We went into the deserted hall of Exeter Castle. "Look, Colonel," I
said, "will you tell them about this? They'll be upstairs. Tell 'em
that it works, that I can see as Jerry Wolfe saw, and everything he
told Alec was true. I'll be all right after a while, but now I want to
be alone. I don't want to be hedged in by close walls, or have to talk.
I'll just roam around down here for a bit. You tell 'em it's okay, that
I'll speak to them later."
"Absolutely." The Colonel was the best stuff there is. "Come up when
you feel like it, son." He was gone.
I strolled over to one of the great mullioned windows and touched its
dusty glass lightly. That glass was older, probably, than all our
little band put together. I thought: when it was placed here, were the
usurping devils abroad in England? How long have they been filtering
through into our world--a hundred years, a thousand? If you start with
one and he lets in others, then figuring by the birth rate and the
multiplying branches of his horrid clan, how long would it take to let
in a million of them? How many figures of our glorious history were
just that--figures, puppets, marionettes pulled by fourth-dimensional
strings, flesh-and-bone shadows fronting for demons....
_We are no other than a moving row of magic shadow-shapes that come and
go...._
Jerry had asserted that when the human body died, the alien was
relegated to his own world again. Then it had to come back, I presumed,
via another birth. It must be centuries, then, at the very least a
couple of centuries, since the first one came through. It takes time to
corrupt the blood of six-thirteenths of all England.
But was it six-thirteenths? Jerry had taken his census in Charing Cross
Station. At Exeter Parva I had seen exactly one usurper. Were they then
centered in London? Were there perhaps no more than fifteen or twenty
thousand of them altogether? That brought down the odds!
* * * * *
I laughed loudly, and the age-old echoes waked in the oak rafters and
laughed after me. Oh, the odds were in my favor, all right.
Opposing me, say (conservatively) twenty thousand foemen: great livid
beasts like nothing a sane mind could conceive, that had a system of
communication outside my dimension which could gather a score or a
thousand of them to down me if I showed fight.
On my side, a regular Colonel Blimp of a retired officer, a Boer War
veteran, a skeptical middle-aged physician, a blind man, another chap
with no left arm, and a girl.
And I: Will Chester, thirty-three years old, five feet ten, moderately
strong, normally intelligent; having all my teeth save two, a thick
crop of black hair, brown eyes, a complexion more ruddy than otherwise,
and a face that, if it would not halt a charging bull in his tracks,
still would not win a beauty competition either.... Seven years of Army
behind me, an income of eight hundred pounds a year from a legacy,
and nothing much in view as a future, until this morning--when I had
suddenly been elected the savior of mankind.
I walked across to the tremendous blackened fireplace, empty now of
everything but a lonely-looking single bronze firedog. Above the
keystone of the arch were the arms and motto of the Exeters, done
in ancient stonework. I could not read the motto, having forgotten
what Latin I once knew. The arms were a jumble of crossed lances,
fleurs-de-lis, and hounds couchant. I wished I had a hound to fondle
and pat, to be a companion in these moments when I felt I could not
bear a human being near me.
* * * * *
For half an hour or so I stood there gazing blindly into the depths of
the hearth and pitying myself shamelessly. Then a touch on my arm made
me leap like a deer. It was Marion; Marion, carrying with her her own
special radiance even in the shadowed hall.
"What cheer, old stager?" she said.
"Not much cheer, lady."
"Obviously. What is it, got the wind up? Scared sky-blue-pink?"
"Yes. I've just realized that this whole affair is fact, is true; that
it's not a crazy adventure in fancy, but a dreadfully real matter of
saving the sane world from destruction--and I'm scared!"
"We all are." She said it quietly, and with her simple words I knew
for the first time that I was not alone in my terror of the unknown.
We were all afraid. I put my arm around her shoulders. Her long light
hair tingled on the back of my hand. I loved her very much, and so I
tormented myself.
"I've been thinking of Jerry Wolfe, and of how alone he must have felt.
He didn't have six pals behind him when the first alien fouled his
view."
"Poor old Jerry," she said.
"You were engaged to him, weren't you?"
"Yes, back in prehistoric times, before Jennifer Tregennis caught him.
Jennifer was one of _them_, you know."
"Yes, I know. D'you still love Jerry?"
"How do you mean? Of course I do."
I didn't say anything. She went on after a moment. "But I'm not in love
with him, if that's what you're driving at. Good heavens, Will, do you
see me as a moony widow-in-name-only? I've got more sense than that."
My heart lifted. I patted her on the back. "Come along young Marion.
Let's go plan strategy with the troops."
We went up the stairs to our sitting room, and I stood before the six
of them and took the reins into my hands. I had a job to do.