lant world, for an offspring plant
would differ very little from the parents. It would be, I suspected, a
fruitless battle to try to make them see that an assumption that was valid
in their case need not extend its validity into the human race.
     'All right,' I said, 'we'll let you have it your way. You're sure that
you can trust me and probably you can. But in all fairness I must tell you I
can't do the job.'
     'Can't?' they asked.
     'You want me to represent you back on Earth. To be your ambassador.
Your negotiator.'
     'That was the thought we had in mind.'
     'I have no training for a job of that sort. I'm not qualified. I
wouldn't know how to do it. I wouldn't even know how to make a start.'
     'You have started,' said the Flowers. 'We are very pleased with the
start you've made.'
     I stiffened and jerked upright. 'The start I've made?' I asked.
     'Why, yes, of course,' they told me. 'Surely you remember. You asked
that Gerald Sherwood get in touch with someone. Someone, you stressed, in
high authority.'
     'I wasn't representing you.'
     'But you could,' they said. 'We want someone to explain us.'
     'Let's be honest,' I told them. 'How can I explain you? I know scarcely
anything about you.'
     We would tell you anything you want to know.'
     'For openers,' I said, 'this is not your native world.'
     'No, it's not. We've advanced through many worlds.'
     'And the people - no, not the people, the intelligences - what happened
to the intelligences of those other worlds?'
     'We do not understand.'
     'When you get into a world, what do you do with the intelligence you
find there?
     'It is not often we find intelligence - not meaningful intelligence,
not cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence does not develop on all
worlds. When it does, we co-operate. We work with it. That is, when we can.'
     'There are times when you can't?'
     'Please do not misunderstand,' they pleaded. 'There has been a case or
two where we could not contact a world's intelligence. It would not become
aware of us. We were just another life form, another - what do you call it?
- another weed, perhaps.'
     What do you do, then?'
     'What can we do?' they asked.
     It was not, it seemed to me, an entirely honest answer.
     There were a lot of things that they could do.
     'And you keep on going.'
     'Keep on going?'
     'From world to world,' I said. 'From one world to another.'
     When do you intend to stop?
     'We do not know,' they said.
     'What is your goal? What are you aiming at? 'We do not know,' they
said.
     'Now, just wait a minute. That's the second time you've said that. You
must know...'
     'Sir,' they asked, 'does your race have a goal - a conscious goal?'
     'I guess we don't,' I said.
     'So that would make us even.'
     'I suppose it would.'
     'You have on your world things you call computers.'
     'Yes,' I said, 'but very recently.'
     'And the function of computers is the storage of data and the
correlation of that data and making it available whenever it is needed.'
     'There still are a lot of problems. The retrieval of the data...'
     'That is beside the point. What would you say is the goal of your
computers?
     'Our computers have no purpose. They are not alive.'
     'But if they were alive?'
     'Well, in that case, I suppose the ultimate purpose would be the
storage of a universal data and its correlation.'
     'That perhaps is right,' they said. 'We are living computers.'
     'Then there is no end for you. You'll keep on forever.' 'We are not
sure,' they said.
     'But...'
     'Data,' they told me, pontifically, 'is the means to one end only
arrival at the truth. Perhaps we do not need a universal data to arrive at
truth.'
     'How do you know when you have arrived?'
     'We will know,' they said. I gave up. We were getting nowhere. 'So you
want our Earth,' I said.
     'You state it awkwardly and unfairly. We do not want your Earth. We
want to be let in, we want some living space, we want to work with you. You
give us your knowledge and we will give you ours.'
     'We'd make quite a team,' I said. 'We would, indeed,' they said. 'And
then?'
     'What do you mean?' they asked.
     'After we've swapped knowledge, what do we do then?'
     'Why, we go on,' they said. 'Into other worlds. The two of us
together.'
     'Seeking other cultures? After other knowledge?'
     'That is right,' they said.
     They made it sound so simple. And it wasn't simple; it couldn't be that
simple. There was nothing ever simple.
     A man could talk with them for days and still be asking questions,
getting no more than a bare outline of the situation.
     'There is one thing you must realize,' I said. 'The people of my Earth
will not accept you on blind faith alone. They must know what you expect of
us and what we can expect of you. They must have some assurance that we can
work together.'
     'We can help,' they said, 'in many different ways. We need not be as
you see us now. We can turn ourselves into any kind of plant you need. We
can provide a great reservoir of economic resources. We can be the old
things that you have relied upon for years, but better than the old things
ever were. We can be better foodstuff and better building material; better
fibre. Name anything you need from plants and we can be that thing.'
