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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78911 ***
+
+
+
+
+                                Survivor
+
+                         by Irving E. Cox, Jr.
+
+
+
+
+  _The gray men had come from an unknown place to overrun the earth.
+  They killed without passion, in much the same manner as the
+  earthlings would exterminate ants to reclaim a hill for planting._
+
+  _And amid the slaughter a small boy looked to his father for
+  guidance. But the man knew that in the face of motorized legions
+  there was only one legacy a parent could leave--so he gave his son a
+  gun...._
+
+
+[Illustration: Illustrator: John Giunta]
+
+
+
+
+He stood still listening. In the distance he heard the unmistakable
+shrill whine of high-speed motors. He looked wildly for a way of
+escape, and saw none. The highway at that point wound under the bare
+overhang of brown cliffs, sheer and naked in the pale sunlight.
+
+He might have climbed the sharp face of rock if he had not been so
+exhausted. But his body was tortured with fatigue and pain. His clothes
+were in tatters. His feet and arms were latticed with a livid network
+of wounds. The long cut in his cheek had stopped bleeding, but the
+caking scab pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
+
+The roaring motors swept closer, so near that the earth shook. Choked
+with panic, he began to run. He sprawled over a jagged rock, and the
+gravel sandpapered the skin from his kneecaps.
+
+The sudden pain cleared his head. He realized that it was a mere animal
+instinct to try to outrun the caravan; but he had a slim chance for
+safety if he hid in the tangled shrubs that choked the swamp on the
+other side of the road.
+
+He darted across the ribbon of cement and plunged into the thicket.
+Hard twigs and thorns tore at his skin. His feet splashed into the
+fetid, black slime, and muddy water oozed reluctantly over his legs.
+
+His head was in a nest of tall grass. To his right the swamp curved
+along the road for a quarter of a mile. Above it two huge, black birds
+swept the sky in a solemn circle. Much closer, a dozen small marshbirds
+danced and chattered on the edge of a decaying log.
+
+The roar of motors was deafening as the caravan rounded the bend. Only
+a thin whisper of rationality kept him from running. As he had once
+before, he clenched his fists until the tattered nails broke the skin;
+and over and over he whispered a kind of litany of sanity:
+
+“I am Vernon Randall Hume. V. R. Hume, corporation lawyer. V. R. Hume;
+age, thirty-five; happily married; the father of three children. I am
+Vernon Randall Hume. I have not lost my mind. Yesterday I had lunch
+at the Athletic Club. Only yesterday!” The word was a symbol, rather
+than an accurate measure of time. It stood for another life, another
+reality. Hume was not sure whether it had been two days or a year ago.
+Yesterday was simply then; this was now--this clanking column of gray
+death moving over a dead landscape.
+
+He could not look at the clattering vehicles; and it was impossible to
+turn his eyes away. They were not thirty feet from him, the roaring
+black machines and the glittering guns that saluted the empty sky. In
+every vehicle were crowded rows of gray-faced men in gray uniforms.
+They sat erect and motionless, obedient automatons.
+
+Suddenly Hume heard a splashing in the swamp behind him. He turned his
+head and saw a white-robed figure fighting free of the slime--a woman
+who had been hiding in the thick brush. Apparently her reason had been
+shattered by terror, and she could not control her lashing instinct to
+run.
+
+A driver signaled. The caravan stopped. The gray men stood up.
+Languidly their guns were lowered, shimmering like silver lances in the
+sunlight. Screaming, the woman floundered in the mud, her long hair
+pulled free in the wind.
+
+The guns jumped and the blue smoke hung for a moment over the caravan.
+The woman clawed at the air in agony before slumping back into the
+slime. The gray men turned in unison, shouldered their arms, and sat
+down. The motors roared and the caravan moved on.
+
+Slowly the noise died and the air was quiet again.
+
+Hume stood up. His wet clothing clung to his skin, and in the sharp air
+each tiny laceration felt like a fresh wound. His feet were numb chunks
+of flesh, slithering in the mud as he walked.
+
+He stopped beside the woman. She lay face up in the black mud, her
+frayed dress billowed by the shallow water, her hands clutching at the
+gaping wound torn in her breast.
+
+Without knowing quite why he did, Hume knelt and kissed her lips. They
+were still warm. Then he understood. She was like Beth, another symbol
+of yesterday. Even this much of a parting had been denied him in that
+first blazing destruction.
+
+His soul screaming with the pain of remembering, he turned and fled,
+plunging awkwardly through the swamp. When he reached dry ground on the
+other side, he collapsed, retching emptily. The nausea swept up around
+him. He lost consciousness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_The boy and his father came to the cliff overlooking the road.
+Cautiously they inspected the empty landscape. The father pointed
+toward the ragged chain of mountains, hazy blue on the horizon. “The
+river is on the other side of the ridge,” he said. “We can hide in the
+swamp until it’s dark again.” They slid down the bank and ran across
+the highway._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was dusk when Hume regained consciousness. The rim of the distant
+mountains was pink against a purple sky and the floor of the valley
+was dark, streaked here and there with mist. How much farther was it?
+Ten miles? He had no way of knowing. Yesterday, in his own car, he
+could have reached the pass in less than an hour; it was a magnificent
+highway. He had never understood distances except in terms of time.
+
+He knew it was dangerous to follow the road, and yet he was still
+afraid to strike out across the desert. He hadn’t the slightest
+conception of the distance a man might walk in twenty-four hours, and
+he knew he had to forage for both food and water. There might be small
+animals of a sort on the desert. A clever man might trap one and kill
+it, but Hume’s cleverness was limited to the manipulation of words in
+legal controversy.
+
+He was sustained by no hope except the sight of the chain of hills, and
+his consuming determination to reach them alive. Once Hume had defended
+a client by utilizing the logic of self-defense. “Take away all that a
+man possesses,” he had said; “throw out all the comforts and gadgets
+of civilization, and face an individual with the one issue of personal
+survival--a choice between life and death--and he cannot choose the
+latter. His choice is neither heroic nor romantic; it is simply
+instinctive.”
+
+Now, for the first time in his life, Hume understood what he had been
+talking about.
