r worse."

She waited, her eyes frightened.

"The thing that paralyzes men and animals," he told her, "is a
projected beam of some sort. We almost ran into it. It's probably akin
to radar. I thought they'd put watchers on the highways. They did
better. They project this beam. When it blocks a highway, anybody who
comes along that highway runs into it. His eyes become blinded by
fantastic colored lights, and he hears unbearable noises and feels
anguish and they smell what we smelled just now. And he's paralyzed.
Such a beam was turned on me yesterday and I was captured. A beam like
that on the highway at the lake paralyzed three men who were carried
away, and later two others whose car ditched and who stayed paralyzed
until the beam was turned off."

"But we only smelled something horrible!" protested Jill.

"You did. I rushed you away. I'd smelled it before. But I went back.
And I smelled it, and I crawled forward a little way and I began to
see flashes of light and to hear noises and my skin tingled. I pushed
my hand ahead of me--and it became paralyzed. Until I pulled it back."
Then he said, "Come on."

"What will we do?"

"We change our line of march. If we drove into it or walked into it
we'd be paralyzed. It's a tight beam, but there's just a little
scatter. Just a little. You might say it leaks at its edges. We'll try
to follow alongside until it thins out to nothing or we get where we
want to go. Unless," he added, "they've got another beam that crosses
it. Then we'll be trapped."

He led the way onward.

They covered four miles of very bad going before Jill showed signs of
distress and Lockley halted beside a small, rushing stream. He saw
fish in the clear water and tried to improvise a way to catch them. He
failed. He said gloomily, "It wouldn't do to catch fish here anyhow. A
fire to cook them would show smoke by day and might be seen at night.
And whatever's at the Lake might send a terror beam. We'll leave here
when you're rested."

He examined the stream. He went up and down its bank. He disappeared
around a curve of the stream. Jill waited, at first uneasily, then
anxiously.

He came back with his hands full of bracken shoots, their ends tightly
curled and their root ends fading almost to white.

"I'm afraid," he observed, "that this is our supper. It'll taste a lot
like raw asparagus, which tastes a lot like raw peanuts, and a
one-dish meal of it won't stick to your ribs. That's the trouble