He'd hardly needed to move the .22 at all. The slightest shift had aligned the sights with the imaginary mark between the little eyes. He had squeezed the trigger nonchalantly, and the part of the head just above the eyes had come right off and the small red body had completed a perfect somersault before dropping into the dead leaves of the clearing.

After that he hadn't bothered with the trees. It was so much more fun in the clearing, waiting for them to come right up to you and pose. Of course it wasn't such good practice, but it was fine entertainment—an ideal way to spend a lazy afternoon in fall when the wood was all cut for winter, the crops in, the barn roof repaired and Pa off to town where he couldn't be finding annoying little things for you to do.

He had got eleven of them altogether, he hadn't missed a one, and he had felt pretty proud taking them home to show to Ma before feeding them to the dogs.

He shifted his cramped legs and peered down through the interstices of the foliage at the gray shape of the hunter. Some of his initial terror had left him when he'd finally realized that they couldn't see through leaves any more than he could; that They, as well as he, needed an open target in order to make a kill.

So he was relatively safe in the tree—for a while, at least. Perhaps he could find safety in trees for the rest of his life. Trees might be the answer.

He felt a little better. A portion of the fear that had followed the meteor shower was still with him, however. The fear that had detonated in his mind the morning after the shower when Pa had come running to the barn, shouting: "The cities! All the cities have been blowed up! They ain't no more cities in the whole world. Radio just said so 'fore it went dead. We're bein' invaded!"

Invaded? Invaded by whom? He hadn't been able to grasp it at first. At first he'd thought Russia, and then he'd thought, no, it couldn't be Russia. Pa had said all the cities. All the cities in the whole wide world.

And then he'd begun to see the people on the road. The terrified people, the walking, running, stumbling people heading for the hills—the hills and the forests, the hiding places that ships couldn't see, that bombs couldn't find.

But that hunters could.

Hunters hunting with incredible silver guns, skimming along the roads to the hills and the forests in fantastic vehicles, alighting by roadsides and 

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