er allies. She'd approached
the stopped car. And something frightened her. She screamed.

But she'd been pulled into the car, which went on before the beam
could come on again to stop it.

CHAPTER 9

It was very likely that at that moment Lockley despised himself more
bitterly than any other man alive. He blamed himself absolutely for
Jill's capture. If there were humans acting with the alien invaders,
her fate would unquestionably be more horrible than at the hands of
the monsters alone. After all, there was one nation most likely to
deal with extra-terrestrial creatures to help them in the conquest of
earth, and its troops were not notorious for their kindly behavior to
civilians.

And Jill was their captive. He'd been carried past the place where a
terror beam blocked the road. The military markings might mean the car
was stolen, or that its markings and paint were counterfeit. It seemed
certain that Jill had gone up to it in confidence that there could
only be American soldiers in such a car, and when near it found out
her mistake too late.

These were not things that Lockley thought out in detail at the
beginning. He ran after the car like a mad man, unable to feel
anything but horror and so terrible a fury that it should have killed
its objects by sheer intensity.

Presently he heard hoarse, gasping sounds. He realized that the sounds
were the breath going in and out of his own throat, while Jill was
carried farther and farther away from him in a car which traveled ten
yards to his one. He sobbed then, and suddenly he was strangely and
unnaturally calm. He was able to think quite coolly. The only
difference between this and normal thinking was that now he could
only think about one thing--full and complete and terrible revenge for
the crimes committed and to be committed against Jill. She would be
taken to Boulder Lake. So he would go to Boulder Lake, and somehow, in
some manner, he would destroy utterly all living beings there and
every trace of their coming.

Which, of course, was both natural and unreasonable. But reason would
have been unnatural at such a time as this.

He moved along the highway in a passion of ultimate resolve. In the
rest of the world, time passed without knowledge of his emotional
state. The rest of the world was suffering emotional agonies of its
own.

The United States had become popular among peoples who disliked all
things American except those they were given free