     'You mean you'd let us eat you and saw you up for lumber and weave you
into cloth? And you would not mind?'
     They came very close to sighing. 'How can we make you understand? Eat
one of us and we still remain. Saw one of us and we still remain. The life
of us is one life - you could never kill us all, never eat us all. Our life
is in our brains and our nervous systems, in our roots and bulbs and tubers.
We would not mind your eating us if we knew that we were helping.'
     'And we would not only be the old forms of economic plant life to which
you are accustomed. We could be different kinds of grain, different kinds of
trees - ones you have never heard of. We could adapt ourselves to any soils
or climates. We could grow anywhere you wanted. You want medicines or drugs.
Let your chemists tell us what you want and we'll be that for you. We'll be
made-to-order plants.'
     'All this,' I said, 'and your knowledge, too.'
     'That is right,' they said.
     'And in return, what do we do?'
     'You give your knowledge to us. You work with us to utilize all
knowledge, the pooled knowledge that we have. You give us an expression we
cannot give ourselves. We have knowledge, but knowledge in itself is
worthless unless it can be used. We want it used, we want so badly to work
with a race that can use what we have to offer, so that we can feel a sense
of accomplishment that is denied us now. And, also, of course, we would hope
that together we could develop a better way to open the time-phase
boundaries into other worlds.'
     'And the time dome that you put over Millville - why did you do that?
     'To gain your world's attention. To let you know that we were here and
waiting.'
     'But you could have told some of your contacts and your contacts could
have told the world. You probably did tell some of them. Stiffy Grant, for
instance.'
     'Yes, Stiffy Grant. And there were others, too.'
     'They could have told the world.'
     'Who would have believed them? They would have been thought of as how
do you say it - crackpots?'
     'Yes, I know,' I said. 'No one would pay attention to anything Stiffy
said. But surely there were others.'
     'Only certain types of minds,' they told me, 'can make contact with us.
We can reach many minds, but they can't reach back to us. And to believe in
us, to know us, you must reach back to us.'
     'You mean only the screwballs...'
     'We're afraid that's what we mean,' they said.
     It made sense when you thought about it. The most successful contact
they could find had been Tupper Tyler and while there was nothing wrong with
Stuffy as a human being, he certainly was not what one would call a solid
citizen.
     I sat there for a moment, wondering why they'd contacted me and Gerald
Sherwood. Although that was a little different. They'd contacted Sherwood
because he was valuable to them; he could make the telephones for them and
he could set up a system that would give them working capital. And me?
Because my father had taken care of them? I hoped to heaven that was all it
was.
     'So, OK,' I said. 'I guess I understand. How about the storm of seeds?'
     'We planted a demonstration plot,' they told me. 'So your people could
realize, by looking at it, how versatile we are.'
     You never won, I thought. They had an answer for everything you asked.
     I wondered if I ever had expected to get anywhere with them or really
wanted to get anywhere with them. Maybe, subconsciously, all I wanted was to
get back to Millville.
     And maybe it was all Tupper. Maybe there weren't any Flowers. Maybe it
was simply a big practical joke that Tupper had dreamed up in his so-called
mind, sitting here ten years and dreaming up the joke and getting it
rehearsed so he could pull it off.
     But, I argued with myself it couldn't be just Tupper, for Tupper wasn't
bright enough. His mind was not given to a concept of this sort. He couldn't
dream it up and he couldn't pull it off. And besides, there was the matter
of his being here and of my being here, and that was something a joke would
not explain.
     I came slowly to my feet and turned so that I faced the slope above the
camp and there in the bright moonlight lay the darkness of the purple
flowers. Tupper still sat where he had been sitting, but now he was hunched
forward, almost doubled up, fallen fast asleep and snoring very softly.
     The perfume seemed stronger now and the moonlight had taken on a
trembling and there was a Presence out there somewhere on the slope. I
strained my eyes to see it, and once I thought I saw it, but it faded out
again, although I still knew that it was there.
     There was a purpleness in the very night and the feel of an
intelligence that waited for a word to come stalking down the hill to talk
with me, as two friends might talk, with no need of an interpreter, to squat
about the campfire and yarn the night away.
     Ready? asked the Presence.
     A word, I wondered, or simply something stirring in my brain -
something born of the purpleness and moonlight?
     'Yes,' I said, 'I'm ready. I will do the best I can.'
