The next morning, they were all dead, and the cow
was sick. She gave bloody milk, that evening, and the next morning she
lay in her stall and would not get up.
The man and the woman were also beginning to sicken, though both of them
tried to continue their work. It was the woman who first noticed that
the plants around the farmhouse were withering and turning yellow.
* * * * *
The farmer went to the stable with Hradzka and looked at the cow.
Shaking his head, he limped back to the house, and returned carrying one
of the weapons from the kitchen--the one with the single trigger and the
octagonal tube. As he entered the stable, he jerked down and up on the
loop extension of the trigger-guard, then put the weapon to his shoulder
and pointed it at the cow. It made a flash, and roared louder even than
a hand-blaster, and the cow jerked convulsively and was dead. The man
then indicated by signs that Hradzka was to drag the dead cow out of the
stable, dig a hole, and bury it. This Hradzka did, carefully examining
the wound in the cow's head--the weapon, he decided, was not an
energy-weapon, but a simple solid-missile projector.
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