+
+The motorized caravans could not have penetrated the mountains yet;
+and Hume’s own people were on the other side, beyond the river. It was
+the only solid reality he had to cling to; it had the inevitability of
+tomorrow’s sunrise.
+
+After nightfall, Hume moved closer to the highway and plodded ahead
+more rapidly, less afraid in the dark. Pangs of hunger gnawed at his
+stomach, but it was a subordinate sensation, hard-ridden by the more
+intensive will to survive. He even took a certain wry comfort in his
+feeling of lightheadedness, for it diminished the constant pain crying
+against his nerves.
+
+A pale half-moon rose. Close to the road Hume saw a frame farmhouse.
+There was a chance he could find food there, and possibly fresh water
+and clothing. Even though he knew the house would be deserted, he
+approached it cautiously. For almost a quarter of an hour he huddled
+in the shelter of a lilac bush at the corner of the yard before he
+mustered up enough courage to go inside.
+
+He walked across the manicured path, his battered shoes crunching
+softly on the white gravel. The house had not been untenanted long
+enough for the neglect to be obvious. The grass was still clipped
+short, and the sharply defined borders around the row of tree roses
+might have been made only an hour ago. But there were little signs of
+desertion: occasional blades of fast-growing weeds, a bush or two bowed
+with dead blooms that should have been pruned away, and a semicircular
+crescent torn in the earth by heavy metal treads.
+
+Close to the porch the twisted body of a woman lay on the ground,
+cradled in a bed of white-faced pansies. The body was seared black,
+almost unrecognizable as anything once human. Beyond her, frozen fast
+to a pillar of the porch, was the charred corpse of a man.
+
+The paint on the front of the house was blistered, still smelling
+faintly of fire. The gray men had used their flame guns here, Hume
+realized, caressing the face of the house with a terrifying white heat,
+like the kiss of a naked sun.
+
+Hume went up the steps and entered the house. In the front room were
+trunks and boxes, partly filled, which the man and woman had obviously
+been packing when the caravan of gray men came. Hume pawed through
+the stacks of things, but found no clothing that he could use. The
+farmer had tried to escape with possessions which had yesterday’s
+values--silverware, good china, books, silks, and fancy linens.
+
+The practical clothing that Hume needed would still be somewhere
+upstairs; but before he explored for it, Hume went to the kitchen
+seeking food.
+
+He found canned goods stacked in a cabinet. With trembling fingers
+he ground two cans open under the wall opener. He gulped a pint of
+condensed soup and a can of peaches; and he became promptly sick. When
+his weakness had subsided, he tried again, eating more slowly. There
+was no water running through the faucet. He had hardly expected it
+to be, and he would have been afraid to drink any if it had. But he
+managed to slake his thirst by draining the juice from another can of
+fruit.
+
+Something faintly reminiscent of well-being filled his body. He leaned
+back in a kitchen chair and propped his tired feet on the white-topped
+table, scraping away the black mud with the point of a knife.
+
+He heard the hum of an approaching motor and was seized again with
+terror. He pulled himself up to the narrow kitchen window and peered
+out.
+
+A treaded vehicle clanked to a stop and three searchlights pinpointed
+the house in the darkness. Hume crouched back against the cold wall,
+his breath icing his throat. Squads of gray men lined up on either side
+of the lights, and a leader bellowed a volley of orders at the face
+of the building. They waited. The command was repeated. After another
+pause, the gray men began to fire their weapons into the house.
+
+Hume slid inside the narrow cubicle beneath the sink, where the
+porcelain gave him some protection from the falling glass and the
+crumbling plaster. The darkness glowed with the scarlet plumes of
+deadly explosives; but, in two minutes, it was over. The searchlights
+went off; the truck crunched on into silence.
+
+The house was a riddled shambles, tottering with unexpected senility.
+Yet it had not caught fire. Hume picked his way carefully through the
+debris and up the swaying stairway to the second floor.
+
+A section of the wall at the head of the stairway gaped open and Hume
+looked out into the valley. The mountains were clearly detailed in
+the cold moonlight. He traced the curve of the highway as it wound
+over the desert toward the pass, and he saw the sprawling oval of the
+single valley town, which yesterday had cast the pleasant reflection of
+lighted streets against the night sky. Now the rows of homes and stores
+were a dead, bleak cancer rising on the desert. On the outskirts of
+the village was a blaze of intermingled searchlights marking the place
+where the gray men had set up an outpost camp.
+
+The town was at the point of a triangle. The entrance to the mountain
+pass, Hume saw, was directly across the desert. If he went that way,
+using the peaks as a guide, he would reach safety much sooner, and he
+would avoid the danger of passing close to the camp of the gray men.
+His fear of crossing the desert on foot suddenly vanished before the
+security it offered.
+
+The two bedrooms at the front of the farmhouse were shot away, but at
+the rear of the hall Hume found a storage closet. He pried the door
+open. Inside were long racks of clothing. Ecstatically Hume fingered
+the solid comfort of a woolen coat.
+
+But his pleasure was fleeting. He heard footsteps on the gravel
+outside. Looking down through the torn wall, he saw a tall figure
+moving boldly toward the house. The gray men had come back! He was
+trapped!
+
+Hume shrank back into the closet, stealthily shutting the door. He
+threw a pile of clothing into a dark corner and slithered beneath it.
+The warmth gradually veneered his terror. He heard no more footsteps.
+For the moment, he was safe. Slowly he gave way to the drowsiness he
+could no longer control.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_The boy and his father found a dry island of land in the swamp.
+Curling into the thicket, they slept four hours and awoke after dark.
+They moved ahead quietly. When they saw the battered farmhouse, the
+father left the child in a nearby ditch, where a film of ice was
+beginning to form on the stagnant water, and went to see if he could
+find any food in the house. He came back with an armload of canned
+goods; they ate well before they went on._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hume awoke violently, the wraith of the nightmare still clinging to his
+brain. It was the old dream of the beginning, of the catastrophe that
+had rung the knell of yesterday. And of Beth: of shrieking desolation
+and of a city turned in an instant into flaming dust.
+
+Yet the sleep had done him good. The worst of his fatigue was gone;
+his head was clear again. Judiciously he picked over the clothing in
+the closet, dressing himself as warmly as he could. He found a pair of
+discarded riding boots, cracked and in need of soling, but nonetheless
+better than the shoes he had on.
