(eng) Murray Leinster by The Brain Stealers (v1.0) (html)

Author:The Brain Stealers (v1.0) (html) [Stealers, The Brain]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

13

It was early night. Lantern-light streamed out of an open door in the barn. He stumbled to the light and stood there blinking, with the coat-wrapped bundle cradled tenderly in his arms. He made his face seem to work with exhaustion and his breath to come in gasps.

"Listen!" he panted. "You—you got a Little Fella here? I—got to show him somethin'! I—I—"

The farmer was an oldish man with an expression of vast patience—and of course unearthly peace. He was milking a cow. He looked around slowly, somehow with the manner of a man to whom any exertion at all is enormously difficult.

"What's that?"

"I was with—gang huntin' that fella," panted Jim. He seemed to sob with exhaustion. "I wasn't—strong. I— caved in. Couldn't do what my Little Fella told me! Couldn't! I fell down an' couldn't get up.... Passed out ... Fainted, I guess. When I come to I was lost.... Tried to find the gang... Found a dead fella layin on the ground. He'd been carryin' this Little Fella..."

A flicker of emotion passed over the lined, thin, patient face of the man on the milking-stool.

"Carryin' a Little Fella?"

"Yeah....The Little Fella's sick!" panted Jim as if in a frenzy. "He's—he's alive! I know that! But he—can't tell me nothin'.... He just lays there...."

He moved the coat-wrapped object.

"I don't know what to do!" he cried in seeming panic.

"I picked 'im up an' wrapped 'im warm. V been carryin' him ever since, tryin' to find somebody ... Nobody but another Little Fella'll know what to do! Y'can't let a Little Fella die!"

The patient eyes looked at him wearily but without doubt. Jim's tale was so unheard-of that there could be no question of plausibility. And it called upon every commanded instinct of loyalty and devotion that the Things had infused into their victims.

"I was lost!" cried Jim again, desperately. "I couldn't get here no quicker! I'm from th' city! I don't know how to find my way around out here in the sticks! Quick! I got to take him to another Little Fella who'll tell me what to do!"

The farmer half-rose, and then settled back again as if the exertion was too great.

"Ma'll show you where the Little Fella is," he said heavily. "Our folks are all off watchin' in case that killer's still around an'—our Little Fella is mighty greedy... She'll tell you..."

Jim turned and stumbled toward the house. A fierce hope stirred in him. An apology for weakness. Possibly only two people in the farm-house. But of course! The man who served the Things would reason that if Jim were a maniac as they'd been commanded to believe, he might have disguised a victim as himself only to stop all search so he might commit further crimes in the same area. After all, the evidence that he was in the city was not conclusive—merely a cryptic telephone-call. So the search could still be going on up here in the hills while the city was also combed with exhaustive care. And if

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