"What was that?" I asked.

"The call is in," said Joe. "They'll call us back."

I nodded.

"I told them it was important."

"I wonder if it is," I said.

"What do you mean? Of course it..."

"I wonder what the senator can do. I wonder what difference it will make if I, or you, or anyone, talks to him about it."

"The senator has a lot of weight," said Joe. "He likes to throw it around."

We sat in silence for a moment, waiting for the call, waiting for the senator and what he knew about it.

"If no one will stand up for us," asked Joe, "if no one will fight for us, what are we to do?"

"What can we do?" I asked. "We can't even run. We can't get away. We're sitting ducks."

"When the village knows..."

"They'll know," I said, "as soon as the news leaks out. If it does leak out. It'll be bulletined on TV and radio and everyone in this village is plastered to a set."

"Maybe someone will get hold of Davenport and hush him up."

I shook my head. "He was pretty sore this morning. Right down the general's throat."

And who was right? I asked myself. How could one tell in this short s.p.a.ce of time who was right or wrong?

For years man had fought insects and blights and noxious weeds. He'd fought them any way he could. He'd killed them any way he could. Let one's guard down for a moment and the weeds would have taken over. They crowded every fence corner, every hedgerow, sprang up in every vacant lot. They'd grow anywhere. When drought killed the grain and sickened the corn, the weeds would keep on growing, green and tough and wiry.

And now came another noxious weed, out of another time, a weed that very possibly could destroy not only corn and grain but the human race. If this should be the case, the only thing to do was to fight it as one fought any weed, with everything one had.

But suppose that this was a different sort of weed, no ordinary weed, but a highly adaptive weed that had studied the ways of man and weed, and out of its vast knowledge and adaptability could manage to survive anything that man might throw at it. Anything, that is, except ma.s.sive radiation.

For that had been the answer when the problem had been posed in that strange project down in Mississippi.

And the Flowers" reaction to that answer would be a simple one. Get rid of radiation. And while you were getting rid of it, win the affection of the world."

If that should be the situation, then the Pentagon was right.

The phone buzzed from the desk.

Joe picked up the receiver and handed it to me.

My lips seemed to be stiff. The words I spoke came out hard arid dry.

"h.e.l.lo," I said. "h.e.l.lo. Is this the senator?

"Yes."

"This is Bradshaw Carter. Millville. Met you this morning. At the barrier."

"Certainly, Mr Carter. What can I do for you?

"There is a rumour..."

"There are many rumours, Carter. I've heard a dozen of them."

"About a bomb on Millville. The general said this morning..."

"Yes," said the senator, far too calmly. "I have heard that rumour, too, and am quite disturbed by it. But there is no confirmation. It is nothing but a rumour."

"Senator," I said. "I wish you'd level with me. To you it's a disturbing thing to hear. It's personal with us."

"Well," said the senator. You could fairly hear him debating with himself.

"Tell me," I insisted. "We're the ones involved..."

"Yes. Yes," said the senator. "You have the right to know. I'd not deny you that."

"So what is going on?

"There is only one solid piece of information," said the senator. "There are top level consultations going on among the nuclear powers. Quite a blow to them, you know, this condition of the aliens. The consultations are highly secret, as you might imagine. You realize, of course..."

"It's perfectly all right," I said. "I can guarantee..."

"Oh, it's not that so much," said the senator. "One of the newspaper boys will sniff it out before the night is over. But I don't like it. It sounds as if some sort of mutual agreement is being sought. In view of public opinion, I am very much afraid..."

"Senator! Please, not politics."

"I'm sorry," said the senator. "I didn't mean it that way. I won't try to conceal from you that I am perturbed. I'm trying to get what facts I can..."

"Then it's critical."

"If that barrier moves another foot," said the senator, "if anything else should happen, it's not inconceivable that we might act unilaterally. The military can always argue that they moved to save the world from invasion by an alien horde. They can claim, as well, that they had information held by no one else. They could say it was cla.s.sified and refuse to give it out. They would have a cover story and once it had been done, they could settle back and let time take its course. There would be h.e.l.l to pay, of course, but they could ride it out."

"What do you think?" I asked. "What are the chances?"

"G.o.d," said the senator, "I don't know. I don't have the facts. I don't know what the Pentagon is thinking. I don't know the facts they have. I don't know what the chiefs of staff have told the President. There is no way of knowing the att.i.tudes of Britain or Russia, or of France."

The wire sang cold and empty.

"Is there," asked the senator, "anything that you can do from the Millville end?"

"An appeal," I said. "A public appeal. The newspapers and the radio..."

