HIGH EIGHT

David Stringer

Although alien invasions have long been a popular conception in science fiction they do not necessarily have to come from outer space and the present-day trend favours more a “boring from within” as David Stringer brilliantly portrays in his first story in this series. The fact that it vitally affects the one commodity all humanity has come to rely upon makes it tremendously thought-provoking, too.

* * * *

For Rick Cameron, the trouble started one bright morning in Stan Mainwaring’s office.

Stan was Outside Works Controller to Saskeega Power, Rick was line maintenance boss for the company. They were great buddies; they’d been through school together, clocked nearly fifteen years together at Saskeega. Rick was sitting on his boss’s desk skinning through a copy of the company magazine when the phone blew. Stan picked up the handset. He said, “What? Yeah, you’d better put him through ...” The phone squawked a long time. Stan’s face changed; his fingers gripped the handset rhythmically, an unconscious reflex. Then, “Yeah, I’ll do that. Yeah, straight away.” He put the instrument down and sat for a moment staring at it, hands spread on the desk top. Rick glanced resignedly at the ceiling.

They’d been using one of the penstocks as a laboratory to check corrosion characteristics on some new metal dressings, they were due to open her up that morning, have a look at what had been happening. Rick had gone over to Main Block to collect Stan, they’d been going to drive up together. Now he had a strong presentiment they wouldn’t be making the trip. He said, “What’s the matter, Stan? Trouble?”

The other looked at him sombrely. “Had a suicide in the night. Old guy wrapped himself round a set of bus bars. They only just found him, Billy says it isn’t too nice. Sheriff’s on the way over, I got to go up and see.”

“Where was it, Stan, where’d it happen?”

The other man shrugged. “Of all the crazy places. High Eight.”

Half a dozen lines went out from Saskeega; Rick’s job was to service and maintain them over a radius of some twenty-five miles from the plant. The shortest run on the sector was the Indian Valley line. That went due west up into the mountains, through Black Horse Pass and down into Indian Valley the other side of the hump. It was the trickiest to service but far and away the most important; it fed the Sand Creek Pool where Sand Creek Atomic Research got their juice. And Sand Creek was about the most important thing in the country.... There was something else; the two installations inside the mountain, and the stepdown transformers that fed them. Rick had heard the rumours, he’d heard his boys mutter that they were parts of the Doomsday Brain, that they were bringing the current that ran the Doomsday Brain. He hadn’t let himself think too much about it and he certainly hadn’t worried. He wasn’t the man to worry. His job was to service the lines.

The first transformer was at the bottom of the hill, the second one way up on the Black Horse at the head of the pass. Number two on the line, number eight on the sector; she sat up there in the clouds and that was the name they’d given her, among themselves. High Eight...

Rick went along with his boss. Privately, he thought it was his baby as much as Stan’s. They drove through Freshet, the little township that had sprung up to house the staff of Saskeega and their families. Passing Rick’s place, his wife gave the car a wave. He shook his head slightly. It was just as well she didn’t know where they were headed and why, Judy was funny about the lines. They got through town and the road started to climb with the towers striding alongside. Standing room on the mountain was strictly limited, the line followed the road most of the way. When they got high enough Rick could see Saskeega below and miles off, the penstocks running down to it, the white threads of the outfalls.

He turned round to Stan. “How in Hell did he manage to get hold of those bars? He must have been crazy...” He wasn’t feeling too great himself; once when he was in the army he’d seen a guy take a thousand cycles, hadn’t been a thing left but his shoes. And supertension was worse; you couldn’t fool with a hundred thousand volts, it played too rough. The bus bars were the big terminals where the contacts were made between the transformers and the cables, they were fenced with guard rails. Drop a spanner over those rails and there it stopped till a Routine Outage. Slide under to get it and the voltage waiting there would come crackling out to meet you, shake you by the hand. Rick ran his fingers through his cropped hair. He said again, “The old guy must’ve been crazy as a coot to crawl inside...”

Stan didn’t answer, just put his foot down harder. They passed number seven; a few miles on and they could see High Eight perched over a cliff, its white walls shining in the sun. When they reached it Stan swung off the road and stopped. They got out. There were a couple of cars parked, one of the station service trucks and the Sheriff’s estate wagon. They walked towards the building and Sheriff Stanton came out the door. One of his deputies backed out after him, taking a bulb out of a flash camera. Stanton nodded to the Saskeega men, wagged his thumb at High Eight. He said, “Better take a look, fellers, your steak-frier’s sure done him proud.”

They went in.

It could have been worse. The body was lying curled up just inside the door, a little old man, grey-haired, clothes ragged. Just an old hobo. The flash had blown him clear instead of taking him in and cooking him, his hands were charred but that was all. He’d smashed the back of his skull on the guard-rail. Not that that mattered, he’d been dead when he hit it. A yard or so away was a tin box. The lid had come off, there were old papers scattered, a couple of photographs. And there were the bus bars shining in the half dark, the transformers singing all round.

An ambulance had been called, they loaded him in as soon as it arrived. Stanton picked up the junk that was spread about, thumbed through it. He shrugged. “No names. Guess if we could trace next of kin they wouldn’t want to know. Maybe he’s better off, poor old guy. You boys known a thing like this before?”

Rick shook his head slowly. Suicides happened, they just happened all the time, but there weren’t many people that chose the lines. It wasn’t a nice way to go...

The door lock was smashed where the old man had broken in. Stan fingered it; he said slowly, “Maybe he was just lookin’ for shelter and a place to sleep awhile. He sure as Hell found that.” They told one of the maintenance men to get up there with a new lock, that was about all they could do. Rick drove back down with Stan, tried to put the whole thing out of his mind. He managed it till he got home that night. He saw Judy’s face and could tell she knew. He asked her how she’d found out. She said she saw the trouble wagon in town, asked one of the boys. Rick swore under his breath about guys who just had to shoot off their big mouths. It wasn’t the sort of thing it did Judy any good to know, not feeling the way she did about the lines. Rick blamed himself partly for that. He’d taken her up to High Eight one day, and it had scared the Hell out of her. The big housings singing like cats, the static over their tops making blue crackles in the dark. She’d lived with the fear for years, but she’d got no better.

He could see the thing was on her back again. She said, “Why’d he do it, Rick, you find out why he did it? Maybe, you know, did he leave a note or something, say why ... ?”

He said, “No note, honey, nothing. Just wasn’t a reason, I guess. Poor old guy was crazy, is all.” He stood squarely, facing her and frowning, worrying about something outside his experience and wondering how to quieten her.

She shook her head violently. She said, “I know why he did it, Rick, I can see why, can’t you?” She gulped. Then, “Was he...much burned?”

“Look, Judy ...”

She said. “It was the lines. It’s always the lines. Like the rails in a ... station, in a subway, they pull, Rick, you never felt them pull? You stood there with the train coming and the noise and felt the rails pull harder and harder...”

“Honey, please ...”

She ignored him. “It’s that way with the lines, Rick. They drew him. Can’t you see him up there, that poor old man, lonely, nobody to go to, nobody around? That’s when they pull most, when there’s nobody around. He was hungry and cold and the night was coming and there were the lights on the wall inside High Eight, like sort of red and amber eyes watching and saying come on, it’s O.K., come on ... and the singing all round, and the shining things behind the rail pulling and pulling...”

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Judy, for God’s sake...”

She wrenched away from him, ran into the kitchen. She snapped switches. She said, “Electricity, Rick. It scares me. Look at it all round, just think, if it was waiting. If it all wanted to pull...”

His temper snapped. He yelled at her, “For Christ’s sake, shut up...” He said, “I was the one had to pick him up, get him in the bloodwagon. I didn’t like it honey, I don’t like that sort of thing. You think I’m a sort of ghoul likes going round picking people off the lines? You want it, you asked to know, yeah, his hands were burned. They were burned black, you could see the bones...Now are you happy, I been trying to forget it most of the day....”

