by Allen Wold
Durk, sitting next to Arnold in the driver's seat while the other two rode in the back of the truck, directed the scientist up the west side of his property, taking the long way around to stay clear of the more sandy soil for as long as possible. When they came to a line between sections, Arnold turned back east again, rolling over ground that owed its poor fertility to quartz rock rather than sand. Arnold slowed when they came within sight of the tractor
"I've got to get close enough to use the winch," Arnold said.
"All right," Durk said. "Turn around and back up. I'll guide you in." He got out of the truck and met Corey and Fenister getting off the back.
"Can that thing actually move through soil like this?" Corey asked, kicking at the clay.
"Not here, I don't think," Durk said. "It gets a lot looser toward the tractor." He and the two hunters started walking toward it as Arnold turned the truck around so that it could back in and bring the winch to bear.
They had gone only a little ways when Arnold started honking at them.
"What is it?" Durk called.
"I don't want to mess up your beans. Which way should I go?"
"Screw the beans—just follow me." He waited until Arnold had backed the truck up almost to where he was standing before starting out again.
Corey and Fenister were quite a way ahead. "Watch your feet," Durk called to them. "You can outrun it, but no sense drawing the thing here until you've got your bait ready." The two hunters halted where they stood.
Durk knew this ground like he knew the top of his dining room table. He did not go straight to the tractor, but arched around to the left and north, directing the truck over the harder soil. Corey and Fenister, realizing what he was doing, came back to join him.
"Is that the track?" Fenister said, pointing to a place where the ground was heaved up in a long, narrow pile.
"Sure is," Durk said. "Wasn't there before. Look, the ground's too hard, see how it keeps trying to come this way and then turning back? Four rows farther on, there's lots of sand. I think we'll be safe right here."
He signaled to Arnold to stop the truck. They were still a little west and somewhat north of the tractor, and saw its exhaust flap bounce up and down as it idled. Durk went up to the truck to talk with Arnold.
"How much cable you got?" he asked.
"A thousand feet," Arnold said. "Is that enough?"
"Should be. Let's get your pig ready."
"I'd like to look at those burrows first."
"You look at them with the pig ready, the crivit will know we're out there and it will come for us. If we don't have the pig, we won't be able to take it back as bait without being caught ourselves."
"All right then," Arnold said and got out of the truck. He left the motor running. Corey and Fenister came up, and together they set to work.
The winch was in the back of the truck bed, right up against the cab, with a boom which held the cable out of the way of the tailgate. In front of the winch were two cages, the smaller one holding a sixty-pound pig, the larger one empty. Arnold and the hunters were hoping to take the monster alive, but Durk kept his shotgun handy.
Corey and Fenister got the pig out of its cage and held it steady while Arnold got the harness on it. This was made of heavy leather straps that went over the pig's shoulders, around its body at the middle, and under its stomach just in front of its back legs. There was a snap hook on top between the pig's shoulders, and a dozen six-inch hooks mounted on swivels on the top, sides, and bottom of the harness. The swivels were such that, from whatever direction the monster took the pig, the hooks would bite.
"Pig doesn't seem afraid," Wendel Fenister commented as Arnold finished fastening the buckles.
"It's sedated," Arnold said. "We used a new tranquilizer that calms you down without putting you to sleep."
Carefully, now that the pig was "armed," they carried it down out of the truck. Arnold went back, threw a lever on the winch, and drew out enough cable so that it could be hooked to the pig's harness. Then he took two leather straps, each about eight feet long, and fastened them to the harness as well. Corey and Fenister each took a strap and, standing on either side of the pig, were able to make it walk between them.
"That sure is fancy," Durk said when they were finished. "Now let's go look at the crivit burrow."
They walked through the beans toward the sandier ground, the cable trailing behind them from the now free-running winch. When they came to the first of the burrow mounds, they stopped.
"What's under there?" Arnold asked, indicating the burrow.
"Kick it in and look," Durk said. Arnold did so, revealing the hole through the soil below. The pig began to get nervous.