I could almost see him shake his head. "It wouldn't work," he said. "No one has any way of knowing what's happening there behind the barrier. There is always the possibility of influence by the aliens. And the pleading of special favour even when that would be prejudicial to the world. The communications media would snap it up, of course, and would play it up and make a big thing of it. But it would not influence official opinion in the least. It would only serve to stir up the people-the people everywhere. And there is enough emotionalism now. What we need are some solid facts and some common sense."

He was fearful, I thought, that we'd upset the boat. He wanted to keep everything all quiet and decent.

"And, anyhow," he said, "there is no real evidence..."

"Davenport thinks there is."

"You have talked with him?"

"No," I said, quite truthfully, "I haven't talked with him."

"Davenport," he said, "doesn't understand. He stepped out of the isolation of his laboratory and..."

"He sounded good to me," I said. "He sounded civilized."

And was sorry I'd said it, for now I'd embarra.s.sed him as well as frightened him.

"I'll let you know," he said, a little stiffly. "As soon as I hear anything I'll let you or Gerald know. I'll do the best I can. I don't think you need to worry. Just keep that barrier from moving, just keep things quiet. That's all you have to do."

"Sure, Senator," I said, disgusted.

"Thanks for calling," said the senator. "I'll keep in touch."

"Goodbye, Senator," I said.

I put the receiver back into the cradle. Joe looked at me inquiringly.

I shook my head. "He doesn't know and he isn't talking. And I gather he is helpless. He can't do anything for us."

Footsteps sounded on the sidewalk and a second later the door came open. I swung around and there stood Higgy Morris.

Of all the people who would come walking in at this particular moment, it would be Higgy Morris.

He looked from one to the other of us.

"What's the matter with you guys?" he asked.

I kept on looking at him, wishing that he'd go away, but knowing that he wouldn't.

"Brad," said Joe, "we've got to tell him."

"All right," I said. "You go ahead and tell him."

Higgy didn't move. He stood beside the door while Joe told him how it was. Higgy got wall-eyed and seemed to turn into a statue. He never moved a muscle; he didn't interrupt.

For a long moment there was silence, then Higgy said to me, "What do you think? Could they do a thing like that to us?"

I nodded. "They could. They might. If the barrier moves again. If something else should happen."

"Well, then," said Higgy, springing into action, "what are we standing here for? We must start to dig."

"Dig?"

"Sure. A bomb shelter. We've got all sorts of manpower. There's no one in the village who's doing anything. We could put everyone to work. There's road equipment in the shed down by the railroad station and there must be a dozen or more trucks scattered here and there. I'll appoint a committee and we'll.. . Say, what's the matter with you fellows?"

"Higgy," said Joe, almost gently, "you just don't understand. This isn't fallout-this would be a hit with the village as ground zero. You can't build a shelter that would do any good. Not in a hundred years, you couldn't."

"We could try," said Higgy, stubbornly.

"You can't dig deep enough," I said, "or build strong enough to withstand the blast. And even if you could, there'd be the oxygen .. ."

"But we got to do something," Higgy shouted. "We can't simply sit and take it. Why, we'd all be killed!"

"Chum," I told him, "that's too d.a.m.ned bad."

"Now, see here.. . " said Higgy.

"Cut it out!" yelled Joe. "Cut it out, both of you. Maybe you don't care for one another, but we have to work together. And there is a way. We do have a shelter."

I stared at him for a moment, then I saw what he was getting at.

"No!" I shouted. "No, we can't do that. Not yet. Don't you see? That would be throwing away any chance we have for negotiation. We can't let them know."

"Ten to one," said Joe, "they already know."

"I don't get it at all," Higgy pleaded. "What shelter have we got?

"The other world," said Joe. "The parallel world, the one that Brad was in. We could go back there if we had to. They would take care of us, they would let us stay. They'd grow food for us and there'd be stewards to keep us healthy and..."

"You forget one thing," I said. "We don't know how to go. There's just that one place in the garden and now it's all changed. The flowers are gone and there's nothing there but the money bushes."

"The steward and Smith could show us," said Joe. "They would know the way."

"They aren't here," said Higgy. "They went home. There was no one at the clinic and they said they had to go, but they'd be back again if we needed them. I drove them down to Brad's place and they didn't have no trouble finding the door or whatever you call it. They just walked a ways across the garden and then they disappeared."

"You could find it, then?" asked Joe.

"I could come pretty close."

"We can find it if we have to, then," said Joe. "We can form lines, arm in arm, and march across the garden."

"I don't know," I said. "It may not be always open."

"Open?"

"If it stayed open all the time," I said, "we'd have lost a lot of people in the last ten years. Kids played down there and other people used it for a short cut. I went across it to go over to Doc Fabian's, and there were a lot of people who walked back and forth across it. Some of them would have hit that door if it had been open."

"Well, anyhow," said Higgy, "we can call them up. We can pick up one of those phones..."