A bird chirped feebly from the branches of the apple tree, but there was no other sound. The men and women sat quietly in the grass and looked at Clyde Ellery without emotion. From farther off, the children stared in futile imitation.
"That's all," Clyde Ellery said lamely. "The ships for this area will land in the same field. Within a week." He paused, then walked toward the road. He was alone again, a leader with no followers.
By ones and twos, the others left as the sun dropped lower. No words were given, no promises made, in the leaving. No man looked to his neighbor.
It was an uneventful week. The women still cooked meals automatically, and between meals they stared endlessly through windows; the men still did a few chores or sat in the shade and stared. Here and there a man might lift his head to the skies and feel a stirring of something like hope, but then he'd see a withered plant or walk through the fields to find a dead cow and he'd go back to sitting in the shade. And it was the same all over the world, whether the man was black or yellow or white.
The same ship returned to the field on Max Carr's farm. With it were a number of other ships, larger by far. They covered the field, like strange green growths, and the earth was black from their flames.
They stood there, empty and waiting for the people to come. And come they did, without hope and with little curiosity. Still they came, walking through the dry dust, riding in Fords and Cadillacs, driving horses and oxen and even goats. They came for days in an endless stream of plodding humanity, clutching personal possessions, carrying precious bags of seeds, driving livestock before them. Men and women and squawling children. Some wore scars where they could be seen, great livid welts that gave mute testimony to the progress of man; others bore their scars unseen. All were silent and looked away quickly if they met another's eye.
The doors of the ships opened and the recorded voice from the smaller ship told them to enter the other ships, taking with them their seed and their animals. In listless streams they poured through the nearest doorways, and some came out of one door and some from another. Some entered holding a bag of seed and came out holding two. There were husbands and wives who went in holding hands and came out by different doors. As they left the ships, they stood where the voice directed them. Slowly one group grew, one or two at a time adding to its numbers, while the other swelled out over the field.
Those in the smaller group looked to the larger and there were many who saw a beloved, a husband or wife, a child or parent, standing among the rejected. A hand that a moment before had gripped another now clutched the limp throat of a bag filled with dying seed. There were some who gazed across the field, then looked briefly through a mist of sadness and longing at the shimmering ships before stepping across to volunteer for death with those they could not leave. There were others who looked across to the larger group and turned away to weep, but stayed where they were.
For several days the sorting of seed and equipment, animals and people, continued. The two camps became little tent villages with smoldering fires. Thin rays of light, unseen during the day, soft blue at night, reached out from the ships between the two groups. Those from the smaller group could pass through the rays, but when two men tried to sneak in among the chosen they were stopped as though by a brick wall. Others tried going around the fingers of light late at night, but the rays curved and drove them back. None of the rejected left, but camped there in silent resignation. One place was the same as another, and they had nothing to do but wait.