nowhere to engulf the startled green men who choked the aisles and searched among the seats of main floor and balcony. Even in the projection booth, where the sound was muffled, the effect was that of some dreadful cataclysm. The thunder merged into a titanic roll of many military drums, and Trace barked, "House lights down!" but Bill Blacknight, the old showman, had already flicked them low.

On the screen appeared a countryside, through which a broad highway cut straight from the camera's position. Far down the road something moved, growing slowly and menacingly as the drums tattooed. The aliens were held petrified, staring with their great single eyes at the panoramic screen and the black and white picture thereon. Even Glodd had halted at the foot of the booth's steps, gazing immobile across the heads of his closest companions, all laved and assaulted by the strange burst of sound.

Trace stood in the open door, looking at their erstwhile prisoner. Glodd was their worst danger for the moment. There was no telling how much of their conversation about the movie he could have understood; yet even if he'd grasped none of it, he was still the only Graken who knew where they were—and he was not stupid. Trace had one of the ray pistols in his hand. Risking everything, he centered it on Glodd and hauled back the stiff trigger.

Glodd puffed into steam and fire without a sound.

Not one greenie turned his head to see. Not an eye flickered from the giant screen.

Trace prudently shut the door, and jumped for the nearest aperture to watch the movie unroll. Bill had managed to lift the volume of the film even higher, and like a hymn to pandemonium, a paean of ear-shattering vociferance, the drums roared from the screen. Now the movement on the two-dimensional roadway was closer, and the front ranks of countless marching soldiers could be seen. It was an old film clip, taken in Germany at least seventeen years before: Hitler's legions, goose-stepping grandly toward the cameras of a world then—however uneasily—at peace. The soldiers grew, widened, shot higher as they neared. The drums remained like endless thunder, and with them there now lifted the for-long-hateful marching song of the Third Reich.

The green men broke. They fled toward the front of the theater, croaking and squawking, and without doubt their thought-radiating helmets flung the fear and panic from one to another, filling the hall and passing through space and metal into the lines of saucers that lay across the 

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