“And so I did. I wanted to carry forward my examination of them. I wanted to dissect one and see what made him go. Perhaps you recall my telling you about the hardness of the exoskeletons.”
“Yes, of course I do.”
“Randall,” said Dobby sadly, “would you believe me if I told you that exoskeleton was so hard I could do nothing with it? I couldn’t cut it and I couldn’t peel it off. So you know what I did?”
“I have no idea,” I declared, somewhat exasperated. I hoped that he’d soon get to the point, but there was no use in hurrying him. He always took his time.
“Well, I’ll tell you, then,” said Dobby, seething. “I took one of those little so-and-sos and I put him on an anvil. Then I picked up a hammer and I let him have it. And I tell you frankly that I am not proud of it. It constituted, in every respect, a most improper laboratory technique.”
“I wouldn’t let that worry me at all,” I told him. “You’ll simply have to put this down as an unusual circumstance. The important thing, it seems to me, is what you learned about the bug…”
And then I had a terrible thought. “Don’t tell me the hammer failed!”
“Not at all,” said Dobby with some satisfaction. “It did a job on him. He was smashed to smithereens.”
I sat down on the bench beside him and settled down to wait. I knew that in due time he’d tell me.
“An amazing thing,” said Dobby. “Yes, a most amazing thing. That bug was made of crystals–of something that looked like the finest quartz. There was no protoplasm in him. Or, at least,” he qualified, judiciously, “none I could detect.”
“But a crystal bug! That’s impossible!”
“Impossible,” said Dobby. “Yes, of course, by any earthly standard. It runs counter to everything we’ve ever known or thought. But the question rises: Can our earthly standards, even remotely, be universal?”
I sat there, without saying anything, but somehow I felt a great relief that someone else was thinking the same thing I had thought It went to prove, just slightly, that I wasn’t crazy.
“Of course,” said Dobby, “it had to happen sometime. Soon or late, it should be almost inevitable that some alien intelligence would finally seek us out. And knowing this, we speculated on monsters and monstrosities, but we fell short of the actual mark of horr–”
“There’s no reason at the moment,” I told him hastily, “that we should fear the bugs. They might in fact, become a useful ally. Even now they are cooperating. They seemed to strike up some sort of deal. We furnish them a place to live and they, in turn…”
“You’re mistaken, Randall,” Dobby warned me solemnly. “These things are alien beings. Don’t imagine for a moment that they and the human race might have a common purpose or a single common concept. Their life process, whatever it may be, is entirely alien to us. So must be their viewpoints. A spider is blood-brother to you as compared with these.”
“But we had ants and wasps and they cleaned out the ants and wasps.”
“They may have cleaned out the ants and wasps, but it was no part, I am sure, of a cooperative effort. It was no attempt on their part to butter up the human in whose dwelling place they happened to take refuge, or set up their camp, or carve out their beachhead, however you may put it. I have grave doubts that they are aware of you at all except as some mysterious and rather shadowy monstrosity they can’t bother with as yet. Sure they killed your insects, but in this they did no more than operate on a level common with their own existence. The insects might have been in their way or they may have recognized in them some potential threat or hindrance.”
“But even so, we can use them,” I told him impatiently, “to control our insect pests, or carriers of disease.”
“Can we?” Dobby asked. “What makes you think we can? And it would not be insect pests alone, but rather all insects. Would you, then deprive our plant life of its pollination agents–to mention just one example of thousands?”
“You may be right,” I said, “but you can’t tell me that we must be afraid of bugs, of even crystal bugs. Even if they should turn out to be a menace, we could find a way in which to cope with them.”
“I have been sitting here and thinking, trying to get it straight within my mind,” said Dobby, “and one thing that has occurred to me is that here we may be dealing with a social concept we’ve never met with on this planet. I’m convinced that these aliens must necessarily operate on the hive-mind principle. We face not one of them alone nor the total number of them, but we face the sum total of them as a single unit, as a single mind and a single expression of purpose and performance.”
“If you really think they’re dangerous, what would you have us do?”
“I still have my anvil and my hammer.”
“Cut out the kidding, Dobby.”
“You are right,” said Dobby. “This is no joking matter, nor is it one for an anvil and a hammer. My best suggestion is that the area be evacuated and an atom bomb be dropped.”
Billy came tearing clown the path.
“Dad!” he was yelling. “Dad!”
“Hold up there,” I said, clutching at his arm. “What is going on?”
“Someone is ripping up our furniture,” yelled Billy, “and then throwing it outdoors.”
“Now, wait a minute–are you sure?”
“I saw them doing it,” yelled Billy. “Gosh, will Mom be sore!”
I didn’t wait to hear any more. I started for the house as fast as I could go. Billy followed close behind me and Dobby brought up the rear, white whiskers bristling like an excited billy goat.
The screen door off the kitchen was standing open as if someone had propped it, and outside, beyond the stoop, lay a pile of twisted fabric and the odds and ends of dismembered chairs.
I went up the steps in one bound and headed for the door. And just as I reached the doorway I saw this great mass of stuff bulleting straight toward me and I ducked aside. A limp and gutted love seat came hurtling out the door and landed on the pile of debris. It sagged into a grotesque resemblance of its former self.
By this time I was good and sore. I dived for the pile and grabbed up a chair leg. I got a good grip on it and rushed through the door and across the kitchen into the living room. I had the club at ready and if there’d be anybody there I would have let him have it.
But there was no one there–no one I could see.
The refrigerator was back in the center of the room and heaped all about it were piles of pots and pans. The tangled coil springs from the love seat were leaning crazily against it and scattered all about the carpet there were nuts and bolts, washers, brads and nails and varying lengths of wire.
There was a strange creaking noise from somewhere and I glanced hurriedly around to find out what it was. I found out, all right.
Over on one corner, my favorite chair was slowly am deliberately and weirdly coming apart. The upholstery nails were rising smoothly from the edging of the fabric–rising from the wood–as if by their own accord–and dropping to the floor with tiny patterings. As I watched a bolt fell to the floor and one leg bent underneath the chair and the chair tipped over. The upholstery nails kept right on coming out.
And as I stood there watching this, I felt the anger draining out of me and a fear come dribbling in to take its place. I started to get cold all over and I could feel the gooseflesh rising.
I started sneaking out. I didn’t dare to turn my back so I backed carefully away and I kept my club ready.
I bumped into something and let out a whoop and spun around and raised my club to strike.
It was Dobby. I just stopped the club in time. “Randall,” said Dobby calmly, “it’s those bugs of yours again.”
He gestured toward the ceiling and I looked. The ceiling was a solid mass of golden-gleaming bugs.
I lost some of my fear at seeing them and started to get sore again. I pulled back my arm and aimed the club up at the ceiling. I was ready to let the little stinkers have it, when Dobby grabbed my arm.
“Don’t go getting them stirred up,” he yelled. “No telling what they’d do.”
I tried to jerk my arm away from him, but he hung on to it.