She screwed her eyes up, hand across her mouth as if she was in pain. A long wait; then, “Rick I’m ... I’m sorry, honey, I don’t know what gets me going like that. It’s a thing I got, about the lines ... I’m sorry...”

He sighed, feeling the old trembling he always felt when he rowed with her. “O.K., so we both got it out of our systems. Now what say we forget it all. These things happen, honey, isn’t any cause to go wild...”

“Rick, couldn’t we go off? You know, you get some other job, we could go some place miles from Saskeega where we didn’t have to see the lines...”

They’d been through that fifty, a hundred times before. Rick would have done most things for her even if she wanted them for crazy reasons but he couldn’t take another job, the lines were all he knew. Or so he told himself. But there was something else, something he didn’t talk about with Judy because she wouldn’t understand. The lines did get you, after a time. Oh, not in the crazy way she said, but there was something about them, the towers and the lines soaring off across the country taking power to run peoples’ lives, run the world. There was something in that. He used to talk about it odd times with Stan; he never really knew how to get it into words but Stan knew what he meant.

That night Rick kept having a recurring dream. It seemed the phone was ringing and he kept answering it and finding there was another body in High Eight. The fifth or sixth time it happened he sat up in bed, thinking blearily that the crazy talk Judy had given him had somehow gotten on his mind. He looked round. The room was dark, he could see his wristwatch dial on the side table. He picked the watch up. It read just after three. He yawned and rubbed his eyes, then the noise that had woken him started again.

The phone was ringing.

He got up and answered it. He listened to what it had to say, then he put the handset down and wondered if he was going to wake up again. But it was no good, this was for real. He went back to the bedroom and started to dress. His hands worked mechanically, almost of their own volition. There was another body in High Eight, the lines were out, he had to get up there quick as he could.

Judy put the light on, and Rick turned round. She was shivering. “Rick, what is it, what goes on? Was it the phone ...?”

He said, “Look honey, I gotta go out. They got some trouble, I’ll try and not be too long...”

She got hold of his arm. “It’s another one. In that Godawful place...”

“Honey, it isn’t, isn’t anything like that. They got some trouble down at the plant. Icing on the insulators.” He said the first thing that came into his head. It didn’t do any good, he could see the look in her eyes, he could tell she knew.

Rick got the car out and drove for the pass. Soon as he left the shelter of town he started to feel the wind pulling and twitching at the steering. There was always a wind on the Black Horse, it blew like a bitch up there night and day. Something came into his mind. He remembered the wind in the poem, the wind that blew in the wasteland where nobody ever came. There was nothing on the mountain either except High Eight.

He didn’t care for that idea too much. Essentially, Rick was a rational guy; but the morning had been bad, and with the wind yelling that way and everything black as Hell it was a whole lot worse. He tried to think about something else, started a sort of mental argument with Judy.

“Look honey, there’s nothing wrong with electricity. You use it right, it’s fine. You fool about and you get in trouble, most things are like that. Look, the lines are good. They light your home, cook your meals, run your television, help you have fun. They keep you warm, they keep you happy. We couldn’t do without the lines...”

Somehow he knew what she’d answer. It was almost like she was there with him in the car. She said, “The lines are waiting, Rick. Every place, all the time. Just waiting. And one day ...”

He took a bend. The headlights shone silver off the foot of one of the towers. He wondered suddenly if the thing was a gag, somebody had decided to have a little fun sending him chasing up there in the middle of the night. Didn’t seem likely, but there was a chance. That meant he’d get to High Eight, wouldn’t be a soul around. Just the wind booming off the cliff and the coloured eyes up there in the housings singing in the dark...He tried to see up towards the pass, but as far as he could tell it was all black. He was suddenly sure the thing was a gag. He felt like turning the car and going straight back, but he knew he couldn’t do that.

Rick got a cigarette out of his windcheater pocket and fumbled it alight. He was angry with himself; he was acting and thinking like a kid fresh from High School. What he was going to do was ride on up and check the place; and if there was nobody around he was going to phone back to Saskeega and somebody was going to get taken apart. That was all there was to it.

There were folk there. There was a patrol car, he saw the roof-flasher from a couple of miles down the road. Somebody was waving a lamp. He stopped the car and got out. The wind was evil; it felt like a solid, animate thing. He leaned into the gusts, tacked across to High Eight.

It was quieter inside, the wind was muted and the housings were silent because the lines were out. A couple of the night maintenance staff from Saskeega were there, and two cops. They were standing in a group looking at the bus bars. One of the engineers was saying “Gee, look at that! Gee, look at that!” He was talking softly, like somebody at a pretty firework display. “Gee, look at that...!”

The Thing squatted with its back turned to Rick, showing him the top of its bald head. Its hands were on the bus bars, but he wasn’t holding the contacts any more. Its arms were burned off at the wrists. The stumps sticking out from the body were dried and twisted. The man must have dived in head first, got hold of the bars one in each hand. God alone knew how...Then they’d got hold of him and the arcing hadn’t stopped till his arms were burned apart. All round for yards across the concrete floor were the black scars where the sparks had drummed and hissed.

The wind howled outside. The man said, “Gee, look at that...!”

Rick turned round on him, managed to talk somehow. “Turn it off, will you? Just turn it off...

The engineer looked at him and shook his head. “Gee, Rick,” he said. “Just look at that...!”

The overseer walked the length of the building to the phone. He rang through to Saskeega, got the duty engineer in West Power Block. He said harshly, “Donnell, what in Hell you playing at down there?”

There was a lot of static on the line. It was hissing and crackling like it was trying to talk as well, a gibberish of embryonic words. Rick could hardly hear his own voice. He said, “What in Hell you playing at?” Suddenly he couldn’t stop himself yelling. He felt he wanted to take somebody and pound their face in because of what had happened. But there was no one to blame...

Donnell sounded half crazy. “Rick, I don’t know what happened, I don’t know how in Hell it happened. Trips shoulda pulled the line, they stayed in. Trips didn’t work, I don’t know what in Hell happened...”

Cameron swore. “What are you using for eyes down there, what about your line volts? What you doing down there, what you using for eyes ...?”

A great guffaw of static. Then, “I pulled the line soon as the volts jumped, Rick, I don’t know what in Hell happened...”

“Soon as Hell you did. Guy’s hands fried off up here, Donnell, while you were sitting waiting for your meters to kick. You took his hands off his body, God damn it, you took ‘em right off his body...”

“Rick, I don’t know how in Hell—”

The overseer slammed the phone down and got out. The whole place smelled like somebody had been cooking meat with no salt, and he knew within two minutes he was going to be sick as a dog.

They had to wait while photographs were taken. You always had to have pictures of a thing like that, Rick reflected bitterly, just in case you ever managed to forget it. Then they started clearing the lines. Rick would have called Stan but it would have done no good; he’d gone off to a big convention the afternoon before, he wasn’t expected back for a couple of days.

Power was restored about six in the morning, and Rick Cameron drove back down to Saskeega and into a hornets’ nest; the feeder had been out most of the night, they’d had to pull juice from half across the country to keep Sand Creek alive. He called Stan long-distance from his office. He still felt pretty shaken up. He had to try three hotels before he reached his boss, when he came on the line he already knew what had happened. Stan flew back the same morning, he was in Saskeega in about six hours. They went down together to see Sheriff Stanton.

