Doc caught himself and choked back his coughing fit. “Sorry. But damn it, man, the aliens have landed in Clyde, only fifty miles away. They’ve set up a base there! That’s what all those rockets going over meant.”
There was a sick gasp from the people who had heard, and a buzz as the news was passed back to others. Faces grayed. Some dropped back to the hard seats, while others pressed forward, trying to reach Doc, shouting questions at him.
Amos let himself be shoved aside, hardly noticing the reaction of his flock. It was Clyde where he had served before coming here again. He was trying to picture the alien ships dropping down, scouring the town ahead of them with gas and bullets. The grocer on the corner with his nine children, the lame deacon who had served there, the two Aimes sisters with their horde of dogs and cats and their constant crusade against younger sinners. He tried to picture the green-skinned, humanoid aliens moving through the town, invading the church, desecrating the altar! And there was Anne Seyton, who had been Richard’s sweetheart, though of another faith….
“What about the garrison nearby?” a heavy farmer yelled over the crowd. “I had a boy there, and he told me they could handle any ships when they were landing! Shell their tubes when they were coming down…”
Doc shook his head. “Half an hour before the landing, there was a cyclone up there. It took the roof off the main building and wrecked the whole training garrison.”
“Jim!” The big man screamed out the name, and began dragging his frail wife behind him, out toward his car. “If they got Jim…”
Others started to rush after him, but another procession of motorcycles stopped them. This time they were traveling slower, and a group of tanks were rolling behind them. The rear tank drew abreast, slowed, and stopped, while a duty-faced man in a major’s untidy uniform stuck his head out.
“You folks get under cover! Ain’t you heard the news? Go home and stick to your radios, before a snake plane starts potshooting the bunch of you for fun. The snakes’ll be heading straight over this town if they’re after Topeka, like it looks!” He jerked back down and began swearing at someone inside. The tank jerked to a start and began heading away toward Clyde.
There had been enough news of the sport of the alien planes in the papers. The people melted from the church. Amos tried to stop them for at least a short prayer and to give them time to collect their thoughts, but gave up after most of the people began moving away. A minute later, he was standing alone with Doc Miller.
“Better get home, Amos,” Doc suggested. “My car’s half a block down. Suppose I give you a lift?”
Amos nodded wearily. His bones felt dry and brittle, and there was a dust in his mouth thicker than that in the air. He felt old, and for the first time, almost useless. He followed the doctor quietly, welcoming the chance to ride the six short blocks to the little house the parish furnished him.
A car of ancient age and worse repair rattled toward them as they reached Doc’s auto. It stopped, and a man in dirty overalls leaned out, his face working jerkily. “Are you prepared, brothers? Are you saved? Armageddon has come, as the Book foretold. Get right with God, brothers! The end of the world as foretold is at hand, amen!”
“Where does the Bible foretell alien races around other suns?” Doc shot at him.
The man bunked, frowned, and yelled something about sinners burning forever in hell before he started his rickety car again. Amos sighed. Now, with the rise of their troubles, fanatics would spring up to cry doom and false gospel more than ever, to the harm of all honest religion. He had never decided whether they were somehow useful to God or whether they were inspired by the forces of Satan.
“In my Father’s house are many mansions,” he quoted to Doc as they started up the street. “It’s quite possibly an allegorical reference to other worlds in the heavens.”
Doc grimaced, and shrugged. Then he sighed, and dropped one hand from the wheel onto Amos’ knee. “I heard about Dick, Amos. I’m sorry. The first baby I ever delivered—and the best-looking!” He sighed again, staring toward Clyde as Amos found no words to answer. “I don’t get it. Why don’t we ever drop atom bombs on them? Why didn’t the moon base use their missiles?”
Amos had no answer to that, either. There was a rumor that all the major powers had sent their whole supply of atomic explosives up to the moon base early in the invasion, and that a huge meteorite had buried the stockpile under tons of debris, where there had been no chance to excavate it. It matched the other cases of accidents that had beset all human resistance.
He got out at the unpainted house where he lived, taking Doc’s hand silently and nodding his thanks.
He would have to organize his thoughts this afternoon. When night fell and the people could move about without the danger of being shot at by chance alien planes, the church bell would summon them, and they would need spiritual guidance. If he could help them to stop trying to understand God, and to accept Him…
There had been that moment in the church when God had seemed to enfold him and the congregation in warmth—the old feeling of true fulfillment. Maybe, now in the hour of its greatest need, some measure of inspiration had returned.
He found Ruth setting the table. Her small, quiet body moved as efficiently as ever, though her face was puffy and her eyes were red. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it, Amos. But right after the telegram, Anne Seyton came. She’d heard—before we did. And…”
The television set was on, showing headlines from the Kansas City Star, and he saw there was no need to tell her the news. He put a hand on one of hers. “God has only taken what he gave, Ruth. We were blessed with Richard for thirty years.”
“I’m all right.” She pulled away and picked up a pot, turning toward the kitchen, her back frozen in a line of taut misery. “Didn’t you hear what I said? Anne’s here. Dick’s wife! They were married before he left, secretly—right after you talked with him about the difference in religion. You’d better see her, Amos. She knows about her people in Clyde.”
He watched his wife move fromjhe room, his heart heavy with her grief, while the words penetrated. He’d never forbidden marriage, he had only warned the boy, who had been so much like Ruth. He hesitated, and finally turned toward the tiny second bedroom. There was a muffled answer to his knock, and the lock clicked rustily.
“Anne?” he said. The room was darkened, but he could see her blonde head and the thin, almost unfemi-nine lines of her figure. He put out a hand and felt her slim fingers in his palm. As she turned toward the weak light, he saw no sign of tears, but her hand shook with her dry shudders. “Anne, Ruth has just told me that God has given us a daughter…”
“God!” She spat the word out harshly, while the hand jerked back. “God, Reverend Strong? Whose God? The one who sends meteorites against Dick’s base, plagues of insects and drought against our farms? The God who uses tornadoes to make it easy for the snakes to land? That God, Reverend Strong? Dick gave you a daughter, and he’s dead! Dead! Dead!”
Amos backed out of the room. He had learned to stand the faint mockery with which Doc pronounced the name of the Lord, but this was something that set his skin into goose pimples and caught at his throat. Anne had been of a different faith, but she had always seemed religious before.
It was probably only hysteria. He turned toward the kitchen to find Ruth and send her in to the girl.
Overhead, the staccato bleating of a ramjet cut through the air in a sound he had never heard. But the radio description fitted it perfectly. It could be no Earth ship with such a noise!