“The males are taller,” Singer observed. “I can see that for myself.”
“Yes. But there is nothing else. They even dress the same.”
“Isn’t that natural, on a space flight of such duration? American men and women space travelers wear identical suits, as do the Russians and French.”
“I suppose so,” Doctor Chang conceded.
“Have you talked to them about their sexual activities? Just come right out and asked them?”
“Of course. But we’ve gotten nowhere. The questioning seems to embarrass them, which I suppose is only natural.”
“Tre-5! He might tell us!”
“Tre-5 is on the London rocket at this very hour,”
“Well, when he comes back, then.” Singer was growing Irritated, and he motioned Chang to leave him alone.
Presently he pushed the remote button for the television and watched the crowd scenes at an airport in Cleveland Everyone was turning out for a look at the Aliens. And why not? It was, perhaps, the single most important event of the century.
Professor Singer watched the crowds for a long time before he turned off the set and picked up his journal.
Colonel Moses was pleased. Nothing on earth could have upset him at that moment. “The tour is going great—better than we expected! Somehow it’s become an Americas tiling, just as we’d hoped. Can you imagine what would have happened if they’d contacted the Russians first?”
Singer smiled slightly. “The Russian scientists would have had to worry about their sex organs, instead of me.”
“Damn it, Professor, forget about that! The question hasn’t even arisen on the tour.”
“Of course not. With the SSS in control out in the hinterlands, what would you expect? They’ve got the people believing in the stork again.”
The Colonel nodded. “Remember when SSS only stood for Selective Service System?”
“Another obscenity,” Professor Singer remarked, but he was smiling.
“The reporters will get onto this sex angle, though,” Colonel Moses cautioned after a moment. “Just you wait! The New York press isn’t afraid of the SSS.”
But the newspapers were busy reporting the success of the tour. Interviews with Tre-5 uniformly followed a pattern, with the favorite question being: what was life like back on his planet? To this he gave a variety of answers, all of which were satisfactory. Newspapers were approaching him now for exclusive stories, offering sums of money that meant nothing to the Alien leader.
New Life published detailed paintings depicting life on the Aliens’ planet, and a number of companies were already producing plastic souvenirs of the event—some in the shape of the Aliens themselves. The visit was growing into a happening that knew no bounds, with all the peoples of the world caught up in it. What had started somewhat hesitantly when the ship landed a few miles from Professor Singer’s laboratory had blossomed into something fine and good and wonderful.
“They’re so friendly!” Colonel Moses reported to Singer at the end of the foreign portion of the tour. “They make no enemies. Everybody loves them. And everybody loves us for contacting them.”
“Not at all the way H.G. Wells imagined it would be,” Singer commented.
“Anyway, Tre-5 is back from Europe. You can talk to him all you want now.”
Singer nodded. “That will be Doctor Chang’s project.”
The time for the visit to end was fast approaching. Tre-S spoke of getting back to his home planet, of reporting on what they’d seen and perhaps planning for a return trip the following year. Already the Aliens were busy loading samples of all sorts into their spacecraft for the three month voyage back home. Some were still out on tour, though, and nothing could be done until all fifty had returned.
It was during this period of waiting that Doctor Chang ran his final series of tests on Tre-5 and several others. He reported his findings with a triumphant burst into Singer’s office early one morning.
“Professor, we have the answer!”
“What answer is that, Doctor Chang?”
“We have located their sex organs!”
Singer felt his heart begin to beat faster. “Tre-S told you?”
“We discovered something in these latest tests, and he confirmed it! We should have realized it long ago, by the way some of them spoke.”
Singer steadied himself on the edge of the desk. “You mean . . .?”
“Their sex organs are in their mouths!”
Singer sat down, very slowly. “You’re certain of this?”
“Of course, Professor! You noted yourself the unusual distending of some mouths, making speech difficult. Those, of course, were the older females, who . . .”
