gesture with the rifle barrel. “Get moving,” he said. “And don’t come back.
Either one of you.”
They hesitated for a moment, looking at him, trying to gauge him,
trying to guess what he might do next.
Slowly they turned and, walking side by side, moved off down the hill.
18
He should have killed the two of them, he thought. They were not fit to
live.
He glanced down at the rifle and saw that his hands had such a tense
grip on the gun that his fingers stood out white and stiff against the satin
brownness of the wood.
He gasped a little in his effort to fight down the rage that boiled
inside him, trying to explode. If they had stayed here any longer, if he’d
not run them off, he knew he’d have given in to that towering rage.
And it was better, much better, the way that it had been. He wondered a
little dully how be had managed to hold in.
And was glad he had. For even as it stood, it would be bad enough.
They would say he was a madman; that he had run them off at gunpoint.
They might even say that he had kidnapped Lucy and was holding her against
her will. They would stop at nothing to make him all the trouble that they
could.
He had no illusions about what they might do, for he knew the breed,
vindictive in their smallness-little vicious insects of the human race.
He stood beside the porch and watched them down the hill, wondering how
a girl so fine as Lucy could spring from such decadent stock. Perhaps her
handicap had served as a bulwark against the kind of folks they were; had
kept her from becoming another one of them.
Perhaps if she could have talked with them or listened, she would in
time have become as shiftless and as vicious as any one of them.
It had been a great mistake to get mixed up in a thing like this. A man
in his position had no business in an involvement such as this. He had too
much to lose; he should have stood aside.
And yet what could he have done? Could he have refused to give Lucy his
protection, with the blood soaking through her dress from the lashes that
lay across her shoulders? Should he have ignored the frantic, helpless
pleading in her face?
He might have done it differently, he thought. There might have been
other, smarter ways in which to handle it. But there had been no time to
think of any smarter way. There only had been time to carry her to safety
and then go outside to meet them.
And now, that he thought of it, perhaps the best thing would have been
not to go outside at all. If he’d stayed inside the station, nothing would
have happened.
It had been impulsive, that going out to face them. It had been,
perhaps, the human thing to do, but it had not been wise. But he had done it
and it was over now and there was no turning back. If he had it to do again,
he would do it differently, but you got no second chance.
He turned heavily around and went back inside the station.
Lucy was still sitting on the sofa and she held a flashing object in
her hand. She was staring at it raptly and there was in her face again that
same vibrant and alert expression he had seen that morning when she’d held
the butterfly.
He laid the rifle on the desk and stood quietly there, but she must
have caught the motion of him, for she looked quickly up. And then her eyes
once more went back to the flashing thing she was holding in her hands.
He saw that it was the pyramid of spheres and now all the spheres were
spinning slowly, in alternating clockwise and counterclockwise motions, and
that as they spun they shone and glittered, each in its own particular
color, as if there might be, deep inside each one of them, a source of soft,
warm light.
Enoch caught his breath at the beauty and the wonder of it-the old,
hard wonder of what this thing might be and what it might be meant to do. He
had examined it a hundred times or more and had puzzled at it and there had
been nothing he could find that was of significance. So far as he could see,
it was only something that was meant to be looked at, although there had
been that persistent feeling that it had a purpose and that, perhaps,
somehow, it was meant to operate.
And now it was in operation. He had tried a hundred times to get it
figured out and Lucy had picked it up just once and had got it figured out.
He noticed the rapture with which she was regarding it. Was it
possible, he wondered, that she knew its purpose?
He went across the room and touched her arm and she lifted her face to
look at him and in her eyes he saw the gleam of happiness and excitement.
He made a questioning gesture toward the pyramid, trying to ask if she
knew what it might be. But she did not understand him. Or perhaps she knew,
but knew as well how impossible it would be to explain its purpose. She made
that happy, fluttery motion with her hand again, indicating the table with
its load of gadgets and she seemed to try to laugh-there was, at least, a
sense of laughter in her face.
Just a kid, Enoch told himself, with a box heaped high with new and
wondrous toys. Was that all it was to her? Was she happy and excited merely
because she supenly had become aware of all the beauty and the novelty of
the things stacked there on the table?
He turned wearily and went back to the desk. He picked up the rifle and
hung it on the pegs.
She should not be in the station. No human being other than himself
should ever be inside the station. Bringing her here, he had broken that
unspoken understanding he had with the aliens who had installed him as a
keeper. Although, of all the humans he could have brought, Lucy was the one
who could possibly be exempt from the understood restriction. For she could
never tell the things that she had seen.
She could not remain, he knew. She must be taken home. For if she were
not taken, there would be a massive hunt for her, a lost girl-a beautiful
deaf-mute.
A story of a missing deaf-mute girl would bring in newspapermen in a
day or two. It would be in all the papers and on television and on radio and
the woods would be swarming with hundreds of searchers.
Hank Fisher would tell how he’d tried to break into the house and
couldn’t and there’d be others who would try to break into the house and
there’d be hell to pay.
Enoch sweated, thinking of it.
All the years of keeping out of people’s way, all the years of being
unobtrusive would be for nothing then. This strange house upon a lonely
ridge would become a mystery for the world, and a challenge and a target for
all the crackpots of the world.
He went to the medicine cabinet, to get the healing ointment that had
been included in the drug packet provided by Galactic Central.
He found it and opened the little box. More than half of it remained.
He’d used it through the years, but sparingly. There was, in fact, little
need to use a great deal of it.
He went across the room to where Lucy sat and stood back of the sofa.
He showed her what he had and made motions to show her what it was for. She
slid her dress off her shoulders and he bent to look at the slashes.
The bleeding had stopped, but the flesh was red and angry.
Gently he rubbed ointment into the stripes that the whip had made.
She had healed the butterfly, he thought; but she could not heal
herself.
On the table in front of her the pyramid of spheres still was flashing
and glinting, throwing a flickering shadow of color all about the room.
It was operating, but what could it be doing? It was finally operating,
but not a thing was happening as a result of that operation.
19
Ulysses came as twilight was deepening into night.
Enoch and Lucy had just finished with their supper and were sitting at
the table when Enoch heard his footsteps.
The alien stood in shadow and he looked, Enoch thought, more than ever
like the cruel clown. His lithe, flowing body had the look of smoked, tanned
buckskin. The patchwork color of his hide seemed to shine with a faint