     I bent and wrapped the time contraption in my jacket and tucked it
underneath my arm and then went up the slope. I knew the Presence was up
there, waiting for me, and there were quivers running up and down my spine.
It was fear, perhaps, but it didn't feel like fear.
     I came up to where the Presence waited and I could not see it, but I
knew that it had fallen into step with me and was walking there beside me.
     'I am not afraid of you,' I told it.
     It didn't say a word. It just kept walking with me. We went across the
ridge and down the slope into the dip where in another world the greenhouse
and garden were.
     A little to your left, said the thing that walked the night with me,
and then go straight ahead.
     I turned a little to my left and then went straight ahead.
     A few more feet, it said.
     I stopped and turned my head to face it and there was nothing there. If
there had been anything, it was gone from there.
     The moon was a golden gargoyle in the west. The world was lone and
empty; the silvered slope had a hungry look. The blue-black sky was filled
with many little eyes with a hard sharp glitter to them, a predatory glitter
and the remoteness of uncaring.
     Beyond the ridge a man of my own race drowsed beside a dying campfire,
and it was all right for him, for he had a talent that I did not have, that
I knew now I did not have - the talent for reaching out to grasp an alien
hand (or paw or claw or pad) and being able in his twisted mind to translate
that alien touch into a commonplace.
     I shuddered at the gargoyle moon and took two steps forward and walked
out of that hungry world straight into my garden.

        15

     Ragged clouds still raced across the sky, blotting out the moon. A
faint lighting in the east gave notice of the dawn. The windows of my house
were filled with lamplight and I knew that Gerald Sherwood and the rest of
them were waiting there for me. And just to my left the greenhouse with the
tree growing at its corner loomed ghostly against the rise of ground behind
it.
     I started to walk forward and fingers were scratching at my trouser
leg. Startled, I looked down and saw that I had walked into a bush.
     There had been no bush in the garden the last time I had seen it; there
had been only the purple flowers. But I think I guessed what might have
happened even before I stooped to have a look.
     Squatting there, I squinted along the ground and in the first grey
light of the coming day, I saw there were no flowers. Instead of a patch of
flowers there was a patch of little bushes, perhaps a little larger, but not
much larger than the flowers.
     I hunkered there, with a coldness growing in me - for there was no
explanation other than the fact that the bushes were the flowers, that
somehow the Flowers had changed the flowers that once had grown there into
little bushes. And, I wondered wildly, what could their purpose be?
     Even here, I thought - even here they reach out for us. Even here they
play their tricks on us and lay their traps for us. And they could do
anything they wanted, I supposed, for if they did not own, at least they
manipulated this corner of the Earth entrapped beneath the dome.
     I put out a hand and felt along a branch and the branch had
soft-swelling buds all along its length. Springtime buds, that in a day or
so would be breaking into leaf. Springtime buds in the depth of summer!
     I had believed in them, I thought. In that little space of time toward
the very end, when Tupper had ceased his talking and had dozed before the
fire and there had been something on the hillside that had spoken to me and
had walked me home, I had believed in them.
     Had there been something on that hillside? Had something walked with
me? I sweated, thinking of it.
     I felt the bulk of the wrapped time contraption underneath my arm, and
that, I realized, was a talisman of the actuality of that other world. With
that, I must believe.
     They had told me, I remembered, that I'd get my money back - they had
guaranteed it. And here I was, back home again, without my fifteen hundred.
     I got to my feet and started for the house, then changed my mind. I
turned around and went up the slope toward Doc Fabian's house. It might be a
good idea, I told myself, to see what was going on outside the barrier. The
people who were waiting at the house could wait a little longer.
     I reached the top of the slope and turned around, looking toward the
east. There, beyond the village, blazed a line of campfires and the lights
of many cars running back and forth.
     A searchlight swung a thin blue finger of light up into the sky, slowly
sweeping back and forth. And at one spot that seemed a little closer was a
greater blob of light. A great deal of activity seemed to be going on around
it.
     Watching it, I made out a steam shovel and great black mounds of earth
piled up on either side of it. I could hear, faintly, the metallic clanging
of the mighty scoop as it dumped a load and then reached down into the hole
to take another bite. Trying, I told myself, to dig beneath the barrier.
     A car came rattling down the street and turned into the driveway of the
house behind me. Doc, I thought - Doc coming home after being routed out of
bed on an early morning call. I walked across the lawn and around the house.
The car was parked on the concrete strip of driveway and Doc was getting
out.
     'Doc,' I said, 'it's Brad.' He turned and peered at me.
