by Clyde Key
* * *
Inside the globe was darkness and silence. It was not completely devoid of sensations, though. He reached out and could feel the smooth inner surface of the globe. There was also the overwhelming stench and he seemed to be floating in a thick fluid, but there was more than fluid. It seemed to be teeming with particles of some kind, soft and squishy and unidentifiable of substance. And there was nausea. Ed gagged, and then he was almost certain he had vomited but it was impossible to discern vomit from the fluid in which he sloshed.
His nose burned, and then came the thought of drowning. He was upside down in the fluid and quite unable to do anything about it, so he would drown. Ed wondered just how long it would take to die in the globe, and what would become of his body afterward. Would anybody ever know, or would the mucky monsters simply devour him, leaving no trace for Baines or Marilee to find. For that matter, would anybody survive when the aliens began to spread out and claim the Earth?
And then he thought about Arlene in another of the globes. Was she smothering, too? The first globe that had taken Ed had not contained the fluid, or at least as much of it as this one, so he thought it was possible that Arlene was not drowning. It was entirely possible that Arlene would wish she could drown, because being captured in the alien globe was the lowest depth of misery that Ed could imagine.
Then he remembered Tilson. The fearful bureaucrat probably was near drowning because he most likely lost control of his bladder in the first instant of being jerked into the globe. But even that couldn’t be any worse than floating in this vile filth.
The dreams started then. First, Ed dreamed of his childhood. It had been very long ago, but it still seemed so clear. Scenes of times past floated by. Birthday parties. Tag games in the schoolyard. The first dance, with the red-haired girl who reminded him of Arlene, but wasn’t Arlene. Listening to Grandpa Hank’s long stories. Detention after school for pranks at recess. It was all there—his whole childhood.
It was Grandpa Hank who had gotten Ed started in this business. So many years before that it seemed like forever, Grandpa told him about a new agency being organized, one where a young man might forge a career. “You can get in on the ground floor” was how Grandpa described it. So Ed had taken a civil service test and applied for some ill-defined position at the Alien Anti-Bigotry Commission. He later found out that AABC was organized as the result of dissension in the ranks of ETCC where Ed’s grandfather worked. In fact, social activists who could not tolerate the technical specialists in ETCC staffed AABC. Grandpa Hank told him a few days later that he’d get along well at AABC in spite of the likes of Helen Norden and Arnetta Washington because his friend Homer Philips had been named director of the new agency, and Philips was not at all like the others.
Arlene was like the others though. She started to work the same day Ed started, and they both reported to Helen Norden who was very highly placed in the agency. Of course, about fifty other bureaucrats reported to Helen Norden, too. Arlene claimed seniority because her personnel papers were processed first, by about fifteen minutes. Ed didn’t see it that way, though.
Arlene was very pretty then. She had a lovely face and flaming red hair, and all the young men at AABC turned to stare at her buxomy figure every time she walked by. Ed had taken Arlene out that first week, and every other single young man in the department was jealous. Even years later, when Ed saw Arlene, he still saw her as he saw her then.
Opposites attract, according to the old saying. And Ed and Arlene certainly turned out to be opposite. Arlene was very much of the social activist mold of her mentor Helen Norden, and Ed was a young version of his Grandpa Hank. But they dated for a couple of years, off and on, until the incident with the report. Then it would not be truthful to say they drifted apart, but their relationship was much too volatile to succeed.
Now it seemed fitting to Ed that the last minutes of their lives were being spent close to each other, but yet out of reach. And in utter misery.
21
June 13, 2112
First there was a sliver of green light and that gleam grew to a dazzling force before Ed fell face first on the ground. For a moment he didn’t understand what had happened, but then he realized the globe had opened to dump him ignominiously into the desert sand. Ed rolled over and tried to stand but could not, so he sat up and looked around him.
The world refused to come into focus. There were shapes around Ed that he could not discern, and the shapes seemed to be moving. Blurred as it was though, the world was completely green—dark and light shades, but all green. The sky even had become bright lime in color. Ed could feel the powerful rays of the sun and he could feel the dirt in his fingers, so he figured he hadn’t gone far from the place where they had been captured.
Then Ed felt his face and discovered his glasses were gone. They weren’t in his pocket either. He was sure he’d been wearing them when he was taken into the globe. Of course he had them on because he couldn’t have seen well enough to get around without them. Perhaps they fell out of the globe with him and were on the ground somewhere nearby. Ed started crawling around and feeling on the ground for his glasses and, much to his relief, he soon located them. They were a little bent out of shape, but still together. He put them on and still couldn’t see.
