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"We mean you no harm."

"But I mean you harm!" said Sam, backing up. "I don't like strangers. I don't like Martians. I never seen one before. It ain't natural. All these years you guys hide, and all of a sudden you pick on me. Leave me alone."

"We come for an important reason," said the blue mask.

"If it's about this land, it's mine. I built this hot-dog stand with my own hands."

"In a way it is about the land."

"Look here," said Sam. "I'm from New York City. Where I come from there's ten million others just like me. You Martians are a couple dozen left, got no cities, you wander around in the hills, no leaders, no laws, and now you come tell me about this land. Well, the old got to give way to the new. That's the law of give and take. I got a gun here. After you left this morning I got it out and loaded it."

"We Martians are telepathic," said the cold blue mask. "We are in contact with one of your towns across the dead sea. Have you listened on your radio?"

"My radio's busted."

"Then you don't know. There's big news. It concerns Earth--"

A silver hand gestured. A bronze tube appeared in it.

"Let me show you this."

"A gun," cried Sam Parkhill.

An instant later he had yanked his own gun from his hip holster and fired into the mist, the robe, the blue mask.

The mask sustained itself a moment. Then, like a small circus tent pulling up its stakes and dropping soft fold on fold, the silks rustled, the mask descended, the silver claws tinkled on the stone path. The mask lay on a small huddle of silent white bones and material.

Sam stood gasping.

His wife swayed over the huddled pile.

"That's no weapon," she said, bending down. She picked up the bronze tube. "He was going to show you a message. It's all written out in snake-script, all the blue snakes. I can't read it. Can you?"

"No, that Martian picture writing, it wasn't anything. Let it go!" Sam glanced hastily around. "There may be others! We've got to get him out of sight. Get the shovel!"

"What're you going to do?"

"Bury him, of course!"

"You shouldn't have shot him."

"It was a mistake. Quick!"

Silently she fetched him the shovel.

At eight o'clock he was back sweeping the front of the hotdog stand self-consciously. His wife stood, arms folded, in the bright doorway.

"I'm sorry what happened," he said. He looked at her, then away. "You know it was purely the circumstances of Fate."

"Yes," said his wife.

"I hated like hell to see him take out that weapon."

"What weapon?"

"Well, I thought it was one! I'm sorry, I'm sorry! How many times do I say it!"

"Ssh," said Elma, putting one finger to her lips. "Ssh."