Professor Singer held up his hand. “Put it in writing. At once. I’ll want to read it all.”
“Only, Professor ”
“What?”
“There was a reporter from New York in the room when I was questioning Tre-5. I don’t know how much he might have understood.”
“Let’s hope not too much.”
But the following day the story broke in one national newspaper. Though the terms used were in strict good taste, the story left no doubt in anyone’s mind. It spread, carried by magazines and television in the urban centers, and by word of mouth in the rural areas.
The following day, a group of Aliens returned from Europe and were greeted at the airport by an unfriendly crowd. A woman, who seemed to be leading them, screamed something about unnatural acts and hurled the first stone. It hit one of the Aliens on the neck and he went down. The others seemed confused by the attack and offered no resistance. They didn’t understand.
Colonel Moses arrived with his sterile trucks a few hours later. “We have to try and get them to their ship,” he told Singer. “Those are my orders.”
“Who was the woman that hurled the first rock?”
“They’re not certain. An SSS member, of course, but does it matter now? The whole country’s turning against, them. The whole world!”
“You too, Colonel?”
“I was home with my wife when the orders came to get them out. She said—she heard about it, and she said . . .”
“I know,” Singer sighed. “Come. We’ll try and explain it to Tre-5.”
“How do you explain something like this?”
“I guess maybe you don’t.”
The crowd—the mob—reached the space ship ten minutes before Colonel Moses’ trucks. Those few Aliens who were loading gifts and clothing and souvenirs were stoned. The ship was wrecked and set afire.
When Colonel Moses arrived, there was nothing he could do. His orders did not allow him to shoot down loyal citizens to protect mere Aliens.
When it was. over, when the last stone had been hurled, the last Alien pounded and trampled into the ground, he went back to the sterile laboratory of Professor Singer.
“They’re all gone, aren’t they?” Singer asked, not looking at him.
“The people . . . you know. What could I do?”
“Tre-5?”
“He was one of the first. He was leading them.”
Professor Singer sighed. “Such a waste, such a waste. They won’t come again, not this way.”
Colonel Moses stood by the window, staring out at the street where a gentle rain was just beginning to fall. “Maybe it’s for the best, Professor. They really were too . . . unnatural for us.”
Quite a number of people are firmly convinced that private eyes are indestructible dispensers of sex and justice, and of bourbon, in satisfyingly impressive doses. But what happens when an Alien—just a friendly Alien—meets such a man?
THE NIGHT HE CRIED
by
FRITZ LEIBER
I glanced down my neck secretly at the two snowy hillocks, ruby peaked, that were pushing out my blouse tautly without the aid of a brassiere. I decided they’d more than do. So I turned away scornfully as his vast top-down convertible cruised past my street lamp, I struck my hip and a big match agai
nst the fluted column, and lit a cigarette. I was Lili Marlene to a T—or rather to a V-neckline. (I must tell you that my command of earth-idiom and allusion is remarkable, but if you’d had my training you wouldn’t wonder.)
The convertible slowed down and backed up. I smiled. I’d been certain that my magnificently formed milk glands would turn the trick. I puffed on my cigarette languorously.
“Hi, Babe!”
Right from the first I’d known it was the man I was supposed to contact. Handsome hatchet face. Six or seven feet tall. Quite a creature. Male, as they say.
I hopped into his car, vaulting over the low door before he opened it. We zoomed off through New York’s purple, smelly twilight.
“What’s your name, Big Male?” I asked him.
Scorning to answer, he stripped me with his eyes. But I had confidence in my milk glands. Lord knows, I’d been hours perfecting them.
“Slickie Millane, isn’t it?” I prompted recklessly.
“That’s possible,” he conceded, poker-faced.
“Well then, what are we wailing for?” I asked him, nudging him with the leftermost of my beautifully conical milk glands.
“Look here, Babe,” he told me, just a bit coldly, “I’m the one who dispenses sex and justice in this area.”
