"They were getting it with a pole. A cloud of them's around. They come in clouds every few years." His hands were beginning to shake again. He lit another cigarette. "Every two or three years. Not as often as they used to. They drift down from Mars in clouds, hundreds of them. All over the world – like leaves." He shuddered. "Like a lot of dry leaves blowing down."

"Gosh!" Jimmy said. He got off the couch onto his feet. "Is it still there?"

"No, they were getting it down. Listen," Ted leaned toward the boy. "Listen to me – I'm telling you this so you'll stay away from them. If you see one of them you turn around and run as fast as you can. You hear? Don't go near it – stay away. Don't…"

He hesitated. "Don't pay any attention to it. You just turn around and run. Get somebody, stop the first man you see and tell him, then come on home. Do you understand?"

Jimmy nodded.

"You know what they look like. They showed you pictures at school. You must have -"

Lena came to the kitchen door. "Dinner's ready. Jimmy, aren't you washed?"

"I stopped him," Ted said, getting up from the couch. "I wanted to have a talk with him."

"You mind what your father tells you," Lena said. "About the buggies – remember what he says or he'll give you the biggest whipping you ever heard of."

Jimmy ran to the bathroom. "I'll get washed." He disappeared, slamming the door behind him.

Ted caught Lena's gaze. "I hope they get them taken care of soon. I hate even to be outside."

"They should. I heard on television they're more organized than last time." Lena counted mentally. "This is the fifth time they've come. The fifth cloud. It seems to be tapering off. Not as often, any more. The first was in nineteen hundred and fifty-eight. The next in fifty-nine. I wonder where it'll end."

Jimmy hurried out of the bathroom. "Let's eat!"

"Okay," Ted said. "Let's eat."

It was a bright afternoon with the sun shining down everywhere. Jimmy Barnes rushed out of the school yard, through the gate and onto the sidewalk. His heart was hammering excitedly. He crossed over to Maple Street and then onto Cedar, running the whole way.

A couple of people were still poking around on Johnson's lawn – a policeman and a few curious men. There was a big ruined place in the center of the lawn, a sort of tear where the grass had been ripped back. The flowers all around the house had been trampled flat. But there was no sign whatsoever of the buggie.

While he was watching Mike Edwards came over and punched him on the arm. "What say, Barnes."

"Hi. Did you see it?"

"The buggie? No."

"My Dad saw it, coming home from work."

"Bull!"

"No, he really did. He said they were getting it down with a pole."

Ralf Drake rode up on his bike. "Where is it? Is it gone?"

"They already tore it up," Mike said. "Barnes says his old man saw it, coming home last night."

"He said they were poking it down with a pole. It was trying to hang onto the roof."

"They're all dried-up and withered," Mike said, "like something that's been hanging out in the garage."

"How do you know?" Ralf said.

"I saw one once."

"Yeah. I'll bet."

They walked along the sidewalk, Ralf wheeling his bike, discussing the matter loudly. They turned down Vermont Street and crossed the big vacant lot.

"The TV announcer said most of them are already rounded up," Ralf said. "There weren't very many this time."

Jimmy kicked a rock. "I'd sure like to see one before they get them all."

"I'd sure like to get one," Mike said.

Ralf sneered. "If you ever saw one you'd run so fast you wouldn't stop until the sun set."

"Oh, yeah?"

"You'd run like a fool."

"The heck I would. I'd knock the ol' buggie down with a rock."

"And carry him home in a tin can?"

Mike chased Ralf around, out into the street and up to the corner. The argument continued endlessly all the way across town and over to the other side of the railroad tracks. They walked past the ink works and the Western Lumber Company loading platforms. The sun sank low in the sky. It was getting to be evening. A cold wind came up, blowing through the palm trees at the end of the Hartly Construction Company lot.

"See you," Ralf said. He hopped on his bike, riding off. Mike and Jimmy walked back toward town together. At Cedar Street they separated.

"If you see a buggie give me a call," Mike said.

"Sure thing." Jimmy walked on up Cedar Street, his hands in his pockets. The sun had set. The evening air was chill. Darkness was descending.

He walked slowly, his eyes on the ground. The streetlights came on. A few cars moved along the street. Behind curtained windows he saw bright flashes of yellow, warm kitchens and livingrooms. A television set brayed out, rumbling into the gloom. He passed along the brick wall of the Pomeroy Estate. The wall turned into an iron fence. Above the fence great silent evergreens rose dark and unmoving in the evening twilight.

For a moment Jimmy stopped, kneeling down to tie his shoe. A cold wind blew around him, making the evergreens sway slightly. Far off a train sounded, a dismal wail echoing through the gloom. He thought about dinner, Dad with his shoes off, reading the newspapers. His mother in the kitchen – the TV set murmuring to itself in the corner – the warm, bright living-room.

Jimmy stood up. Above him in the evergreens something moved. He glanced up, suddenly rigid. Among the dark branches something rested, swaying with the wind. He gaped, rooted to the spot.

A buggie. Waiting and watching, crouched silently up in the tree.

It was old. He knew that at once. There was a dryness about it, an odor of age and dust. An ancient gray shape, silent and unmoving, wrapped around the trunk and branches of the evergreen. A mass of cobwebs, dusty strands and webs of gray wrapped and trailing across the tree. A nebulous wispy presence that made the hackles of his neck rise.

The shape began to move but so slowly he might not have noticed. It was sliding around the trunk, feeling its way carefully, a little at a time. As if it were sightless. Feeling its way inch by inch, an unseeing gray ball of cobwebs and dust.

Jimmy moved back from the fence. It was completely dark. The sky was black above him. A few stars glittered distantly, bits of remote fire. Far down the street a bus rumbled, turning a corner.

A buggie – clinging to the tree above him. Jimmy struggled, pulling himself away. His heart was thumping painfully, choking him. He could hardly breathe. His vision blurred, fading and receding. The buggie was only a little way from him, only a few yards above his head.

Help – he had to get help. Men with poles to push the buggie down – people – right away. He closed his eyes and pushed away from the fence. He seemed to be in a vast tide, a rushing ocean dragging at him, surging over his body, holding him where he was. He could not break away. He was caught. He strained, pushing against it. One step… another step… a third -

And then he heard it.

Or rather felt it. There was no sound. It was like drumming, a kind of murmuring like the sea, inside his head. The drumming lapped against his mind, beating gently around him. He halted. The murmuring was soft, rhythmic. But insistent – urgent. It began to separate, gaining form – form and substance. It flowed, breaking up into distinct sensations, images, scenes.

Scenes – of another world, its world. The buggie was talking to him, telling him about its world, spinning out scene after scene with anxious haste.

"Get away," Jimmy muttered thickly.

But the scenes still came, urgently, insistently, lapping at his mind.

Plains – a vast desert without limit or end. Dark red, cracked and scored with ravines. A far line of blunted hills, dust-covered, corroded. A great basin off to the right, an endless empty piepan with white-crusted salt riming it, a bitter ash where water had once lapped.