+
+He descended the stairway and went back to the kitchen, intending to
+fill the pockets of the coat with canned goods. Oddly, the cupboard was
+empty. He was sure he had left several cans unopened, and without food
+he was afraid to try the desert crossing. Then he found the carving
+knife in a kitchen drawer. He rationalized comfort and security from
+it. There would be animals of some sort on the desert. If necessary, he
+could kill one to ease his hunger, though the clinging crust of culture
+made even the idea faintly nauseating.
+
+It was dawn when he set out. He plodded on for hours, without stopping
+and without taking his eyes from the mountains. The sun rose high, but
+Hume felt neither the heat nor his own weariness, for he walked in
+freedom, unafraid. There were no gray men here; there would be none.
+This desert was an unwanted waste, claimed only by the sun and wind,
+inhabited only by the small, frightened animals that fled as Hume
+approached.
+
+The ground was a rolling carpet of colored stones, worn smooth by the
+patient erosion of time. Here and there were scattered clumps of hardy
+brush and an occasional brilliantly flowered plant clinging close to
+the earth. Frequent hills of stone three or four feet high cast narrow
+shadows on the desert. From the semi-darkness terrified animal eyes
+peered out at Hume, like glowing, yellow gems.
+
+Hume’s stride gradually lengthened with his returning self-confidence.
+He squared his shoulders. Since yesterday he had not spoken, fearing
+that even the sound of his voice would betray him. Now he talked aloud
+to the emptiness, for the pure joy of hearing his own voice. He shouted
+into the wind; he roared defiance at the invaders.
+
+As he walked along, he picked up stones and hurled them at the hiding
+animals. His blood pounded with a strange excitement when they ran from
+him; and leaped with joy when he hit a toad and killed it.
+
+Year ago, in college, Hume had been a baseball star. He needed only a
+little practice to restore the accuracy of his pitching technique. By
+midday he was able to hit any animal he saw on the desert.
+
+It became a game with him to slaughter them, a pleasure that restored
+his sense of superiority, of dominion over all things of the earth.
+He was its master, not the hordes of gray men. He felt the familiar
+security of yesterday, the comfortable luxury of planetary ownership.
+
+He killed rabbits by the score, neither for sustenance nor for safety,
+but to feed the flame of his possessiveness, so long stifled by his
+fear of the gray men. When he had perfected the technique of throwing
+the stones, he multiplied the pleasure by transforming it into an
+art. First he would frighten the animal, make it run; then, when it
+had nearly escaped his range, he would hurl the rock, watching with a
+savage delight while the victim leaped into the air, screaming in agony
+as it died.
+
+Only once did the pattern change. He cornered a rabbit and, unable to
+flee, the terrified animal attacked him, slapping him viciously with
+its feet before he cut its throat with his kitchen knife. As the warm
+blood washed over his hand, he thought he might make a meal of the
+rabbit, but his hunger was not sufficiently acute for him to eat the
+uncooked flesh. He regretted that he had not brought any matches with
+him. But it was a minor annoyance. The mountains were very close; in
+another ten or twelve hours he would be on the other side, among his
+own people. He threw the carcass aside and went on.
+
+In the afternoon he abandoned the coat he had taken from the farm and,
+shortly after, two of the sweaters. He knew he would want them again
+after dark, but the heat of the afternoon sun was unbearable and he
+was sure he could make better time if he were not impeded by the heavy
+clothing.
+
+At sunset he reached the foothills. Red in the setting sun, the
+mountains towered above him, a snow-capped wall. His nerves tingled
+with triumph. He had nearly reached his goal. The pass was a half mile
+farther south. He could see the highway curving gracefully toward it.
+
+He would have to move more cautiously again, now that he was once more
+close to the road. But it would be for the last time. The gray men had
+not passed the mountains; he was confident of that; and he would be
+safe on the other side. It even seemed unlikely, when he considered the
+matter, that the gray men would be at the pass with any kind of force.
+They would still be consolidating the enormous territory they had taken
+close to the city. Probably they would have an outpost here, but he
+would be able to bypass that easily enough.
+
+Hume came to the top of a hill higher than the rest and looked down
+upon the highway. In that instant his mounting confidence collapsed.
+For he saw a long, black, motorized column approaching from the valley,
+and at the foot of the pass a city-size camp of the gray men.
+
+Terrified again, he crept down the face of the hill to a small gully,
+where he hid himself in a thicket of shrubs. Like the desert animals,
+he felt safe in the cold shadows. For an instant the analogy was clear
+to him. To the gray men he was of no greater value than the rabbits
+Hume had slain for the pure delight of expressing his own proprietary
+superiority. But the comparison was a disastrous hypothesis. It led his
+mind to the madness of despair. His conscious rationality reared back,
+rejecting the data, wiping his mind clear of the inevitable conclusion.
+
+Slowly the motorized column clanged past Hume’s hiding place; and
+slowly Hume reasoned away his fear. The pass was not the only way
+through the mountains. A man on foot could force a passage almost
+anywhere. Hume was vaguely familiar with the terrain, since he had
+occasionally vacationed at the mountain resorts. He convinced himself
+that, even if the gray men had occupied the pass itself, they would not
+have strayed from the highway because they were helpless without their
+motorized caravans of weapons.
+
+At nightfall the batteries of searchlights encircling the invader’s
+camp were turned on; as darkness deepened, the camp blazed like a
+fallen star. Hume saw a small vehicle move out from the camp, stopping
+at intervals along the road. When it passed beneath his gully, he
+understood why, for one of the gray men got out and began to pace the
+cement. The enemy was putting out a network of sentries along the base
+of the mountains. Obviously, then, other refugees had slipped into the
+safety of the hills at night, and the gray men intended to stop them.
+
+Momentarily Hume was breathless with panic. He was cornered and he had
+no way of escape. Before this his safety had been bought by hiding from
+the gray men and running when he could. Now he must either wait quietly
+for them to find him, or fight his way free. Once again the analogy
+of the rabbit played dangerously on the fringe of his mind. Even the
+rabbit Hume had cornered could not meekly resign itself to death; it
+was driven instinctively to fight its way out.
