s arbitrarily cut off.

"I'll bet," said Lockley when the newscast ended, "I'll bet the other
information was that the invaders have managed to tell him that earth
must surrender to them!"

"Why?"

"What else would they want to say? To come and play patty-cake, when
they can push the Army around at will and have managed to keep planes
from flying anywhere near them? They may not know we've got atom
bombs, but I'll bet they do! Part of that extra information could have
been a warning not to try to use them. It would be logical to bluff
even on that, though they couldn't make good."

Jill said very carefully, "You hinted once that they might be men,
pretending to be monsters. But that would mean that somebody I care
about would probably be killed because he'd seen them and knew they
weren't creatures from beyond the stars."

"I think you can forget that idea," said Lockley. "They don't act like
men. Chasing away the plane that was going to land for us, and not
using the beam on the fugitives it was plainly going to land
for--that's not like men preparing to take over a continent! And
nudging the Army back to make the cordoned space larger--that's not
like our most likely human enemy, either. They'd wipe out the cordon
by stepping up the terror beam to death ray intensity."

"Suppose they couldn't?"

"They wouldn't have landed with a weapon that couldn't kill anybody,"
said Lockley. "It's much more likely that they're monsters. But they
don't act like monsters, either."

Jill was silent for a moment.

"Not even monsters who wanted to make friends?"

"They," said Lockley drily, "would hardly make a surprise landing.
They'd have parked on the moon and squeaked at us until we got
curious, and then they'd arrange to land, or to meet men in orbit, or
something. But they didn't. They made a surprise landing, and cleared
a big space of humans, keeping themselves to themselves. But if they
do think we're animals, like rabbits, they'd kill people instead of
stinging them up a bit, or paralyzing them for a while and then
letting them go. That's not like any monster I can imagine!"

"Then--"

"You'd better go to sleep," said Lockley. "We've got a long day's hike
before us tomorrow."

"Yes-s-s," agreed Jill reluctantly. "Good-night."

"'Night," said Lockley curtly.

He stayed awake. It was amusing that he was uneasy about wild animals.
There were predators in the Park, and he had only an improvised club
for a weap