They’d taken all the precautions they could; the lock on the door had been fixed, but the second victim hadn’t got in that way. There were a couple of windows in the transformer house, they were fairly small and they had heavy bars across, but it looked like the suicide had pulled the bars out with his bare hands and the glass and frame as well. There was no sign of anything he could have used as a lever and there was blood on the sill and on the floor inside, a trail of it to the bus bars. It looked as if he’d torn his hands to pieces smashing the window. Stanton said maybe more would be known after the autopsy, but it looked plain enough; the guy had been crazy, like the hobo. He shook his head. He said he’d known the dead man, he was a farmer from down in Indian Valley. He said, “Beats me how a little guy like that could have busted that window apart. He must have been deranged, crazy as Hell ... but that don’t help us none, what you boys goin’ to do about this ?”

The Saskeega men looked at each other a little blankly. Then Stan said, “Don’t seem to be much we can do, Andy. Like you said, suicides happen. If a guy goes crazy we can’t read his mind. We didn’t kill those folk.”

Stanton grunted. “Your juice did. Look fellers, I seen things like this before. Take my word. Not on the lines, that’s something new, but I’m telling you if there’s a suicide, say a drowning, and the word goes round, you’ve got a dozen more. Seems the idea gets in peoples’ minds, triggers half the potential nut cases in the county. Now I’ve seen this and I don’t want no more bodies coming down off that mountain, what’re you going to do?”

Rick said carefully, “You think maybe the old guy heard about the hobo?”

“Don’t see how. Lived on his own, got a little place way out of town, hardly ever saw any folks. I’ll check on it, but I don’t see how in Hell he could have known.”

Stan said, “Well, we can’t write it off as just bad luck. What say we put a guard on that place a few nights, Rick, till things quiet down?”

Rick thought of the blackness up there, the wind talking in the wires all the night through. The warning lights that Judy reckoned said come on. ... He said, “Two men, Stan, and better arm ‘em. Makes ‘em feel better.”

Stan looked at the overseer sharply, but nothing more was said. He brought the thing up again that night though, while Rick was driving him home. “Two lots of double time just to watch one bloody little transformer stage, see no more crazy bastards turn themselves into rare steak...The old man’s going to nail my ears to the wall for this, Rick. They want a guard, I say put on a guard, fine, put a guard on the place. But why the Hell two?”

Rick narrowed his eyes and squinted at a bend. “You like to do it, Stan, you do it on your own?”

He said, “I’d do it if I had to, and you damn well know it, what’n Hell you getting at?” He sounded surly. Rick glanced at him quickly. That wasn’t like Stan...

They posted the guards and that took care of things at High Eight for a time. But High Eight wasn’t the real worry. What Rick wanted to know, what Stan wanted to know, what it seemed everybody in Saskeega wanted to know was why those trips hadn’t worked. On all high-tension lines there is gear designed to kill the circuit in an emergency, if, for instance, a tower blows down or gets struck by lightning. If the lines stayed in they’d burn up everything, fry anybody within yards as well. That’s what the trips are for, in the event of a major short they pull the plug after three or four seconds at the outside. But the suicide had been on the bars a lot longer than that and the lines didn’t cut at all till Donnell shut down by hand.

That was another mystery, of course. How could Donnell and the whole night staff have missed seeing things were wrong? Donnell swore he took action as soon as the voltage went crazy and he was a good engineer, Stan knew that. “But the Hell, Rick,” he said worriedly. “He didn’t pull those lines till there was nearly nothing left of the guy, he didn’t pull till the voltage had steadied again. He could have had the whole feeder burn out under his nose. Under all their noses...”

The Controller questioned everybody, but he could get no leads. There just didn’t seem to be a reason for any of it. The trip gear was checked a dozen times, there wasn’t a thing out of place. That line just had to pull. And yet it didn’t.

They had to leave things like that. Nobody liked it, but there wasn’t anything to be done. The guards were kept on High Eight a couple of weeks, but nothing else happened. Rick put another set of bars on the window, had the door double-locked and hoped the line had settled down for good. But it had not. The day after the guards were removed Saskeega lost three men.

Two of them were killed in a chopper that crashed into the cliff right below High Eight. Nobody could explain it; a farmer who saw it happen said the machine just turned and flew straight at the rock. The Company ran half a dozen helicopters, they were good for patrolling lines in awkward country. Stan grounded the rest as soon as he heard; that didn’t make Rick’s job any easier. He tried to make the best of it. He was sanguine enough to realize there was nothing else his boss could have done.

The other death was on the Indian Valley feeder as well. The man’s name was Halloran, Rick had known him very well. He was half Irish, hadn’t seemed to have a nerve in his body. He was boss of one of the maintenance gangs, he’d been with Saskeega for years.

He took a truck out that day, nobody saw him go. Nobody missed him either. About five in the afternoon a patrol came through from Indian Valley on a routine job, saw something they never would have believed. One of the men told Rick later, they drove down and stopped and got out of the car and stood staring, and they still could hardly believe. Parked beside one of the towers was the trouble wagon; and up above it, way up in the sky, Jim Halloran was crouched over an insulator stack, blue fire in his hands and the pain of the Pit in his eyes...

Rick began to lose staff. They sloped off in ones and twos, found other jobs where they wouldn’t have to keep looking over their shoulders wondering who was going next. Halloran’s death hit them harder than anything else that had happened. Old farmers can go crazy, bums can get tired of life, but Halloran was a guy they’d worked with, got drunk with. He wouldn’t have killed himself, that was what they muttered. Something dragged him up to that tower, he didn’t take his own life, and whatever the something was, if it could kill a guy like Halloran it could do anything.

Rick knew the rumours were going round, but there wasn’t a thing he could do. He’d got his hands full as it was; there was a lot of routine work on the lines, repair jobs were always coming up; kids out for kicks shooting up the insulators, all sorts of things like that. The choppers were still being taken apart to find out what made them fly into rock walls, he’d had to split the remnants of half a dozen gangs and make up new bosses, and there was trouble there. Always friction when a thing like that has to be done. He was working most hours God gave, his wife was headed for a nervous breakdown on account of all the trouble, he’d just about had enough. Then he heard about Stallion Jim.

It seemed one of the gangers was a halfbred Indian. Whatever the truth of his tale, he reckoned years back his people had owned most of Saskeega County. He said that Indian Valley had been their chief hunting ground, which explained its name, and that the Black Horse was sacred land, the home of the tribal gods. Stallion Jim was the boss spirit or totem, and there was a legend that one day he would return and drive the white-eyes back into the east. There would be portents when that happened, thunder and lightning on the peak, and people would be killed by fire from the sky. It all fitted in very nicely, and it was just about what was needed to start a general rout.

Rick decided this was one thing he could knock over the head. He had the Indian—Joey, they called him—in his office, and had the mother, father and grand-daddy of all rows. He told him one more word out of him about phantom horses or curses or fire from above and there’d be more fire than he knew what to do with right down on earth, and he’d personally kick him to the other side of Saskeega. Joey didn’t answer much; but even while his boss was bawling him out his eyes were flicking to the window of the office. The lines were visible from that window, threading away towards the hills, and the Black Horse was lowering in the distance...

The Indian saved Rick his trouble. He lit out the same day, they never saw him again.

But the damage had been done. Saskeega lost more men than ever till Rick was practically working with skeleton crews. He didn’t have a day off for a month; then he got sick and tired. He told Judy to pack a lunch, they’d be getting out for a time. He’d seen as much of the Company as he wanted, if the whole shebang fell apart while he was away it was just too Goddam bad.

They drove round the long way to Indian Valley. It had always been one of Judy’s favourite spots. It was a hot day. Rick pulled the car off the road under a group of trees. They sat and talked and ate the meal; then he leaned back and smoked a cigarette, and looked through the leaves to where he could see the Black Horse framed in the distance. The top of the mountain seemed to move as he stared at it, crawling forward against the clouds and not getting anywhere. Rick started to doze; he was feeling at peace with the world.

