eath of the world. This was an attempt to
fight the last war on earth in disguise. Humans had posed as non-human
beings so that America would fight against phantoms while its great
military rival pretended to help and actually stabbed from behind.

It was completely logical, of course. An admitted attack by terror
beams in the form of death rays would involve retaliation by America.
Against a human enemy great, roaring missiles could circle earth to
plunge down upon that enemy's cities to turn them and their
inhabitants into incandescent gas. An attack known to be by humans and
upon humans must touch off the world's last war in which every living
thing might die. No conceivable success at the beginning could prevent
full retaliation. But if the attack were believed to be from space,
then American weapons and valor would be spent against creatures which
were no more than ghosts.

Lockley moved forward. Only he could know the situation as it
presented itself here. Even vengeance for Jill should be put aside, if
it called for action irrelevant to this state of things. But it did
not. A full and terrible revenge for her required exactly the action
the coolest of cold-blooded resolutions would suggest be taken now.
And Lockley moved on and downward to take it.

He began to crawl downhill toward the lights, unaware that there were
some gaps in his picture of the total scene. For example, these lights
could be detected by aircraft overhead. The fact did not occur to
Lockley. He was not given pause by the relaxation of the enemy's
disguise so far as air observation was concerned. He didn't think of
it. He moved on.

He drew near the lighted area. He did not walk, he crawled. He began
to listen with fury-sharpened ears. If he could get close to that huge
rocket, close enough to detonate its solid fuel stores....

That would be at once revenge and expedience. If the rocket's fuel
blew up instead of burning as intended, it would annihilate the camp.
It would wipe out every living creature present. But there would be
fragments left by the explosion. There would be corpses. There would
be wreckage. And that wreckage and those corpses would be unmistakably
human. The last war on earth might not be avoided, but at the worst it
would be fought against America's actual enemy and not against
imaginary monsters.

It was worth dying to accomplish even that. But Jill....

Lockley's progress was infinitely slow, but he needed to take