by D. F. Jones
All physical laws he knew were stood on their head. He calculated rapidly: with a ninety-degree arc at, say, two thousand kilometers… .
In which case, the range estimate was clearly wrong-or was it? Suppose it wasn’t a sphere, but an ovoid? Had they changed shape? What had happened with mass and volume made no sort of sense. He couldn’t believe they had increased mass and volume; no, the other way, volume and mass …
But why assume an ovoid? Might it not be a disc, thin as paper, or concave, a form of parachute?
Confronted with stabilization problems beyond human grasp, he could only watch, not think. Whatever, it was an entry procedure of incredible elegance.
At that instant fear was vanquished, lost in wonder. He remembered Lunar One’s report of the alien departure from the Martian orbit: another calculation showed the transit speed to have been at least a quarter the speed of light… . His mind raced; he was almost happy. Nothing that size could land - it would envelope the globe. The craft must reduce in size… .
He tried to grapple with the heat problem and gave up, surrendering to a wild ecstasy. That he should see such incomprehensible wonders! He could not expect to remotely understand; relatively less than an aboriginal savage, he appreciated that if he lived to be a thousand, he would not grasp how this miracle might be performed - but at least it was granted to him to know it could be done. Mad-eyed, he swung towards Blake, still half-crouching, his mouth slack, a figure of fear.
“Get up!” screamed Forbin, “Get up, man-and look!”
The tone, if not the words, penetrated. Blake hesitantly rose, his eyes mesmerized by the vision.
“Don’t you see!” Anger and joy drove Forbin. “Don’t you see? Watch .’”-His voice broke. “Stasis!” Forbin savored the Greek word. “Standing … wonderful!”
Untold aeons of time passed. He realized the blackness beyond the clouds could not be static, but was reducing volume as it approached, the major deceleration phase past. Yet perspective was fooling him: the craft had to be below the speed of sound, on the final approach-Blake cried out.
There were two black shapes, side by side, where the one had been, their total diameter, Forbin guessed, less than the original. The alien craft were shrinking fast, much closer.
Blake gave a half-strangled cry, and Forbin knew fear again.
A cloud boiled up and vanished. Another writhed swiftly upwards in long streamers and was gone, a process of seconds.
The aliens, perhaps twenty kilometers each in diameter, were through the upper clouds. Then came the worst moment: they were through the cloud base. That reflective layer lost, the scene changed from a bright summer morning to a blackness beyond the worst imaginable tropical thunderstorm, the sparkling sea transformed into sullen gray-black, side-lit by the sun in a way no man had ever seen. Totally nonreflective, the aliens seemed to absorb all light.
In the same instant the unearthly silence was broken. A flock of gulls, screeching their alarm signal, hurtled past the terrace; a wind was rising at unearthly speed. The sea kicked up in confusion; lines of foam raced inwards to two foci beneath the approaching shapes. The foam-form changed, spiraling inwards; at the center the sea humped, fell back, and humped again. Unsteadily, a twisting stalagmite of water rose, then another, both reaching up, twin columns of water, brilliant on the sunward side, pitchblack on the other. Forbin felt the near-gale-force wind on the back of his neck.
He estimated the angle of entry at seventy degrees, assuming the aliens had an exact course for the complex; it was hard to believe that beings with their technological expertise would heed anything so crude as course corrections, but as he watched they appeared to retreat, climbing, shrinking fast. The waterspouts hesitated, slowly buckled, lost form, and fell back in a giant puffball of glittering spray. Once again it was a summer’s day.
“Christ!” Blake’s shaky voice was stopped by the distant sullen roar of falling water.
“Look!” cried Forbin, pointing. “They’re moving!”
The aliens tracked straight for the complex, maintaining height. Forbin spotted the shimmering edge of a distant cloud as the craft passed before it.
“See that? D’you see that?”
With full day back and the objects much smaller, Blake had revived somewhat. ” Yeah. They must be white hot!”
Which started an uncomfortable train of thought: what creatures could possibly stand such temperatures?