     'Oh,' he said, and his voice sounded tired, 'so you are back again.
There are people waiting at the house, you know.'
     Too tired to be surprised that I was back again; too all beat out to
care.
     He shuffled forward and I saw, quite suddenly, that Doc was old. Of
course I had thought of him as old, but never before had he actually seemed
old. Now I could see that he was - the slightly stooped shoulders, his feet
barely lifting off the ground as he walked toward me, the loose, old-man
hang of his trousers, the deep lines in his face.
     'Floyd Caidwell,' he said. 'I was out to Floyd's. He had a heart attack
- a strong, tough man like him and he has a heart attack.'
     'How is he?'
     'As well as I can manage. He should be in a hospital, getting complete
rest. But I can't get him there. With that thing out there, I can't get him
where he should be.
     'I don't know, Brad. I just don't know what will happen to us. Mrs
Jensen was supposed to go in this morning for surgery. Cancer. She'll die,
anyhow, but surgery would give her months, maybe a year or two, of life. And
there's no way to get her there. The little Hopkins girl has been going
regularly to a specialist and he's been helping her a lot. Decker - perhaps
you've heard of him. He's a top-notch man. We interned together.'
     He stopped in front of me. 'Can't you see,' he said. 'I can't help
these people. I can do a little, but I can't do enough. I can't handle
things like this - I can't do it all alone. Other times I could send them
somewhere else, to someone who could help them. And now I can't do that. For
the first time in my life, I can't help my people.'
     'You're taking it too hard,' I said.
     He looked at me with a beaten look, a tired and beaten look.
     'I can't take it any other way,' he said. 'All these years, they've
depended on me.'
     'How's Stuffy?' I asked. 'You have heard, of course.'
     Doc snorted angrily. 'The damn fool ran away.'
     'From the hospital?'
     'Where else would he run from? Got dressed when their backs were turned
and snuck away. He always was a sneaky old goat and he never had good sense.
They're looking for him, but no one's found him yet.'
     'He'd head back here,' I said.
     'I suppose he would,' said Doc. 'What about this story I heard about;
some telephone he had?'
     I shook my head. 'Hiram said he found one.'
     Doc peered sharply at me. 'You don't know anything about it?'
     'Not very much,' I said.
     'Nancy said you were in some other world or something. What kind of
talk is that?'
     'Did Nancy tell you that?'
     He shook his head. 'No, Gerald told me. He asked me what to do. He was
afraid that if he mentioned it, he would stir up the village.'
     'And?'
     'I told him not to. The folks are stirred up enough. He told them what
you said about the flowers. He had to tell them something.'
     'Doc,' I said, 'it's a funny business. I don't rightly know myself.
Let's not talk about it. Tell me what's going on. What are those fires out
there?'
     'Those are soldier fires,' he told me. 'There are state troops out
there. They've got the town ringed in. Brad, it's crazier than hell. We
can't get out and no one can get in, but they got troops out there. I don't
know what they think they're doing. They evacuated everybody for ten miles
outside the barrier and there are planes patrolling and they have some
tanks. They tried to dynamite the barrier this morning and they didn't do a
thing except blow a hole in Jake Fisher's pasture. They could have saved
that dynamite.'
     'They're trying to dig under the barrier,' I said.
     'They've done a lot of things,' said Doe. 'They had some helicopters
that flew above the town, then tried to come straight down. Figuring, I
guess, that there are only walls out there, without any top to them. But
they found there was a top. They fooled around all afternoon and they
wrecked two 'copters, but they found out, I guess, that it's a sort of dome.
It curves all the way above us. A kind of bubble, you might say.'
     'And there are all those fool newspapermen out there. I tell you, Brad,
there's an army of them. There isn't anything but Millville on the TV and
radio, or in the papers either.'
     'It's big news,' I said.
     'Yes, I suppose so. But I'm worried, Brad. This village is getting
ready to blow up. The people are on edge. They're scared and touchy. The
whole damn place could go hysterical if you snapped your fingers.'
     He came a little closer.
     'What are you planning, Brad?'
     'I'm going down to my place. There are people down there. You want to
come along?'
     He shook his head. 'No, I was down there for a while and then I got
this call from Floyd. I'm all beat out. I'm going in to bed.'
     He turned, and started to shuffle away and then he turned back.
     'You be careful, boy,' he warned. 'There's a lot of talk about the
flowers. They say if your father hadn't raised those flowers it never would
have happened. They think it was a plot your father started and you are in
on it.'
     'I'll watch my step,' I said.

