"Come on, you!” he snarled at the boy who stared at him with that strange watchful, guarded look in his eyes—a look that wasn't Earthly—that belonged, in part, to a being beyond men. Andy knew that if his own mind was not actually read, his every act, at least, was watched, through his own son's eyes.
Andy picked Jack up, and stumbled down the dark stair. The kid squirmed and fought; but Andy's own physical strength could win here, at least. He hurried to the garage. Working with his free hand, he got the door open. He got into the new car, dragging Jack after him. Jane was calling angrily from the house, again. Supper! Andy could almost have laughed mockingly at the triviality of such a thing as supper, now! As for Jane, he couldn't face her now. He had to protect her from what he knew. He couldn't tell her; he couldn't tell anyone! It wouldn't do any good anyway!
With a fury that was part of his dark secret, he stamped on the starter. A minute later the car tore out of the driveway. Once he had the car on the road, Andy's foot jammed more fiercely down on the accelerator. Speed ... Faster ... Faster ... Going toward town. Going toward nowhere, really, unless it was away from bewildering fact, and away from the brooding something that seemed to be in the air—that seemed to haunt the evening stars and the yellow harvest moon.
The whizzing motion wasn't much relief; but Andy's teeth were gritted together. His foot, pushing the accelerator, was down as far as it would go now. Sixty ... Seventy.... Eighty. Ninety miles an hour...
* * * *
Under the tense, drawn anguish of Andy's mind, the crash was almost inevitable. It came on the Hensler Curve, when another car's lights blazed into view. Andy had to take to the ditch at terrific speed. The car under him did a crazy squelching skip on the steep embankment, hurtled and wobbled around sideways, and landed on its top...
Queer, maybe; but Andy only got a wrenched wrist out of the bargain. The kid wasn't so lucky.
Lost in a sort of mind-fog, Andy Matthews drove back to the farm in the milk truck. That was about midnight. Jane had come into town with the truck, and she was at the hospital, now, with Jack.
Partly because he was dazed by what had happened, Andy had been able to ignore at first the almost hysterical accusations of his wife, and the veiled contempt under Doctor Weller's professional kindness:
"Your boy can't last more than a few hours, Mr. Matthews. We did our best. The emergency operation was the only chance. But now that it's over, the boy's system can't stand the shock. I'm sorry."
What the matter-of-fact old physician wanted to say of course, was that Andy was just another damn-fool driver, who had as good as murdered his own son.
Still, Andy was able to ignore that accusation. They didn't know how he loved that kid of his. Or why the accident had happened. Andy had just one burning idea now—revenge. Revenge against that unearthly presence whom he felt was the author of all his misfortune.
Otherwise he was like a dead thing, impervious to all feeling. It wasn't anger, exactly, that gripped him now. He'd gone beyond that. It was just fundamental need. Even grief seemed to have dissipated into a mist, against which was stamped the fiery blob that represented his scheme. He'd thought of it beforehand had rejected it as hopeless. He still thought it was hopeless—as hopeless as trying to kill an elephant with a popgun. But—well—there wasn't any other way at all...
He got a couple of big thermos bottles from the kitchen pantry. Then he hurried outdoors, and to the woodshed. High up on the wall here, was a locked chest, where he kept special things. He'd expected to do some stump blasting in woodlot. Now he opened the chest, and took out a large bundle of cylindrical objects, wrapped in waxed paper.
By the beam of a flashlight, he ripped the paper from each of the objects. Inside was an oily, yellowish, granulated stuff that looked a little bit like pale brown sugar.
"Brown sugar, eh?” Andy thought craftily. Yeah, maybe it was a good idea to imagine it was something harmless, like brown sugar.
He packed the stuff in the thermos bottles. Then he went to the tool room over the granary to get the peach box apparatus. He took it out into the night, and set it down at the farther end of the garden.
There were streaky clouds in the sky, over-casting the moon. Andy was glad of that, at least. But maybe his enemy knew his whole plan already. Andy was conscious of the gigantic learning he was pitted against. Maybe he'd be stricken dead in some strange way in the next moment. But he accepted this possibility without emotion.
