the Eater. A cone of blue radiance lashed out and caught the animal. Great portions of the Eater turned red and puffed into acrid smoke. The blue cone still bore at the beast but it still came on.
The night echoed to the thud as the battering ram of a head caught the man and tossed him. Strange rasping, tearing sounds ensued at the Eater reared and trampled the fallen, broken thing.
There was no outcry from the battered figure on the ground, no sound of rage from the attacking Eater … just those terrible rending sounds as gleaming hoofs raced and smashed.
But the dull red glow set by the blue cone spread upon the Eater’s body, spread like swiftly creeping fire … although there was no smell of burning flesh … merely acrid smoke that steamed and eddied above the knoll, rising into the clear blue of the night.
Charging up the slope, the three men saw the Eater stagger away from the mangled body, slump into a heap of something that looked for all the world like a heap of molten metal.
The man was stretched on the ground, body ripped apart, skull cracked open. One arm, torn from its socket, lay yards away. One leg was twisted off at the knee.
And out of the broken skull came something … something that was black and loathesome and many armed. Something that stared at the three with terrible eyes of angry red.
For one long moment it watched them, then slowly crawled back into the skull again. The man’s body writhed and twisted, finally gained a sitting position. The jaw moved slowly, awkwardly. Distorted sounds came out of the wagging jaws, sounds that tried to be words and failed.
Then the body flopped down again and the loathesome thing scuttled from the smashed brain case. It darted rapidly away, moving like a furtive crawfish, a terrible, repulsive alien thing that made one’s gorge rise by the very sight of it.
Chet’s gun snapped to his shoulder and the field and woods reverberated with its yammering. The black thing thrashed and bounced to the impact of the bullets and then lay still.
The sheriff turned angrily on the constable. «Damn you, Chet, what did you do that for?»
Chet lowered the gun and stared at the thing with revulsion on his face.
«It gave me the creeps,» he said.
The county agent said: «Perhaps it’s better that he did.»
«What do you mean by that?» demanded the sheriff.
«Take a look at that body … the man’s body, I mean. Do you recognize it?»
The sheriff looked. The moon shone full upon the broken features.
«Howard!» exclaimed the sheriff. «William F. Howard. The owner of the Martian show!»
The sheriff’s jaw hung slack. «Paul, it can’t be that! It was all just a fake. Nobody’s ever been to Mars!»
«Perhaps not,» said the county agent. «But that doesn’t mean the Martians haven’t come to Earth.»
The thing seemed less plausible, more fantastic, back in the sheriff’s lights … but the proof was there.
«Examine that body,» said the county agent. «A clever thing of steel and plastics. Intricate machinery in it, too. Until a few hours ago it passed for a man who called himself William F. Howard. You talked to him, Sheriff. And so did Chet. He fooled you both. He fooled everyone he talked to. Everyone thought he was a man. And yet he wasn’t … he was just a machine to house that filthy thing Chet killed.»
The sheriff wiped his brow. «Do you really think that thing was a Martian, Paul? That the show really was a Martian show?»
«Perhaps,» said the county agent. «If it was it was a clever way to masquerade. Announce yourself as something grotesque enough, impossible enough and you can be that thing and no one will believe you.»
«But look here,» Chet broke in, «what would them Martians be doing traipsing all over with a show? If they wanted us to believe they were Martians they could have gone to some of these here professors and proved it and if they didn’t want us to believe it …»
The county agent shook his head wearily. «Who can tell how an alien brain would work? Or what purposes an alien brain might hold? Looking at it the way a human being would look at it, a fifth column might be the answer. A fifth column from Mars … trying to soften Earth up before they took us over. That would fit. Enough diseases, enough strange insects removed from their natural enemies, enough fungi would do the trick. They could starve us out … have us beaten before the first war-rocket blasted off from Mars.
«Perhaps they would wipe out some Earth species with their diseases and their insects, establish some of their own on Earth. Most of them probably couldn’t adapt themselves to Earth conditions, but some of them could. Given time, the Martians could transform parts of Earth into a little Mars … weeding out Earth life, replacing it with Martian life. Even now we can’t be sure. Maybe the work is further progressed than we can guess. Maybe some of our unwanted, noxious plants really may be Martian plants …»
Chet shucked up his pants and spat contemptuously.
«You’re plumb batty,» he declared.
«I didn’t say that is what happened,» explained the county agent. «I said that was what might have happened. That would form a logical human explanation. But possibly it isn’t the human explanation that we want. From the Martian viewpoint … if Howard was a Martian … the explanation might be something entirely different. Probably would be. We are dealing with a thing beyond our depth.»
«There’s something wrong, you can bet your eye teeth on that,» announced the sheriff. «Something that needs a whale of a lot of explaining. Take that there Eater …»
«An animal formed of silicon instead of carbon,» said the county agent.
«Probable, not very possible … but there it was. All three of us saw what happened to it. We know it wasn’t flesh and blood. We know it wasn’t something that belonged to Earth. It, alone, if nothing else, should convince us that we’re dealing with something alien, something from out in space.
«That blue cone that set the Eater on fire is another thing. Looks a lot like a flashlight. Something like a gun, too. But it isn’t either one. The scientists will have a holiday with it, if they don’t kill themselves taking it apart.
«Then there were the other animals. Too bad we haven’t got them. They might give us some more data to go on. But Howard apparently destroyed them when he knew the jig was up. He was afraid that, examined closely enough, they might give him away. And the machine in the tent. Joe was right. It couldn’t have been a generator … at least not the kind of generator we know. Probably was used to keep the Eater caged, but just how it worked, we can’t know.»
«What I can’t figure out,» said the sheriff, «is why Howard or the thing that was Howard … tried to make up to the Eater. He must have known it was dangerous. But he took the chance … there must have been a reason.»