"it's big," Arnold said, kneeling down to clear away some dirt so he could look into the hole. He brushed his hand along the bottom of the burrow. "Heavier clay down here," he said. "That means it can't dive deeper like it did at the sand flats." Behind him, the pig began to squeal softly and jerk at its straps.
"Somebody," Fenister said, "doesn't like being used for bait."
"Can you smell anything down that hole?" Corey asked.
Arnold lowered his head and sniffed. "Just clay and dirt," he said, his nose wrinkling. "Anaerobic bacteria. If the crivit left a scent, I can't detect it."
"The pig sure can," Fenister said. He and Corey had a firm grip on their straps, cinched up short to keep the pig with its deadly hooks from moving.
Arnold got to his feet. "This has got to be pretty nearly as far as the monster can go," he said. "Let's take the pig farther out."
The hunters dragged the pig toward the burrow and had to lift it into the air when they got to the mounded dirt. The pig, squealing and thrashing, tried to bite off the straps but couldn't quite reach them. Arnold stayed where he was, making sure the cable was clear, and Durk walked ahead of the hunters, testing the soil with his feet and listening hard for the telltale sound of an approaching crivit.
As they went farther into crivit territory, the pig stopped protesting and went rigid.
"It makes me frightened," Corey said, "watching that animal freeze like that."
"At least it won't run away when we put it down," Fenister said.
They crossed over another burrow and stopped at a third.
"How can you tell when it's coming?" Fenister asked as they set the pig on its feet. The animal stood there, trembling.
"You can hear it," Durk said. "It makes more noise than you might think when it moves through the ground."
"How about if it comes back through one of its old tunnels?" Corey asked.
"Then, uh ..." Durk started to say and then he too froze. "Hush!" he hissed. "Then they make a lot less noise," he said, turning his head from side to side. "Goddamn, let's get out of here."
He started walking quickly back toward the truck. Corey and Fenister hesitated uncertainly for a moment, then started unwrapping the straps from their hands so they could let the pig go. And just a hundred feet from them, the burrow they were next to began to shift and settle, the movement coming toward them at a frightening rate.
"Get out of there," Durk called to the two hunters. "Set the winch," he yelled to Arnold, who didn't yet know what was going on. Corey and Fenister at last managed to drop the straps and started to back away from the pig when the burrow right in front of them burst open and two long, wrist-thick tentacles came up waving. In an instant the pig was wrapped in the sinuous appendages and dragged into the ground.
"Goddamn," Arnold said, and belatedly ran back to the truck. The cable was unreeling rapidly. Corey and Fenister stopped retreating and instead grabbed the cable, trying to slow it down.
"It's going to run the whole thing out," Corey yelled as Arnold sprinted the last few feet to the truck and grabbed for the winch controls. He threw on the brake, and the wire went taught. Then he engaged the gears and started winding the cable back in.
"We've got it," Fenister said, running down the burrow. The cable had sliced through the churned-
up soil and now disappeared into the ground a hundred feet away. He grabbed the cable and gave it a jerk to try to set the hooks.
"Give me a hand," he called, and Corey started to go to him.
"Stay clear," Durk yelled. "If it lets go of the pig, it will snap out of the ground and hook you."
The sandy soil churned where the cable disappeared into the ground. Back at the truck, Arnold applied more power to the winch, and slowly the cable began to draw back. But only for a moment. The winch motor whined, the cable thrummed, but the crivit seemed to have gotten a grip in the earth and was not going to come out of the hole.
"I'll get shovels," Corey yelled, and started running back toward the truck.
"Damn fool," Durk said. He made sure his shotgun was loaded, then walked over to where Fenister was jerking on the cable, not ten feet from the churning soil through which, on occasion, a tentacle could be seen reaching up into the air.
"Get back," Durk called to Fenister. "It can reach you."
And just then the monster stopped pulling and surged forward, half out of the ground. The cable went slack for a moment, and the monster, only dimly perceived, flung its tentacles around Fenister's legs and dragged him off his feet.