“Ed? Ed?” The voice calling was Arlene’s. It was not Arlene’s normal voice, stern and controlled. She was frightened and quivering, like Ed had never heard her before.
“I’m over here, but I can’t see anything. Where are you?”
Then Ed felt a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve found you. I can’t see much either, but it’s getting better,” said Arlene.
“I can’t get up,” said Ed. “Can you help me? I’m just stiff. I don’t think anything’s broken.”
Arlene took his arm and lifted and steadied Ed as he tried once more to get up. After much effort and a couple of false starts, they got him on his feet although he was still a bit unsteady.
“Can you tell where we are?” he asked.
“In the desert somewhere. That’s all I can see.”
“I could tell that much,” said Ed. “What can you see around us?”
“Not much of anything. I’m very nearsighted without my lenses and I’ve lost them. I can see what’s wrong with your glasses, though. They’re covered with some kind of muck. So is your face. Let’s see what I can do with the glasses.”
Arlene took the glasses from his face. “Some of this stuff is coming off. In fact, most of it is coming off now.” Arlene put the glasses in Ed’s hand, and he put them back on his face.
“Now I can see,” said Ed. “Not very well, but I can get around with them.”
Ed stared at Arlene, and resisted telling her how she looked, even though she could probably guess by looking at him. Then Ed looked at the area around them and decided that it seemed vaguely familiar. When he saw the rocket fleet—just the tops actually, because the fleet was many kilometers away—Ed knew they were back near Needles, though probably ten or fifteen kilometers from the park. At first he didn’t see the aliens, because they were far from him, and they were almost impossible to distinguish because the whole world had taken on their color. Indeed, he probably wouldn’t have seen them at all if some had not moved.
“They’re out there, Arlene. They’re pretty far away, but we’re completely surrounded.”
“So what do we do now, soldier?”
The question surprised him. Ed was far more used to Arlene giving orders than asking advice, even though it was his usual practice to ignore orders and offer unwanted advice freely, especially to Arlene whom it usually rankled.
“I’d say we wait here for the time being,” said Ed. “I’m sure Marilee and Miss Searles have kept track of our location and probably have Major Baines on his way with troops.”
She was silent for a few minutes. Then she blurted out, “Tilson! I completely forgot about Merrill Tilson!”
“Yeah. Me, too,” said Ed. Ed shaded his eyes from the s
un and scanned the terrain around them for Tilson or the globe that had him. “I see a globe over there a ways, near that brush. Let’s walk over there.”
“Okay, but I’ll have to follow you. I can’t see more than a couple of meters.”
The globe dropped Tilson in a heap when they were within a few meters of it and then the globe sped away. Tilson was covered with the filthy alien substance and he seemed dazed. He lay still in the dirt for a moment, then rolled over and stared at the sky. “Oh, my God! I’ve died and gone to hell!” Tilson rolled back over and pounded his fists into the ground and moaned.
“Tilson! Merrill Tilson!” yelled Arlene. “It’s okay! We’re over here!”
Tilson continued to moan and pound his fists against the ground.
“I don’t think he can hear you,” said Ed. “I think I can see why, too. He’s got that junk all in his ears.”
Arlene grabbed Tilson’s shoulder and shook him. “You’re okay!” she yelled again. We’re here! We’re here!”
Tilson looked up and seemed quite surprised to see them both, but he still moaned.
“Calm down,” said Ed. “Let’s get under control and see what we can figure out about this situation.”
Tilson appeared even more frightened. “I can’t hear you,” he screamed, “and everything is green! Why is everything green?”
“Oh, good grief!” said Ed. “Tilson’s an impossible case in the best of circumstances! Why do we have to be stuck with him now?”
Arlene glared at Ed. “Cut it out, Halloran. Tilson is just a sensitive individual. A lot of people should be so sensitive.” Then she ripped the sleeve from her dress and rolled the tip of it into a swab and started cleaning out Tilson’s ears.
Ed shook his head. “Oh, brother!”
“Can you hear me now?” asked Arlene.
“A little! I can hear a little bit now!” said Tilson, who was noticeably calmer then.
“Now let’s figure what to do,” said Arlene. “You got us into this! How are you going to get us out?”
