nk that's enough. They can take the towns...."

Lockley did not answer, and Jill said no more. Her breathing became
deep and regular. She was so weary that even hunger could not keep her
awake.

Lockley tried to think. There was the matter of food. Bracken shoots
were common enough but unsubstantial. It would need more careful
observation to note all the likely spots for mushrooms. Perhaps they
were far enough from the lake to take more time hunting food. They
were almost exactly in the situation of Australian bushmen who live
exclusively by foraging, with some not-too-efficient hunting. But
Australian savages were not as finicky as Jill and himself. They ate
grubs and insects. For this sort of situation, prejudices were a
handicap.

He considered the idea with sardonic appreciation. Two days of
inadequate food and such ideas came! But he and Jill wouldn't be the
only ones to think such things if matters continued as they were
going. The towns around Boulder Lake were being evacuated. The cordon
about it had been made to retreat. There was panic not only in
America, but everywhere. In Europe there were wild rumors of other
landings of other ships of space. The stock markets would undoubtedly
close tomorrow, if they hadn't closed today. There'd be the beginning
of a mass exodus from the larger cities, starting quietly but building
up to frenzy as those who tried to leave jammed all the routes by
which they could get away. If the creatures of the spaceship wanted
more than the flight of all humans from about their landing place,
there would be genuine trouble. Let them move aggressively and there
would be panic and disorder and pure catastrophe, with self-exiled
city dwellers desperate from hunger because they were away from market
centers. It looked as if a dozen or two monsters could wreck a
civilization without the need to kill one single human being directly.

He heard a sound. He turned off the radio, gripping the clumsy club
which was probably useless against anything really threatening.

The sound continued. There were rustlings of leaves, and then faint
rattling, almost clicking noises. Whatever the creature was, it was
not large. It seemed to amble tranquilly through the forest and the
night, neither alarmed nor considering itself alarming.

The clickings again. And suddenly Lockley knew what it was. Of course!
He'd heard it in the compost pit shell, when he was a prisoner of the
invaders from space. He ro