Winthrop stood there alone as the soldiers got rid of the other civilians and established guardposts, then as prime movers urgently and noisily brought up ack-ack guns, searchlights, and engine generators.
There was a bawling of commands, a tense, noisy excitement. Under the encircling searchlights' glare guards walked short posts, sub-machine guns ready. The noise subsided.
Everything was in readiness and, Winthrop thought, God grant that everything would be enough!
Suddenly lightning forked across the sky. With the crashing thunder came a teeming rain which drove Winthrop hastily back to his car.
The radiator coolant was boiling murmurously amid the rain's driving tumult. Winthrop shut off the lights and engine, sat staring through the streaming windshield at the smooth, enigmatic surface of the cylinder on the slope.
There was a sleep-provoking magic in the downpour's prolonged pattern.
Oh, ship of space, the rains of Earth will wash your surface clean!
II
He awoke at dawn, stiff from the unnatural position of his sleep, momentarily confused as to his whereabouts. Then he caught sight of the cylinder, and memory came sweeping back.