“Listen! It wasn’t my idea to...” Ed stopped. He wasn’t going to argue about it.
“Why is everything green?” cried Tilson. “Why is the world green?”
Ed stamped his foot at Tilson. “Because you have alien crap in your eyes! That’s why! And you have alien crap in your ears and that’s why you can’t hear! You’re covered with alien crap! We all are!”
“Ed Halloran! Control yourself! There is no call to get nasty with Tilson and it won’t help us out of this situation.”
“Maybe not, but being kind to that doofus won’t help, either!” Ed realized he was doing it again, so he turned away and clammed up. Why, he wondered, of all the people in the world, why did he have to get stuck in these circumstances with these two particular people, either of which could rile him greatly under normal conditions. Then he decided he could be calm if he must. “I’m afraid there’s not much we can do to help ourselves here, except maybe to stay as far from the aliens as we can and not provoke them. I’m sure Marilee knows where we are and she probably has Major Baines and some troops on the way now. They’ll spring us when they get here.”
“It’s getting hot out here,” said Arlene. “Maybe we ought to sit down and rest and conserve our strength.”
“Maybe so,” said Ed, “but I probably better stand up. I’m not sure I could get back up if I got down.”
“Suit yourself.” Arlene dropped to the ground and assumed a straddle-legged position that looked uncomfortable to Ed, even if he could make his knees go that way.
“I think I’ll walk around just a few steps here. Maybe it’ll work the stiffness out,” said Ed.
“My skin burns,” said Tilson. “I hurt all over. I’m getting sore.”
Until that moment, Ed hadn’t noticed it. But his skin burned too. Maybe it was because of the blazing desert sun but Ed noticed that his skin also burned on the shaded side. It was probably reaction to the substance that covered his body, he decided.
Ed took a few slow steps around, stopping frequently to rest. He also turned frequently also, because it became obvious that the glaring sun intensified the burning sensation on his skin. Then he saw the aliens moving. One line of perhaps a dozen aliens traveling abreast was moving straight toward them. “Hey, we’re going to have company!” he yelled.
Within a few minutes, the aliens had arrived, still in line. They approached very near and when Ed, Arlene, and Tilson moved aside, the line of aliens changed direction and approached them again. When Ed’s group moved aside again, the aliens changed their course once more and it came to Ed suddenly that his group was being herded! The line of aliens was trying to move them in one particular direction.
“I think they want us to go that way,” said Ed.
“Should we?” asked Arlene. “If they want us to go that way, what do they have in mind for us?”
“Beats me,” said Ed. “But I don’t want to touch them, and I don’t feel up to fighting so I’m going where they want me.”
“Oh, no! What are they going to do to us?” Tilson started crying. “Are they going to eat us? They’re going to eat us alive!”
Ed turned to Tilson and yelled into his ear. “No, I don’t think so. We don’t have any evidence they ever ate anybody alive. Now after you’re dead is another story!”
Tilson sobbed and Arlene yelled, “Ed Halloran! How cruel! Why must you treat Tilson that way?”
“Okay. I’ll quit. I’ll leave him alone,” said Ed.
It wasn’t difficult to see which way the aliens wanted them to go. Ed struck out on a path perpendicular to the line of aliens, and Arlene and Tilson followed. Occasionally they had to change their course to go around brush or outcroppings of rock, but the alien line would adjust to keep them herded in the right direction. They didn’t move particularly swiftly, because neither Ed nor Arlene could move easily across the rough terrain and Tilson would not get more than a couple of steps away from them. Still, they stayed several meters ahead of the aliens. Ed surmised the aliens might fear the humans since humans had already killed several aliens and also wrecked many of their globes and knocked down several of the huge rockets, with many casualties.
A half an hour later, Ed figured they had gone about one kilometer when they reached the alien camp. A very large area had been cleared. It looked to Ed as if the desert surface had been bored with a huge flat machine tool because there was a huge circular depression about 50 centimeters deep cut into the ground. The depression was a few hundred meters across and the bottom was smooth, even geometrically flat all the way across. The surface didn’t look like natural soil and was much darker than the desert around, but he couldn’t tell if it had been paved. In a large circle just inside the outer circumference of the depression were alien globes about ten meters apart. These were guards, Ed guessed. Ed and his company stopped at the edge of the pit, but the line of the aliens grew nearer.