+
+Hume had no alternative. As the moon rose, he crept out of his gully
+noiselessly. When he stood up, his feet felt like dead clods; his
+teeth chattered and his body shook in the icy wind sweeping out of the
+mountains. His hands searched the level of the earth until he found a
+suitable stone of the right weight. When the sentry was directly below
+him, he hurled the rock with all his strength. The gray man dropped and
+lay still, a huddled shadow on the white road.
+
+Exultant, Hume slid down the hill and stood over his enemy--a thin,
+frail, underfed creature, as powerless as Hume himself when he was
+taken by surprise and stripped of the power of his weapons. Shivering,
+Hume ripped off the long, swirling, high-collared, gray coat which the
+sentry was wearing. It was woven of a material much like wool; Hume
+felt warmer as soon as he drew it on.
+
+The gray man began to twist and groan. Sneering, Hume watched the agony
+for a moment. Then he picked up the stone again and hammered it into
+the colorless, gray face. The bones crunched and he felt the warm blood
+spurting over his hands. An ecstatic madness, a purity of joy he had
+never experienced before, seized him, and he beat the quivering pulp
+until he was breathless.
+
+When he paused, he heard footsteps on the road behind him. Another
+sentry, perhaps--coming to relieve his friend! Hume turned and fled
+toward the mountains, running frantically up the steep inclines,
+stumbling through the ragged gulches. He was pursued by a fear that
+rode him until his pulse banged in his temples, his breath came in
+gasps, and a taste of blood tainted the back of his throat. He paused
+and looked back.
+
+A tall figure was bending over the gray man Hume had killed.
+
+Hume turned to run again, but his head swam with exhaustion. His knees
+began to buckle. He saw the narrow ravine ahead, but he hadn’t the
+strength to resist his own momentum. He slid helplessly down the rocky
+bank and lay still, bent unnaturally over a heap of boulders.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Cautiously rounding a bend, the boy and his father saw two gray men
+fighting in the middle of the highway. They sprang into the roadside
+ditch, the man shielding his son’s body with his own. Gradually,
+the father understood that they had not been seen. He crept out and
+examined the body on the road. The assailant had fled, taking his
+victim’s coat, but leaving the gun. The father picked it up and called
+his son. They turned of the highway and began the steep climb toward
+the peaks._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The wound in Hume’s cheek was bleeding again, and one foot was
+grotesquely bent beneath him. Slowly he pulled himself to his feet,
+dizzy with pain.
+
+He saw the crest of the hills above him and he began to climb, moving
+uncertainly, pulling himself forward with his clawing hands. Hour by
+hour he inched upward, pausing at intervals for rest, shivering with
+cold, wracked by pain, leaving a thin trail of freezing blood on the
+rocks below him.
+
+His rational consciousness narrowed to a single awareness. He must pass
+the ridge; he would be safe, then. The pain, the tearing hunger, the
+agonizing memories were the torments of another body, somehow remotely
+related to his own. He set his eyes on the crest and moved toward it.
+
+At dawn he was above the snow line. The ridge was only a few feet
+farther on. He looked up at the crevices of snow, long crystal folds
+streaked with golden light. The wind screamed and a mist of snow bit
+into his face, but he did not notice it. He was safe! He had reached
+the top!
+
+An energy and warmth from outside himself gradually flowed into Hume’s
+body, a joy that lifted him up in spite of his pain. He stood erect and
+felt nothing. Proudly, the joy of achievement singing in his soul, he
+began to walk toward the crest....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+...Obediently, the boy waited in the cave where his father had left him
+while he went to find the shortest way down to the river on the other
+side. The father had given his son the gray man’s gun, showing him how
+to use it. “But don’t fire unless it’s absolutely necessary. Even if
+the gray men reach the top of the pass, they probably won’t find your
+hiding place. Use the gun only if you see one of them coming toward
+you.”
+
+The boy looked out. He saw the tall, gray figure climbing up the hill
+of the snow at the mouth of the cave. Calmly he aimed the gun, as his
+father had instructed him, and fired. The man fell, rolled a short
+distance through the brittle snow, and lay still.
+
+For a long time the boy crouched in the cave, but as the hours passed,
+hunger eventually drove him out. He slid down the snow past the body
+of the man he had killed, ignoring it. Among the pines he found traces
+of his father’s footprints and followed them down out of the snow to
+the bank of the river. He sat by the muddy water, staring across at the
+opposite bank. His people were over there; his father had said so; but
+where? Why had no one come out to meet him, bringing a little boat that
+would ferry him across the river?
+
+Hopefully, the boy followed the bank, wondering if there might be a
+bridge farther on. Just beyond a thicket of brambles he found his
+father, sprawled in the damp earth, his body crushed in the tracks made
+by a treaded vehicle.
+
+The boy then heard a sound on the other side of the river and, looking
+up, he saw a black, motorized column moving triumphantly on the
+opposite bank.
+
+The boy turned to run, and discovered that he had been quietly
+surrounded by a corps of gray men, who were pointing their short,
+vicious weapons at him. When they saw that the boy was powerless,
+they threw a net over him and bound him securely with it. Later they
+carried him back to their camp and put him in a square, black box,
+heavily barred on one side, so that they could study his habits at
+their leisure. In a sense, some of them were even kind toward the boy,
+treating him the way he had his own pet terrier when he still lived
+back in the city.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s note:
+
+
+  This etext was produced from Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader,
+  April 1953 (Vol. 1, no. 2).
+
+  Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but
+  minor inconsistencies have been retained as printed.
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78911 ***
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+
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78911 ***</div>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="cover" style="max-width: 107.5625em;">
+  <img class="w20" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p>Transcribed from Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader, April 1953 (Vol. 1, no. 2).</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"></div>
+<h1>
+Survivor
+</h1>
+
+
+<p class="center f15">by <strong>Irving E. Cox, Jr.</strong></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"></div>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><i>The gray men had come from an unknown place to overrun the earth. They
+killed without passion, in much the same manner as the earthlings would
+exterminate ants to reclaim a hill for planting.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>And amid the slaughter a small boy looked to his father for guidance.
