"Just as I pushed the button and the hatch was closing, a flock of owls
circled the ship. They started flying through the hatch and somehow
they jammed it open."
Em said to my wife, "There must have been a hundred of them. They kept
coming and coming and flying into that hatch. Then they began dumping
out all the recording instruments. The men tried to run a motor-driven
ladder up to the ship and those owls hit the driver on the head and
knocked him out with some kind of instrument."
Guy turned his grief-stricken face to me. "Then the hatch closed and we
don't dare go near the ship. It was supposed to fire in five minutes,
but it hasn't. Those damned owls could have...."
There was a glare in the east. We all turned and saw a brief streak of
gilt pencil its way up the black velvet beyond the mountains.
"That's it!" Guy shouted. "That's the ship!" Then he moaned. "A total
loss."