“They want us to go in there,” said Arlene. “I don’t guess we have much choice, do we?”
“No. We don’t have any choice,” said Ed. “I hope I can get down there. That’s a tall step for an old man with no knees.”
“Tilson, give him a hand,” said Arlene. Tilson was looking worriedly back over his shoulder at the approaching aliens and made no effort to help Ed. “Help Ed down!” she screamed. Then she realized Tilson couldn’t hear her. She grabbed his shoulder, and Tilson spun around. She yelled again, “I said help Ed down there!”
Tilson looked back at the aliens once more, then took Ed’s arms and steadied him as he stepped off into the depression. Then Arlene and Tilson followed Ed. They had already moved several steps inside the alien camp when the line of aliens reached the edge. Each alien went through the same process of separating body substance to flow down the rim, then the skeleton part of each jumped down to recombine with the goop.
“That still is about the most disgusting thing I have ever seen!” said Ed.
“Well, you look pr
etty disgusting yourself right now,” said Arlene.
“Hmm. Maybe I’d better pass on the small talk right now. I can’t think of any better compliments than that myself.”
“Are they going to eat us now?” asked Tilson. “I’m not ready for this. I’m much too young. You shouldn’t have put me in this position.”
Arlene said, “Leave him alone!” before Ed had a chance to say anything to Tilson.
When all the aliens were down, they started herding Ed and his group again. As they walked along, they passed many aliens milling about apparently without direction or purpose inside the compound. All the aliens except the ones following gave them wide clearance, though. Shortly, they came to a circle of globes that must have been near the exact center of the alien camp. Inside the circle rested a silvery globe that was much larger than all the others. This one was about two meters in diameter. The circle of globes parted so the humans could approach the large globe. Then the circle closed again.
“Now what?” asked Arlene. “What is this all about?”
“I don’t know for sure, but maybe we’re about to make contact with their leader. This may be him in the big globe.”
“Him?” Arlene’s voice was disapproving.
“Okay. It’s an it, not a him,” said Ed.
Ed stood directly in front (probably) of the large globe and Arlene stood beside him. Tilson stood behind both of them.
“I’m going to try once more,” whispered Arlene. Then in a loud voice that had regained its previous command, Arlene said, “Greetings, Visitors. I am Arlene Sisk, authorized representative of the government of the United States of America on whose portion of the Earth’s surface you have landed. I must speak with the leader of The Visitors. Are you the leader of The Visitors?”
Then a small dark spot appeared on the globe right in front of them. The spot grew until it covered most of the half facing them. Then the darkness turned light and they saw the alien inside the globe. Ed couldn’t see all that well but he thought the front of the globe was open instead of just transparent, because alien goo was dribbling out onto the ground. Inside the globe was an alien that looked no different to Ed than any of the others, except that this one wore a shiny belt about two thirds of the way up its body and there was a bright metallic disk about 10 centimeters across on the belt.
Then the alien spoke, seemingly through the disk it wore on its belt. “Greetings. I am the Eldest of Veezee, whom you call Visitors. I am happy to speak with you here now. Veezee have tried many times to communicate with Earthlings since our arrival but Veezee have not been successful. Veezee have been attacked at all landing sites. It is most recent that Veezee have discovered that Earthlings communicate with physical vibrations. Veezee speak with what Earthlings say are magnetic spectrum radiations. Now I speak with device that converts Veezee magnetic speech to physical vibration speech. I, the Eldest of Veezee, hope now to have peace with Earthlings, even the government of the United States of America on whose portion of the Earth’s surface Veezee have landed.”
Ed was speechless.
But Arlene was not. “Ed Halloran! You imbecile! You have single-handedly plunged the world into war with these friendly... Visitors!”
22
“See, Halloran. You’ve made some stupid moves! All this time The Visitors were trying to talk to us and you wouldn’t listen!” Arlene was smug, even under the caked green sludge. “Now we can get on with learning from them!”
“I still think we’d better learn about them first—like, can we trust them? Let’s see some evidence of their good intentions.”
The Eldest of the Veezee spoke again. “Veezee will be happy to demonstrate good intentions. We will destroy the evil Halloran for you.”
“No, no! You don’t understand! Halloran is not evil, just misguided!” said Arlene. “There’s a great difference!”
“Then Veezee will detain Halloran for you, so that Halloran will not be able to cause problems for you.”
“Oh, no! That isn’t necessary, either! I can control Halloran quite well!”