“Must be surface heat only,” said Forbin unconvincingly. “Has to be.”
“Forbin.”
Frantically he lowered the volume, deafened by the Martian voice.
“We will descend to your present position in five minutes. Keep well clear.”
“Five minutes,” muttered Blake. “And how far is ‘well clear’?” He made unsteadily for the other end of the terrace.
“Inside!” shouted Forbin. “Get inside!” His neck ached horribly. Following Blake, grit stung his face; miniature dust devils whipped across the stone flags, to be sucked up to the heat column above the static Martians.
In the calm of the living room Forbin glanced at his watch, pleased and amazed at his own self-control, his ability to do anything so practical as note the time. He moved to the sideboard, slopping brandy generously into two tumblers. Returning to Blake, his shaking hands spilled some, the finest cognac in the world, reserved solely for him by order of the Master. For all he now cared, it might have been two cents a barrel.
“Here.” He thrust a glass into Blake’s eager two-handed grip. Both drank it like water. They stared unseeingly at each other, blind to everything except their own thoughts.
“Incredible,” said Forbin at last, “utterly incredible! To think that I should have lived to see -“
“Christalmighty! Stop being so goddam calm!”
“Me?” His surprise was not entirely genuine. “Do we have any option?” He went on in a harder tone. “Two minutes thirty.”
Blake made the trip to the decanter.
“They have to be infinitely superior beings,” said Forbin, thinking aloud. “Propulsion, gravity and thermal control, and the ability to metamorphosize-“
“Can it!” shouted Blake savagely. “Don’t try your lecture out on me! You tell me what we do!
“
“We keep our heads, do as we’re told, and learn all we can. This could be only a visit.”
“And maybe not! Stop kidding yourself!”
“We’ll soon find out.” Forbin finished his drink; the glass clattered as he put it down. “You can do as you please, but I’m going to meet them.”
“Go right ahead, be the hero!” But after a moment’s irresolution, Blake followed.
“Keep your back to the balustrade,” advised Forbin. The fierce wind had dropped to a steady breeze. “And hold on. The wind may become quite strong.”
“Quite strong!” Blake mimicked bitterly. “You ought to be a bloody Brit!”
Forbin did not hear, watching intently. Still lacking a yardstick, he had no firm idea of their size - or shape. He thought they were spheres, but the completely light-absorbent surface held no highlights or shadows. They were just intensely black. Forbin thought that such must be the very stuff of deep space… .
“Now we come. If the heat is too great, go.”
Forbin swallowed hard. Visually he detected nothing, but his neck muscles told him they were approaching very slowly. Fascination had previously overcome fear, now pride came to his aid: this was the first meeting between man and extraplanetary life - and he represented mankind.
Certainly they were much lower, yet seemed the same size; they had to be contracting, which meant an increase in heat loss… .
His theory was confirmed by the rising wind. He gripped the coping behind him.
Lower now, much lower. Angle, say thirty degrees, range in azimuth around thirty meters, size two, three degrees? No, more; perhaps five?
Forbin gave it up; did it matter? The wind neared gale force. A snatched glance sh
owed Blake was sweating, and no comfort.
It was hotter - or was it? Radiant heat and fear have much the same effect. Elevation less than twenty degrees; still no real evidence of their true shape - and what awful figures would emerge when they did land?
Fervently Forbin prayed for strength to bear whatever he might see. Endlessly he repeated, his voice lost in the screaming wind, “God, give me strength.”
Blake tugged his sleeve, pointing away from the aliens.
On the white wall of the residence were two black shadows. The strangers were spheres.
Forbin felt new strength; they had gained one small item which the aliens, locked in their craft, could not know - an estimate of their size, a little less than two meters in diameter.
Blake ripped his collar open, then grabbed the coping again.
Sweat blinded Forbin. Tightening his hold with one hand, he sought a handkerchief. Instantly it was torn from his grasp by the wind, sucked towards the Martians. Short of them it flashed upwards in a puff of weak yellow flame, the ashes gone before he could blink.
