"I must go now, Captain Kingsford. It's time I made my rounds of the emplacements."
"I'll join you, Mr. Rogers," he said, and we left the ship together. I never entered the hatch of the Algonquin again.
We spent the entire night covering the perimeter of the defense positions. The emplacements were spaced at about half-mile intervals, each covering the other, and each manned by two of the crew. We had armed each position with a fixed base nuclear rifle of recoilless design, as well as small arms for the individual men. The night was pervaded by a heavy silence, broken only by the distant humming of the refinery and the reactor. The men at the emplacements spoke little. The spirit of the hunt, as I have said, had dwindled, but there was a feeling about this night that hung over all of us.
Along toward first light we were heading back into the center of the camp, having completed a full circuit of the perimeter on foot. The suits we wore were light enough, despite the helmets we needed for communications, but there was still the feeling of restriction, even without the face plates. I was tired. I had gone almost twenty hours without sleep. As we walked, Kingsford held a hand to his head just above the eye patch. He had a headache and his good eye was red. He stopped a moment to rub the eye and take a cigarette from a packet in his tunic. He offered me one and struck his lighter so that we could light the cigarettes. Suddenly, he held his hand very still.
"Look, Mr. Rogers," he said. "Look. The flame. How it flickers. The air is moving. The air is moving, Mr. Rogers."
I turned my head up automatically, but detected no change in the stillness. Kingsford studied the flame and began to smile. Then my headset came alive with a voice.
"Captain. Captain Kingsford. This is Pierce. It's blowing up a breeze here. It's becoming a wind as I speak. The sun has not quite risen, but it's almost light enough. I don't see anything, but I feel the wind. It's stronger each second."
We could feel it now. Gradually at first, then stronger, the air began to stir and move in the direction of Pierce's emplacement. Other positions began to report the movement in the air. Then the first light of Aldebaran broke over the horizon in a brilliant red glow and we heard Pierce again.
"I see it," he called. "It's like a ship. It seems bigger than the Algonquin. Captain, it's moving toward us, but not directly at us. I make the distance to be about seven miles, but I can't be sure. I don't know how big it is. What's its size, Captain?"