“No, you can’t!” said Ed. “I don’t report to you any more! I report directly to President Litton.”
Arlene said, “Don’t be stupid, Ed!” Then she whispered into his ear, “They don’t understand. It’s safer if they think I’m the leader here.”
Ed frowned. “So tell them we’re leaving,” he whispered back. “Tell them they have to send a representative to our headquarters to talk.”
Arlene nodded. “Okay. Eldest Veezee, we must leave now. We wish for you to send a representative to our headquarters to speak with our leaders.”
“Then you are not leader of Earthlings,” said Eldest. “You are of no consequence.”
The line of aliens that had herded Ed’s group into the camp had stayed a few meters back, but now they began to move, and that alarmed Ed. “No, no! Ms. Sisk is very important to our government! Tilson and I will follow Ms. Sisk back to our headquarters. We will return to speak with you another time, when our leader is ready!”
“Is that what you say, Ms. Sisk?” asked Eldest.
“Yes, it is what I say. We will return,” said Arlene.
Arlene turned and saw the aliens that now nearly surrounded them, and she hesitated. Ed caught her hand, and gave her a little pull. “Now. We move out of here now or we may never get out.” Arlene and Tilson followed him as he went around the nearest aliens. “Now you get in front, Arlene. We’re supposed to be following you.”
Arlene stepped ahead of them, and moved briskly for a woman of her age. Ed’s stiffness was getting better so he had no problem keeping up with her. When they reached the edge of the alien camp, though, he had a problem. He needed to step up a half a meter to get out and he could not. After a couple of tries and nearly falling, he sat on the edge of the depression and rolled over outside. Then Arlene and Tilson tugged and pulled to get him standing again.
Ed resisted the urge to look back until they had gone a hundred meters or so from the alien compound. Then he saw their alien captors, or perhaps some different aliens, had followed them to the edge, but no farther. The aliens stood in a little group near where they had left the compound.
“Are they going to follow us?” asked Arlene.
“I don’t think so,” said Ed. “It’s just a little too much trouble to get up out of the hole.”
“Yeah. They must have seen you trying to get out,” said Arlene.
“My skin burns,” said Tilson. “The sun is so hot out here, we’re going to die in the desert. I still can’t hear. There’s too much of that stuff in my ears.”
“I’m going to cram some of that stuff in your mouth if you don’t shut up,” said Ed. “We’re all hurting, and I’m tired of listening to you complain!”
“What did he say? I can’t hear a word he says!” cried Tilson. “I’m so miserable I could die!”
“I might arrange that, too,” said Ed.
“Halloran, quit it!” Arlene moved between Ed and Tilson. She yelled in Tilson’s ear, “Be patient! It’s going to be okay!”
Ed just shook his head, and resolved to get Tilson out of this area and never let him return.
Later, when the group had trudged some distance out of sight of the alien camp, Ed stopped and tried to gauge their position. He looked back at the alien rocket fleet, which loomed in the distance, and he calculated the sun’s position in the sky from shadows. “We’re not going in the right direction. We should have been seeing Needles Park on the horizon by now.”
“You’re saying we’re lost in the desert?” asked Arlene.
“Kind of. We know the area we’re in because we can still see the rocket fleet, but we don’t know our relative position because we don’t know what time it is. We must have been in the globes longer than we thought.”
“Do you think we might not make it?”
“We need some luck. I thought maybe we might have been near enough to make it to the park, but if we were, we didn’t go the
right direction. Of course, we might not have made it in our circumstances, anyway?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean think about it. We’re two decrepit old people and a sniveling sissy. The only chance we have in the desert is for somebody to find us.”
Arlene turned somber thinking about Ed’s assessment. “We came so close! We came so close to something great!”
Then Tilson began to cry. “What’s wrong now? Something else is wrong, isn’t it? What’s going to happen to us?” Tilson fell to his knees and sobbed.
Then, much to Ed’s surprise, Arlene slapped Tilson’s face. She grabbed his shirt and shook him, then yelled into his ear, “Shut up, Tilson! You’re not helping anything! Get yourself under control!” Tilson’s wailing subsided, but he still sniffed and buried his head in his hands.
Then Arlene looked up suddenly. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what? I don’t hear anything but the wimp.”
“There’s a noise. It sounds like a roar but it’s distant.”