There was the most fearsome noise he’d ever heard. It wasn’t like thunder, wasn’t like anything he could think of. It filled the air, it was deep and hollow at the same time, a series of concussions that hit him like punches under the heart. There was nothing to see, just the mountain and the sailing clouds. He sat with the cigarette in his fingers and his mouth open. The row lasted maybe ten seconds, maybe twenty. When it finished Judy started to whimper. She said, “Stallion Jim. . . She ducked, like the sight of the mountain was burning her. It was the first time Rick knew she’d heard the story.

He shoved her in the car and started up. He had no idea what he was going to do, he just knew he was going to get away from that place but fast. The noise had shaken him up badly, more badly than he was prepared to admit either then or later. He heard himself saying over and over, “Was a storm, honey, it was thunder, that’s all...” But he didn’t even believe that himself. The din hadn’t sounded like any thunder he’d ever heard. It had sounded just like it should; like the beat of huge, horrid hooves round the mountain...

They got home, the phone was raising Hell. Would Rick Cameron go up to the Black Horse right away, Station Seven had exploded.

He didn’t waste time explaining that transformer stages don’t explode, he just put Judy back in the motor and drove down to Stan’s place. Jeff was at home; he thanked God for that at least. She looked pretty white herself; Rick said things were under control, could she look after Judy while he went up the hill. He felt better after that; he knew his wife would be O.K. He drove for the Black Horse.

He didn’t make good time. Traffic was stalled on the mountain, somebody said a tower was down across the road. Rick would have got through faster with a trouble wagon, but he’d only got his private car and no identification. In the end he gave up arguing. He drove through on the wrong lane and the Hell with everybody. He got up to Number Seven, the tower wasn’t down, but she was leaning out across the road like she’d come any minute. The sky was full of cables. Rick left the car and walked.

It looked like half Saskeega had got there in front of him. Stan was there and Sheriff Stanton, they said old man Perkins had been up but he’d cleared off again. That suited Rick fine. He went and had a look at what was left of the stage. There wasn’t much; a few bits of metal scattered around, some lumps of concrete, pieces of the insulator stacks. Where the transformers had stood was a hole. A crater. It was twelve, maybe fifteen feet deep and thirty feet across. It had an obscene look about it, it was black inside like the earth had been burned, and it threw rays and arms out across the road like a filthy star. Rick walked to the edge of it with Stan, stood looking down. He didn’t know what to think. He said quietly. “How do you read this, mister?”

His boss shook his head. “Only one answer. Somebody blew it. We been sabotaged but good...”

The linesman stared at him, grinning without humour. “No. Oh, no ... somebody blew it? You mean, they blew this thing up ? You just see that hole, Stan, you know what it’d take to dig that out? You worked out what size charge you’d put in to make a hole like that?”

Stan looked angry. “So they didn’t know what they were doing. They used a big charge.”

Rick nodded. “Yeah, they did. They used a big charge. And that row I heard was the charge going off. Yeah.”

He walked round the lip of the crater. Stan followed up. He said, “So it blew on its own. How’s that, Rick, it just sort of blew up. Just like so.”

Rick could feel the sweat starting out on his face. It was like he was going crazy. He said, “Transformer stages do not explode. I am a working stiff, I am not too bright in the head, I just know this, transformer stages do not spontaneously ... explode.”

He’d never had a row with Stan. He didn’t have one then, but it got mighty close. When things had calmed down a bit, the overseer said, “O.K., Rick, O.K. So we take first things first. What do we do?”

Rick was still glaring at the hole. He said, “Block that road, Stan, east at Saskeega, west at the end of Indian Valley.”

“It’s done.”

“Relieving tackle on that downhill tower. Then get the traffic all through, get it clear. We can guy her then so she won’t fall, if she does we’ll have the line laying down right back to Saskeega. When we’ve secured her we go back down the hill and face the music. By then they’ll be playing a real pretty tune...”

They got busy. Supporting the tower was a ticklish job, it was nearly night before they’d finished, and a storm was blowing up over the Black Horse. A queer fancy came into Rick’s mind, wedged itself there somehow so it wouldn’t be driven away. The next tower downhill was the one Jim Halloran had died on. He kept thinking he’d look up and see him still up there, riding the wires like a big, ragged crow as the stalk was winched upright. When everything was tied off, the vehicles convoyed back down. Rick couldn’t stop from looking in his mirror and seeing the red hood just behind and feeling glad he wasn’t the last in line. He was still pretty badly shaken up, he just felt like that. Glad he wasn’t the last in line...

If he thought he’d had trouble over the suicides he soon found out that had been nothing. There was trouble and trouble and trouble. Saskeega was important, whatever happened there was important. Saskeega fed Sand Creek, and Sand Creek was part of the National Effort and that was very important. Nobody thought too much about sleep until the stage was rebuilt and the lines were in again. Stan and Rick were grilled by the FBI, they asked did they think the feeder had been sabotaged, they said the Hell yes, there didn’t seem to be anything else they could say. Yes, somebody blew that stage, somebody that wanted Sand Creek shut down. And that was all that was needed. The state troopers were turned out, and after that Rick complained bitterly he needed a countersigned pass to get from his house across to his own garage and back.

A patrol crossed the Black Horse the night the stage blew, to check that the tower was O.K. and the tackles holding. The driver said later it was queer up there, the wind gusting so strong the tail of the car got nearly snatched off the road a couple of times. Nothing impossible in that; as Stan said, anything could happen on that mountain in a blow and most times it did. The other linesman acted strangely, wouldn’t talk on the hill, just sat making bug-eyes up at the wires in the dark. He killed himself the same night, ran his car in the garage. That made six...

Rick found out something about himself. He was scared of the Black Horse.

It was crazy, he knew that, he told himself it was crazy, but he couldn’t shake it off. The Black Horse was a hill. A lump of dirt stuck there in the way so they’d had to put the lines across it, give it a wire necklace. Rick told himself the lines were just lines, they carried supertension up from Saskeega to Indian Valley, across to Sand Creek. Just power lines, that was all. But some part of him insisted there was something else.

He’d get up nights, go to the windows and watch the green lightning-flicker over the mountain, listen to the war-drums of the thunder. That was the line where people died. That was where they took hold of bus bars, scalded themselves into mummies. That was where they climbed towers, reached out and got a good firm grip on Death. That was where transformers exploded, and blew half the mountain out doing, it. That was the line to High Eight.

He’d never felt like that, never had a thing in his mind that was crazy but that he couldn’t drive away. He tried to tell himself there was a Reason, there was always a Reason for everything, but that didn’t help because then he’d try and imagine what the Reason looked like. He’d see it stalking up there on its own two legs, he’d see it walking empty roads under the lightning flashes and glaring down at Saskeega, scurrying home to a little white building, nesting down before the dawn caught up with it. That was how he got to feel, about High Eight.

They built the new stage. They costed it and ordered the parts and put them together, and tested and checked and corrected, until it was all fine. Then they started the feeder again and Rick hoped he’d get some peace.

He did, for a couple of months. He got Judy to go away to her folks, she came back looking brown and well. They started going down to Stan’s place again, had a lot of fun. And the Indian Valley line stayed like it should, it was just a string of well-behaved towers humping away across a hill. Everything was O.K.

Then Rick got a call that started it all again. This time for keeps.

He was over in his office one afternoon. It was a nice day, the sun was shining and he was sitting up there with his feet on the desk and a cup of coffee in his hand. Then the phone rang. He picked it up. “Yeah, line maintenance, Cameron here...”

A voice gabbled in his ear. “That you, Rick ? For Chrissake come up here, Rick, come up for Chrissake, we got a tower m-mm.”

Cameron frowned. “What? Say again?” It sounded like the phone had said, “We got a tower melting.”

It had.

Rick didn’t know what to make of one of his boys gone crazy, raving on the line like that. He said, “Er ... Look Johnny, you on your own? Who you got with you, pal, who’s with you?”