        16

     They were in the living-room. As soon as I came in the kitchen door,
Hiram Martin saw me.
     'There he is!' he bellowed, leaping up and charging out into the
kitchen.
     He stopped his rush and looked accusingly at me. 'It took you long
enough,' he said.
     I didn't answer him.
     I put the time contraption, still wrapped in my jacket, on the kitchen
table. A fold of cloth fell away from it and the many-angled lenses winked
in the light from the ceiling fixture.
     Hiram backed away a step. 'What's that?' he asked.
     'Something I brought back,' I said. 'A time machine, I guess.'
     The coffee pot was on the stove and the burner was turned low. Used
coffee cups covered the top of the kitchen sink. The sugar canister had its
lid off and there was spilled sugar on the counter top.
     The others in the living-room were crowding through the door and there
were a lot of them, more than I'd expected.
     Nancy came past Hiram and walked up to me. She put out a hand and laid
it on my arm.
     'You're all right,' she said.
     'It was a breeze,' I told her.
     She was beautiful, I thought - more beautiful than I'd remembered her,
more beautiful than back in the high school days when I'd looked at her
through a haze of stars. More beautiful, here close to me, than my memory
had made her.
     I moved closer to her and put an arm around her. For an instant she
leaned her head against my shoulder, then straightened it again. She was
warm and soft against me and I was sorry that it couldn't last, but all the
rest of them were watching us and waiting.
     'I made some phone calls,' Gerald Sherwood said. 'Senator Gibbs is
coming out to see you. He'll have someone from the State Department. On
short notice, Brad, that was the best I could do.'
     'It'll do,' I said.
     For, standing in my kitchen once again, with Nancy close beside me,
with the lamplight soft in the coming dawn, with the old familiar things all
around, that other world had retreated into the background and had taken on
a softness that half obscured its threat - if it were a threat.
     'What I want to know,' Tom Preston blurted, 'is what about this stuff
that Gerald tells us about your father's flowers.'
     'Yes,' said Mayor Higgy Morris, 'what have they to do with it?'
     Hiram didn't say anything, but he sneered at me.
     'Gentlemen,' said lawyer Nichols, 'this is not the way to go about it.
You must be fair about it. Keep the questions until later. Let Brad tell us
what he knows.'
     Joe Evans said, 'Anything he has to say will be more than we know now.'
     'OK,' said Higgy, 'we'll be glad to listen.'
     'But first,' said Hiram, 'I want to know about that thing on the table.
It might be dangerous. It might be a bomb.'
     'I don't know what it is,' I said. 'It has to do with time. It can
handle time. Maybe you would call it a time camera, some sort of time
machine.'
     Tom Preston snorted and Hiram sneered again. Father Flanagan, the
town's one Catholic priest, had been standing quietly in the doorway, side
by side with Pastor Silas Middleton, from the church across the street. Now
the old priest spoke quietly, so quietly that one could barely hear him, his
voice one with the lamplight and the dawn. 'I would be the last,' he said,
'to hold that time might be manipulated or that flowers would have anything
to do with what has happened here. These are propositions that go against
the grain of my every understanding. But unlike some of the rest of you, I'm
willing to listen before I reach a judgement.'
     'I'll try to tell you,' I said. 'I'll try to tell you just the way it
happened.'
     'Alf Peterson has been trying to call you,' Nancy said. 'He's phoned a
dozen times.'
     'Did he leave a number?'
     'Yes, I have it here.'
     'That can wait,' said Higgy. 'We want to hear this story.'
     'Perhaps,' suggested Nancy's father, 'you'd better tell us right away.
Let's all go in the living-room where we'll be comfortable.'
     We all went into the living-room and sat down.
     'Now, my boy,' said Higgy, companionably, 'go ahead and spill it.'
     I could have strangled him. When I looked at him, I imagine that he
knew exactly how I felt.
     'We'll keep quiet,' he said. 'We'll hear you out.'
     I waited until they all were quiet and then I said, 'I'll have to start
with yesterday morning when I came home, after my car had been wrecked, and
found Tupper Tyler sitting in the swing.'
     Higgy leaped to his feet. 'But that's crazy?' he shouted. 'Tupper has
been lost for years.'
     Hiram jumped up, too. 'You made fun of me,' he bellowed, 'when I told
you Tom had talked to Tupper.'
     'I lied to you,' I said. 'I had to lie to you. I didn't know what was
going on and you were on the prod.'
     The Reverend Silas Middleton asked, 'Brad, you admit you lied?'