+But the man knew that in the face of motorized legions there was only
+one legacy a parent could leave—so he gave his son a gun....</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"></div>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="028" style="max-width: 46.875em;">
+  <img class="w20" src="images/028.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p>Illustrator: John Giunta</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"></div>
+
+
+<p>He stood still listening. In the distance he heard the unmistakable
+shrill whine of high-speed motors. He looked wildly for a way of
+escape, and saw none. The highway at that point wound under the bare
+overhang of brown cliffs, sheer and naked in the pale sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>He might have climbed the sharp face of rock if he had not been so
+exhausted. But his body was tortured with fatigue and pain. His clothes
+were in tatters. His feet and arms were latticed with a livid network
+of wounds. The long cut in his cheek had stopped bleeding, but the
+caking scab pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.</p>
+
+<p>The roaring motors swept closer, so near that the earth shook. Choked
+with panic, he began to run. He sprawled over a jagged rock, and the
+gravel sandpapered the skin from his kneecaps.</p>
+
+<p>The sudden pain cleared his head. He realized that it was a mere animal
+instinct to try to outrun the caravan; but he had a slim chance for
+safety if he hid in the tangled shrubs that choked the swamp on the
+other side of the road.</p>
+
+<p>He darted across the ribbon of cement and plunged into the thicket.
+Hard twigs and thorns tore at his skin. His feet splashed into the
+fetid, black slime, and muddy water oozed reluctantly over his legs.</p>
+
+<p>His head was in a nest of tall grass. To his right the swamp curved
+along the road for a quarter of a mile. Above it two huge, black birds
+swept the sky in a solemn circle. Much closer, a dozen small marshbirds
+danced and chattered on the edge of a decaying log.</p>
+
+<p>The roar of motors was deafening as the caravan rounded the bend.
+Only a thin whisper of rationality kept him from running. As he had
+once before, he clenched his fists until the tattered nails broke the
+skin; and over and over he whispered a kind of litany of sanity:</p>
+
+<p>“I am
+Vernon Randall Hume. V. R. Hume, corporation lawyer. V. R. Hume; age,
+thirty-five; happily married; the father of three children. I am Vernon
+Randall Hume. I have not lost my mind. Yesterday I had lunch at the
+Athletic Club. Only yesterday!” The word was a symbol, rather than an
+accurate measure of time. It stood for another life, another reality.
+Hume was not sure whether it had been two days or a year ago. Yesterday
+was simply then; this was now—this clanking column of gray death
+moving over a dead landscape.</p>
+
+<p>He could not look at the clattering vehicles; and it was impossible to
+turn his eyes away. They were not thirty feet from him, the roaring
+black machines and the glittering guns that saluted the empty sky. In
+every vehicle were crowded rows of gray-faced men in gray uniforms.
+They sat erect and motionless, obedient automatons.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Hume heard a splashing in the swamp behind him. He turned his
+head and saw a white-robed figure fighting free of the slime—a woman
+who had been hiding in the thick brush. Apparently her reason had been
+shattered by terror, and she could not control her lashing instinct to
+run.</p>
+
+<p>A driver signaled. The caravan stopped. The gray men stood up.
+Languidly their guns were lowered, shimmering like silver lances in the
+sunlight. Screaming, the woman floundered in the mud, her long hair
+pulled free in the wind.</p>
+
+<p>The guns jumped and the blue smoke hung for a moment over the caravan.
+The woman clawed at the air in agony before slumping back into the
+slime. The gray men turned in unison, shouldered their arms, and sat
+down. The motors roared and the caravan moved on.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the noise died and the air was quiet again.</p>
+
+<p>Hume stood up. His wet clothing clung to his skin, and in the sharp air
+each tiny laceration felt like a fresh wound. His feet were numb chunks
+of flesh, slithering in the mud as he walked.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped beside the woman. She lay face up in the black mud, her
+frayed dress billowed by the shallow water, her hands clutching at the
+gaping wound torn in her breast.</p>
+
+<p>Without knowing quite why he did, Hume knelt and kissed her lips. They
+were still warm. Then he understood. She was like Beth, another symbol
+of yesterday. Even this much of a parting had been denied him in that
+first blazing destruction.</p>
+
+<p>His soul screaming with the pain of remembering, he turned and fled,
+plunging awkwardly through the swamp. When he reached dry ground on the
+other side, he collapsed, retching emptily. The nausea swept up around
+him. He lost consciousness.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p><i>The boy and his father came to the cliff overlooking the road.
+Cautiously they inspected the empty landscape. The father pointed
+toward the ragged chain of mountains, hazy blue on the horizon. “The
+river is on the other side of the ridge,” he said. “We can hide in the
+swamp until it’s dark again.” They slid down the bank and ran across
+the highway.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It was dusk when Hume regained consciousness. The rim of the distant
+mountains was pink against a purple sky and the floor of the valley
+was dark, streaked here and there with mist. How much farther was it?
+Ten miles? He had no way of knowing. Yesterday, in his own car, he
+could have reached the pass in less than an hour; it was a magnificent
+highway. He had never understood distances except in terms of time.</p>
+
+<p>He knew it was dangerous to follow the road, and yet he was still
+afraid to strike out across the desert. He hadn’t the slightest
+conception of the distance a man might walk in twenty-four hours, and
+he knew he had to forage for both food and water. There might be small
+animals of a sort on the desert. A clever man might trap one and kill
+it, but Hume’s cleverness was limited to the manipulation of words in
+legal controversy.</p>
+
+<p>He was sustained by no hope except the sight of the chain of hills, and
+his consuming determination to reach them alive. Once Hume had defended
+a client by utilizing the logic of self-defense. “Take away all that a
+man possesses,” he had said; “throw out all the comforts and gadgets
+of civilization, and face an individual with the one issue of personal
+survival—a choice between life and death—and he cannot choose
+the latter. His choice is neither heroic nor romantic; it is simply
+instinctive.”</p>
+
+<p>Now, for the first time in his life, Hume understood what he had been
+talking about.</p>
+
+<p>The motorized caravans could not have penetrated the mountains yet;
+and Hume’s own people were on the other side, beyond the river. It was
+the only solid reality he had to cling to; it had the inevitability of
+tomorrow’s sunrise.</p>
+
+<p>After nightfall, Hume moved closer to the highway and plodded ahead
+more rapidly, less afraid in the dark. Pangs of hunger gnawed at his
+stomach, but it was a subordinate sensation, hard-ridden by the more
+intensive will to survive. He even took a certain wry comfort in his
+feeling of lightheadedness, for it diminished the constant pain crying
+against his nerves.</p>
+
+<p>A pale half-moon rose. Close to the road Hume saw a frame farmhouse.
