ng you
call a Wabbly. When I started the 'copter's engine they got the
spark-impulses and sighted on them. We'd better get away from here."

"Horses in here," said Sergeant Walpole. "The Wabbly came by. No people
left."

They brought the animals out. The horses reared and plunged as there
were other infinitely sharp, deadly explosions of the eggs coming down
eight miles through darkness.

"Let's go. After the Wabbly?" said the 'copter man.

"O' course," said Sergeant Walpole. "Somebody's got to find out how to
lick it."

They went clattering through darkness. It was extraordinary what
desolation, what utter lack of human life they moved through. They came
to a town, and there was a taint of gas in the air. No lights burned in
that town. It was dead. The Wabbly had killed it.

PART IV

"... which panic was enhanced by the destruction of a
second flight of fighting planes. However, the
destruction of Bendsboro completed civilian
demoralization.... A newscasting company re-broadcast
a private television contact with the town at the
moment the Wabbly entered it. Practically all the
inhabitants of the Atlantic Coast heard and saw the
annihilation of the town--hearing the cries of '_Gas!_'
and the screams of the people, and hearing the
crashings as the Wabbly crushed its way inexorably
across the city, spreading terror everywhere....
Frenzied demands were made upon the Government for the
recall of troops from the front to offer battle to the
Wabbly.... It is considered that at that time the one
Wabbly had a military effect equal to at least half a
million men." (_Strategic Lessons of the War of
1941-43._--U. S. War College. Pp. 83-84.)

They did not enter the town. There was just enough of starlight to show
that the Wabbly had gone through it, and then crashed back and forth
ruthlessly. There was a great gash through the center of the buildings
nearest the edge, and there were other gashes visible here and there.
Everything was crushed down utterly flat in two eight-foot paths; and
there was a mass of crumbled debris four feet high at its highest in
between the tread-marks.

They looked, silently, and went on. They reached a railroad track, the
quadruple track of a branch-line from New York to Philadelphia. The
Wabbly was going along that right-of-way. There was no right-of-way left
where it had been. Rails were crushed flat. Culverts w