“Rick, for Chrissake...”

“Take it easy, Johnny, you got Grabowski with you? You get him on the line, will you? and, Johnny, take it easy...”

The phone swore. It said, “Damn it to Hell an’ gone, Rick, I ain’t shook my bolts, I’m at High Eight and the place is goin’ crazy again and there’s people all over, will you damn well come ... ?” The line went dead.

The fear had a galvanic effect, it bounced Rick out of his chair and out of the office. He jeeped across to Main Block and burst in on Stan. He said breathlessly, “High Eight again, Stan, something wrong with a tower. Can you come?” The Controller didn’t waste time answering, just grabbed his hat and ran after him.

There was an accident truck outside, they jumped in and Stan set the siren blaring. He drove for the gates scattering people right and left. Rick yelled at him. “There’ll be Hell for this, the old man’ll give us Hell, using a siren without a main alarm...”

He shouted back. “If it’s a phoney we give out we got a short on the button. If it’s the real thing, best we keep it to ourselves. What the Hell they say’s the matter?”

“Say we got a tower melting.”

“What?”

Rick bawled, “Melting...” Stan didn’t ask anything else, just put his foot down and kept it there. They bounced through the gate and screeched onto the main road.

There was plenty wrong.

They passed Number Seven, everything still looked O.K. The truck swung round the last bend but one and there was High Eight, above and tiny in the distance. Rick said “Jesus Christ...” He couldn’t help it.

Strain towers are extra-heavy stalks put in to take the pull where the cables change direction. Last one before Indian Valley was just below High Eight, and like the linesman had said it was melting. There wasn’t any doubt it was melting. Metal was dropping off the arms, running like solder under a torch, splashing down onto the rock in gobs a foot across. While Rick stared the whole thing sagged, shoved a spar towards the mountain like a man thrusting his knee out, bracing himself for a big yawn. Beyond the tower was a trouble wagon, and a little figure in Saskeega blue was running like Hell down the mountain. In front of him were the people.

The road was full. There were a couple of hundred of them, maybe more. They were formed in a ragged column, moving up the middle of the carriageway towards High Eight. All sorts of people. There was a garageman still in his soiled whites, a girl in a blowy dress. . . . And in front of them the tower was bending into crazy shapes and over their heads the wires were waltzing from side to side.

Rick slammed the siren in again and the truck came down behind them howling and bellowing. Stan was leaning out of the cab yelling at the top of his voice. “Get out from under the wires..... Get back, get off the road, get out from under the wires...”

For all the notice they took the wagon might not have been there. Stan left it nearly too late to stop. At the last instant he trod on the anchors and wrenched the wheel round and the truck screeched and broadsided onto the rough. It dragged a plume of dust behind it forty, fifty yards, then it smashed its pan across a rock and the ride was over. Rick banged his head on the screen, fell back and heard the cables part. Something slapped on the road behind the truck’s tail, the Saskeega men curled up instinctively away from the cab sides, there was the rush and whimper of the arcing then the cutoffs killed the line. Stan got out; Rick followed him cautiously, feeling himself to see he was still in one piece. The Sand Creek feeder was out again...

Boris Grabowski reached the truck. His face was as near white as it could get and his eyes looked as if they were bolting out of his head. He said, “Boss, I’m going bloody crazy.”

Rick said heavily, “You and me both, Boris, you and me both.” He looked up towards the strain tower. She was mostly all gone; there was a stump about six or eight feet tall, and the struts of that were twisted and blackened. What was left of the head had been dragged ninety, a hundred feet downhill, and all the road was a jumble of wires. The people were standing about in the middle of the mess. The cables had come down right among them, but they were still all on their feet, God alone knew how. The Saskeega men tried to talk to them, but it was no use. They started pushing them clear of the cables. It was hard work. The strangers stared straight ahead, walked when they were being shoved, stopped still as soon as they were left alone. “What we need,” said Rick furiously, “is a bloody sheepdog.”

He sent Boris down to phone for roadblocks and ambulances and lifting gear to clear the carriageway. Then he walked on up to High Eight with Stan. They got another shock. The people they’d seen had been only the second wave, the first crowd of zombies had got there before the lines parted. There were red smears on the door where they’d torn the locks apart. They were the folk Johnny had tried to tell about on the phone.

Rick went inside. Johnny was very dead. It looked like he’d tried to hold the folk back from the bus bars. He hadn’t had a chance, they’d picked him up bodily and shoved him onto the contacts...Six had managed to die, a dozen more were hanging round the gear looking stupid, fumbling at the bars like something ought to have happened but hadn’t. Rick hauled one of them up and shoved him away. He came right back and the overseer shoved him off again. He came back again and Rick hit him, he couldn’t stop himself. He didn’t feel it. He rolled across the floor, got up slobbering blood and started feeling for the contacts again. Rick let him be. It was like giving a kid a toy to keep it quiet....

The only one of the victims that showed any sign of being human was a girl. She sat just outside the door and she was crying. Stan put his jacket round her shoulders. He said, “God knows what’s with the others, but this looks like plain shock.” He started talking to her. He found out her name was Allison Foster, she’d lived with her aunt a few miles out of Freshet. She said they’d heard the music. That was all. They’d heard the music. They’d got the car out and driven up, following whatever was calling them. They’d had a blowout on the trail, had to walk the rest of the way. She told Stan, the music had stopped now. It had gone away. Then she starting in crying again.

The Controller looked up and shook his head, and they heard the sirens going way off towards Saskeega...

The mountain was cordoned. The road was closed to traffic from Freshet right to Indian Valley. It seemed every research lab in the country had a team up there scraping about. They even sent some people over from Cape Kennedy. What the spaceboys wanted with bits of the busted stalk, Rick couldn’t figure. Stan said sardonically that maybe they thought the Company had little green men.

Just about everything got analysed, the tower struts, the insulators, the rock face, bits of the cables. If there were ever any reports Stan and Rick didn’t get to see them. They were no wiser than they had been the day the thing happened. All they knew was one bright morning that tower melted. It couldn’t have happened, but it did.

They re-rigged the feeder. A piece was blasted out of the rock, the new cables were brought inside the line of the old so the eggheads could keep their playground. Power was restored two days after the accident. The troops stayed put; Black Horse Pass was stiff with guards.

Within a week the people who’d been saved were all dead, and that started a national scare on its own. There was talk of putting the whole of Saskeega County under quarantine. That would have been done, but nobody could find out why the victims died. Wasn’t anything physical, they just seemed to fade away. Nobody could do a thing. Rick heard the day the power went back on they had to strap them down to stop them walking to the Black Horse and doing the same thing all over. The girl Stan had talked to didn’t seem too bad, they didn’t watch her like they watched the others. They let her ram her fingers in a light socket. Somehow she kept them there till her heart stopped....

Rick moved over to Stan’s place for a time because he didn’t like the idea of Judy being on her own any more. When she was with Jeff she wasn’t too bad. About ten days after the trouble he got back from Saskeega one evening and Stan asked him to go down to the workshop. He’d got something he wanted to show him.

He’d got a nice little place rigged up at the bottom of the lot, a shed with a couple of lathes and a milling machine. The thing he wanted to talk about was standing in the middle of the floor. Rick stared at it. “What’n Hell is it, Stan?”

He said, “Take a look. Guess at its operation.”

Rick looked. The device was about four feet tall, a square box set on thin, dural legs. Most of the housing was taken up with circuitry. Rick was no electronics man but he knew an oscillator pack when he saw one. There was a metal cone speaker mounted above it on a horizontal baffle, and on top of that a thing that looked like the element of an electric fire. Over that again was a fine wire-mesh frame.

Cameron shrugged. “Lower part’s obvious. Rest looks like it’d be good for warming the house. What’s it supposed to do?”

Stan said, “It’s a bugtrap.”