     'Yes, of course I do. That big ape had me pinned against the wall...'
     'If you lied once, you'll lie again,' Tom Preston shrilled.
     'How can we believe anything you tell us?'
     'Tom,' I said, 'I don't give a damn if you believe me or not.'
     They all sat down and sat there looking at me and I knew that I had
been childish, but they burned me up.
     'I would suggest,' said Father Flanagan, 'that we should start over and
all of us make a heroic effort to behave ourselves.'
     'Yes, please,' said Higgy, heavily, 'and everyone shut up.'
     I looked around and no one said a word. Gerald Sherwood nodded gravely
at me.
     I took a deep breath and began.
     'Maybe,' I said, 'I should go even farther back than that - to the time
Tom Preston sent Ed Adler around to take out my telephone.'
     'You were three months in arrears,' yelped Preston. 'You hadn't
even...'
     'Tom,' said lawyer Nichols, sharply.
     Tom settled back into his chair and began to sulk.
     I went ahead and told everything - about Stiffy Grant and the telephone
I'd found in my office and about the story Alf Peterson had told me and then
how I'd gone out to Stiffy's shack. I told them everything except about
Gerald Sherwood and how he had made the phones. I somehow had the feeling
that I had no right to tell that part of it.
     I asked them, 'Are there any questions?'
     'There are a lot of them,' said lawyer Nichols, 'but go ahead and
finish. Is that all right with the rest of you?'
     Higgy Morris grunted. 'It's all right with me,' he said.
     'It's not all right with me,' said Preston, nastily. 'Gerald told us
that Nancy talked with Brad. He never told us how. She used one of them
phones, of course.'
     'My phone,' said Sherwood. 'I've had one of them for years.'
     Higgy said, 'You never told me, Gerald.'
     'It didn't occur to me,' said Sherwood, curtly.
     'It seems to me,' said Preston, 'there has been a hell of a lot going
on that we never knew about'
     'That,' said Father Flanagan, 'is true beyond all question. But I have
the impression that this young man has no more than started on his story.'
     So I went ahead. I told it as truthfully as I could and in all the
detail I could recall.
     Finally I was finished and they sat not moving, stunned perhaps, and
shocked, and maybe not believing it entirely, but believing some of it.
     Father Flanagan stirred uneasily. 'Young man,' he asked, 'you are
absolutely sure this is not hallucination?'
     'I brought back the time contraption. That's not hallucination.'
     'We must agree, I think,' said Nichols, 'that there are strange things
going on. The story Brad has told us is no stranger than the barrier.'
     'There isn't anyone,' yelled Preston, 'who can work with time. Why time
is - well, it's...'
     'That's exactly it,' said Sherwood. 'No one knows anything of time. And
it's not the only thing of which we're wholly ignorant. There is
gravitation. There is no one, absolutely no one, who can tell you what
gravitation is.'
     'I don't believe a word of it,' said Hiram, flatly. 'He's been hiding
out somewhere ...'
     Joe Evans said, 'We combed the town. There was no place be could hide.'
     'Actually,' said Father Flanagan, 'it doesn't matter if we believe all
this or not. The important thing is whether the people who are coming out
from Washington believe it.'
     Higgy pulled himself straighter in his chair. He turned to Sherwood.
'You said Gibbs was coming out. Bringing others with him.'
     Sherwood nodded. 'A man from the State Department.'
     'What exactly did Gibbs say?'
     'He said he'd be right out. He said the talk with Brad could only be
preliminary. Then he'd go back and report. He said it might not be simply a
national problem. It might be international. Our government might have to
confer with other governments. He wanted to know more about it. All I could
tell him was that a man here in the village had some vital information.'
     'They'll be out at the edge of the barrier, waiting for us. The east
road, I presume.'
     'I suppose so,' Sherwood said. 'We didn't go into it. He'll phone me
from some place outside the barrier when he arrives.'
     'As a matter of fact,' said Higgy, lowering his voice as if he were
speaking confidentially, 'if we can get out of this without being hurt,
it'll be the best thing that ever happened to us. No other town in all of
history has gotten the kind of publicity we're getting now. Why, for years
there'll be tourists coming just to look at us, just to say they've been
here.'
     'It seems to me,' said Father Flanagan, 'that if this should all be
true, there are far greater things involved than whether or not our town can
attract some tourists.'
     'Yes,' said Silas Middleton. 'It means we are facing an alien form of
life. How we handle it may mean the difference between life and death. Not
for us alone, I mean, the people in this village. But the life or death of
the human race.'
