by Eando Binder
“Because…well, it might be dangerous,” she said, her eyes glancing up and down the street.
“Dangerous?” echoed Thane, baffled. “Please tell me more.”
Her eyes suddenly fastened on him. “Who are you?” she demanded. “You aren’t one of…them?”
“I don’t know what you mean, M’am,” said Thane, explaining briefly who he was, where he lived, and what he did.
“Oh, yes,” said the woman, relieved. “I heard of you, the writer out at Miller’s cabin. “Listen, come in, Mr. Smith, where we won’t be seen. I want to tell someone…”
She gave another nervous glance down the street, then opened the door. Thane followed her in and sat down in the stuffed chair she waved at.
“My children are in school,” she went on, “so we won’t be interrupted. This thing has me worried, you see.”
“The sighting?”
“No, not that. What happened afterward.”
Chapter 3
She gulped at the memory, then began. “It was an egg-shaped object bigger than a bus, sailing across the sky. It flashed blue and green colors, then turned bright orange as it suddenly swung down to the ground. I thought it was going to hit the house. I guess I just stood there frozen, too frightened to even scream.”
It took her a moment to go on. “Well, then it stopped just as suddenly and settled slowly to the ground, across in the field back of our house. It stopped and hung eight feet off the ground, I’d say. Just hung there, mister.”
Her eyes looked at him in appeal, as if afraid of laughter.
“I believe you,” said Thane softly. “You see, I saw a saucer myself. Two of them, having a…well, never mind. It’s your story I want to hear.”
She went on with more spirit, now safe from ridicule.
“Well, I kept watching in a sort of trance, like. I saw a round doorway open up in the bottom of that machine, and three little men floated down to the ground.”
“Floated?”
“Yes, like a balloon. They didn’t jump down. Floated.”
Anti-gravity, did they have that?
“Well,” the woman resumed, “I was fit to be tied, I’ll tell you. The three little men—if they were men—were no more than 3 ½ feet tall and dressed in like one-piece silvery suits and a helmet. Almost like astronauts.
“One of the little men then held up some kind of instrument,” her story went on. “Don’t ask me what it was. It made kind of little sparkles in the air, and he turned around and pointed it in several directions. Like he was measuring something.”
She shook her head, mystified. “I guess one of the little men then saw me looking out the window. I saw him turn my way, then make a gesture, and the other two quickly ran under their hovering machine and floated back up inside. Then the oval object just shot up into the sky like a meteor going the wrong way, and in seconds it was only a star that soon winked out.”
“Did you tell your husband the story?” Thane wanted to know.
“Yes, the next morning. He just laughed and went to work. But I couldn’t keep it inside of me so I phoned the paper—The Tanglewood Weekly—and told them. They sent their man around. But it was after that that the rest happened…”
Fear sprang into her eyes and the words came out with a rush.
“The next afternoon, when I was home alone, a big black car pulled up and three men stepped out, dressed in black suits. They rang the front doorbell and said they were ‘security agents’ of the government who were investigating all saucer sightings, so I let them in. They even showed credentials without my asking.”
She paused, her mouth open. “Then what happened?” prompted Thane, impatiently.
“Well, you won’t believe the rest. As soon as the door closed behind us, the three men in black became very serious and warned me not to talk about my sighting to anyone else. Or else I would be in great trouble.”
“Did they make any specific threats?”
“Oh, yes.” The woman’s eyes shone in terror now. “They didn’t say it directly maybe, but they hinted that they would have revenge through my husband or even”—her voice broke—“even my children. I guess what they really wanted was the thing I found,” the woman was saying.
Thane sat up. “What thing?”
“The next morning, after my husband left for work, I went out in the field where the saucer had landed. And in the grass I found an odd little…well, instrument of some kind, maybe the one that made sparkles.”
“So you gave it to them.”
“I was scared not to. And now, I’m still afraid,” said the woman, wailingly. “Now that I’ve done what they warned me not to and told you…oh, what will happen to me?”
The fear in her eyes was the same fear Standish and Todd had displayed. So THAT was the reason they had both reneged about telling their stories. They, too, had been visited by the inexplicable men-in-black.
What had happened to Standish’s cordwood? Had the men-in-black visited the farmer, threatened him, and ‘confiscated’ the cordwood with the red stain?
If someone wanted to keep solid evidence of the existence of UFO’s out of authoritative hands, that might be the way they’d do it, through impersonation and intimidation.
But just who were the men-in-black, exactly? What was their game?
“Is there anything else you know about those three men who threatened you?” asked Thane hopefully. “Could you describe any one of them or point him out if arrested?”
Auburn locks tossed as she shook her head. “They looked sort of…well, average. They were all about the same build. One was lighter-skinned than the other two. Clean-shaven. Neat shirts and ties…pleasant faces….”
Her voice trailed off vaguely. The hardest person to pick out of a crowd was always the ‘average man’. Thane shrugged, giving up.
“Then they drove away?”