Durk felt like he was moving in slow motion. He saw Fenister go down, saw a series of shorter tentacles reaching for the man's legs, saw what looked like a great parrot's beak opening, down which went the end of the cable. He strode as quickly as he could, only five paces off, and it seemed to take forever. He raised the shotgun, watched as Fenister's feet were grabbed by the shorter tentacles surrounding the beak, saw the beak close, shearing away part of Fenister's boot, and aimed the shotgun at a point on the monster's body just above its maw.
He fired, the animal thrashed, Fenister cried out. Durk stepped closer, looking for something like an eye or a head. The monster oozed green blood, thrashing and battering Fenister but not drawing him any nearer. Durk aimed right into the monster's mouth, just past Fenister's ankle, and fired again.
The tentacles, long and short, flailed, letting Fenister go. The monster started to back down into its burrow, throwing dirt forward as it did so. Its beak worked, and the cable started to fray. Moving like an automaton, Durk stepped up right on top of the thing. He had only one more shot. He couldn't see the creature for the soil, but he aimed at a spot about a foot behind the chomping beak and fired straight down.
He was thrown off his feet into a row of beans. Corey and Arnold were shouting from somewhere far off. Durk pulled himself to his knees, saw tentacles standing stiffly up into the air, contorted in painful knots and arches. And then they relaxed and drooped down to the ground.
Corey and Arnold came running up as he got to his feet. Fenister was pulling himself away from the monster with his hands. Corey dropped his shovel and knelt beside his friend.
"Are you all right?"
"Goddamn, nearly broke my leg," Fenister said. Corey looked down at his feet.
"Nearly bit your foot off too," he said. He helped Fenister get up.
"I thought it had me there for a while," Fenister said. His face was mottled red and white. "Goddamn."
"Let's get you back to the truck," Corey said. He dropped his shovel and put his arm under Fenister's shoulders.
Meanwhile, Arnold was digging tentatively at the monster's head. Durk came up to him and looked down into the burrow.
"It nearly bit through your cable," he said, letting the barrel of the shotgun drag. Arnold looked up at him with frightened eyes.
"I—" he said, "I—"
Durk stepped over the burrow and grabbed the scientist's shoulder. He shook him, hard.
"It's dead now," Durk said. "Let's go back to the truck and pull it out with the winch."
"Goddamn," Arnold gasped. He stepped back, shook himself all over, and gradually regained his composure. He looked back at the burrow. "And we thought we were going to take it alive," he said.
Fenister was sitting on the tailgate when they got back to the truck.
"How you doing?" Durk asked the hunter.
"Nothing broken," Fenister said. "Nothing missing, except the sole of my boot." He held up his foot. Only a part of the toe of the sole was left. The sock was cut, but the skin was unbroken underneath.
"He's damned lucky," Corey said. "If I ever go fishing after one of those monsters again, I'm going to take a harpoon."
"Let's get this one out of here first," Durk said. He went to the winch and started the motor again. Slowly at first, and then more quickly the cable started winding up. The four men stood at the truck, watching the bean plants go down as the crivit was dragged across the field toward them.
Then Durk noticed other bean plants waving off to one side.
"We've got company," he said, pointing. Another two feet of beans in the next row nearer lifted up a couple of inches, then settled back down. "Can't hear it because of the winch," he said.
"Damn," Arnold said, putting more power into the winch. "Those things are cannibals." The winch groaned, the cable sang, and the dead crivit occasionally bounced into sight as it was dragged across the rows.
"Get him in the truck," Arnold said to Corey. "Durk, move that big cage out of the way. We're just going to drag the monster on and run."
Durk climbed into the back of the truck as Corey helped Fenister around to the passenger's side. There was nowhere to move the cage to, so he just threw it over the side of the bed, and then dumped the pig cage too. He reached for the boom and swung it to one side so that the crivit would come up right over the tailgate.