     'Now, see here,' piped Preston, 'you can't mean that a bunch of
flowers...'
     'You damn fool,' said Sherwood, 'it's not just a bunch of flowers.'
     Joe Evans said, 'That's right. Not just a bunch of flowers. But an
entirely different form of life. Not an animal life, but a plant life - a
plant life that is intelligent.'
     'And a life,' I said, 'that has stored away the knowledge of God knows
how many other races. They'll know things we've never even thought about.'
     'I don't see,' said Higgy, doggedly, 'what we've got to be afraid of.
There never was a time that we couldn't beat a bunch of weeds. We can use
sprays and...'
     'If we want to kill them off,' I said, 'I don't think it's quite as
easy as you try to make it. But putting that aside for the moment, do we
want to kill them off?'
     'You mean,' yelled Higgy, 'let them come in and take over?'
     'Not take over. Come in and co-operate with us.'
     'But the barrier!' yelled Hiram. 'Everyone forgets about the barrier!'
     'No one has forgotten about it,' said Nichols. 'The barrier is no more
than a part of the entire problem. Let's solve the problem and we can take
care of the barrier as well.'
     'My God,' groaned Preston, 'you all are talking as if you believe every
word of it.'
     'That isn't it,' said Silas Middleton. 'But we have to use what Brad
has told us as a working hypothesis. I don't say that what he has told us is
absolutely right. He may have misinterpreted, he may simply be mistaken in
certain areas. But at the moment it's the only solid information we have to
work with.'
     'I don't believe a word of it,' said Hiram, flatly. 'There's a dirty
plot afoot and I...'
     The telephone rang, its signal blasting through the room.
     Sherwood answered it.
     'It's for you,' he told me. 'It's Alf again.'
     I went across the room and took the receiver Sherwood held out to me.
     'Hello, A1f' I said.
     'I thought,' said Alf, 'you were going to call me back. In an hour, you
said.'
     'I got involved,' I told him.
     'They moved me out,' he said. 'They evacuated everybody. I'm in a motel
just east of Coon Valley. I'm going to move over to Elmore - the motel here
is pretty bad - but before I did, I wanted to get in touch with you.'
     'I'm glad you did,' I said. 'There are some things I want to ask you.
About that project down in Greenbriar.'
     'Sure. What about the project?'
     'What kind of problems did you have to solve?'
     'Many different kinds.'
     'Any of them have to do with plants?'
     'Plants?'
     'You know. Flowers, weeds, vegetables.'
     'I see. Let me think. Yes, I guess there were a few.'
     'What kind?'
     'Well, there was one: could a plant be intelligent?'
     'And your conclusion?'
     'Now, look here, Brad!'
     'This is important, Alf.'
     'Oh, all right. The only conclusion I could reach was that it was
impossible. A plant would have no motive. There's no reason a plant should
be intelligent. Even if it could be, there'd be no advantage to it. It
couldn't use intelligence or knowledge. It would have no way in which it
could apply them. And its structure is wrong. It would have to develop
certain senses it doesn't have, would have to increase its awareness of its
world. It would have to develop a brain for data storage and a thinking
mechanism. It was easy, Brad, once you thought about it. A plant wouldn't
even try to be intelligent. It took me a while to get the reasons sorted
out, but they made good solid sense.'
     'And that was all?'
     'No, there was another one. How to develop a foolproof method of
eradicating a noxious weed, bearing in mind that the weed has high
adaptability and would be able to develop immunity to any sort of threat to
its existence in a relatively short length of time.'
     'There isn't any possibility,' I guessed.
     'There is,' said A1f 'just a possibility. But not too good a one.'
     'And that?'
     'Radiation. But you couldn't count on it as foolproof if the plant
really had high adaptability.'
     'So there's no way to eradicate a thoroughly determined plant?'
     'I'd say none at all - none in the power of man. What's this all about,
Brad?'
     'We may have a situation just like that,' I said. Quickly I told him
something of the Flowers.
     He whistled. 'You think you have this straight?'
     'I can't be certain, Alf, I think so, but I can't be certain. That is,
I know the Flowers are there, but...'
     'There was another question. It ties right in with this. It wanted to
know how you'd go about contacting and establishing relations with an alien
life. You think the project. . . ?'
     'No question,' I said. 'It was run by the same people who ran the
telephones.'
     'We figured that before. When we talked after the barrier went up.'
     'Alf; what about that question? About contact with an alien?'