“I still don’t hear it,” said Ed. He began to look all around them. “Everything is so blasted blurred, we could get run over before I’d see it!”
“We’d get run over before you’d hear it either,” said Arlene. “It’s getting louder.”
Ed stared all about them even more intently then. “I still don’t see anything, and I don’t hear it either. It may be your imagination.”
“No, it wasn’t. I’m sure I heard it, but now it’s going away.”
“What do you mean going away?”
“I mean the sound is getting fainter,” she said. Then after a moment, she said, “It’s gone. I don’t hear it any more.”
Ed wanted to believe Arlene had heard the veeto plane searching for them, but he dared not say so, to raise their hopes. He couldn’t be certain Arlene hadn’t heard some alien craft, or even imagined the sound.
“We need to go east,” said Ed. “All the roads, the towns, the parks—everything—has to be to the east of us.”
“But which way is east?” asked Arlene.
“With the sun this high and not knowing what time it is, I’m not sure, but I know how to find out.” Ed found a long stick and poked it into the ground. Then he placed a pebble at the end of the stick’s shadow. “Now we wait.”
“Wait for what? A magtrain?”
“We wait for the shadow to move. The tip of the shadow will move east. It will take about fifteen minutes for it to move enough to give us a pretty accurate direction.”
“I’m impressed, Halloran. I didn’t think an old g?man would know anything like that.”
“Hey, I’m a soldier,” said Ed. “And I used to be a Boy Scout, too, but that was a long time ago.”
They waited quietly, sweltering in the sun, until the stick’s shadow had moved a few centimeters. Ed placed another stone at the second position. Then he stepped around and sighted down the stones. “That way is east. We’re lucky that’s not the way we came. I wouldn’t want to go back around the alien camp.”
“I hear it again,” said Arlene. “I think it’s louder this time.”
Ed still couldn’t hear it, but he searched the horizon anyway for the source of the sound. “Which way does it seem to be coming from?”
“That way, from the east if your stick is right. No, it’s not, either. It’s to the north.”
Ed stared. “I still don’t see it. No, wait! I see something! But it’s far away. I can’t tell what it is.”
“Bad news. It’s getting fainter. It’s going farther away.”
“I don’t want to get your hopes up, but it might be the veeto. I’d think they’d be looking for us. If it’s them, they’ll be making another swing by here and they’ll be closer next time.” Ed wished he believed it.
“They are coming back! The sound is getting louder again!”
“Yes, they are!” yelled Ed. “I can see them now and I can hear them too! They’re coming right to us!”
Within a few minutes, the faint buzz of the veeto plane had turned to a great roar and the plane hovered a few meters from them, raising large sprays of desert sand and debris under the jets before settling to rest. Then the roar muted to a dull whine and the passenger door of the craft flew open. Marilee sharp looked out at them. “Oh my God! You look awful!”
“Let’s go!” yelled Arlene. “Let’s get on the plane and get out of here!”
“Unh uh! There’s no way!” said Marilee.
“What? What do you mean, there’s no way?” asked Ed.
“The smell! You can’t just get in the plane! We couldn’t stand it!”
Then Everett Lane came to the door of the plane and looked out from behind Marilee. The smile quickly vanished from his face.
“Lane! Order Ms. sharp to let us on the plane right now!” said Arlene.
“I don’t think that would be wise,” said Lane. “Our pilot might pass out. I don’t want to hurt your feelings but you smell worse than anything I have ever been around in my whole life!”
“Lane, you’ve got to do something,” said Ed. “We’re about to die out here.”
“Okay. Let me see what I can find in here.” Lane disappeared into the aircraft and returned in a few minutes with a stiff brush and two fire extinguishers. “These are the non-toxic foam kind. Maybe they’ll help.”
Ed put his hands over his eyes while Lane sprayed him first with one of the fire extinguishers. Ed scrubbed his face and arms and rubbed the foam in all over. Then Lane sprayed him again.
“It looks like it’s getting the muck off, but I think you have a permanent stain,” said Lane.
“Maybe it’s not all that permanent. I had a little of that stain before and it seemed to be wearing off,” said Ed.
Then Lane sprayed Arlene and Tilson with the fire extinguishers. “Lt. Sharp!” he called. “Come see what you think. Can they get in the plane with us now?”
Marilee stepped out of the craft and looked at Ed and his companions. “They’re still awful, but I think we can stand it now. Or maybe we’re just getting used to it now.”