Chapter 14

I suppose that one could say that this was an eclectic lot. There were Caucasians, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. There was a slight majority of Whites, but not enough for them to dominate the scene. In other words, the crowd was about what one might have seen at any place in a Massachusetts city before the advent of the aliens.

I introduced the three of us and explained why we were in Worcester. We were immediately challenged as liars by one of the men in the crowd because everybody knew that the aliens were unbeatable. In answer to that, I held up a ray gun and said, "Do you know what this is?" At the answer of no, I said, "This is a ray gun taken from an alien that I personally killed. If you want further proof, you should go look out the front door and see the air craft that we arrived in."

Jimmy Rogers jumped up at that and said, "I saw the air craft, and it is marked 'Human Air Force HAF-3.'" That shut up the loudmouth, and I was able to continue with my explanation.

When I finished, someone else said, "I don't see why these people can't be welcomed into our group. We certainly have plenty of room." That statement was met with loud applause, so I guess that we were welcome if we decided to move here.

I did say that I would tell everyone else in our community that we would be welcome to move in, but we would respect the rights of those who had moved in ahead of us. To whet their appetites and to see just how cowed these people were, I also said that we needed people to man some of our flying machines, and we would welcome any who wanted to join us in our fight against the aliens.

Someone else shouted at that point, "NO! We don't want anything to attract the aliens' attention to us. You can't fight them with this place as your base of operations."

That generated a spirited debate within the group and quickly split it into those who would welcome an opportunity to fight and kill aliens and those who just wanted to hide from them. Those who wanted to fight were in the significant majority, and they managed to drown out the timid people in the group.

One person did raise the point that we might successfully win a fight with the flying boxes, but we stood no chance against the UFOs. In answer to that, I asked if anyone there had even seen a hint of a UFO since the initial strike against us. I also said that none of us had seen any sign of UFO activity despite spending a lot of time in the air, first in our ultralights and later in our stolen alien craft. Of course, no one had seen a UFO since that first day, so that argument died for lack of supporting evidence.

We did join them for lunch, and I must say that what they had to eat was atrocious. I managed to choke it down, and so did Sarah, but Ann refused to touch it after one bite. She ran out to HAF-3 and found our lunch. When she brought that in to eat and people saw it, our stock suddenly went way up. I did say that we planned to move our food supplies to wherever we decided to live, and we would share what we had with our friends.

Suddenly, all but two of the people against us switched sides, and those two, a man and his wife, said that they would leave if my group of war mongers was allowed to move in. I didn't say anything to that, but I didn't have to. Someone who's opinion appeared to be respected told them to shut up and leave if they wanted to. They would even be welcomed if they changed their minds and came back, but they were not going to keep out somebody who obviously knew how to cope with the desperate situation. With that, those two people got up and left, and I never saw them again.

The next thing that I knew, we were being begged to join these people and to bring anything we thought useful with us. I answered by saying that I would have to make a presentation to my community and take a vote. We would abide by whatever they chose to do. I promised to let these people know how the vote turned out as soon as possible.

Sarah and I agreed that we had enough data to present to our community for a decision on whether or not to move to the hospital. We were ready to move, but we were not going to abandon our friends if they did not want to move. Of course, with there being other children living at the hospital, Ann was ready to move.

They had electricity to burn, and this electricity was generated on site with a combination of solar panels and wind turbines. They also had their own water purification plant, so those two very important points were covered. Heating and cooling plants were also working well, so there was little in the way of basics to complain about.

They did not have a school, but there were enough children to justify one, and Sarah was willing to be one of the teachers. I thought that she really wanted to be a school teacher, and all of this other stuff was just getting in the way. As far as I was concerned, she could teach if she wanted to—I certainly was not going to stand in her way.

We both noticed that there was no sign of a garden for vegetables anywhere around the hospital grounds. That was something else that Sarah had shown a talent for, so she could put in a large garden next spring. We would probably have to put in fencing to keep the wild animals out, especially the hogs. They could destroy a garden overnight.

That night, everybody wanted to hear from us about our trip to Worcester. Ann had already been spreading the word to anyone who would listen of how great it would be to move, but she was not what one would describe as an unbiased source of information.

I asked Sarah to tell about our visit, and she gave a very good presentation on the advantages and disadvantages of us moving there. At the end, she did say that we thought moving to Worcester was a good idea, but we would not abandon our friends if we were outvoted. She then opened the floor for questions, and she did get a lot of those, some of which she could not answer.

It was getting very late by the time the questions became repetitive, so she stopped that phase of the meeting and suggested that we wait until tomorrow to take a vote. That way, people would have time to think about what they had heard and to form a reasoned opinion. Some were ready to vote right away, but most thought that a short delay before voting was a good idea.

Joe reported that HAF-2 was ready for a trial of its gun installation. The work had gone much faster than expected because they were just copying a proven design, and they had everything there ready to be used. The four craftsmen were going to take HAF-2 out tomorrow for a gun test. I was welcome to come along if I did not have something more pressing to do. Frankly, I needed a little rest from problem solving, so I agreed to go along for the test.

The test came off to expectations. All five of us tested the quad-mount, and we agreed that it was ready for practical use. As far as we were concerned, HAF-2 was complete until we were ready to add the additional guns. We did decide to put one quad-mount on each of the other flying boxes just in case we needed them to shoot at anything. We had enough guns, but not enough people to justify all of that work. However, we were optimists at heart, and expected to have enough people to man at least one gun station on each flying box. I figured that we would pick up a lot of gun crew members if we did move, and I was expecting the vote to turn in that direction tonight.

During supper, there was no other topic of conversation but the anticipated vote tonight, and the vote was going to be opened up to every member of the community except for Sam Winters, Jr. Ann was thrilled that she was going to be allowed to vote, and she made sure that everybody knew exactly how she was going to vote. If the vote was against moving to Worcester, Ann was going to be very disappointed.

The vote turned out to be unanimous: move to Worcester as soon as possible. Sarah, Ann, and Maggie took HAF-2 to Worcester the next day to report on the result of the vote and to start laying claim to which rooms we wanted. One subject that had never come up was what we were going to do about the five dogs. By this time, the puppies had all been claimed by humans, so that was not the problem. The problem was going to be allowing the dogs to go outside, and how much supervision would be needed when we did that.