Rick was fogged. “What does it trap?”

“It’s set for ‘skeeters at the moment. Give me a hand with it, I’ll show you.” They lifted the machine outside and Stan plugged in a wander lead from the shop distributor board. He pointed at a line of potentiometers on the chassis. He said, “You get a sort of list comes with it, you set these things up for your homing frequencies. Composite note.”

Rick had read something about that somewhere; how the females of certain insects emit a note to attract the males, or the other way round. He wasn’t too sure about that, but the principle was obvious. He said, “You mean the pack generates the call frequency, the ‘skeeters fly in...”

“And land on the hotplate over the sound source. Quick and easy. And it works, it works fine.” Stan switched the thing on. There was no audible sound; the side panels just got a sort of velvety feel, that was all. The elements started to glow orange-red; within seconds something dropped down onto the gauze, wriggled and vanished. Then another and another. Soon a stream of insects were flying down to incinerate themselves. Stan switched off. He said, “That’s enough for a demonstration. I don’t even care for killing ‘skeeters at the moment, I’m beginning to know what they feel like.”

It took a few moments for the implication to sink in. When it did, Rick felt like he’d been kicked in the gut. He said, “Stan, if you’re suggesting what I think.... It’s crazy. And it’s too bloody horrible for words....”

Stan shrugged. “I didn’t suggest a thing. I showed you an insect trap, you made your own comparisons.” He picked up a gauze frame. “I left the thing running last night. This was the result.” Rick took it from him. It was like he’d expected. The thing was coated with insects, black drifts and skeins of them, He chucked it down and Stan walked away.

Rick followed him. Somehow, although a thing that had been in his mind for a long time had been verbalized, he still felt he had to argue. He felt mad at Stan for saying something he was so scared might be true. He said, “Stan, if you expect me to go along with a crazy thing like that—”

The other man swung round on him. “Christ, Rick, can’t you play this quiet...?” He said, “Look, I don’t believe.” He spread his hands. “I can’t believe. But I’ve followed this thing through and there’s only one answer satisfies my logic. I can’t believe that answer. But I also know, I know, Rick, that what you saw that machine do, is a model of what’s going on at High Eight. This I swear before God and His angels.” He ducked back into the workshop.

Rick stepped after him helplessly. Stan opened a cupboard. There was a bottle of Scotch and a couple of glasses. He got the whisky down and poured a couple of slugs. Rick picked his drink up, and the glass chattered suddenly against his teeth. He set it down and looked at it. “Now I know I’m going crazy.”

Stan rubbed his face. “Rick, listen and hear me. I may not have the chance to repeat what I’m going to say. You can’t explain the Black Horse, I can’t, none of us can. So we’ll take the things that have happened as pointers and see what they can show us. If we see something outside our technology, that’s a pity. Because like the guy said, once you’ve eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.”

He took a swig of whisky. He said, “We’ll eliminate sabotage. If you wanted to wreck our lines, O.K., but how would you melt a tower ? And we’ll eliminate the chance that we’re all asleep and dreaming this, I cut my face shaving this morning, I bled...We’ll also discount the idea that we’ve suffered a series of unconnected mishaps because a probability of that order is strictly in the monkeys-play-Beethoven class. We’ll take the facts as interrelated events and work from there.

“An old hobo died. Then there was the farmer. Then the boys in the chopper, they flew nearly straight at High Eight. And Halloran up on the wires. Then the people we saw the day the tower melted. Now, I know and you know, Jim Halloran wouldn’t have killed himself. It’s like the guys said, he was pulled up there. The zombies didn’t kill themselves consciously either; you know that, you were with me, you helped drag ‘em off the lines. They weren’t conscious of a damn thing. I don’t believe any of the deaths have been suicides, except maybe the old tramp. People have been drawn to the lines, in particular to High Eight, and there hasn’t been a damn thing they could do about it. To me that suggests a force, a Will if you want to think of it like that. Something stronger than humans, something that can cut across the basic instinct to survive, make you go up there and ... char yourself into a union with it. And the figures say something else. First it was one, then two, then three, then a hundred. The Will is getting stronger. So I maintain it’s a process of feeding....”

Rick said hoarsely, “For the sake of God...”

Stan kept on talking, overrode him. “It’s very strong now because it took the ones that died in hospital. It’s strong and it’s mean. It’s made mistakes in the past. Bad ones. But it won’t make any more. What happened to Station Seven we shall never know. Or the tower. I’d say that last time it got over-keen. It was hauling in its biggest batch to date, it got careless, allowed too big a concentration of itself in one place. Because it can concentrate and disperse. It can adjust our voltage to what it needs. This I’ve proved.”

Rick said, “But our juice—”

Stan stopped him savagely. “It isn’t our juice. He ... it ... uses the current somehow as a carrier. It can work the voltage the way it wants. For instance, it can keep surges away from the trip gear when it doesn’t want the hotplate turned off. They read on the dials, they read every place, but the lines don’t pull out.”

“That’s crazy—”

“Rick, you don’t know about this because it was done behind your back. For that, I’m sorry. I put recording voltmeters on that line. One on the output at Saskeega, one in High Eight, one at Station Seven, half a dozen more in between. They were set up one night and taken down again before dawn. I got the rolls here.” He turned on a shaded lamp and opened a drawer. He handed Rick the graphs. The overseer stared at them. It seemed to him in that moment the shadows in the workshop started to darken and crowd. Theories were great, but they were still just playing with words, this was something you could touch. Rick was a working stiff, he believed in something he could touch.

The line up to the Black Horse was full of knots and snarls. The graphs showed it. There were pulses in the voltage, peaks and zeroings. There were rhythms where something had raced all night up the wires and back between Saskeega and High Eight. Something impossible, something malevolent, something terribly strong. Allison had talked about music. This was the notation of the time she’d heard...

Stan said quietly, “I ran the same test in Indian Valley. Beyond High Eight the voltage doesn’t move. The lines are clean.”

Rick could only whisper. “What in Hell is it? You know what in Hell it is, Stan?”

He shrugged. “How can I answer that? How can anybody ? Maybe it’s the old man, the hobo. Maybe he somehow got caught in the lines. And he’s lonely, wants some company...Maybe it’s something that blew in with the cosmic rays, maybe we generated it ourselves from cobalt and hydrogen, maybe there was a second Creation down there in the windings, deep in the darkness and warmth, and this is the new Adam. Demon or spirit. Stallion Jim or AntiChrist himself, I don’t know. But I know why it uses our lines, why it’s sitting up there in High Eight.”

“Why?”

He said, “Use your head, Rick. We’re the biggest feeder into the Sand Creek Pool. And there’s the gear on the hill, the Doomsday units. Whatever we think, whatever happens, those lines are going to stay intact. The thing could flow off, it’s got a whole country to travel in, hunt in. It must have moved when it blew the stage, it must have got out when the tower went. But it comes back each time to where it knows its safe.”

Cameron was just beginning to see possibilities. He had to lick his lips to make his voice come. “Stan,” he said. “what’s going to be the end of this...”

The Controller was standing in the half dark outside the circle of lamplight. Rick saw him shrug. He said, “This is still supposition. But the way I see it, there need be no end. Look at the lines, Rick, think about them. Think about them the way Judy does. Think how they go out from the power companies to the substations, how they split into street mains, how the street mains split into the risers. Think about how they wind themselves through towns and villages, into shops and movie houses and theatres, factories, farms, hospitals...A forest, that’s what the lines are. A million trees on the same trunk. And if those lines go bad, and it’s starting here at High Eight ... they could touch us all. There’d be no getting away.

“Nobody would realize when it really started to pull. Maybe it would take the scientists, the politicians, anybody who could understand it, know what it was trying to do. Maybe we’d start a few wars, help it on with the job. One thing’s certain; until the very last of us went, Saskeega would still be manned, those lines to Sand Creek would be alive. And after that, when there was nobody left.... Who knows ? Perhaps Saskeega would still be manned...

