Way Station

by Clifford D. Simak

They would not be coming. Not Mary, not David, nor any of the others.

Too human for the shadows, too shadowy for Earth.

if the mob showed up at the same time Lewis should appear, bringing back the body, there’d be unsheeted hell to pay.

Before the night was over the Hazer must be secure within the grave.

in the last two days, he realized, he had lost that observer status.

those great storage tanks which held the acids and the soupy matter which once had been the bodies of those creatures which came traveling to the station, leaving behind them, as they went on to some other place, the useless bodies which then must be disposed of.

Down at the end of the shelves was one section of shelving into which the articles were packed more systematically and with greater care,

there were, as well, those few, tagged in red, that made one shudder to even think upon.

Slowly the room began to darken, then suddenly it seemed to flare and he was in the room no longer, but in another place, a place he had never seen before.

the very air of this place—wherever it might be—seemed to crawl with danger.

Two things came trotting from the woods and stopped at the edge of it. They sat down and grinned at him, with their tails wrapped neatly round their feet.

The wolf-like bodies with the skull-like heads were coming up the hill in a silent rush.

The gun bucked as he squeezed the trigger

He reached a hand into his pocket and took out two cartridges, cramming them into the magazine to replace the shells he’d fired.

The others backed away, slowly, watchfully.

a round and black balloon that swelled and deflated with its honking, and jerked and swayed as it walked along, hung from the center of four stiff and spindly legs

The firing pin clicked on an empty breech and the gun was empty, but there was no need of another shot.

Then the world faded swiftly and was no longer there.

He was back in the basement once again. The target shoot was over.

Holodeck?

They had asked him, he remembered, when the station had been built, if he had a hobby—if there was any sort of recreational facility they could build into the station for him.

he had said that he would like a rifle range,

There had not, so far in the thousands of times that he had used the range, been a duplication either in the scene nor in the beasts which rampaged about the scene.

Was there actually a differential that would stand up under logical examination between the sport of hunting and the sport of war?

The crystalline entity.

that was the trunk which had belonged to the Hazer who had died upstairs.

He was a victim of museum fatigue, Enoch told himself, overwhelmed by the many pieces of the unknown scattered all about him.

the inscription on the bottle read: To be taken when the first symptoms occur.

My approaching death, he had written, and there was no room for mistranslation.

It has been, in all reality, (another long time term), since a true (sensitive?) has been found to carry out its purpose.

We here at the (temple? sanctuary?) all are greatly concerned that without a proper linkage between the people and (several words that were not decipherable) the galaxy will go down in chaos (and another line that he could not puzzle out).

Was it possible that the Hazers knew more of life and death than had ever been spelled out?

He tried to imagine what one might feel if he were in contact with the force, and could not.

"The force"

Ulysses, he thought, had not told him all the truth about the Talisman.

he had not told him that for many years its power and glory had been dimmed by the failure of its custodian to provide linkage between the people and the force.

If he left the station, then he could no longer be in a position to appear before Galactic Central to plead that Earth be cured of war.

It all was his and he had a right to it, for it had been given him. But that did not mean, he knew, that Galactic Central might not object most strenuously to his taking any of it.

the slight chuckle of a materializer operating

Ulysses, he thought. Ulysses coming back again.

he saw that the creature was a rat that walked erect, with sleek, dark fur covering its body and a sharp, axlike rodent face.

There was something very wrong about it. The creature should have greeted him. It should have said hello and come out to meet him.

the creature, he realized, had not been intent on the killing of the keeper, but the disruption of the station.

he saw the creature rise and, snatching up the gun, rush toward the door.

no member of Galactic Central, he was convinced, would have acted as the ratlike creature had.

Likewise, the creature had known the phrase that would operate the door.

The alien was running across the field and had almost reached the line of woods.

Would he dare to kill an alien?

it had not killed him; it had fled instead.

there was Lucy Fisher, not more than twenty feet away. “Get out of here!” he shouted, forgetting that she could not hear him.

Enoch scrambled to his feet, lunging after her, and as he did the air behind him made a frying sound and there was the sharp bite of ozone in the air.

A laser, Enoch thought. The alien’s weapon was a laser, packing a terrific punch in a narrow beam of light.

No matter what it may have done, or failed to do, back there at the station, the alien now meant business. It knew that it was cornered and it was playing vicious.