“No, actually, I don’t,” she said. “But it’s terribly important, isn’t it? When extraterrestrial visitors cause the field to stop functioning, everything stops–the radio, telephones, cars, everything!”
“Our car still works,” Barron pointed out.
“Perhaps the interference isn’t complete,” said Mrs Barron. “When the visitors return, it will be complete.”
“And when will that be?” Barron asked, exasperated.
“They will let us know,” she replied. She went up the steps into the big house.
Barron said several things under his breath, then followed his wife.
“Good for her!” said Elsie Spratt, who had come to the ranch-house door to stand beside Jupe. “She got the last word for a change!”
Elsie went back to the table and sat down. “That old goat she’s married to is enough to drive a saint mad,” she said. “If Mrs Barron says a thing is black, he decides it’s white just to spite her. But tonight she’s got it all her own way. She’s been predicting flying saucers and visitors from outer space all along, and he’s insisted that we’ll be taken over by Communists or bureaucrats or labour unions, and she turns out to be right!”
“Do you really think she is?” said Jupe. “Do you really think we have visitors from outer space?”
Elsie looked away from him. “What else could it be?” she said. She stood up, suddenly brisk, and got a candle and a tin candlestick from one of the cupboards.
“You can take this with you when you go to bed,” she said, handing the candlestick to the boys. Then she went up the stairs carrying a lamp. Mary Sedlack came in and went up, too.
Banales, Detweiler, and Aleman also had rooms in the ranch house, and they came in soon after. Banales showed Konrad and the boys where they were to sleep in a big bunkroom at the front of the house. Konrad declared that he didn’t dare shut his eyes, but he stretched out on a cot and was soon breathing deeply and evenly.
The boys lay in the darkness for a long while after the candle was put out. They listened to the noises made by the old house, and by the people in it. Somewhere nearby someone tossed restlessly in bed. Someone else paced in the darkness.
Jupe awoke in the early hours of the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. His mind kept turning over the events of the previous day. After a time he got up and went to the window. The moon had set, and the ranch was dark and quiet. No one stirred outside. Jupe couldn’t guess the hour, but he thought that dawn must be fairly close.
Impulsively, he put on his clothes and moved softly to the cots where his fellow Investigators slept. A light touch brought each of them awake. A few minutes later, all three boys were creeping down the stairs and out of the house. By the faint light of the stars, Jupe led the others past the workers’ cottages to the parking area near the sheds. There the boys huddled under a tree.
“What gives?” asked Pete.
Jupe frowned and pulled at his lip, as he always did when he was thinking furiously. “Would it be very difficult for someone to imitate the President’s voice?” he finally asked. “And would it be hard to get a recording of the Marine Band playing ‘Hail to the Chief’?”
“You think this is a hoax?” asked Bob.
“I don’t know. But it makes me think of a famous radio broadcast that I once read about,” said Jupe. “It was done by Orson Welles, and if it didn’t start out to be a hoax, it sure wound up as one.”
Jupe leaned against the trunk of a tree and cleared his throat, as if he were about to give a lecture.
“Way back in the 1930s,” he said, “before there was any television, Welles went on radio one Hallowe’en night with a dramatization of a science fiction story by H. G. Wells, the English novelist. The story was called War of the Worlds. It was about monsters from Mars who came to invade the earth. At the very beginning of the programme, an announcer came on to say that it was only a radio play, but the rest of the programme sounded just like a series of emergency news broadcasts. Anyone who tuned in late heard bulletins about the strange objects from outer space that had fallen to earth near a little town in New Jersey. They heard that the strange objects were spaceships, and that terrible creatures with tentacles were emerging from them. Parts of the programme were supposed to be coming from mobile units at the scene, and the radio audience heard sirens and crowd noises. There were reports of poisonous gases coming from the New Jersey marshes. And there were bulletins on traffic conditions on the major highways as people supposedly fled from the invaders.
“What the broadcasting company didn’t know until the programme was over was that people really were fleeing from the Martians. Thousands of them thought the reports on the radio were real, and they panicked.
“Now suppose that the broadcast we heard today didn’t really come from Washington? Suppose the voice we heard wasn’t really the voice of the President? Suppose we were listening to a broadcast that came from around here.” Jupe gestured towards the cliffs that surrounded them.
“Okay,” said Bob. “There could be a transmitter out there. Maybe it could jam the regular wavelengths by broadcasting noise. Maybe it could broadcast a fake speech. But the soldiers on the road . . .”
“Suppose they’re imposters,” said Jupe. “That lieutenant is so military–so full of spit and polish. He could be acting a part.”
“Maybe he just got his commission,” said Bob. “He is kind of overdressed. He even wears his gloves nonstop. But I hear that new officers are like that.”
“If it’s a hoax, somebody’s gone to an awful lot of trouble,” said Pete. “Why would anyone do that? The fire on the cliffs was–well, it was pretty weird. It can’t be easy to make bare rock cliffs look like they’re burning. And we did see a spaceship take off. And that sheep herder–his hair was burned! And what about that gadget that Hank Detweiler found on the meadow–that clamp or switch or whatever it was?”
“All very convincing,” said Jupe, “But stop and think about it, Pete. Your father works in movie studios. Did anything happen today that couldn’t be duplicated by a good special effects man?”
“N-no,” said Pete after a second. “I guess not.”
“There’s only one way to find out for sure,” said Jupe. “We have to do what we planned in the first place. We have to hike out to the nearest town and see what’s happening there.”
“That means we go up those cliffs, doesn’t it?” said Bob. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
“Oh, no!” groaned Pete. “Do we have to go back to that meadow? What if someone–or something–is up there?”
“That’s what you said last night,” Jupe pointed out, “and we didn’t find anyone there besides the herder. Quit worrying. We won’t go until it starts getting light.”
The boys waited impatiently until a faint, flat light began to replace the blackness in the valley. Then they got up and started swiftly towards the meadow. When they had passed the cultivated fields and reached the edge of the pasture, they saw fog. It rose from the reservoir and flowed down over the dam in a fluffy stream. They hiked towards it, taking care to avoid the sheep on the lower meadow, but at the foot of the dam they paused. Each of them felt a thrill of dread. Into the mind of each came the picture of Simon de Luca lying on the ground, his hair singed as if by rocket fire.
The boys groped around the rocks and bushes at the edge of the dam. When they had climbed to the top of the dam, they started to skirt the reservoir. Pete was in the lead, wading through fog.
Suddenly he cried out.
Someone stood in the path–a tall, thin person who seemed to have a head too large for his body. It took a moment for the boys to realize that this person was wearing a suit of glossy white material–a suit that shone even in the dim light–and that the head was covered with a huge helmet. It was a helmet that might have been used by a diver or an astronaut, or perhaps by an alien who could not breathe Earth’s air.
Pete shouted again. Jupe saw the creature lift an arm and strike out. At that same instant, something behind Jupe clutched him around the throat. He was lifted up so that he saw the grey sky above and the pale morning stars. Then came an explosion of pain in the back of his neck. He felt himself falling into darkness and then he saw no more.