“If I wasn’t an engineer, if I wasn’t works controller for Saskeega and if I believed this, I’d get out. I’d go live in Tibet. That way I might manage to die apart from it. But I’m not a free agent. I have to say this is rubbish, this is all fools’ talk. I have to get on with the job.”

He lit a cigarette. The sudden flare of light was startling. Rick saw his face for a second. He looked worried nearly to death. The overseer said suddenly, “We can kill it, Stan. Cut the lines at Saskeega and beyond High Eight, quarantine it, starve it to death...”

Stan laughed. He said bitterly, “Kill it? Can you see that happening, can you see me running to old man Perkins, to the Government? What would I say, cut the lines over the Black Horse, cut ‘em each end because the Devil’s in the wires and we got to starve him out? Can you see me doing that? And can you imagine them listening? I told you it was smart. It’s damn smart. There’s no way out.”

Rick said, “Take it in your own hands. You know what’s happening, you’ve sold me on it...I’m with you, my boys’d do it...”

Stan was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I’ll forget you said that, Rick. But I’ll give you this warning. I forbid you as your superior to do anything that would prejudice the running of Saskeega Power. I’m still Works Controller, and, by God, if that’s my job I’m going to see it keeps on getting done. You clear on that, Rick?”

Cameron shook his head. It was like he couldn’t think straight any more. “You can’t just let it build, Stan. It’s too bloody awful to think about. If this thing gets started...”

Mainwaring shook his head. “Rick, I’m in a vice. I’m caught in the same trap as everybody else. It’s the sort of trap only the human race could have invented for itself. It could have sprung any time. It’s chosen now. We’re hooked on our own technology.

“Those lines have got to stay in. We need ‘em. We’re dead without them. Could be we’re dead with them as well, that’s just too bad. But we can’t turn the clock back. We can’t scrap electricity just because it’s turned mean.

“I’ve told you what I know is true. But I didn’t tell you I believed it. This is one of those times when knowing and believing are two different things. I can’t let myself believe this because of what I am at Saskeega. I can’t believe it on a personal basis either because it represents the descent to what I’ve been taught to regard as unreason. I can’t take a fall like that.”

He walked across the shed and turned on another light. Then another. Then he started one of the lathes. He said, “I stand or fall on what I’ve told you. I’m about to prove it one way or the other.”

Suddenly, Rick was scared. “Stan, what the Hell....”

He turned on the other lathe, the drilling machine. He looked round but there was nothing else left to start up. The whole place was humming and clacking, light streaming out across the lawn in the dusk. And far-off was the Black Horse, a shadow in the night. The mountain looked ten miles tall. Stan said, “This filth can come down the wires. It got to the people in hospital. It got to the girl Allison. It made her do something I still shudder to think about. So it could be with us now. In the lamps, the lathes.

“I say the Thing, whatever it is, is logical. So far it’s moved in steps that can and have been explained. Being logical, it knows I’m the only guy understands it and can order its death. I’ve absolved you from responsibility and also for the moment from risk by giving you the orders I did. So if it wants to stay alive it’s got to take me. And it’s got to move fast.” He put his hand on the housing of one of the lathes and looked at the mountain. He said, “I’m challenging you, you bastard. And whichever way you move you’re through. Because if I go off the book people will finally know you’re real, and they’ll know how to carve your heart out...”

Nothing happened. The mountain hung in the sky like a cloud and the lathes turned softly and the belts went click-click-click over the pulleys and that was all. They waited; then Stan shut down the gear and Rick followed him back to the house.

They heard a late night newscast. The news was weird. Throughout the States ten thousand people had been reported missing from their homes within the last twenty-four hours. The FBI were conducting nation-wide enquiries. An airliner had crashed in the Rockies, nearly five hundred miles off course. A cowboy, riding a boundary miles from anywhere, had seen a strange thing. He swore he’d met an army of ragged, empty-faced folk who swarmed past without speaking, pushed on to God knew where. There was a lot more stuff like that.

Stan hunted out some maps and did a little plotting. The course of the aircraft, the sightings of wandering people ... he wound up with a set of lines. They all pointed to one place.

Rick felt he couldn’t believe his eyes. But he had to believe. He said, “Stan, by God, it’s moving. It’s started to move...” Stan just sat and shook his head. He didn’t answer.

They talked the girls into going east. They couldn’t say what they were afraid was happening, they just told them, over and over, there was something badly wrong. They had a hard job convincing them, but they gave in finally. Stan left it that Judy would drive out in the morning, he’d follow on as soon as he could. Then they tried to get some rest. Rick was up at dawn. It was pretty early, but Stan had beaten him to it. The garage was empty, he’d already gone to Saskeega.

Rick drove up to his own place. Everything was quiet. He changed, hunted out an old cutthroat razor and had a shave. He didn’t fancy using his Remington. Then he went and stood outside where he could see the valley, the mountain beyond, the lines moving up there like cobwebs miles away. He kept thinking he ought to be packing, they all ought to be getting out. But it was still too crazy. It was like throwing away job and future and home and all the folk you knew because one night you’d had a bad dream. It was all so peaceful. The air smelled good, there just couldn’t be a Thing in the wires that was fixing to kill everybody on earth....

He drove down to Saskeega. There were troops on the road, everything was confused. Nobody knew for sure what was happening. He saw tanks, and there were guns pointed about. Nowhere to aim them. He heard somebody ask if they’d started another war.

Saskeega was empty. Deserted. It was crazy. Rick could hear the noise of the turbines, the roaring the place always made. The power was going out, but the station was running itself.

A siren was howling someplace, but even the siren sounded sort of lonely. Like there was nobody to shout to and it knew it. Rick went into Main Block, got to the old man’s office. The door was swinging open, his chair was overturned, there were papers scattered about the floor. Like he’d jumped up suddenly and run out like a mad thing. There was no help there. Rick drove across to West Power.

The sun was well up now, it was going to be a hot day. He got out of the car, ran across the macadam. His footsteps were the only thing there was. He got to the control room, Donnell was there on his own. Rick asked where the Hell were the shift staff, why hadn’t he yelled for help. He was sweating, looked half crazy. He’d tried, phones wouldn’t answer, he couldn’t leave the place on its own. Voltage had been jumping over the Black Horse, the trips hadn’t pulled the line. Mr. Mainwaring had been in, Mr. Mainwaring had driven up to High Eight. He’d said he would call from the pass. He hadn’t called yet...

Rick looked at the dials on the main panel, they were reading steady. The building was pulsing. Wasn’t what you could call a noise, it was the feeling of a dozen turbines threshing power into the lines, driving it up and away over the Black Horse. Donnell couldn’t keep still. The wires were bad, they’d gone bad again, something was far wrong. He’d buy his lot if he let the line burn out, he’d buy his lot if he pulled the plug without an authority. Would Rick authorize him, would he clear him to close the line?

Cameron swore at him. It was Donnell’s baby, not his. The engineer looked like he was going to burst out crying. He started patting panels and controls like he couldn’t believe anything was real any more. The phone rang.

Rick grabbed it. But it wasn’t Stan, it was Judy. Somehow the call had got through, they couldn’t have all been dead in the exchange... Judy on the line, wanted to know were things O.K. ? She was packing, they were getting on the road, were things O.K. ?

Donnell was yanking Rick’s arm. Muttering something about music. He knocked him off and he started to yell. “The music, Rick, it started again, was the music last time, I saw those dials move, we all did, couldn’t do a thing, just had to hear the music. Christ, Rick, the music . . .” He was down on his knees, groping about. Donnell was through.