He could see it now, and could see the signs of three other crivits grinding through the soil toward it. But the soil was too heavy for the living monsters to make much speed. The dead creature was well in advance.
It was shaped roughly like a squid, but instead of smooth sides, it had lots of small tentacles which ended in flat digging feet. Besides the two long grabbing tentacles and the dozen or so smaller holding ones around its mouth, there were four or five broader diggers, now all hanging limply. The body looked to be about six feet long and was a grayish blue color without markings.
Arnold slowed the winch as the monster was dragged up to within feet of the truck, and Durk manipulated the boom to lift it off the ground. Quickly, they brought the thing onto the truck bed. Arnold went to get in behind the wheel, and Corey came back out to ride with Durk. When he saw the thing in the truck, he almost decided to walk.
"That one's no danger" Durk said, kicking the corpse. "Those are, though." He pointed to where giant mole mounds were slowly grinding through the dense soil toward the truck. Then Arnold put the truck into gear and they went off with a jerk.
Durk stood on his porch and watched the truck drive off with its bizarre cargo. Though just a short while ago he had decided to leave the Visitors to themselves, the crivit hunt had changed his mind again. He didn't know how far the remaining crivits might penetrate into his bean field, but he didn't care. Their being there at all was more than he could stand.
There was no sense now, he knew, in trying to go back for his tractor At least three other crivits were at large, and though he could run faster than they could burrow through fresh soil, they could retrace their tracks quickly and almost silently. It would be just too dangerous.
Nor was there any sense in going over to his alien neighbors to complain. Not only would they not care about his troubles, they might even take that as a sign that he had become dangerous to them. And he was not in a position to go in and attack them single-handed.
He went back into his living room. He thought he might like a drink right about now, but he was almost out of moonshine. Better save what was left for a time when it might really be needed. Meanwhile, he could start thinking about making up another batch.
He found himself staring at a large, white rock sitting on a shelf in the corner case. It was just a piece of quartz, a mass of thumb-sized crystals clinging to a coarser matrix. Deep in the crevices between individual crystals were
tiny flecks of gold. There wasn't enough of the precious metal there to fill a tooth, but it was a pretty rock, and it made him think about the mine from which it had come two generations ago.
The mining operation had not been very extensive, and most of it underlay Thurston's property, where the rock formations existed. But one tunnel had been driven under the Attweiler farm, with permission and the payment of a fee, to facilitate loading what ore there was into flat-bottomed boats riding the Saksapaw River.
The more he knew about the Visitors next door, the better. And the scientists up at the Research Triangle Park might be able to use that knowledge to counter what the Visitors were doing, or maybe even to drive them off.
He got a heavy flashlight, went back outside, got in his truck, and drove it over to the riverbank. The last twenty feet along the top of the bank were uncultivated and covered with bushes and trees. The bank itself was steep, the river rushing brown and dirty thirty feet below. Durk drove up to a place where the bank had fallen in a bit and parked his truck.
Climbing down the bank was not easy. It was a cliff of clay, steep, with few handholds, and the clay crumbled under his feet and hands. But he knew where he wanted to go. He'd discovered the place as a boy. When his father had found out where he'd been, he'd closed the old tunnel mouth up. But that was years ago, and the river had undercut the end of the tunnel. If he was lucky, it would have opened it up again.
He was lucky. The square, black mouth gaped in the side of the clay cliff, its floor only five feet up from the water. He snapped on the flashlight and peered into the tunnel. Part of the roof had collapsed here, but farther in, the tunnel was clear. With a grim smile, Durk stepped into the darkness.
Chapter 7
Bill Gray sat alone in the secret underground lab under Data Tronix. Around him, the dozens of monitor screens glowed, but most of them were blank. The computer-generated plans of the Visitor headquarters had long since been filled in as far as possible, and all the lines there that had been bugged had also been identified. Now it was a simple matter of monitoring those lines, recording unusual power usages, recording intercom and phone conversations, and pulling off everything that went through the alien computer buses for later analysis.