“Yes, with a last warning that I should keep my mouth shut about anything I had seen the night before.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Ranslick,” said Thane, getting up. He needed a chance to digest all this. “Now please don’t worry because you told me. I’ll never give you away. The men-in-black won’t know you told me.”
Tooling his way back through town to take the road to his shack, Thane swung around a corner—and gasped. A big black car was parked on the street. And with their eyes glued on him penetratingly, three men lounged at the corner.
Three men in black suits….
Chapter 4
Thane drove on, thoughts boiling like an overheated pot. Too much had happened this one morning for him to properly evaluate everything. The switchover from a complete UFO-skeptic to a saucer sighter, all in a few hours, was enough in itself to make him dizzy. On top of that had been dumped the three stories of the other witnesses.
Thane drove home in a sort of short-circuited daze, unable to think any more on the subject. It was hopeless to try getting at his typewriter today, so he again picked up the UFO book to read the rest of it. He had been interrupted in the middle by the dogfight between two UFO’s.
Four chapters later, his eyes widened.
There it was in front of him, a special report by John Sheel, the author-UFOlogist, who had for years traveled all around the country and interviewed flying saucer witnesses in person.
“Time and again,” wrote Sheel, “I came across witnesses who refused to talk out of fear. They claimed mysterious people had visited them and warned them to keep quiet. The intruders had usually demanded some photo or other piece of evidence that might prove UFO’s existed. The visitors were sometimes Air Force officers, or FBI agents, even CIA operatives—so they said. But all were impostors. For when anybody checked with the Air Force or FBI, no such person was known to them!
“But most of all, the visitors were black-
suited men who arrived in a big black car. You’ll hear more of them later. I’ve called them the MIB’s—for “men-in-black.”
* * * *
Trying to keep his fingers from trembling, Thane tore open the packet of developed Kodak prints. The first was blank except for a vague blotch. The second and third also. But the fourth…
Thane stared, open-mouthed. Sharp and clear was the first saucer that he had snapped, standing out against the blue sky with unmistakable reality. The other three pictures out of the seven were not as good, but even they showed an undeniable flying machine of disk shape, at various angles.
“I saw them too,” spoke up Bert in a hoarse whisper. “You told me I’d be surprised. I was.” He straightened up. “Now mind you, I still don’t believe in flying saucers, in spite of your snaps.”
“You think I faked them, Bert?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Bert said hastily. He went on stubbornly. “But I just won’t believe in ’em, that’s all.”
The common reaction of most people, according to Sheel’s book.
“Will my movies be in tomorrow at noon, Bert?”
“On the button,” Bert nodded. “What have you got on them?”
“Something nobody could fake,” said Thane, going out.
Thane waited at the You-Name-It Chemical Shop while Jansen took care of a customer. Then the chemist shook his head. “I didn’t finish my analysis yet, Mr. Smith. Lordy, what kind of metal is it? Out-of-this-world, you called it. What did you mean?”
“Just what I said, Professor.” Thane eyed him. “Can you stand a shock, Jansen? It came from a flying saucer.”
“I thought so,” said Jansen quietly. “Why should I be shocked?”
“You mean you believe in UFOs?” asked Thane incredulously. “Then you must have seen one yourself.”
“No,” said Jansen. “But I’ve read enough books and studied enough sightings by others to convince me. Tell me all about yours, Mr. Smith.”
Thane obliged and showed Jansen his photos. The chemist whistled. “Your sighting might blow the lid off the whole controversy, especially if I can analyze that metal and prove it wasn’t of earthly origin.”
“Right,” agreed Thane. “I’ll be in tomorrow and see if you have any results.” He had not told Jansen of the MIB’s. He couldn’t quite believe in their machinations himself as yet, not without further substantiation.
Thane could not make up his own mind at the moment, not without further study and thought about the entire UFO phenomenon. He would have to read up more and see what evidence, if any, there was for each theory of origin.
Glancing up from his intense scrutiny of the snapshots, Thane was startled to see a face peering in at him, through the luncheonette window. The face of a man dressed in…black! The face almost instantly disappeared. Were they watching him? Did they know he had photos? Had they checked at the camera shop? Thane ate nervously, with these thoughts whirling in his mind. When he came out, he fully expected to see the three MIB’s loitering casually at the corner, near their big black car, but nothing was in sight.
Relieved, Thane got into his own car and wheeled out of town. An hour later, back at his cabin, he strode to his typewriter and yanked out the sheet that still had on it the title COLUMBUS ROCKET TO MARS.
That was dead, kaput. Thane had no more interest in writing that article. His next article would be about UFO’s, if anything. He began typing up the detailed report of his sighting the morning before, fresh and strong in his memory. Every detail stood out vividly, burned into his brain by its very strangeness.
As the UFO book suggested, when writing details, Thane gave every fact or estimate he could. His technically trained mind came in handy here. Speed of original saucer when coming down, about 5000 mph…shape, that of a flattened disk…size, approximately 75 feet in diameter…height during the dogfight; about 3000 feet.
