Free Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak Page A

who did not paid very dearly for it.”
    “A warning strip it may be,” said the Brigadier, “planted with booby traps, one of which our metal friend encountered. But if my interpretation is correct, men of good will had nothing to do with it. If your men had been really of a deep good will, they would have built a fence around it. What you are trying to do, Parson, is to scare us off. If something holds a threat you label it evil, and that gives you the excuse to turn your back and walk away-from it. My way would be to invade the strip, being very cautious, using poles or prods or whatever other means I could to unmask and disarm the booby traps. There is something about the cube that I am certain someone does not wish us to learn. Perhaps some fact of great value, and I, for one, do not propose to turn my back upon it.”
    “That is quite in keeping with your basic character,” said the Parson, “and I’ll not go a step out of my way to dissuade you. But I do feel it my solemn duty to warn you that evil forces are best left alone.”
    “There you go again with this talk of evil. What is evil, may I ask? How would you define an evil?”
    “If you have to ask,” the Parson told him, “it would be a waste of breath to attempt to tell you.”
    “Did anyone see exactly what happened out there when Jurgens was hurt?” asked Mary. “He himself saw nothing. He says he was hit, that something struck him a blow. But he did not see it strike.”
    “I saw not a thing,” the Parson said, “and I was standing where I should have seen. The fact that I saw nothing convinces me more than ever that it was an evil force.”
    “I saw something,” said Lansing, “or thought I saw something. I didn’t mention it because I could not be certain. I saw, strange as it may sound, a motion. A flicker. A flicker that was gone so fast I could not be sure I’d seen it. I’m not certain even now.”
    “I cannot understand this talk of evil,” Sandra said. “The cube is beautiful. It makes the breath catch in my throat. I sense no evil in it.”
    “Yet it attacked Jurgens,” Mary said.
    “Yes, I know. But even knowing that, I still see the beauty in it; to me there is no evil there.”
    “Well spoken,” said the Brigadier. “There speaks our poetess—what did you call yourself, a certified poetess?”
    “You are correct,” Sandra said, speaking softly. “You cannot know what that means to me. Only in my world could you know the honor—almost the glory—of being certified a poetess. There are many poets, very many of them, all skilled in their profession, but very few who are certified as poets.”
    “I cannot imagine such a world,” the Parson said. “It must be a faerie place. Many good words, perhaps, but no good works.”
    “You are right in saying you cannot imagine it,” said Sandra. “You’d feel out of place there.”
    “And that,” the Brigadier told the Parson, “should hold you for a while.”
    All of them sat in silence for a time, then Sandra said, “There it is again. There’s something prowling this campfire. I hear the sniffling again.”
    “I hear nothing,” said the Brigadier. “My dear, it’s your imagination. There is nothing out there.”
    Another silence, then the Parson asked, “What do we do come morning?”
    “We look over the cube,” said the Brigadier. “We look it over well, being very careful. Then, if we find nothing that throws light on the situation, we continue on our way. Up ahead of us, if the shabby innkeeper was telling us the truth, there is a city, and it seems to me that in a city we may find more of interest than we are finding here. If we wish and it seems reasonable, we always have the option of returning to the cube and having a go at it again.”
    The Parson pointed to Jurgens and spoke to Lansing. “Will he be able to travel?”
    Lansing held up the crutch he was working on. “It will take him awhile to get accustomed to this. It’s a fairly bad job. I