He looked at his watch. Eight o'clock, and night was fast spreading a blanket of charcoal shadows over the hillsides. He'd wait till morning to move this crazy beast to the next camp six miles away. A night trip might entail chances he wasn't willing to take.
After a couple of nervous fumbles with a match, he lit a cigarette and glanced uneasily out the one window in the rough cabin. What if the alien, or whatever it was, wasn't kidding about the danger he was in? What if his buddies did decide to come back before morning with the extermination of a human on their minds? Think of it, Granger, he told himself laconically, you'd be a hero! A nice, cold, dead one. And they'd never find the bunch who'd have knocked him off. He'd be one of those "mysterious deaths" the papers played up.
"Free me immediately!" screeched the angry captive, his head swaying like a balloon on a stick. "You haven't much time left!"
"You're a nasty tempered little imp, aren't you?" growled Granger as he strode across the room and peeked curiously inside the crate.
"I loathe you," growled the thing. "I have no intentions of deceiving you. This whole situation is simply a matter of pure logic so far as your plight is concerned."
"You're forgetting," said Granger, his voice lacking a certain amount of its previous confidence, "that you're the one who's in a mess."
"Only temporarily, you fool!" raved the creature, jumping frantically up and down. "Look!" he screamed, pointing a tiny hand toward the window over Granger's left shoulder.
The geologist gasped as he shot a quick glance in the direction of the thing's outstretched arm. A pale green light had turned the surrounding land and sky into an eerie dawn that extended its weird phosphorescence into the cabin itself. And two hundred yards from the cabin, in a small area relatively clear of major obstructions, was the same ship he had seen a few hours before.
"They're here!" shouted the alien. "Let me out!"
Granger slammed shut the door and lifted a massive oak bar into iron brackets on either side. Then he was at the window again. A hatch near the bottom of the craft was open, but there was no sign of movement.