But no sound. The utter silence of both craft, both in flight and while battling, had been the most eerie aspect of all. Even now, Thane marveled how two craft could circle and dart at supersonic bursts of speed without creating the least sound-waves or sonic booms. There was a real mystery, the uncanny propulsion they must use that somehow suspended the laws of physics as understood on earth.
These peripheral thoughts flitted through Thane’s mind as he continued with his report. Duration of sighting…
Thane jerked violently at the knock on the door, totally unexpected. He opened the door and gasped. The three men-in-black were there. He hadn’t even heard their black car pull up in the driveway.
“Mr. Thane Smith?” said one of the three politely. He was slightly taller than the others. Swiftly, Thane noted that he was lighter-skinned than the other two, tallying with Mrs. Ranslick’s description. The same three MIB’s. And it was true that their bland faces were ‘average,’ not unusual in any way.
“Yes, what is it?” Thane replied, guardedly.
“We’re from a security agency of the government. We understand you made a sighting…”
“How did you know that?” demanded Thane sharply.
“Oh, we have ways of finding out such things,” the spokesman said, smiling knowingly like an FBI agent might. “We also know you have photos of flying saucers, or more properly, UFO’s.”
“Perhaps I have,” snapped Thane. “What about it?”
The three men looked at each other, then: “We want the negatives,” came the blunt words.
“You don’t get them,” returned Thane firmly.
“But you don’t understand. For reasons we can’t go into, the government does not at this time wish for the public at large to know that the UFO’s exist.”
“Which government?” Thane said suspiciously.
“Why, our government—yours and ours.”
“Show me your credentials,” demanded Thane. Without hesitation, the spokesman withdrew a leather folder from his pocket and opened it up. “See? We are from the Security Service of the Board of Space Technology and…”
“A worthless fake,” said Thane flatly. “There’s no U.S. seal on it. That makes you impostors. Just who do you represent?”
The three men were obviously taken aback at being thus suddenly exposed. Then their faces swung toward Thane, as if in reproval. “If you don’t give them to us we will take them away from you.”
Chapter 5
Thane crouched, tensing his body and loosening his muscles, as he had been trained to do in college. Maybe they didn’t know he had been the boxing champ there, and also a karate graduate, not to mention some wrestling and judo stints, as well as football and track.
Thane suddenly leaped and jabbed a jolting punch squarely on the leader’s chin, with all the power of his 190 pounds behind it. Whirling, he chopped with the heel of his palm at the second man’s neck and heard him groan. Both went down, out of action for the time being.
But the third man, obviously trained for action, stepped back in time to avoid the kick that Thane had aimed for his groin. He leaped forward then before Thane could recover and a fist exploded in his face.
Thane staggered back. It had been a powerful blow. He could feel the blood trickling over his lips. The man came at him viciously, fists pounding. But Thane was now warding off the blows.
Suddenly, he lowered his head and took his assailant by surprise, butting him hard in the midsection. Then Thane kept driving his legs as if heading for the goal posts with a football, with his head still down, and drove the man stumblingly backward until he crashed into the log wall of the cabin with a dull thud.
Groggily, he kept his feet but he was out of action too.
“Out,” grated Thane. “Out, you scum.”
The three men did not seem to want to tackle the blazing-eyed tall man again. Obediently, they staggered out, hal
f-lugging the man who had been felled by the karate blow.
“I could have killed him,” hissed Thane. “Remember that, in case you ever think of bothering me again. I could call the police and demand your arrest, except that it would be three witnesses to one and you could lie your way out of it. So get going. And stay out of my sight.”
The three MIB’s got in their car. Just as it began rolling, the leader stuck his face out the window, still with its bland, almost friendly expression.
“You are a skillful man of action, Mr. Smith. But we advise you, nevertheless, not to show or publish those photos anywhere, nor submit your report of having seen a UFO dogfight. That is a warning.”
The car sped away. Dabbing at his nosebleed with a hanky, Thane had a dazed look in his eyes. How had they known he had seen the saucer dogfight? They couldn’t have seen the movie sequence themselves, and Thane had told no one yet of his incredible sighting, unique among all sightings in the UFO book he had read.
What uncanny way did they have of finding out such things? Who were they in the first place? Were they part of a hidden organization on earth, as John Sheel had maintained? An ancient race whose culture was unknown to the world at large, basically opposed to civilization as we know it?
Thane returned to his typewriter and finished his report. But he had more to do than that, from now on. He had a mission to perform—ferreting out the secret of the mysterious and menacing men-in-black.
* * * *
Driving toward town with his report the next morning, Thane patted his coat’s breast pocket. In there lay his negatives. They were too precious now to be left unguarded or even hidden at his cabin. He would have to carry them with him wherever he went. Now to the police with his sighting report, as a good citizen should.
Thane started. In his rear vision mirror there was…a big black car.