I snuggled submissively under his encircling right arm, still nudging Trim bow and again with my left milk gland. The convertible sped. The skyscrapers shrank, exfoliated, became countryside. The convertible stopped.
As the hand of his encircling arm began to explore my prize possessions, I drew away a bit, not frustrating, and informed him, “Slickie dear, I am from Galaxy Center . . .”
“What’s that—a magazine publisher?” he demanded hotly, being somewhat inflamed by my cool milk glands.
“. . . and we are interested in how sex and justice are dispensed in all areas,” I went on, disregarding his interruption and his somewhat juvenile fondlings. “To be bold, we suspect that you may be somewhat misled about this business of sex.”
Vertical, centimeter-deep furrows creased his brow. His head poised above mine like a hawk’s. “What are you talking about, Babe?” he demanded with suspicious rage, even snatching his hands away.
“Briefly, Slickie,” I said, “you do not seem to feel that sex is for the production of progeny or for the mutual solace of two creatures. You seem to think—”
His rage exploded into action. He grabbed a great big gun out of the glove compartment. I sprang to my two transmuted nether tentacles—most handsome gams if I, the artist, do say so. He jabbed the muzzle of the gun into my midriff.
“That’s exactly what I mean, Slickie,” I managed to say before my beautiful midriff, which I’d been at such pains to perfect, erupted into smoke and ghastly red splatter. I did a backward flipflop out of the car and lay still—a most fetching corpse with a rucked-up skirt. As the convertible snorted off triumphantly, I snagged hold of the rear bumper, briefly changing my hand back to a tentacle for better gripping. Before the pavement had abraded more than a few grams of my substance, I pulled myself up onto the bumper, where I proceeded to reconstitute my vanished midriff with material from the air, the rest of my body, and the paint on the trunk case. On this occasion the work went rapidly, with no artistic gropings, since I had the curves memorized from the first time I’d worked them out. Then I touched up my abrasions, stripped myself, whipped myself up a snazzy sliver lame evening frock out of chromium from the bumper, and put in time creating costume jewelry out of the tail light and the rest of the chrome.
The car stopped at a bar and Slickie slid out. For a moment his proud profile was silhouetted against the smoky glow. Then he was inside. I threw away the costume jewelry and climbed over the folded top and popped down on the leather-upholstered seat, scarcely a kilogram lighter than when I’d first sat there.
The minutes dragged. To pass them, I mentally reviewed the thousand-and-some basic types of mutual affection on the million-plus planets, not forgetting the one and only basic type of love.
There was a burst of juke-box jazz. Footsteps tracked from the bar toward the convertible. I leaned back comfortably with my silver-filmed milk glands dramatically highlighted.
“Hi, Slickie,” I called, making my voice sweet and soft to cushion the shock.
Nevertheless it was a considerable one. For all of ten seconds he stood there, canted forward a little, like a wooden Indian that’s just been nudged from behind and is about to topple.
Then with a naive ingenuity that rather touched me, he asked huskily, “Hey, have you got a twin sister?”
“Could be,” I said with a shrug that jogged my milk glands deliciously.
“Well, what are you doing in my car?”
“Waiting for you,” I told him simply.
He considered that as he slowly and carefully walked around the car and got behind the wheel, never taking his eyes off me. I nudged him in my usual manner. He jerked away.
“What are you up to?” he inquired suspiciously.
“Why are you surprised, Slickie?” I countered innocently. “I’ve heard this sort of thing happens to you all the time.”
“What sort of thing?”
“Girls turning up in your car, your bar, your bedroom—everywhere.”
“Where’d you hear it?”
“I read it in your Spike Mallet books.”
“Oh,” he said somewhat mollified. But then his suspicion came back. “But what are you really up to?” he demanded.
“Slickie,” I assured him with complete sincerity, bugging my beautiful eyes, “I just love you.”
