e size of men. She couldn't
describe them, but they weren't human beings. He seemed to find it
unthinkable that she hadn't examined them in detail.

Lockley came to her rescue. He observed that he'd been a prisoner of
the invaders, and had escaped. Then the driver's curiosity became
insatiable. He wanted to know every imaginable detail of that
experience. He expressed almost incredulous disappointment that
Lockley couldn't give even a partial description of the creatures.
When convinced, he launched a detailed recital of the descriptions
offered by the workmen from the camp. He pictured the aliens as hoofed
like horses, equipped with horns like antelopes, fitted with multiple
arms like octopi and huge multi-faceted eyes like insects.

He seemed to contemplate this picture with vast satisfaction as the
truck growled and rumbled through the night.

The headlights glared on ahead of the truck. There were dark fields
and darker mountains beyond them. From time to time little side roads
branched off. They undoubtedly led to houses, but no speck of lamp
light appeared anywhere. This part of the world was empty, with the
loneliness of a landscape from which every hint of human activity had
been removed.

Jill asked a question. The driver grew garrulous. He gave a dramatic
picture of terror throughout the world, the suspension of all ordinary
antagonisms in the face of this menace to every man and nation on the
earth. There was peace even in the world's trouble spots as appalled
agitators saw how much worse things could be if the monsters took over
the world to rule. But the driver insisted that the United States was
calm. Us Americans, he assured Lockley, weren't scared. We were
educated and we knew that them scientists would crack this nut
somehow. Like only yesterday a broadcast said this Belgian guy had
come up with calculations that said this poison beam had to be
something like a radar beam or a laser beam or something like that.
And the American scientists were right out there in front, along with
guys from England and France and Italy and Germany and even Russia.
All the big brains of the world were workin' on it! Those Martians
were gonna wish they'd come visitin' polite instead of barging in like
they owned the world! They'd be lucky if they wound up ownin' Mars!

Lockley pressed for details about the scientists' results. He didn't
expect to get them, but the driver cheerfully obliged.

Radio, said the driver l