He grasped the handle of the double-throw switch lightly in his fingers, and swung it over to the same position in which he had accidentally placed it when he had first found his son's contraption, and had learned of its strange propertied. That sleepy murmur began, and those green worms of turbid light started to creep along the radiating wires of the apparatus.
He waited until the glow was on full—until the energy, groping across space, reached maximum. Meanwhile, as far as was possible, he kept his mind on things, which didn't quite concern his present task. He'd made plans to send Jack to college, when the time came, for instance. But that was all over, now...
His hand lifted one of the loaded thermos bottles. It was best to have the stuff it contained insulated against cold and heat and against electric shock. That's why he had used those vacuum flasks.
He tossed the thermos toward the glowing wires, while he stood defensively back. There was a soft, ringing sound. Mild static prickles raced over Andy's body, as the flask bounced upward, amid a play of cold, troubled flame. In a twinkling the missile was gone—vanished away in the direction of those clouds over the moon. A swift, but comparatively shockless start.
Presently, the second thermos went the way of the first. Andy was dully surprised he'd gotten away with it.
With the job over, now, Andy felt a wilted kind of relief. He got into the milk truck and drove back to town—to the hospital. There, with wide-eyed, tearless Jane beside him, he continued the vigil at Jack's bedside ... Jane didn't show any resentment now. She seemed glad to have Andy there with her. Jack belonged to them both; and though Andy hadn't told her anything about the dark mystery, she must have sensed how sorry he was. There was a funny kind of strain in the room that he felt right away, but couldn't place. It was mental. It seemed to take hold of one's mind, powerfully, incomprehensibly, expressing an indomitable will that must not—could not—be denied. “Live! Live! Live!” it seemed to beat out in an incessant, wordless, telepathic rhythm.
Andy decided at last that it was only an illusion of this own tired brain, hoping for the impossible—that Jack would pull through. And so, with Jane in his arms, he sat in a chair, watching through the night. Some time after dawn they both fell asleep.
* * * *
Doctor Weller didn't wake them till nine in the morning. He'd already examined Jack several times.
He looked quizzically at the child's parents, first one, then the other. His heavy brows knit in puzzlement.
"I hardly believe it,” he said at last. “But the boy's better. His pulse is firmer and more even, and not so fast, that rib we had to dig out of his lung hasn't caused as much trouble as I thought."
He almost grinned, then. “You folks must be psychic,” he went on conversationally. “Things like this happen once in a while, I've sometimes thought, though medical science never had enough evidence to back the idea up. But if you care a good deal for someone who is very sick, and insist in your mind that they must live, perhaps it helps. Maybe that's right. Maybe not. Anyway, keep on hoping, folks!"
After the physician was gone, Jane threw her arms around her husband's neck, and wept. Andy stroked her silky blonde hair, and patted her shoulder. But already, behind his narrowed eyes, a weird suspicion was beginning to form. Psychic, he and Jane? Perhaps. But Andy was beginning to doubt—not the miracle itself—but its source. He fumbled into the hip pocket of the overalls he was still wearing. The metal tube, reminder of a personality possessing psychic powers far beyond the Earthly, was still there.
Mist
er Weefles. Jack's dream pal ... All his folks were dead, Jack had said. The last of a race, that must mean. A shaggy, lonely giant on a world that had perished. Lonesome...
Was that right? It could be right! Andy began to wonder if his first judgment hadn't been incorrect after all...
He was looking beyond the veil of suspicion, which one must inevitably feel for anything strange and alien. He had read about the theories of evolution—how men would change when the Earth got older. Long natural fur, to keep out the increasing cold. Big chests and big lungs to breathe the thinning atmosphere, before it became actually necessary to withdraw to airtight caverns and habitations. Then perhaps the slow decadence of boredom and sterility, leading to extinction.
And now, when the danger of death had come to his small companion, the monster seemed to be doing his best. He was standing there, in that glass globe, sending out healing waves with his telepathic apparatus...
