The Big Front Yard and Other Stories by Clifford D. Simak Read Free Book Online Page A

sort of milk-glass contraptions as had been in the woods. He counted eight of them, shining in the sun, perched upon some sort of rock-gray cradles. And there were other cradles empty.
    He took the binoculars from his eyes and stood there for a moment, considering the advisability of climbing the hill and investigating closely. But he shook his head. There’d be time for that later on. He’d better keep on moving. This was not a real exploring foray, but a quick reconnaissance.
    He climbed into the truck and drove on, keeping watch upon the gas gauge. When it came close to half full he’d have to turn around and go back home again.
    Ahead of him he saw a faint whiteness above the dim horizon line and he watched it narrowly. At times it faded away and then came in again, but whatever it might be was so far off he could make nothing of it.
    He glanced down at the gas gauge and it was close to the halfway mark. He stopped the pickup and got out with the binoculars.
    As he moved around to the front of the machine he was puzzled at how slow and tired his legs were and then remembered – he should have been in bed many hours ago. He looked at his watch and it was two o’clock and that meant, back on Earth, two o’clock in the morning. He had been awake for more than twenty hours and much of that time he had been engaged in the back-breaking work of digging out the strange thing in the woods.
    He put up the binoculars and the elusive white line that he had been seeing turned out to be a range of mountains. The great, blue, craggy mass towered up above the desert with the gleam of snow on its peaks and ridges. They were a long way off, for even the powerful glasses brought them in as little more than a misty blueness.
    He swept the glasses slowly back and forth and the mountains extended for a long distance above the horizon line.
    He brought the glasses down off the mountains and examined the desert that stretched ahead of him. There was more of the same that he had been seeing – the same floorlike levelness, the same occasional mounds, the self-same scraggy vegetation.
    And a house!
    His hands trembled and he lowered the glasses, then put them up to his face again and had another look. It was a house, all right. A funny-looking house standing at the foot of one of the hillocks, still shadowed by the hillock so that one could not pick it out with the naked eye.
    It seemed to be a small house. Its roof was like a blunted cone and it lay tight against the ground, as if it hugged or crouched against the ground. There was an oval opening that probably was a door, but there was no sign of windows.
    He took the binoculars down again and stared at the hillock. Four or five miles away, he thought. The gas would stretch that far and even if it didn’t he could walk the last few miles into Willow Bend.
    It was queer, he thought, that a house should be all alone out here. In all the miles he’d traveled in the desert he’d seen no sign of life beyond the sixteen little ratlike things that marched in single file, no sign of artificial structure other than the eight milk-glass contraptions resting in their cradles.
    He climbed into the pickup and put it into gear. Ten minutes later he drew up in front of the house, which still lay within the shadow of the hillock.
    He got out of the pickup and hauled his rifle after him. Towser leaped to the ground and stood with his hackles up, a deep growl in his throat.
    â€œWhat’s the matter, boy?” asked Taine.
    Towser growled again.
    The house stood silent. It seemed to be deserted.
    The walls were built, Taine saw, of rude, rough masonry crudely set together, with a crumbling, mudlike substance used in lieu of mortar. The roof originally had been of sod and that was queer, indeed, for there was nothing that came close to sod upon this expanse of desert. But now, although one could see the lines where the sod strips had been fit together, it was nothing