This statement awakened in him an irritation so great that it overrode his uneasiness about me, for he cuffed me in the face—so suddenly that I almost forgot and changed it back to my top tentacle.
“I make the advances around here, Babe,” he asserted harshly.
Completely under control again, I welled a tiny trickle of blood out of the left-hand corner of my gorgeous mouth. “Anything you say, Slickie, dear,” I assented submissively and cuddled up against him in a prim, girlish way to which he could hardly take exception.
But I must have bothered or at least puzzled Mm, for he drove slowly, his dark-eaved eyes following an invisible tennis ball that bounded between me and the street ahead. Abruptly the eaves lifted and he smiled.
“Look, I just got an idea for a story,” he said. “There’s this girl from Galaxy Center—” and he whipped around to watch my reactions, but I didn’t blink.
He continued, “I mean, she’s sort of from the center of the galaxy, where everything’s radioactive. Now there’s this guy that’s got her up in his attic.” His face grew deeply thoughtful.
“He’s the most beautiful girl in the universe and he loves her e crazy, but she’s all streaming with hard radiations and it’ll burn if he touches her.”
“Yes, Slickie—and then?” I prompted after the car had rammed its way for several blocks between high buildings.
He looked at me sharply. “That’s all. Don’t you get it?”
“Yes, Slickie,” I assured Mm soothingly. My statement seemed to satisfy Mm, but he was still edgy.
I He stopped the car in front of an apartment hotel that thrust toward the stars with a dark presumptuousness. He got out on the street side and walked around the rear end and suddenly stopped. I followed him. He was studying the gray bumper and the patch of raw sheet metal off which I’d used the paint. He looked around at me where I stood sprayed with silver lame in the revealing lamp light.
“Wipe your chin,” he said critically.
“Why not kiss the blood off it, Slickie?” I replied with an ingenuousness I hoped would take the curse off the suggestion.
“Aw nuts,” he said nervously and stalked into the foyer so swiftly he might have been trying to get away from me. However, he made no move to stop me when I followed him into the tiny place and the even tinier elevator. In the latter cubicle I maneuvered so as to give him a series of breathtaking s
cenic views of the Grand Tetons that rose behind the plunging silver horizon of my neckline, and he unfroze considerably. By the time he opened the door to his apartment he had got so positively cordial that he urged me across the threshold with a casual spank.
It was just as I had visualized it—the tiger skins, the gun racks, the fireplace, the open bedroom door, the bar just beside it, the adventures of Spike Mallet in handsomely tooled leather bindings, the vast divan covered with zebra skin . . .
On the last was stretched a beautiful ice-faced blonde in a filmy negligee.
This was a complication for which I wasn’t prepared. I stood rooted by the door while Slickie walked swiftly past me.
The blonde slithered to her feet. There was murder in her glacial eyes. “You two-timing rat!” she grated. Her hand darted under her negligee. Slickie’s snaked under the left-hand side of his jacket.
Then it hit me what was going to happen. She would bring out a small but deadly silver-plated automatic, but before she could level it, Slickie’s cannon would make a red ruin of her midriff.
There I was, standing twenty feet away from both of them—and this poor girl couldn’t reconstitute herself!
Swifter than thought I changed my arms back to upper dorsal tentacles and jerked back both Slickie’s and girl’s elbow. They turned around, considerably startled, and saw me standing twenty feet away. I’d turned my tentacles back to arms before they’d noticed them. Their astonishment increased.
But I knew I had won only a temporary respite. Unit s something happened, Slickie’s trigger-blissful rage would swiftly be refocused on this foolish fragile creature. To save her, I had to divert his ire to myself.
“Get that little tramp out of here,” I ordered Slickie from the corner of my mouth as I walked past him to the bar.”
“Easy, Babe,” he warned me.
I poured myself a liter of scotch—I had to open a second bottle to complete the measure—and downed it. I really didn’t need it, but the assorted molecules were congenial building blocks and I was rather eager to get back to normal weight.
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