There was but one thing to do. He found his moccasins by the night table and pulled them on, threw a leather jacket on over his pajamas. From the wall above his desk, Eddie took down his .22, broke it, slipped in a shell, and tiptoed from the house.
The humming was stronger outside. Not louder, exactly, but more easy to feel. He crouched down, the way he'd seen commandos do in pictures, and began to run, holding the rifle at ready before him. And for once, Rags seemed content to stay at his side and not go dashing along ahead up the path. As they took the turn by the big rock a startled nightbird plunged out of the bushes and took wing. The bird's violent rush brought caution to Eddie and he slowed his run to a walk. Suppose, he thought, that someone in a helicopter or maybe a balloon was hanging over the tree house. Spies, probably. And suppose they wanted the tree house for a headquarters.
He stopped, looked back down at the house dimly outlined in the starlight. Suppose, he continued, that there were too many of them. He'd just better sneak up quiet and see what was going on.
He eased himself around another turn in the path and came again in view of the oak. The lights were still there, but they no longer looked to be mere points of brightness against an empty sky. He stopped, more puzzled than ever ... they looked like navigation lights on a ship, and a couple of them like the glow from inside a radio. And all of them were swaying gently in the night wind, twenty feet or so above the tree.
Rags went slowly ahead, two feet, three, four, then stopped ... belly almost to the dust. His teeth shone in a soundless snarl, not a muscle of his body moving. Eddie had never seen him act like this, not even when the bear had come down into the valley to raid for chickens. Rags was plainly terrified, and something of the dog's emotion communicated itself. The boy bit his lip grimly, then strained to listen, heard what the dog was hearing; someone ... something was moving about up in the oak.
Some of his fear gave way to anger. "Messin' around in my tree house!"
He gripped the rifle tightly, took two determined steps forward. The third step he never completed. He was unconscious when he pitched into the ground. And when Rags leaped after him, he too crumpled as if dead....
The Commander left his report-strewn desk and strode heavily over to the forward port. Glumly, he looked down at the frosty pitted surface of the satellite a thousand miles away, and in his imagination saw the planet that swung on the dead orb's opposite side. It was nonsense to have to hide behind a moon from such a primitive planet, waiting and waiting like a coward for reassuring information. But such prudence had ever been part of holy Law.
He sighed, turned away from the huge wall of window. Sometimes one wondered about Law, he mused darkly. One did not disobey, of course, but one could not help wondering sometimes. And occasionally one even wondered the blackest heresy of all—was it really important to kill all life everywhere for the sake of colonization.