o pieces with a thunderous detonation. The truck crashed. It
was interesting to Lockley that automobile engines invariably went
dead at about the time that explosives went off. The fact was, of
course, that ionized air is more or less conductive. In an ion cloud
the spark plugs shorted and did not fire in the cylinders.

There were two other vehicles which essayed to pass Lockley as he
went on up the long way to the lake. Both came from the interior of
the Park. He left them wrecked beside the highway. Between times, he
walked with a dogged grimness toward the place where Vale had been the
first to report a thing come down from the sky. That had been how many
days ago? Three? Four?

Then Lockley had been a quiet and well-conducted citizen inclined to
pessimism about future events, but duly considerate of the rights of
others. Now he'd changed. He felt only one emotion, which was hatred
such as he'd never imagined before. He had only one motive, which was
to take total and annihilating vengeance for what had been done to
Jill.

He plodded on and on. He had to make a march of not less than twenty
miles from the Park's beginning. He journeyed on foot because there
were terror beams to pass and automobile engines did not run when his
protective device operated. He could not arm himself from the cars
that ditched, because all chemical explosive weapons and their
ammunition blew at the same time. He was a minute figure among the
mountains, marching alone upon a winding highway, moving resolutely to
destroy--alone--the invaders from outer space and the men who worked
with them for the conquest of earth. For his purpose he carried the
strangest of equipment, a device made of a pocket radio and a cheese
grater.

He had food in his pockets, but he could not eat. During the afternoon
he became impatient of its weight and threw it away. But he thirsted
often. More than once he drank from small streams over which the
highway builders had made small concrete bridges.

At three in the afternoon a truck came up from behind. Here he
trudged between steep cliffs which made him seem almost a midget. The
highway went through a crevice between adjoining mountainsides. There
was no place for him to conceal himself. When he heard the engine, he
stopped and faced it. The truck had picked up many men from wrecked
cars along its route. There were scorched and scratched and wounded
men, hurt by the explosion of their firearms. The truck bro