+There was a chance he could find food there, and possibly fresh water
+and clothing. Even though he knew the house would be deserted, he
+approached it cautiously. For almost a quarter of an hour he huddled
+in the shelter of a lilac bush at the corner of the yard before he
+mustered up enough courage to go inside.</p>
+
+<p>He walked across the manicured path, his battered shoes crunching
+softly on the white gravel. The house had not been untenanted long
+enough for the neglect to be obvious. The grass was still clipped
+short, and the sharply defined borders around the row of tree roses
+might have been made only an hour ago. But there were little signs of
+desertion: occasional blades of fast-growing weeds, a bush or two bowed
+with dead blooms that should have been pruned away, and a semicircular
+crescent torn in the earth by heavy metal treads.</p>
+
+<p>Close to the porch the twisted body of a woman lay on the ground,
+cradled in a bed of white-faced pansies. The body was seared black,
+almost unrecognizable as anything once human. Beyond her, frozen fast
+to a pillar of the porch, was the charred corpse of a man.</p>
+
+<p>The paint on the front of the house was blistered, still smelling
+faintly of fire. The gray men had used their flame guns here, Hume
+realized, caressing the face of the house with a terrifying white heat,
+like the kiss of a naked sun.</p>
+
+<p>Hume went up the steps and entered the house. In the front room were
+trunks and boxes, partly filled, which the man and woman had obviously
+been packing when the caravan of gray men came. Hume pawed through the
+stacks of things, but found no clothing that he could use. The farmer
+had tried to escape with possessions which had yesterday’s values—silverware,
+good china, books, silks, and fancy linens.</p>
+
+<p>The practical clothing that Hume needed would still be somewhere
+upstairs; but before he explored for it, Hume went to the kitchen
+seeking food.</p>
+
+<p>He found canned goods stacked in a cabinet. With trembling fingers
+he ground two cans open under the wall opener. He gulped a pint of
+condensed soup and a can of peaches; and he became promptly sick. When
+his weakness had subsided, he tried again, eating more slowly. There
+was no water running through the faucet. He had hardly expected it
+to be, and he would have been afraid to drink any if it had. But he
+managed to slake his thirst by draining the juice from another can of
+fruit.</p>
+
+<p>Something faintly reminiscent of well-being filled his body. He leaned
+back in a kitchen chair and propped his tired feet on the white-topped
+table, scraping away the black mud with the point of a knife.</p>
+
+<p>He heard the hum of an approaching motor and was seized again with
+terror. He pulled himself up to the narrow kitchen window and peered
+out.</p>
+
+<p>A treaded vehicle clanked to a stop and three searchlights pinpointed
+the house in the darkness. Hume crouched back against the cold wall,
+his breath icing his throat. Squads of gray men lined up on either side
+of the lights, and a leader bellowed a volley of orders at the face
+of the building. They waited. The command was repeated. After another
+pause, the gray men began to fire their weapons into the house.</p>
+
+<p>Hume slid inside the narrow cubicle beneath the sink, where the
+porcelain gave him some protection from the falling glass and the
+crumbling plaster. The darkness glowed with the scarlet plumes of
+deadly explosives; but, in two minutes, it was over. The searchlights
+went off; the truck crunched on into silence.</p>
+
+<p>The house was a riddled shambles, tottering with unexpected senility.
+Yet it had not caught fire. Hume picked his way carefully through the
+debris and up the swaying stairway to the second floor.</p>
+
+<p>A section of the wall at the head of the stairway gaped open and Hume
+looked out into the valley. The mountains were clearly detailed in
+the cold moonlight. He traced the curve of the highway as it wound
+over the desert toward the pass, and he saw the sprawling oval of the
+single valley town, which yesterday had cast the pleasant reflection of
+lighted streets against the night sky. Now the rows of homes and stores
+were a dead, bleak cancer rising on the desert. On the outskirts of
+the village was a blaze of intermingled searchlights marking the place
+where the gray men had set up an outpost camp.</p>
+
+<p>The town was at the point of a triangle. The entrance to the mountain
+pass, Hume saw, was directly across the desert. If he went that way,
+using the peaks as a guide, he would reach safety much sooner, and he
+would avoid the danger of passing close to the camp of the gray men.
+His fear of crossing the desert on foot suddenly vanished before the
+security it offered.</p>
+
+<p>The two bedrooms at the front of the farmhouse were shot away, but at
+the rear of the hall Hume found a storage closet. He pried the door
+open. Inside were long racks of clothing. Ecstatically Hume fingered
+the solid comfort of a woolen coat.</p>
+
+<p>But his pleasure was fleeting. He heard footsteps on the gravel
+outside. Looking down through the torn wall, he saw a tall figure
+moving boldly toward the house. The gray men had come back! He was
+trapped!</p>
+
+<p>Hume shrank back into the closet, stealthily shutting the door. He
+threw a pile of clothing into a dark corner and slithered beneath it.
+The warmth gradually veneered his terror. He heard no more footsteps.
+For the moment, he was safe. Slowly he gave way to the drowsiness he could no
+longer control.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p><i>The boy and his father found a dry island of land in the swamp.
