They were safe, but the safety was not permanent. Through the din and dust, they could see that the gigantic beasts were wedged tightly in both entrances. In the middle was a sort of battlefield, where the animals fought to reach the opposite end of the building; they were gradually tearing each other to piecesbut the sties too were threatened with demolition.
“I had to follow you,” Nancy gasped. “But Father1 don't think he even recognized me!”
At least, Gregory thought, she had not seen her father trampled underfoot. Involuntarily glancing in that direction, he saw the shotgun that Grendon had never managed to reach still lying across a bracket on the wall. By crawling along a traverse beam, he could reach it easily. Bidding Nancy sit where she was, he wriggled along the beam, only a foot or two above the heaving backs of the swine. At least the gun should afford them some protection: the Aurigan, despite all its ghastly differences from humanity, would hardly be immune to lead.
As he grasped the old-fashioned weapon and pulled it up, Gregory was suddenly filled with an intense desire to kill one of the invisible monsters. In that instant, he recalled an earlier hope he had had of them: that they might be superior beings, beings of wisdom and enlightened power, coming from a better society where higher moral codes directed the activities of its citizens. He had thought that only to such a civilization would the divine gift of traveling through interplanetary space be granted. But perhaps the opposite held true: per– haps such a great objective could be gained only by species ruthless enough to disregard more humane ends. As soon as he thought it, his mind was overpowered with a vast diseased vision of the universe, where such races as dealt in love and kindness and intellect cowered forever on their little globes, while all about them went the slayers of the universe, sailing where they would to satisfy their cruelties and their endless appetites.
He heaved his way back to Nancy above the bloody porcine fray.
She pointed mutely. At the far end, the entrance had crumbled away, and the sows were bursting forth into the night. But one sow fell and turned crimson as it fell, sagging over the floor like a shapeless bag. Another, passing the same spot, suffered the same fate.
Was the Aurigan moved by anger? Had the pigs, in their blind charging, injured it? Gregory raised the gun and aimed. As he did so, he saw a giant hallucinatory column in the air; enough dirt and mud and blood had been thrown up to spot the Aurigan and render him partly visible. Gregory fired.
The recoil nearly knocked him off his perch. He shut his eyes, dazed by the noise, and was dimly aware of Nancy clinging to him, shouting, “Oh, you marvellous man, you marvellous man] You hit that old bor right smack on target!”
He opened his eyes and peered through the smoke and dust. The shade that represented the Aurigan was tottering. It fell. It fell among the distorted shapes of the two sows it had killed, and corrupt fluids splattered over the paving. Then it rose again. They saw its progress to the broken door, and then it had gone.
For a minute, they sat there, staring at each other, triumph and speculation mingling on both their faces. Apart from one badly injured beast, the building was clear of pigs now. Gregory climbed to the floor and helped Nancy down beside him. They skirted the loathsome messes as best they could and staggered into the fresh air.
Up beyond the orchard, strange lights showed in the rear windows of the farmhouse.
“It's on fire! Oh, Greg, our poor home is afire! Quick, we must gather what we can! All Father's lovely cases”
He held her fiercely, bent so that he spoke straight into her face. “Bert Neckland did this! He did it! He told me the place ought to be destroyed and that's what he did.”
“Let's go, then”
“No, no, Nancy, we must let it burn! Listen! There's a wounded Aurigan loose here somewhere. We didn't kill him. If those things feel rage, anger, spite, they'll be set to kill us now don't forget there's more than one of *em! We aren't going that way if we want to live. Daisy's just across the meadow here, and she'll bear us both safe home.”
“Greg, dearest, this is my home!” she cried in her despair.
The flames were leaping higher. The kitchen windows broke in a shower of glass. He was running with her in the opposite direction, shouting wildly, “I'm your home now! I'm your home now!”
Now she was running with him, no longer protesting, and they plunged together through the high rank grass.
When they gained the track and the restive mare, they paused to take breath and look back.
The house was well ablaze now. Clearly nothing could save it. Sparks had carried to the windmill, and one of the sails was ablaze. About the scene, the electric lights shone spectral and pale on the tops of their poles. An occasional running figure of a gigantic animal dived about its own purposes. Suddenly, there was a flash of lightning and all the electric lights went out. One of the stampeding animals had knocked down a pole; crashing into the pond, it short-circuited the system.
“Let's get away,” Gregory said, and he helped Nancy on to the mare. As he climbed up behind her, a roaring sound developed, grew in volume, and altered in pitch. Abruptly it died again. A thick cloud of steam billowed above the pond. From it rose the space machine, rising, rising, rising, suddenly a sight to take the heart in awe. It moved up into the soft night sky, was lost for a moment, began dully to glow, was seen to be already tremendously far away.
Desperately, Gregory looked for it, but it had gone, already beyond the frail confines of the terrestrial atmosphere. An awful desolation settled on him, the more awful for being irrational, and then he thought, and cried his thought aloud, “Perhaps they were only holiday-makers here! Perhaps they enjoyed themselves here, and will tell their friends of this little globe! Perhaps Earth has a future only as a resort for millions of the Aurigan kind!”
The church clock was striking midnight as they passed the first cottages of Cottersall.
“We'll go first to the inn,” Gregory said. “I can't well disturb Mrs. Fenn at this late hour, but your landlord will fetch us food and hot water and see that your cuts are bandaged.”
“I'm right as rain, love, but I'd be glad of your company.”
“I warn you, you shall have too much of it from now on!”
The door of the inn was locked, but a light burned inside, and in a moment the landlord himself opened to them, all eager to hear a bit of gossip he could pass on to his custom.
“So happens as there's a gentleman up in Number Three wishes to speak with you in the morning,” he told Gregory. “Very nice gentleman come on the night train, only got in here an hour past, off the wagon.”
Gregory made a wry face.
“My father, no doubt.”
“Oh, no, sir. His name is a Mr. Wills or Wells or Wallshis signature was a mite difficult to make out.”
“Wells! Mr. Wells! So he's come!” He caught Nancy's hands, shaking them in his excitement. “Nancy, one of the greatest men in England is here! There's no one more profitable for such a tale as ours! I'm going up to speak with him right away.”
Kissing her lightly on the cheek, he hurried up the stairs and knocked on the door of Number Three.