in a grand way--"in Technicolor," the man had said. Explode in
Technicolor. It was meant to be funny, of course, but he had always
remembered it, and he realized now that that was a small part of what
he was feeling. The rest of it was that he was a soldier._Barbarian_, said a small voice, _primitive._ But he couldn't listen. "Say, Cap," Rush was saying, "it's getting a mite chilly. I understand you got a bottle."
"Sure," he said cheerfully, "near forgot it." He pulled it out and gave it to Rush. The colonist broke the seal and drank, saying to Dylan half-seriously, half-humorously: "One for the road."
Beneath them the planet revolved and the night came on. They waited, speaking briefly, while the unseen sun went down. And faintly, dimly through the snow, they heard at last the muffled beating of a ship. It passed overhead and they were sighting their guns before they recognized it. It was the mailship.
They listened while she settled in a field by the camp, and Rush was pounding Dylan's arm. "She will take us all," Rush was shouting, "she'll take us all," and Dylan too was grinning, and then he saw a thing. 

Small and shadowy, white-coated and almost invisible, the thing had come out of the woods and was moving toward them, bobbing and shuffling in the silent snow. Dylan fired instinctively, because the thing had four arms and was coming right at him. He fired again. This time he hit it and the thing fell, but almost immediately it was up and lurching rapidly back into the trees. It was gone before Dylan could fire again. They both lay flat in the snow, half-buried. From the camp there were now no sounds at all. For the first time today Dylan could hear the snow fall.

"Did you get a good look?"
Rush grunted, relaxing. "Should've saved your fire, son. Looked like one o' them monkeys."
But there was something wrong. There was something that Dylan had heard in the quickness of the moment which he could not remember but which was very wrong.
"Listen," he said, suddenly placing it. "Dammit, that was no monkey."
"Easy--"
"I hit it. I hit it cold. It made a _noise_."
Rush was staring at him.
"Didn't you hear?" Dylan cried.
"No. Your gun was by my ear."

And then Dylan was up and running, hunched over, across the snow to where the thing had fallen. He had seen a piece of it break off when the bolt struck, and now in the snow he picked up a paw and brought it back to Rush. He saw right away there was no blood. The skin was real and furry all right but there was no blood. Because the bone was steel and the muscles were springs and the thing had been a robot. 

The Alien 

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