But those thermos bottles Andy Matthews had shot into space, were filled with stuff meant to kill.
After a moment Andy's suspicions and weariness were reawakened. Perhaps his second judgment was not so sure, either. The shaggy giant could be a true friend—yes. But couldn't he, just as well have an ulterior motive in his efforts to save Jack? What if Jack happened to be an essential link in a chain of conquest—one that it had taken years to develop to the point of usefulness? Naturally, in that case, the furry enigma would want to preserve the boy's life, wouldn't he?
It was almost a quandary, as dark as the myriad questions of the stars. But the clear truth was there in his pocket. The little tube of pictures. Oh, they scared a man when he first examined them—sure! Because they were so unfamiliar. But if you thought about them a little, you got a milder slant on their significance. They were like postcards sent to a kid nephew!
Andy's suspicions wilted when he saw their ridiculousness. He got a new grasp on the nature of the unknown. The shaggy thing out there had lost the aspect of omnipotence, created for Andy by the fantastic circumstances under which he had first glimpsed the mystery with which his boy was involved...
The monster was finite. And with all the rest of his kind gone, lonely. Maybe he'd worked and groped for years to find a companion—means to reach another mind—one of the right form to receive and transmit thoughts readily. Jack hadn't been harmed through the years of contact—except by his own father!
Andy's original stark fear had left him, to be replaced by a new worry. The aura of healing strain still clung in the room, evidence of terrific effort. And the monster was finite. Besides, he was bemused, now, by that tremendous concentration. Probably he would not be watching some of his instruments. While above his head, on the outside of the crystal sphere that enclosed him, was another apparatus. A wheel of rods. And across space were thermos bottles intended to destroy...
Andy moved slowly, trying thus to hide the driving need for haste in his blood. He edged toward the door of the hospital room. “Jane,” he said, facing his wife briefly. “There's something I've got to look after. It's very important. I'll be back in an hour."
She looked at him with weary contempt for his desertion now. She didn't know anything about the real depth of the situation. Nor could he try to explain.
He drove like blazes back to the farm. All the way he kept muttering: “Dynamite! Those flasks are full of dynamite! Look out!"
Getting out of the truck, Andy slammed through the garden gate by the garage. At the farther end of the garden he stopped, staring.
The peach box apparatus, he had left active there had ceased to function. No green flame coursed along its wires, though its switch remained closed.
There was no use now to shift the blade of that double-throw switch to its opposite pole to reverse the action of the machine, as he had intended. Andy bent down, touching the radial filaments. They were still a little warm. The power must have ended just a moment ago, its far-off source broken off.
There wasn't anything to do but go back to town and the hospital, now. Andy reasoned that there must have been corresponding developments there, too. Flushed with a confused excitement, he arrived, and hurried to Jack's room.
Jane was alone there with the boy, who looked just as before—asleep and breathing evenly. But Jane was smiling.
"What happened?” Andy snapped. “Something happened. I know it!"
Jane looked at him oddly. “You must be the psychic one,” she said. “I was frightened at first. Jack had a kind of sudden convulsion. I called the doctor in. But he said nothing was wrong, except maybe a nightmare. He said he thought Jack was sure to recover now, and that he wouldn't be crippled ... That it was just the shock of the emergency operation that was so dangerous. Oh. Andy—I—hardly believe it; but I—I'm so glad—"
Andy Matthews took her in his arms then briefly. He could surely not have denied his own happiness at that moment. But he was looking deep into the texture of a mystery, and feeling an odd ache of regret over something that could have driven his wife to hysteria, had she known...
Half an hour later, Andy took Jane out to a restaurant. A radio was going there, giving news-flashes; and Andy particularly wanted to listen.
"Take it or leave it, friends,” the announcer was saying. “The moon's dead old volcanoes have still got a few kicks left in them, that make Vesuvius and Aetna look sick! A half-dozen observatories, in Australia and Asia, where of course it's still night, and where the moon is still above the horizon, have just reported some very interesting phenomena. Two small puffs of dust were observed in a lunar crater called Plato. These puffs were followed by a tremendous blast that demolished nearly a quarter of the old volcano.
