Way Station

by Clifford D. Simak

he had achieved the scent of apple blossoms, and had lived a day in spring while a blizzard howled outside.

Love

NO. 406,302 TO STATION 18327. NATIVE OF VEGA XXI ARRIVING AT 16532.82. DEPARTURE INDETERMINATE. NO LUGGAGE. CABINET ONLY, LOCAL CONDITIONS. CONFIRM.

It would be good to have a Hazer once again.

a Hazer, any Hazer, would turn out to be a friend.

July 12, 1915—arrived this afternoon (3:20 P.M.) five beings from Vega XXI, the first of their kind to pass through this station.

They are biped and humanoid,

They glow, not with a visible light, but there is about them an aura that goes with them wherever they may be.

they made me feel I was one with them and not simply a station keeper they would spend a short time with.

I believe that they were truly the most civilized people I have ever met.

I have said they glowed and I think by that I mean they glowed in spirit. It seemed that they were accompanied, somehow, by a sparkling golden haze that made happy everything it touched—almost as if they moved in some special world that no one else had found.

Even after they were gone, the golden haze seemed to linger in the room and it was hours before all of it was gone.

The Hazers had come back, the five of them, time and time again, for it seemed that they found in this station, perhaps even in the man who operated it, some quality that pleased them.

Then one day they came no more and he wondered why, asking after them when other Hazers showed up at the station. But he had never learned what had happened to them.

the old, wise one, the philosopher, who had died on the floor beside the sofa.

It was the golden haze, Enoch told himself, gulping, in something near to horror, that had made the Hazer seem so wondrous and so beautiful, so vital, so alive and quick, so filled with dignity.

The golden haze was the life of them and when the haze was gone, they became mere repulsive horrors that one gagged to look upon.

Did they wear their life force on the outside of them while all other creatures wore it on the inside?

A Vegan, when he fell, must stay where he fell,

WILL THERE BE RELATIVES OR FRIENDS ARRIVING FOR THE RITES? NO. YOU WILL NOTIFY THEM? FORMALLY, OF COURSE. BUT THEY ALREADY KNOW. HE ONLY DIED A MOMENT OR TWO AGO. NEVERTHELESS, THEY KNOW.

PROCEED AS IF THE VEGAN WERE ONE OF YOUR OWN.

Climbing down the ladder, he went up the short flight of stairs to the granary,

Huh?

working by lantern light to construct a coffin.

beside his father’s grave, he dug another grave,

He did not dig it as deep as he would have liked to dig, not the full six feet that was decreed by custom, for he knew that if he dug it that deep he never would be able to get the coffin in.

He put the Vegan in the coffin and nailed shut the lid, then climbed from the grave.

The watchers still were out there. He had lost his shadow people. And the world was edging in toward war.

He needed sun and soil and wind to remain a man.

“Lucy! What has happened, child?”

He bent and lifted her in his arms and ran for the shed.

knew that what he’d done had been a great mistake—that

here nothing in the world ever could get at her. But she was a human being and no human being, other than himself, should have ever crossed the threshold.

He got to his feet and went to the wall to take down the rifle. Then he went outside to face whatever had been pursuing her.

Two men were coming up the field toward the house and Enoch saw that one of them was Hank Fisher, Lucy’s father.

Hank, he saw, was carrying a coiled whip in his hand, and looking at it, Enoch understood those wounds on Lucy’s shoulders.

“And I ain’t finished with her yet. There ain’t no one, not even my own flesh and blood, can put a hex on me.”

“It’s the best way in the world,” said Roy, “to get a coon dog trained.”

“She tried to stop the training. She tried to grab Butcher away from Roy, here.”

Without laying a finger on him, mind you, she tied him up in knots. He couldn’t move a muscle.

“Roy got real mad at her.

she tied him up in knots, just like she did to Butcher.

Roy just stiffened up and then he fell down to the ground

She turned me blind—she blinded her own father!

her eyes once more went back to the flashing thing she was holding in her hands. He saw that it was the pyramid of spheres

the spheres were spinning slowly, in alternating clockwise and counterclockwise motions, and that as they spun they shone and glittered, each in its own particular color, as if there might be, deep inside each one of them, a source of soft, warm light.

And now it was in operation. He had tried a hundred times to get it figured out and Lucy had picked it up just once and had got it figured out.

She should not be in the station.

Bringing her here, he had broken that unspoken understanding he had with the aliens who had installed him as a keeper.

She had healed the butterfly, he thought; but she could not heal herself.

Ulysses came as twilight was deepening into night.

I came tonight to tell you, Enoch, that we are in trouble.”