The spheres were level with the top of the balustrade, less than a meter in diameter, surrounded by swirling dust and burning leaves. They stopped, rock steady, as if mounted on granite pillars.
Blake stumbled, almost fell, saved by Forbin. Both men leaned against the solid wall of wind.
“Hold on!” yelled Forbin. “It can’t last!”
As he shouted, in perfect unison, the spheres increased in size: eighty centimeters, one meter. Magically the wind dropped to a strong breeze and the heat decreased, the silence broken only by whipcracks from the flaking stone beneath the hovering Martians.
Forbin stared avidly, as if he could never see enough of these unearthly black forms. Were they rotating? Waiting, he prayed anew.
Chapter III
FOR A LONG time nothing happened: leaves fell in the dying breeze, ignited on the cracking stones, flared, and vanished. Forbin could hear Blake’s heavy breathing and the distant cry of gulls. The men caught something of the aliens’ immobility and were still, awaiting the final revelation.
Then a voice, not from the radio, seemingly from nowhere.
“We greet you, Forbin. Do not be afraid.”
In a day of shattering amazements, the voice was not the least.
By birth a Virginian, and very much a citizen of the USNA, Forbin had a strong attachment, a deep affection, for England, Once great, mistress of the seas, she had not been brought down by conquest; tired, a vision gone, she had turned her back on the world, dropped out. Unlike the rest of Europe she had not moved into the twenty-second century; she lacked most of the advantages - and disadvantages - of the modern world, and Forbin loved her with the quiet intensity only a foreigner can have. Alexander the Great was a Macedonian, not a Greek; Napoleon, Corsican; Hitler, Austrian not German; and Stalin was a Georgian outlander.
“We greet you, Forbin. Do not be afraid.”
The vaguely Bostonian accent of the Martian radio transmissions had gone, replaced by the warm burr of Devon, land of Drake, who planted the English flag in California forty years before the Pilgrim Fathers left Plymouth, Devon. Devon - a county of maddening, twisting lanes, thatched cottages, thick cream, and powerful cider - Forbin’s favorite.
At last he found his voice. “Yes, I am Forbin.” He was conscious of Blake, bug-eyed, beside him. “This is my chief assistant, Dr. Blake.”
“We know Dr. Blake.”
Forbin felt like Alice in Wonderland, solemnly making introductions - to what? Blake made as if to speak, but changed his mind.
” Yes,” said Forbin, unable to think of anything to say.
“In three minutes our temperature will be down to thirty-seven degrees Celsius. Let us then go where you may rest.”
Of all possible statements from travelers fresh in from a sixty-million-kilometer journey, this struck Forbin as the most improbable. Certainly they were not hostile - not yet. Had Colossus been wrong?
“Yes,” he said again, “er, you will appreciate that we are, um, under some strain. If you agree, we will wait for you in there.” He indicated the French windows. He had to talk with Blake, agree upon a general line.
“We understand.”
Blake practically fell on the sofa, mopping his face. Forbin poured more brandies.
“Goddammit!” Blake waved his arms helplessly. “Where do we start? I mean, when, and what, gets outa the spheres? Reckon they’re breaking it gently, with all this formal stuff. …” His mind fastened on something else. “And this ‘we’ bit, with only one voice - and that could be coming from any damned place - and the accent, that really shook me!”
Forbin nodded in agreement.’ ‘They must have watched an awful lot of TV to get it that perfect.”
“Still, it’s a smart idea. Certainly made me feel at home and a lot less scared. Took me right back to good old Wyoming!”
Forbin froze, his face hard. “What d’you mean, Wyoming?”
Blake looked startled. “What I say! I know Wyoming when I hear it. Hell, I was raised there!”
“Quick, Blake, we haven’t much time. Are you sure!”
“Sure I’m sure. Aren’t you?”
“No. I-” He stopped.
To human eyes there was no sense of motion: they did
not appear to glide, float, or roll; one instant in one spot, the next that much closer. Two meters from Forbin they stopped, hovering at his eye level.
