“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.”

— Clifford D. Simak

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

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Clifford D. Simak 137

American writer, journalist 1904–1988

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Clifford D. Simak 137

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