Rick stood feeling the power through the soles of his shoes and there was Judy on the line and he didn’t know what to do, couldn’t think any more. The voltage was going to waltz again and he couldn’t think. He said, “Look, Judy, get this and get it good. Things aren’t O.K., there’s something crazy happening. Just get out, Judy, make it fast...”

Then it hit him. She was packing, meant she was calling from home. They shouldn’t have gone back up there, he wanted them away and clear. He yelled at her. “Judy, get out of that house...!”

“What—”

He gagged, but it had to be said. “Judy, the lines. Like you said, there’s something wrong with the lines. Judy, don’t go near any lines. Don’t try and cook, don’t use any lights, don’t take any more calls. Just get out. Tell Jeff that’s from Stan and me. Tell her we’ll come soon as we can, tell her I’ll bring Stan along, I’ll bring him if I have to carry him. But get out! You got that, Judy, you got that O.K.?”

“Ye-es...”

“Well, be a good girl, finish that packing and get out. Shoo, scat...I’ll see you soon as I can...”

He put the handset down, ran to the line phone. Donnell was yelling. “I heard it last time, Rick, couldn’t tell you, couldn’t lose my job, you’d have said I was crazy, couldn’t say what I heard....”

He said, “For Chrissake, get out of the way. . . .” He got past him, got to the phone. He rang High Eight. Nobody there. The static on the line was horrible, it was wailing and gibbering at the same time, it was like hearing a mad army. He’d never heard static like that before. He yelled, “Anybody there? Come on, come on somebody, are you there ... ?”

He thought he heard a handset being picked up. “Stan, that you ? You up at High Eight?”

Something like a groan. It sounded like a groan. And a word, all threaded through and underlaid with static. Sounded like, “Can’t...” Then there was nothing.

Cameron banged the receiver rest. He yelled, “Stan? Stan, you there ? West Power to High Eight, are you there... ?”

High Eight answered. They both saw it, saw every dial on the board kick its stops as the voltage jumped up there on the mountain.....

Rick made a noise like a horse neighing. He jumped at the board and pulled the line, killed it stone dead. Then he ran for the car.

There was a shortcut onto the mountain, missing Freshet. A rough road, barely more than a track. He took the car on that and held her flat out, squealing her into bends, breaking off into the rough, smashing her chrome chops on boulders. He was trying to break her up like he was busting up inside. When he got to High Eight the lines were live again. Somebody had authorized Donnell to put them back in. Or they’d put themselves back in. It didn’t make any difference to Rick. Didn’t make any difference to the folk who had got there before him either.

All through the night they’d been coming, the poor folk, the first of the ragged armies...They were piled round the bars, the transformers were singing there shoulder deep. And there were black skeins round the walls like the bugs in the trap, and overhead in the wires like a crop of filthy fruit. There’d been a cordon of troopers round the hill. It was hard to tell, but it looked like the guards were mostly underneath.

Rick started to laugh. A thin noise, wild and high. Laughing at the people, at High Eight, at what he’d seen there, at what he’d promised Jeff. He’d said he’d bring Stan. If he had to carry him. But he couldn’t carry him. He couldn’t move him, he’d have broken, he was too brittle....

He went back down the mountain. He never knew how he reached the bottom. He had to run the last half mile. He’d busted the car, she was seized solid.

There was a big line store about a mile from Number Seven, they’d set it up when they did all the work on the hill. Rick was lucky; when he reached it one of the Company trucks was standing outside. There was nobody around. He broke the door open, loaded what he wanted in the back of the wagon. When she wouldn’t take any more he started up and went for Freshet like a bat from Hell. He couldn’t think any more. He just wanted to see Judy had got away, he wanted her clear.

He drove into trouble. A roadblock. It hadn’t been there when he’d come down. There were poles across the road, he could see the army moving about behind. He stopped the truck and a soldier came over. He had a carbine in his hands and looked like he’d been told he could use it. Rick yelled at him he was Saskeega maintenance, he’d got an urgent job. He shoved his pass under his nose and the man fetched his sergeant.

Cameron felt he was going crazy. What he’d got wouldn’t keep and he knew it. The sergeant came across. He was scared. He had a big, pasty face and the fear was in his face, he smelled of fright. He wagged his thumb at the truck. “Down, bud...”

Just along the road Hell started breaking loose, shots and screams. A column of people was coming along. Soldiers firing over their heads, trying to turn them. It wasn’t making any difference, they were walking like they didn’t hear.

Rick jabbed the throttle and let the clutch go. He heard the smack as the shoulder of the truck shoved the sergeant’s face out of the way then he was through the block, bouncing and skidding on the timbers and poles and scattering men every which way. Something rattled behind him; blue sky opened up over the windshield, then he was clear. They never came after him. It looked as if they had their hands too full.

Rick got to his place, Jeff’s car was still in the drive. He rammed the truck in alongside and got out. Something made him look across to the garage. The port was up, his wife’s old Pontiac was gone. He tried to tell himself, it’s O.K., they took the Pontiac instead, it’s O.K., but it wasn’t any good. He felt fear. It was like a hand round his heart squeezing it until it could get no smaller, no colder. He walked slowly into the house. He called, “Judy ... ?”

Nothing. No answer. Water running somewhere and another noise. He followed it. Came from the lounge. He walked in. There was a hairdryer lying buzzing on the carpet, a cord up to the wallplug.

Jeff was in the kitchen, of all the crazy places. Sitting over the sink with her head down. Cameron lifted her. Blood was all down the side of the sink, spattered, red and pink, a pink fan spreading to the plug. Her face was gouged, hair to chin. Like she’d been clawed by a mountain cat. She’d gone to the sink to try to stop the blood but she couldn’t, she was hurt too bad. He let go of her, wasn’t anything he could do. He stood there and knew he couldn’t go crazy, not just for a while.

He knew what had happened, he could see it so clearly. Judy did what she said, she kept off all electric things, but she forgot the drier. She bathed and changed and then she started the drier and let High Eight talk, held the motor right up by her face so she could hear it clear. He should have remembered, he should have told her about the drier....

Jeff tried to stop her. When she heard ... whatever it was you heard, she went out and got the Pontiac and Jeff tried to hold her and she beat and beat and tore her face apart...But it wasn’t Judy that had done that, it wasn’t his Judy, it was a Thing that already belonged to High Eight. . . . And that was where she went, she left Jeff on the ground and drove up the road, and God can you hear me, she drove to High Eight...

He should have done what she said. He should have taken her away, she was always so scared of the lines, she knew one day she’d have to go to the lines.

It had taken Stan and it had taken Judy, it had taken everything he had. It had to take him. It knew he hated it, it knew he could kill it. It was up there sulking, deep in the windings, it was full and lazy, but it knew it had to move because he was coming to kill.

Rick tried to hold his mind on what he had to do. On his back he had a box of caps, the truck outside was loaded with blasting sticks. Linked charges on the tower heads each side of High Eight, blow the lines and pin it. Then flatten High Eight, burst its foul blue heart...But he wasn’t going to make it. He had the caps ready, he was checking them, but he knew he wasn’t going to make it. He didn’t want to make it because he’d have to go inside, he’d have to pick Judy off the wires....

It hit him, on the dot.

High Eight calling....

He reeled, hand to his head. It was like all the sound there ever was. Like music but not like music. Like the wind in trees. Like voices. Like Mom and Pop. Lovely and lovely and ugghh...

Ugghh....

Like Judy....

It didn’t take him all at once. It tried, but it couldn’t. It had to rack up and down, and slide, move and slide, look for him, pinpoint...

He was moving again, draggingly. The caps in his hand, blasting sticks in the truck, and the wind in the trees soughing, Judy calling and not to let go of the caps don’t ever forget ... and up ahead on the hill, movement. A shifting and crawling. A motion that was no motion. Molecules that were not molecules forming and dissolving, bubbling, frothing...

And for the first time, fear...