+Curling
+into the thicket, they slept four hours and awoke after dark. They
+moved ahead quietly. When they saw the battered farmhouse, the father
+left the child in a nearby ditch, where a film of ice was beginning to
+form on the stagnant water, and went to see if he could find any food
+in the house. He came back with an armload of canned goods; they ate
+well before they went on.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Hume awoke violently, the wraith of the nightmare still clinging to his
+brain. It was the old dream of the beginning, of the catastrophe that
+had rung the knell of yesterday. And of Beth: of shrieking desolation
+and of a city turned in an instant into flaming dust.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the sleep had done him good. The worst of his fatigue was gone;
+his head was clear again. Judiciously he picked over the clothing in
+the closet, dressing himself as warmly as he could. He found a pair of
+discarded riding boots, cracked and in need of soling, but nonetheless
+better than the shoes he had on.</p>
+
+<p>He descended the stairway and went back to the kitchen, intending to
+fill the pockets of the coat with canned goods. Oddly, the cupboard was
+empty. He was sure he had left several cans unopened, and without food
+he was afraid to try the desert crossing. Then he found the carving
+knife in a kitchen drawer. He rationalized comfort and security from
+it. There would be animals of some sort on the desert. If necessary, he
+could kill one to ease his hunger, though the clinging crust of culture
+made even the idea faintly nauseating.</p>
+
+<p>It was dawn when he set out. He plodded on for hours, without stopping
+and without taking his eyes from the mountains. The sun rose high, but
+Hume felt neither the heat nor his own weariness, for he walked in
+freedom, unafraid. There were no gray men here; there would be none.
+This desert was an unwanted waste, claimed only by the sun and wind,
+inhabited only by the small, frightened animals that fled as Hume
+approached.</p>
+
+<p>The ground was a rolling carpet of colored stones, worn smooth by the
+patient erosion of time. Here and there were scattered clumps of hardy
+brush and an occasional brilliantly flowered plant clinging close to
+the earth. Frequent hills of stone three or four feet high cast narrow
+shadows on the desert. From the semi-darkness terrified animal eyes
+peered out at Hume, like glowing, yellow gems.</p>
+
+<p>Hume’s stride gradually lengthened with his returning self-confidence.
+He squared his shoulders. Since yesterday he had not spoken, fearing
+that even the sound of his voice would betray him. Now he talked aloud
+to the emptiness, for the pure joy of hearing his own voice. He shouted
+into the wind; he roared defiance at the invaders.</p>
+
+<p>As he walked along, he picked up stones and hurled them at the hiding
+animals. His blood pounded with a strange excitement when they ran from
+him; and leaped with joy when he hit a toad and killed it.</p>
+
+<p>Year ago, in college, Hume had been a baseball star. He needed only a
+little practice to restore the accuracy of his pitching technique. By
+midday he was able to hit any animal he saw on the desert.</p>
+
+<p>It became a game with him to slaughter them, a pleasure that restored
+his sense of superiority, of dominion over all things of the earth.
+He was its master, not the hordes of gray men. He felt the familiar
+security of yesterday, the comfortable luxury of planetary ownership.</p>
+
+<p>He killed rabbits by the score, neither for sustenance nor for safety,
+but to feed the flame of his possessiveness, so long stifled by his
+fear of the gray men. When he had perfected the technique of throwing
+the stones, he multiplied the pleasure by transforming it into an
+art. First he would frighten the animal, make it run; then, when it
+had nearly escaped his range, he would hurl the rock, watching with a
+savage delight while the victim leaped into the air, screaming in agony
+as it died.</p>
+
+<p>Only once did the pattern change. He cornered a rabbit and, unable to
+flee, the terrified animal attacked him, slapping him viciously with
+its feet before he cut its throat with his kitchen knife. As the warm
+blood washed over his hand, he thought he might make a meal of the
+rabbit, but his hunger was not sufficiently acute for him to eat the
+uncooked flesh. He regretted that he had not brought any matches with
+him. But it was a minor annoyance. The mountains were very close; in
+another ten or twelve hours he would be on the other side, among his
+own people. He threw the carcass aside and went on.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon he abandoned the coat he had taken from the farm and,
+shortly after, two of the sweaters. He knew he would want them again
+after dark, but the heat of the afternoon sun was unbearable and he
+was sure he could make better time if he were not impeded by the heavy
+clothing.</p>
+
+<p>At sunset he reached the foothills. Red in the setting sun, the
+mountains towered above him, a snow-capped wall. His nerves tingled
+with triumph. He had nearly reached his goal. The pass was a half mile
+farther south. He could see the highway curving gracefully toward it.</p>
+
+<p>He would have to move more cautiously again, now that he was once
+more close to the road. But it would be for the last time. The gray men
+had not passed the mountains; he was confident of that; and he would be
+safe on the other side. It even seemed unlikely, when he considered the
+matter, that the gray men would be at the pass with any kind of force.
+They would still be consolidating the enormous territory they had taken
+close to the city. Probably they would have an outpost here, but he
+would be able to bypass that easily enough.</p>
+
+<p>Hume came to the top of a hill higher than the rest and looked down
+upon the highway. In that instant his mounting confidence collapsed.
