He sat and watched them come and he thought of going in to get a rifle, but he didn't stir from his seat upon the steps. The rifle would do no good, he told himself. It would be a senseless thing to get it; more than that, a senseless attitude. The least that man could do, he thought, was to meet these creatures of another world with clean and empty hands.


The Big Front Yard (pp. 142-143); originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, October 1958 - Short Fiction - Skirmish (1977)

Clifford D. Simak Quotes

He sat and watched them come and he thought of going in to get a rifle, but he didn't stir from his seat upon the steps. The rifle would do no good,...

He sat and watched them come and he thought of going in to get a rifle, but he didn't stir from his seat upon the steps. The rifle would do no good,...

He sat and watched them come and he thought of going in to get a rifle, but he didn't stir from his seat upon the steps. The rifle would do no good,...

He sat and watched them come and he thought of going in to get a rifle, but he didn't stir from his seat upon the steps. The rifle would do no good,...