I
Sam Collins flashed the undertaker a healthy smile, hoping it wouldn't
depress old Candle too much. He saluted. The skeletal figure in endless
black nodded gravely, and took hold of Sam Collins' arm with a death
grip.
"I'm going to bury you, Sam Collins," the undertaker said.
The tall false fronts of Main Street spilled out a lake of shadow, a
canal of liquid heat that soaked through the iron weave of Collins'
jeans and turned into black ink stains. The old window of the hardware
store showed its age in soft wrinkles, ripples that had caught on fire
in the sunset. Collins felt the twilight stealing under the arms of his
tee-shirt. The overdue hair on the back of his rangy neck stood up in
attention. It was a joke, but the first one Collins had ever known Doc
Candle to make.
"In time, I guess you'll bury me all right, Doc."
"In my time, not yours, Earthling."
"Earthling?" Collins repeated the last word.
The old man frowned. His face was a collection of lines. When he
frowned, all the lines pointed to hell, the grave, decay and damnation.
"Earthling," the undertaker repeated. "Earthman? Terrestrial? Solarian?
Space Ranger? _Homo sapiens?_"
Collins decided Candle was sure in a jokey mood. "Kind of makes you
think of it, don't it, Doc? The spaceport going right up outside of
town. Rocketships are going to be out there taking off for the
Satellite, the Moon, places like that. Reminds you that we _are_
Earthlings, like they say in the funnies, all right."
"Not outside town."
"What?"
"Inside. Inside town. Part of the spaceship administration building is
going to go smack in the middle of where your house used to be."
"My house _is_."
"For less time than you will be yourself, Earthling."
"Earthling yourself! What's wrong with you, Doc?"
"No. I am not an Earthling. I am a superhuman alien from outer space. My
mission on Earth is to destroy you."
* * * * *
Collins pulled away gently. When you lived in a town all your life and
knew its people, it wasn't unusual to see some old person snap under the
weight of years.
"You have to destroy the rocketship station, huh, Doc, before it sends
up spaceships?"
"No. I want to kill _you_. That is my mission."
"_Why?_"
"Because," Candle said, "I am a basically evil entity."
The undertaker turned away and went skittering down Main Street, his
lopsided gait limping, sliding, hopping, skipping, at a refined
leisurely pace. He was a collection of dancing, straight black lines.
Collins stared after the old man, shook his head and forgot about him.
He moved into the hardware store. The bell tinkled behind him. The store
was cramped with shadows and the smell of wood and iron. It was lined
off as precisely as a checkerboard, with counters, drawers,
compartments.
Ed Michaels sat behind the counter, smoking a pipe. He was a handsome
man, looking young in the uncertain light, even at fifty.
"Hi, Ed. You closed?"
"Guess not, Sam. What are you looking for?"
"A pound of tenpenny nails."
Michaels stood up.
Sarah Comstock waddled energetically out of the back. Her sweet, angelic
face lit up with a smile. "Sam Collins. Well, I guess _you'll_ want to
help us murder them."
"Murder?" Collins repeated. "Who?"
"Those Air Force men who want to come in here and cause all the
trouble."
"How are you going to murder them, Mrs. Comstock?"
"When they see our petition in Washington, D.C., they'll call those men
back pretty quick."
"Oh," Collins said.
Mrs. Comstock produced the scroll from her voluminous handbag. "You want
to sign, don't you? They're going to put part of the airport on your
place. They'll tear down your house."
"They can't tear it down. I won't sell."
"You know government men. They'll just _take_ it and give you some money
for it. Sign right there at the top of the new column, Sam."
Collins shook his head. "I don't believe in signing things. They can't
take what's mine."
"But Sam, dear, they _will_. They'll come in and push your house down
with those big tractors of theirs. They'll bury it in concrete and set
off those guided missiles of theirs right over it."
"They can't make me get out," Sam said.
* * * * *
Ed Michaels scooped up a pound, one ounce of nails and spilled them onto
his scale. He pinched off the excess, then dropped it back in and fed
the nails into a brown paper bag. He crumpled the top and set it on the
counter. "That's twenty-nine plus one, Sam. Thirty cents."
Collins laid out a quarter and a nickel and picked up the bag.
"Appreciate you doing this after store hours, Ed."