He stood up. Instantly they rose with him. The action struck him as ridiculous; he had a strong desire to laugh, and knew that if he did, the end would be hysteria.
“You find our action ridiculous?”
Forbin’s tumbler shattered on the carpet. He swayed. Blake grabbed him.
“You - you read my thoughts!”
“You did not speak?”
“No!” shouted Forbin. “No!”
“Then it is evident that at short range we can read your thoughts.”
“This is impossible!” Forbin was near the end of his road. “I - we - cannot communicate with you. Impossible!”
Blake tightened his grip on his chief’s arm. “Take it easy, Charles,” he said, breathing brandy fumes over Forbin.
His chief shook himself free. “I ask that you move out of range.”
“We agree. We see the confusion in your minds. You are less simple structures than predicted.”
Instantly, their movement too fast for human eyes, they were at the far end of the long room.
“Think now. We will tell you when we read you.”
Forbin fought to keep his exhausted mind under control; he wanted to run, run anywhere, away. He took a deep breath. Think … think what? His eyes shut, he counted mentally, forcing an image of each numeral before his inner eye. One, two, three …
“We have a faint image of the figure six.”
He opened his eyes; they were three meters away.’ ‘No closer, please-not if we are to have any meaningful communication.”
At once they were one meter further back. “Try again.”
He did so, feeling calmer, immensely relieved at their cooperation.
“We receive nothing.”
Forbin nodded thankfully; at least they had reasoning powers akin to humans.
Blake felt thankful too, but less trusting. Suppose they were fooling? Immediately he feared the consequences of that thought, but nothing happened; he gave up and just trusted. Encouraged by the Martian attitude and, in his view, poor old Forbin’s inability to handle the bastards, he took over.
“One leetle point - this is your first time in our environment. Could be you don’t know it all. Okay, so you know if our atmosphere will suit you, but how about the effect of yours on us, when you open up?”
His chief was by no means as far gone as Blake thought; he frowned at his assistant’s manner, but said nothing, still wrestling with an earlier problem. If they could speak simultaneously in two different dialects - it could not be only a question of accent
s - they could probably speak totally different languages at the same time … and this mind-reading: that was another unnerving surprise. The Martian reply to Blake drove these thoughts right out of his head.
“Blake, we have considered these factors. You saw we did not enter this room until our temperature had fallen to a safe, human level. Do not be alarmed. As to our appearance, for you we are as we are. The sphere is a convenient shape, a form familiar to humans.”
Blake grunted, foggily trying to absorb the idea he was looking at real Martians, not at their spacecraft.
Forbin found even more food for thought in their answer. That ‘we are as we are’ was a clear statement: they did not intend to show their Martian form. That was comforting - and disturbing.
But Blake, who had not dropped his half-pint of brandy on the floor, felt bolder, his language slangier. Eager to vent his pent-up bitterness, he said, “That’s your privilege, but for us it’s kinda weird, talking to a coupla balls!”
Forbin winced at Blake’s truculence and fervently hoped the Martians did not understand the stress Blake had placed on the last word.
“We see your difficulty. There is a solution, but it may pose fresh difficulties for you.”
Crossing to the sideboard, Forbin was fortunate enough to be passing an armchair, and grabbed the back in time.
Where the Martians had been stood another Forbin, another Blake.
The men goggled at their other selves. The Martian versions stood casually, “Blake” with his hands in his pockets, “Forbin” fiddling nervously with his wedding ring, typical mannerisms of the originals.
Curiosity gradually overcame shock; Blake even went closer to check the evidence of his eyes. The figures appeared solid, not projections. “Blake” took out a cigar.
If I smell that cigar, thought Forbin, I’ll go right out of my mind. He stared at the counterparts’ faces, relaxed, noncommittal. “Blake” was feeling his pockets for matches. Forbin had had enough.
“No! No - please!”
Instantly the black balls were back.
“Bastards!” said Blake softly, rocking slowly on his heels. The Martian reversion appeared in his fuddled brain as some sort of victory.