"All my agony fades away, when you hold me in your embrace... don't tear me down for all I need, make my heart a better place, give me something that I believe... don't tear me down, you've opened the door now, don't let it close"
Chapter Twenty-One: The Days Of Imprisonment
The arrival of a second fighting machine drove us from our peephole and back into the pantry: we feared that, from its elevation, the invader might see down and beyond the barrier protecting us from view. We occasionally ventured back, but even the slightest suggestion that one of them might be lurking nearby drove us straight back into the pantry in a heart-throbbing retreat. As terrible as the danger was, the attraction of peeping was irresistible for all of us. I can recall with such wonder that, in spite of the infinite danger that threatened to place us somewhere between starvation and an even more terrible death, we would struggle bitterly for that horrible privilege of sight. I witnessed Zack and Leonard race across the kitchen, torn between the eagerness and the dread of making a noise, striking and kicking each other to within a few inches of exposure. The fact was that we had absolutely incompatible dispositions and habits from those Zack possessed, and our danger and isolation only accentuated our incompatibility. I had really come to hate Zack's trick of helpless exclamation and his stupid mind. His endless muttering vitiated every effort that I made to think out a line of action, and he drove me at times, almost to the verge of craziness: something which I wasn't currently as my mother had me tested. He was as lacking in self restraint as a silly woman from a 1930s horror movie. He would weep for hours on end, and I verily believe that this spoiled child of life thought that, in some ways, his tears were efficacious. He ate more than any of us did, and it was in vain that I pointed out that our only chance of survival was to stop in the house until the invaders had done with their pit, and that the time might come when we would need food; yet he continued to eat and drink big meals at short intervals, and he slept very little.
As the days wore on, his complete and utter disregard and carelessness of any consideration to the rest of us so intensified our distress and danger that Howard had resorted to threats, and then at last to blows. That brought him to reason for a time, but he was one of those weak creatures: void of pride.
And whilst we fought in the dark in a dim contrast of whispers, snatched food and drink, gripping hands and blows, in the pitiless sunlight of that terrible summer, was the strange wonder, the unfamiliar routing of the invaders in the pit. After a long time I ventured back to the peephole, to find that the newcomers had been reinforced by the occupants of no fewer than three of the fighting machines. These had brought with them certain fresh appliances that stood in an orderly manner around the cylinder area. The second handling machine was now completed, and was busied in servicing something that one of the bigger machines had brought. This was a body resembling a milk can in its general form; above it oscillated a pear-shaped receptacle, from which a stream of white powder flowed through a circular basin below.
The oscillatory motion was imparted to this by one tentacle of the handling machine. With two spatulate hands, the handling machine was digging out and flinging masses of earth into the pear shaped receptacle above, whilst with another arm it periodically opened a door and removed rusty and blackened clinker from the middle part of the machine. Another steely tentacle directed the powder from the basin and along a ribbed channel towards some sort of receiver which was hidden from my view by a mound of dirt. From this unseen receiver, a little thread of green smoke rose vertically into the air. As I looked, the handling machine extended a tentacle in a telescopic fashion until it had lifted a bar of white aluminium looking metal into sight, untarnished as yet and shining dazzlingly, and deposited it onto a growing stack of bars which stood at the side of the pit. Between the sunset and starlight, this strange machine must have made more than a hundred such bars out of the crude earth, and the mound of dust rose steadily until it topped the side of the pit.
Zack was sitting at the slit when the first men were brought to the pit. I was sitting below, huddled up with Penny: neither of us daring to speak, but listening with all our ears. He made a sudden movement backward and Raj, fearful that we had been observed, crouched in a spasm of terror. Zack came sliding down the rubbish and crept behind Leonard, and, for a moment, I shared his panic. After a while, my curiosity got the better of me and gave me courage. I rose up and clambered up to the slit. At first, I could see no reason for his frantic behaviour. The whole picture was a scene of flickering green gleams and shifty black shadows. I thought that I heard the drifting suspicion of human voices; I entertained this thought at first, only to dismiss it soon after.
I crouched down, watching this fighting machine closely, realising for certain that each one of these did contain an invader, sitting in the hood. I suddenly heard a yell, and a long tentacle reached over the shoulder of the machine to the cage on its back. Then something, struggling violently, was lifted high against the sky and, as the object came down again, I saw by the green brightness that it was a young girl, no older than her early twenties; with flowing blonde locks, she looked just like Penny. I could see her staring eyes and gleams of light on her necklace. She vanished behind the mound, and for a moment there was silence. And then the shrieking began and sustained a cheerful hooting from the invaders. I slid down the rubbish and struggled to my feet, clasping my hands over my ears, and bolted to the pantry. Penny, who had been crouching silently with her hands over her head, looked up as I passed; she cried out loud and came running after me. I dare not tell her of what I had just witnessed: the sheer gruesomeness of it made me shudder, even just thinking about it. That girl had resembled Penny so much. I allowed a tear to fall down my cheek, and she just held me tightly until I felt a sudden calm.
Zack, I found, was quite incapable of discussion. He, too, had witnessed this new and culminating atrocity, and it appeared to have robbed him of all vestiges of reason or forethought. He had already sunk to the level of an animal. Even once I had faced the facts of how terrible our position was, I had found no reason for total despair.