     He laughed, a bit uneasily. 'There are a million answers. The method
would depend upon the kind of alien. And there'd always be some danger.'
     'That's all you can think of? All the questions, I mean?'
     'I can't think of any more. Tell me more of what's happened there.'
     'I'd like to, but I can't. I have a group of people here. You're going
to Elmore now?'
     'Yeah. I'll call you when I get there. Will you be around?'
     'I can't go anywhere,' I said.
     There had been no talk among the others while I'd been on the phone.
They were, all listening. But as soon as I hung up, Higgy straightened up
importantly.
     'I figure,' he said, 'that maybe we should be getting ready to go out
and meet the senator. I think most probably I should appoint a welcoming
committee. The people in this room, of course, and maybe half a dozen
others. Doc Fabian, and maybe...'
     'Mayor,' said Sherwood, interrupting him, 'I think someone should point
out that this is not a civic affair or a social visit. This is something
somewhat more important and entirely unofficial. Brad is the one the senator
must see. He is the only one who has pertinent information and...'
     'But,' Higgy protested, 'all I was doing...'
     'We know what you were doing,' Sherwood told him.
     'What I am pointing out is that if Brad wants a committee to go along
with him, he is the one who should get it up.'
     'But my official duty,' Higgy bleated.
     'In a matter such as this,' said Sherwood, flatly, 'you have no
official duty.'
     'Gerald,' said the mayor, 'I've tried to think the best of you. I've
tried to tell myself...'
     'Mayor,' said Preston, grimly, 'there's no use of pussy-footing. We
might as well say it out. There's something going on, some sort of plot
afoot. Brad is part of it and Stiffy's part of it and...'
     'And,' said Sherwood, 'if you insist upon a plot, I'm part of it as
well. I made the telephones.'
     Higgy gulped. 'You did what?' he asked.
     'I made the telephones. I manufactured them.'
     'So you knew all about it all along.'
     Sherwood shook his head. 'I didn't know anything at all. I just made
the phones.'
     Higgy sat back weakly. He clasped and unclasped his hands, staring down
at them.
     'I don't know,' he said. 'I just don't understand.'
     But I am sure he did. Now he understood, for the first time, that this
was no mere unusual natural happening which would, in time, quietly pass
away and leave Millville a tourist attraction that each year would bring the
curious into town by the thousands. For the first time, I am sure, Mayor
Higgy Morris realized that Millville and the entire world was facing a
problem that it would take more than good luck and the Chamber of Commerce
to resolve.
     'There is one thing,' I sad.
     'What's that?' asked Higgy.
     'I want my phone. The one that was in my office. The phone, you
remember, that hasn't any dial.'
     The mayor looked at Hiram.
     'No, I won't,' said Hiram. 'I won't give it back to him. He's done harm
enough already.'
     'Hiram,' said the mayor.
     'Oh, all right,' said Hiram. 'I hope he chokes on it.'
     'It appears to me,' said Father Flanagan, 'that we are all acting quite
unreasonably. I would suggest we might take this entire matter up and
discuss it point by point, and in that way...'
     A ticking interrupted him, a loud and ominous ticking that beat a
measure, as of doom, through the entire house. And as I heard it, I knew
that the ticking had been going on for quite some time, but very softly, and
that I'd been hearing it and vaguely wondering what it was.
     But now, from one tick to another, it had grown loud and hard, and even
as we listened to it, half hypnotized by the terror of it, the tick became a
hum and the hum a roar of power.
     We all leaped to out feet, startled now, and I saw that the kitchen
walls were flashing, as if someone were turning on and off a light of
intensive brilliance, a pulsing glow that filled the room with a flood of
light, then shut off, then filled it once again.
     'I knew it!' Hiram roared, charging for the kitchen. 'I knew it when I
saw it. I knew it was dangerous!'
     I ran after him.
     'Look out!' I yelled. 'Keep away from it!'
     It was the time contraption. It had floated off the table and was
hovering in mid-air, with a pulse of tremendous power running through it in
a regular beat, while from it came the roar of cascading energy. Below it,
lying on the table, was my crumpled jacket.
     I grabbed hold of Hiram's arm and tried to haul him back, but he jerked
away and was hauling his pistol from its holster.
     With a flash of light, the time contraption moved, rising swiftly
toward the ceiling.
     'No!' I cried, for I was afraid that if it ever hit the ceiling, the
fragile lenses would be smashed.
     Then it hit the ceiling and it did not break. Without slackening its
pace, it bored straight through the ceiling. I stood gaping at the neat
round