Somehow it seemed natural that the chuck and Beasly should be sitting there together – the two of them, it appeared to Taine, might have a lot in common.
And it was a good beginning – that a man and an alien creature from this other world should sit down companionably together.
He tried to envision the setup of these linked worlds, of which Earth was now a part, and the possibilities that lay inherent in the fact of linkage rolled thunder through his brain.
There would be contact between the Earth and these other worlds and what would come of it?
And come to think of it, the contact had been made already, but so naturally, so undramatically, that it failed to register as a great, important meeting. For Beasly and the chuck out there were contact and if it all should go like that, there was absolutely nothing for one to worry over.
This was no haphazard business, he reminded himself. It had been planned and executed with the smoothness of long practice. This was not the first world to be opened and it would not be the last.
The little ratlike things had spanned space – how many light-years of space one could not even guess – in the vehicle which he had unearthed out in the woods. They then had buried it, perhaps as a child might hide a dish by shoving it into a pile of sand. Then they had come to this very house and had set up the apparatus that had made this house a tunnel between one world and another. And once that had been done, the need of crossing space had been canceled out forever. There need be but one crossing and that one crossing would serve to link the planets.
And once the job was done the little ratlike things had left, but not before they had made certain that this gateway to their planet would stand against no matter what assault. They had sheathed the house inside the studdings with a wonder-material that would resist an ax and that, undoubtedly, would resist much more than a simple ax.
And they had marched in drill-order single file out to the hill where eight more of the space machines had rested in their cradles. And now there were only seven there, in their cradles on the hill, and the rat-like things were gone and, perhaps, in time to come, they’d land on another planet and another doorway would be opened, a link to yet another world.
But more, Taine thought, than the linking of mere worlds. It would be, as well, the linking of the peoples of those worlds.
The little ratlike creatures were the explorers and the pioneers who sought out other Earth-like planets and the creature waiting with Beasly just outside the window must also serve its purpose and perhaps in time to come there would be a purpose which Man would also serve.
He turned away from the window and looked around the room and the room was exactly as it had been ever since he could remember it. With all the change outside, with all that was happening outside, the room remained unchanged.
This is the reality, thought Taine, this is all the reality there is. Whatever else may happen, this is where I stand – this room with its fireplace blackened by many winter fires, the bookshelves with the old thumbed volumes, the easy-chair, the ancient worn carpet – worn by beloved and unforgotten feet through the many years.
And this also, he knew, was the lull before the storm.
In just a little while the brass would start arriving – the team of scientists, the governmental functionaries, the military, the observers from the other countries, the officials from the U.N.
And against all these, he realized, he stood weaponless and shorn of his strength. No matter what a man might say or think, he could not stand off the world.
This was the last day that this would be the Taine house. After almost a hundred years, it would have another destiny.
And for the first time in all those years there’d be no Taine asleep beneath its roof.
He stood looking at the fireplace and the shelves of books and he sensed the old, pale ghosts walking in the room and he lifted a hesitant hand as if to wave farewell, not only to the ghosts but to the room as well. But before he got it up, he dropped it to his side.
What was the use, he thought.
He went out to the porch and sat down on the steps.
Beasly heard him and turned around.
“He’s nice,” he said to Taine, patting the chuck upon the back. “He’s exactly like a great big teddy bear.”
“Yes, I see,” said Taine.
“And best of all, I can talk with him.”
“Yes, I know,” said Taine, remembering that Beasly could talk with Towser, too.
He wondered what it would be like to live in the simple world of Beasly. At times, he decided, it would be comfortable.
The ratlike things had come in the spaceship, but why had they come to Willow Bend, why had they picked this house, the only house in all the village where they would have found the equipment that they needed to build their apparatus so easily and so quickly? For there was no doubt that they had cannibalized the computer to get the equipment they needed. In that, at least, Henry had been right. Thinking back on it, Henry, after all, had played quite a part in it.
Could they have foreseen that on this particular week in this particular house the probability of quickly and easily doing what they had come to do had stood very high?
Did they, with all their other talents and technology, have clairvoyance as well?
“There’s someone coming,” Beasly said.
“I don’t see a thing.”
“Neither do I,” said Beasly, “but Chuck told me that he saw them.”
“Told you!”
“I told you we been talking. There, I can see them too.”
And so could Taine.
They were far off, but they were coming fast – three dots that rode rapidly up out of the desert.
He sat and watched them come and he thought of going in to get the rifle, but he didn’t stir from his seat upon the steps. The rifle would do no good, he told himself. It would be a senseless thing to get it; more than that, a senseless attitude. The least that Man could do, he thought, was to meet these creatures of another world with clean and empty hands.
They were closer now and it seemed to him that they were sitting in invisible easy-chairs that traveled very fast.
He saw that they were humanoid, to a degree at least, and there were only three of them.
They came in with a rush and stopped very suddenly a hundred feet or so from where he sat upon the steps.
He didn’t move or say a word – there was nothing he could say. It was too ridiculous.
They were, perhaps, a little smaller than himself, and black as the ace of spades, and they wore skintight shorts and vests that were somewhat oversize and both the shorts and vests were the blue of April skies.
But that was not the worst of it.
They sat on saddles, with horns in front and stirrups and a sort of bedroll tied on the back, but they had no horses.
The saddles floated in the air, with the stirrups about three feet above the ground and the aliens sat easily in the saddles and stared at him and he stared back at them.
Finally he got up and moved forward a step or two and when he did that the three swung from the saddles and moved forward, too, while the saddles hung there in the air, exactly as they’d left them.
Taine walked forward and the three walked forward until they were no more than six feet apart.
“They say hello to you,” said Beasly. “They say welcome to you.”
“Well, all right, then, tell them – Say, how do you know all this!”
“Chuck tells me what they say and I tell you. You tell me and I tell him and he tells them. That’s the way it works. That is what he’s here for.”