+For he saw a long, black, motorized column approaching from the valley,
+and at the foot of the pass a city-size camp of the gray men.</p>
+
+<p>Terrified again, he crept down the face of the hill to a small gully,
+where he hid himself in a thicket of shrubs. Like the desert animals,
+he felt safe in the cold shadows. For an instant the analogy was clear
+to him. To the gray men he was of no greater value than the rabbits
+Hume had slain for the pure delight of expressing his own proprietary
+superiority. But the comparison was a disastrous hypothesis. It led his
+mind to the madness of despair. His conscious rationality reared back,
+rejecting the data, wiping his mind clear of the inevitable conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the motorized column clanged past Hume’s hiding place; and
+slowly Hume reasoned away his fear. The pass was not the only way
+through the mountains. A man on foot could force a passage almost
+anywhere. Hume was vaguely familiar with the terrain, since he had
+occasionally vacationed at the mountain resorts. He convinced himself
+that, even if the gray men had occupied the pass itself, they would not
+have strayed from the highway because they were helpless without their
+motorized caravans of weapons.</p>
+
+<p>At nightfall the batteries of searchlights encircling the invader’s
+camp were turned on; as darkness deepened, the camp blazed like a
+fallen star. Hume saw a small vehicle move out from the camp, stopping
+at intervals along the road. When it passed beneath his gully, he
+understood why, for one of the gray men got out and began to pace the
+cement. The enemy was putting out a network of sentries along the base
+of the mountains. Obviously, then, other refugees had slipped into the
+safety of the hills at night, and the gray men intended to stop them.</p>
+
+<p>Momentarily Hume was breathless with panic. He was cornered and he had
+no way of escape. Before this his safety had been bought by hiding from
+the gray men and running when he could. Now he must either wait quietly
+for them to find him, or fight his way free. Once again the analogy of
+the rabbit played dangerously on the fringe of his mind. Even the
+rabbit Hume had cornered could not meekly resign itself to death; it
+was driven instinctively to fight its way out.</p>
+
+<p>Hume had no alternative. As the moon rose, he crept out of his gully
+noiselessly. When he stood up, his feet felt like dead clods; his
+teeth chattered and his body shook in the icy wind sweeping out of the
+mountains. His hands searched the level of the earth until he found a
+suitable stone of the right weight. When the sentry was directly below
+him, he hurled the rock with all his strength. The gray man dropped and
+lay still, a huddled shadow on the white road.</p>
+
+<p>Exultant, Hume slid down the hill and stood over his enemy—a thin,
+frail, underfed creature, as powerless as Hume himself when he was
+taken by surprise and stripped of the power of his weapons. Shivering,
+Hume ripped off the long, swirling, high-collared, gray coat which the
+sentry was wearing. It was woven of a material much like wool; Hume
+felt warmer as soon as he drew it on.</p>
+
+<p>The gray man began to twist and groan. Sneering, Hume watched the agony
+for a moment. Then he picked up the stone again and hammered it into
+the colorless, gray face. The bones crunched and he felt the warm blood
+spurting over his hands. An ecstatic madness, a purity of joy he had
+never experienced before, seized him, and he beat the quivering pulp
+until he was breathless.</p>
+
+<p>When he paused, he heard footsteps on the road behind him. Another
+sentry, perhaps—coming to relieve his friend! Hume turned and fled
+toward the mountains, running frantically up the steep inclines,
+stumbling through the ragged gulches. He was pursued by a fear that
+rode him until his pulse banged in his temples, his breath came in
+gasps, and a taste of blood tainted the back of his throat. He paused
+and looked back.</p>
+
+<p>A tall figure was bending over the gray man Hume had killed.</p>
+
+<p>Hume turned to run again, but his head swam with exhaustion. His knees
+began to buckle. He saw the narrow ravine ahead, but he hadn’t the
+strength to resist his own momentum. He slid helplessly down the rocky
+bank and lay still, bent unnaturally over a heap of boulders.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p><i>Cautiously rounding a bend, the boy and his father saw two gray men
+fighting in the middle of the highway. They sprang into the roadside
+ditch, the man shielding his son’s body with his own. Gradually,
+the father understood that they had not been seen. He crept out and
+examined the body on the road. The assailant had fled, taking his
+victim’s coat, but leaving the gun. The father picked it up and called
+his son. They turned of the highway and began the steep climb toward
+the peaks.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The wound in Hume’s cheek was bleeding again, and one foot was
+grotesquely bent beneath him. Slowly he pulled himself to his feet,
+dizzy with pain.</p>
+
+<p>He saw the crest of the hills above him and he began to climb, moving
+uncertainly, pulling himself forward with his clawing hands. Hour by
+hour he inched upward, pausing at intervals for rest, shivering with
+cold, wracked by pain, leaving a thin trail of freezing blood on the
+rocks below him.</p>
+
+<p>His rational consciousness narrowed to a single awareness. He must pass
+the ridge; he would be safe, then. The pain, the tearing hunger, the
+agonizing memories were the torments of another body, somehow remotely
+related to his own. He set his eyes on the crest and moved toward it.</p>
+
+<p>At dawn he was above the snow line. The ridge was only a few feet
+farther on. He looked up at the crevices of snow, long crystal folds
+streaked with golden light. The wind screamed and a mist of snow bit
+into his face, but he did not notice it. He was safe! He had reached
+the top!</p>
+
+<p>An energy and warmth from outside himself gradually flowed into Hume’s
+body, a joy that lifted him up in spite of his pain. He stood erect and
+felt nothing. Proudly, the joy of achievement singing in his soul, he
+began to walk toward the crest....</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>...Obediently, the boy waited in the cave where his father had left
+him while he went to find the shortest way down to the river on the
+other side. The father had given his son the gray man’s gun, showing
+him how to use it. “But don’t fire unless it’s absolutely necessary.
+Even if the gray men reach the top of the pass, they probably won’t
+find your hiding place. Use the gun only if you see one of them coming
+toward you.”</p>
+
+<p>The boy looked out. He saw the tall, gray figure climbing up the hill
+of the snow at the mouth of the cave. Calmly he aimed the gun, as his
+father had instructed him, and fired. The man fell, rolled a short
+distance through the brittle snow, and lay still.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time the boy crouched in the cave, but as the hours passed,
+hunger eventually drove him out. He slid down the snow past the body
+of the man he had killed, ignoring it. Among the pines he found traces
+of his father’s footprints and followed them down out of the snow to
+the bank of the river. He sat by the muddy water, staring across at the
+opposite bank. His people were over there; his father had said so; but
+where? Why had no one come out to meet him, bringing a little boat that
+would ferry him across the river?</p>
+
+<p>Hopefully, the boy followed the bank, wondering if there might be a
+bridge farther on. Just beyond a thicket of brambles he found his
+father, sprawled in the damp earth, his body crushed in the tracks made
+by a treaded vehicle.</p>
+
+<p>The boy then heard a sound on the other side of the river and, looking
+up, he saw a black, motorized column moving triumphantly on the
+opposite bank.</p>
+
+<p>The boy turned to run, and discovered that he had been quietly
+surrounded by a corps of gray men, who were pointing their short,
+vicious weapons at him. When they saw that the boy was powerless,
+they threw a net over him and bound him securely with it. Later they
+carried him back to their camp and put him in a square, black box,
+heavily barred on one side, so that they could study his habits at
+their leisure. In a sense, some of them were even kind toward the boy,
+treating him the way he had his own pet terrier when he still lived
+back in the city.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter"></div><div class="transnote">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_note">
+    Transcriber’s note:
+  </h2>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>This etext was produced from Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader,
+April 1953 (Vol. 1, no. 2).</p>
+
+<p>Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but
+minor inconsistencies have been retained as printed.</p>
+</blockquote>
+</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78911 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
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+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
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+
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+[Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook [#78911](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78911)