atter of time," she pleaded. "Please take it to them. They've
got to have it right away or they can't use it. She heard the clink of
one of the stove lids and watched in horror as Mac dropped the hand
through the hole into the fire beneath. She was suddenly sick. During
it all she could hear was Mac's laughter.

"Git on upstairs," he said a few minutes later. "Git on up to bed."

* * * * *

Alice looked at him, knowing her face was pale and her eyes wet and
hating him for what he had done to her and what he had done to the
aliens. But she felt fear, too, because she had never seen him quite
like this.

"What are you going to do?"

He went over, took down a box of shells from the cupboard. "What d'you
suppose? I'm goin' to run that thing off my place."

"You can't do that!"

"You wait and see."

"But he's done nothing to you!"

"He's on my property, ain't he? Now you get on upstairs like I told
you. Git!"

Alice went up the stairs engulfed by a feeling of sorrow for the
aliens, particularly for the one that would never get his hand back,
and filled with fury for her husband.

From her bedroom window she could see the alien still standing in the
yard and she wondered what he would think of them for burning the hand
and for what Mac was about to do.

She stood there a long time before the alien moved. She heard the
downstairs door open and close and she knew Mac was outside and that
the two were approaching each other. The alien finally moved from her
field of vision.

Listening, she heard the alien's calm, whistling voice but she could
not make out what he said. She could only hear the raving of her
husband and this she did not want to hear.

When the shotgun blast came she jumped as if she herself had been hit
and once again she was flooded with compassion for the creature from
another world somewhere who had come in friendship and who had been
given something hateful in return.

She went to the window but she could see nothing. She did not dare go
downstairs again with Mac in the mood he was in. She sat in an
armchair at the window looking out into the barn lot illuminated by
the lone electric light high in the windmill. And eventually, she did
not know when, she fell asleep.

When she woke up the day was just dawning and with a rush she
remembered everything that had happened the night before and she found
she had slept through the night in the chair without removing