PEOPLE ARE ALIKE ALL OVER
PAUL W. FAIRMAN
ADAPTED FOR THE TWILIGHT ZONE 1960
VIDEOGRAPHY
Episode title: People are Alike All Over
Based on: “Brothers Beyond the Void” by Paul W. Fairman.
Publication: Fantastic Adventures, March 1952.
Teleplay: Rod Serling.
Director: Mitchell Leisen.
Cast: Roddy McDowall, Paul Comi, Susan Oliver, Byron Morrow, Vic Perrin, Vernon Gray.
Running Time: 27 minutes.
Medium: B&W.
Air Date: March 25, 1960.
PEOPLE ARE ALIKE ALL OVER
It was a matter of great satisfaction to Marcusson that he could be with Sam Conrad upon the eve of his great adventure. Marcusson's day had been full; the final briefing during the morning hours at the Foundation headquarters; the many handshakes and well-wishes—these carried over into the afternoon cocktail party given in his honor.
The party had been a boring affair because Marcusson did not care for liquor, the fevered enthusiasm which always went with it, nor the brittle garden variety of compliment:
"Oh Mr. Marcusson! You've no idea how thrilled I am to shake your hand!"
"You'll make it, boy—make it and come back again. A little thing like space won't stop you!"
"Would you just give me one little old autograph, Mr. Marcusson? Here on my scarf. I'd be so thrilled."
Boring.
So Marcusson had left at the earliest opportunity and hastened away to spend his last evening on earth—for a time at least—with Sam Conrad. They sat on Conrad's vine-covered porch and there was lemonade in a pitcher filled with tinkling cubes of ice; that, the fragrant night, and the quiet restful aura of a true friend.
Wonderful.
Marcusson lay back in his chair and closed his eves. “I'll remember this,” he said.
Sam Conrad puffed on his pipe. “I'm honored. The world's most currently famous man comes to visit me.
"Cut it out. My head's crammed full with that kind of rot. It's also full of exact science and cold mathematical calculations. Facts and figures haunt my dreams. I want some good steadying conjecture—some of your tobacco-stained philosophy to wet down the indigestible mass."
"Are you afraid, Charles?"
"No—no, I don't think so.”
Marcusson leaned suddenly forward in his chair. “Sam—what do you think I'll find?"
Conrad shrugged. “Your men at the Foundation would know more about that than I. Mars is really beyond the abstract and restful philosophies—"
"Let's not kid ourselves. They know nothing at all—I know nothing."
"Nor do I. But let's project a bit from what solid ground we have. We'll look at it this way: you are a lone Earthman hoping to set your feet on the planet Mars. Therefore, your instinctive interest is in your own safety. What sort of people will you find there—if any? Will they haul you from your ship and kick the life out of you? Will they find pleasure in tearing you to pieces?"
"What do you think, Sam?"
The older man poured two leisurely glasses of lemonade. “We can project with a fair chance of being right. Mars is an old planet. There will certainly be no newly evolved life-forms there. So, if you find living creatures, they will certainly have every right to be called people."
"I'll go along with that."
"And people, Charles, are the same everywhere."
"I don't know—"
"There is absolutely no reason why they shouldn't be. In constructing humankind, Nature Invented a fixed formula—a pattern of behavior built upon basic instincts to meet certain physical needs and spiritual conditions. Those conditions, so far as a humanoid is concerned, are the same here on Earth as they would be in the furthest reaches of space. Physical characteristics, of course, are changeable to meet changed geographical and geological conditions. But such things are only trappings; outer garments, so to speak. The spiritual and emotional care of the humanoid is as fixed as the stars."
"Then you believe people are the same everywhere?"
"People—wherever they are able to exist—are all the same."
Marcusson left an hour later. He shook hands with Conrad at the gate and pointed to a certain spot in the heavens. “Tomorrow night about this time, look just—there. You may not see me, but don't forget to look."
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