attention. And I'm giving it the kind of unpatterned signals that normally mean living things. Continuous, nonrepeat patterns of stimulation. And—they're too strong for the devilish thing."

Ellen said doubtfully, "Too strong?"

"You touch people to call their attention. If you touch them too hard, it isn't a touch but a blow, and you can knock them down. That's what I'm giving this thing. It has the quality of a signal the spot can't ignore, and the force of a blow. It should have the psychological effect of thousands of bells of intolerable volume—only worse. But we've got to keep on with the stimulus. And we mustn't repeat, or it might be able to get used to the pattern."

"I'll talk to it in French," said Ellen. "But it doesn't seem to me that a walkie-talkie could be too strong for—"

"It's hooked to the car's power system," Borden told her. "Jerry set it up and connected it just before he began to recite poetry. There are several kilowatts of radiation going to the thing now, and all of it is attention-holding radiation."

When night fell and the use of a sun-mirror was patently impossible, Borden moved on the highway toward what had been the white spot. The walkie-talkie sent on its waves ahead.

Ellen recited, "La fourmi et la cigale" from second-year French. Borden was more or less ready to take on from there with what he remembered of Shakespeare.

They reached the end of the desert and all about them there was the moist ground of the oasis which once had been the center of a civilization. Presently they moved into the deserted, emptied buildings of a city.

Borden said, "This civilization will be worth studying!"

They went on and on and on, talking endlessly, and driving the entity which had conquered a planet by painstakingly recalled sections of Mother Goose, and by haphazard recollections of ancient history, the mythology of ancient Greece and Rome, and the care and feeding of domestic cats.

When dawn came, Borden was speaking rather hoarsely into the microphone, and the creature was plainly in sight before them. It writhed and struggled spasmodically. It flung masses of itself insanely about. It knitted itself into intricate spires and pinnacles, with far-flung bridges, which shuddered and dissolved.

The sun rose, and the 

 Prev. P 38/41 next