He got up and came slowly into the vault. He loosened the bonds that held Brandon helpless. Brandon said uneasily, "D'you think it's all right to let me loose yet?"
"I think so," said Jim casually. "Anyhow I'll shoot you if you go near the transmitter before I'm sure." Then he smiled faintly. "I'm having too much fun to want it to stop. I'm just picturing things to myself. Try it!"
He went out and sat down bareheaded in the sunshine again. He thought contentedly. But his thoughts were not like those of the Things. Not at all. He thought....
There were people in the mountain country who had a Little Fella in the attic. They waited for him to summon them, and to give them orders. Nothing happened. They received no orders. They were not summoned. They puzzled over it. Days passed. They ceased to wait for commands, without realizing that they ceased to wait. They grew stronger. They grew energetic. They came to dread a summons to the Little Fella. Still none came. Finally—after weeks, perhaps—someone went uneasily up to the attic. There was an evil smell there. The Thing was still in its nest. It moved eagerly as the human drew near. But it did not order the human to approach. The someone went down shuddering a little. The Thing was unspeakably repulsive... One didn't want anything like that in the house....
There was a Thing in the boiler-room of an apartment-house in a city. It ceased to command its slaves. They did not seek it out. Naturally! Days passed. It smelled evily. No one went near it. It stirred eagerly when there was movement in the cellar. But its nest was shunned. Ultimately, in desperation, it climbed out of the nest on its own feeble legs. Desperately, it lay in wait for a fur naceman. When he came, it advanced upon him, slavering. He received no commands and, shuddering, moved to avoid it. It moved desperately upon him. It sank its fangs ravenously in his ankle. In panic, he struck it fiercely with the coal-shovel.
He hit it. It tried to flee. He hit it again, suddenly raging. In a frenzy of revulsion he battered it to lifelessness.
A Thing came bumping down a flight of attic steps. It no longer glistened fatly. Its belly was flabby and the skin hung in folds. Its beady eyes were desperate. In the kitchen, the woman screamed a little. The Thing moved toward her, slavering. She ran out of the door into the farm-yard. The Thing followed. It bumped down the steps to the ground. A dog came toward it, bristling. The Thing was ravenous. It was starving. It fixed its beady eves upon the dog, which came closer, sniffing its foetid smell and growling. It slashed at the dog with its fangs.
The dog tore it to pieces, snarling.
A Thing lay in a nest of soft furs, in a nest of which the heat was thermostatically controlled. The woman who had ordered the expensive nest prepared grew restive. She complained to her husband of the smell. He had the nest thrown out. The Thing was a waif. It skulked in dark places, going mad with rage at its own helplessness and the utter lack of response of even small, feral animals to its will.
It tried to feed upon the kittens of an alley-cat. The alley-cat ripped it in maternal frenzy with long sharp claws. Suddenly blood jetted from some unprotected vein close to its thin and hairless skin. It struggled more and more feebly....
Things which were neglected. Things which were ignored. Things which were regarded at first dubiously and then disgustedly by humans who had been their slaves, and who became horribly ashamed that they had been slaves.... Things which were taken out-of-doors and shot because men were ashamed.... Things which were drowned because men hated to remember what they had done for those Things.... Things which had been greedy, and who were suddenly faced perhaps by the parents of a human which had been the victim of a Thing's gluttony, and those parents hated the Thing for what they had allowed it to do, took the Thing and tried with horrifying ingenuity to make it pay.... Things which were put into cages and dumped into trash-cans for garbage collectors to take away.
And, of course, Things who were carefully examined by scientific men who tried to understand the secret of their domination and its end. Things which were carefully killed and dissected.... Things which an animal-trainer tried to teach to do tricks, because he knew that they understood human speech, but which he had to kill because of their insatiable blood-lust.... Things which had not slaves and no civilization, and no science or art or knowledge, who had suddenly become mere animals unable even to communicate with one another. Which strayed or escaped from the places where they had been masters, and encountered each other and fought horribly for the pure purpose of cannibalism.... And Things which struggled with a desperate resolution to reach the place where their space-craft had landed, and found it surrounded by men who killed them ruthlessly....
And Things which were doled out small rations of the blood of slaughtered animals, given to them when they responded to the painstaking questions of scientists, and withheld when they did not.
It was two weeks before three Security cars drove carefully up to the place where there had once been a village, but where now was only the shell of a single brick building and certain mounds of rotted timbers overgrown with vines. Men in the uniform of Security officials got out. They came toward the brick shell in which the vault still stood.
Jim faced them, his hand on his revolver. But he recognized one or two of them from pictures. One in particular he recognized as the tired-faced, white-haired man who had helped make the first atomic bomb, some thirty years before, and had devoted his life ever since to the prevention of the use of other bombs and their equivalents. He was the director-general of Security, but he had none of the pomposity of his underlings.
"I think," said the white-haired man, "that you must be James Hunt You see, we improved our detectors. When we came to our senses our detectors showed a much stronger field than had ever been registered before, and we managed to trace it."
Jim said shortly, "Hm... You should. It isn't focused."
"Yes," said the white-haired man. "I've reviewed the file on you, Mr. Hunt. Your apparatus, which we seized, was very ingenious."
Jim said coldly, "I don't think that you came here to pay me compliments!"
The Director-General of Security said humbly, "In part I did. But also I came to tell you that you can turn off your transmitter now."
"You can turn it off," said Jim grimly, "after you kill me!"
The Director-General of Security smiled faintly.
"It doesn't matter. You see, we worked with the apparatus we seized from your laboratory. We worked out the principles involved. And we've built thirty more transmitters, all of which are working now. Yours alone took care of the Things, but it's hardly likely that all the others will go out of action at the same time. We made a large number for—security. Your vigil isn't necessary any longer. That's all."
Jim relaxed. Then he shrugged. He looked at the men who had gotten out of the three Security cars.
"I suppose," he said sardonically, "that I'm under arrest, now. I've a life sentence for breach of security, I'm charged with a murder I didn't commit, with two escapes from custody, and there's a hold-up you can bring against me. I did break the law in working on thought-transmission! But if I hadn't worked at it, I'd have had no idea how to stop it! But I did smash the Things! I've got that much satisfaction!"
Then he shrugged.
"All right," he said cynically. "I suppose I've accomplished enough for one man. I go to jail now and you can smash the transmitter if you like. I'll come quietly!"
The white-haired man smiled without mirth.
"I understand your attitude," he said gently. "But we did think we were doing the right thing. Now we know we weren't. But I did not come to arrest you, but to ask your help. We have found the space-ship in which the Things came here. They had rather manlike creatures in it with them—all dead, however. The controls were designed to be operated by those manlike creatures, and not by Things. We've forced some Things to explain, by signals. It appears that they control some nine planets in two solar systems, all of them inhabited by the same beings who had apparently built and navigated the spaceship, and on whom the Things apparently—fed."