iendly
terms with a race which could travel between the stars. But there was
an even more urgent reason. The aliens had not yet begun to murder,
but it was suspected that they had a horrifying power to kill. So it
was firmly commanded that no bomb or missile or bullet was to be used
unless the invaders invited hostilities by killing humans. Their
captives--the crew of a helicopter--might be freed if aliens and men
achieved friendship. So for now--no provocation!

The thing which nobody saw moved comfortably over the ground between
the park and Maplewood. In the center of the weapon field there was a
something which generated the terror beam and probably carried
passengers. Whatever it was, it moved onward and into Maplewood and
for seven miles in every direction troops watched for it to move out
again. Artillerymen had guns ready to fire upon it if they ever got
firing coordinates and permission to go into action. Planes were ready
to drop bombs if they ever got leave to do so. And a few miles away
there were rockets ready to prove their accuracy and devastating
capacity if only given a launching command. But nothing happened. Not
even a flare was permitted to be dropped by the planes far up in the
sky. A flare might be taken for hostility.

The thing from the Park stayed in Maplewood for two hours. At the end
of that time it moved deliberately back toward the Park. It left the
town untouched save for certain curious burglaries of hardware stores
and radio shops and a garage or two. It looked as if intensely curious
not-human beings had moved from their redoubt--Boulder Lake--to find
out what civilization human beings had attained. They could guess at
it by the buildings and the homes, but most notably in the technical
shops of the inhabitants.

It went slowly and deliberately back into the Park. Humans moved
cautiously back into the area that had been emptied. Not many, but
enough to be sure that the thing had really returned to the place from
which it had come. Soldiers were tentatively entering the
again-abandoned town of Maplewood when the unseen thing changed the
range of its weapon bearing on that little city. It was then
presumably not less than seven miles on its way back to Boulder Lake.
The military had congratulated themselves on what they'd learned. The
beam projectors at the lake had a range of much more than seven miles,
but this movable, unidentifiable thing carried a lesser armament. From
it, men and