“And did you—it—go home?”
“No, I was too confused. It wasn’t my home. I’m a Martian. Don’t you understand that? Well, I don’t blame you if you don’t, because I don’t, either. But I walked. And I— I mean Howard Wilcox—got thirsty and he—I—” He stopped and started over again. “This body got thirsty and I stopped in here for a drink. After two or three beers, I thought maybe the bartender there could give me some advice and I started talking to him.”
I leaned forward across the table. “Listen, Howard,” I said, “you were due home for dinner. You’re making your wife worry like anything about you unless you phoned her. Did you?”
“Did I— Of course not. I’m not Howard Wilcox.” But a new type of worry came into his face.
“You’d better phone her,” I said. “What’s there to lose? Whether you are Yangan Dal or Howard Wilcox, there’s a woman sitting home worrying about you or him. Be kind enough to phone her. Do you know the number?”
“Of course. It’s my own—I mean it’s Howard Wilcox’s—” “Quit tying yourself into grammatical knots and go make that phone call. Don’t worry about thinking up a story yet; you’re too confused. Just tell her you’ll explain when you get home, but that you’re all right.”
He got up like a man in a daze and headed for the phone booth.
I went over to the bar and had another quickie, straight. Barney said, “Is he—uh—”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “There’s something about it I still don’t get.”
I got back to the booth.
He was grinning weakly. He said, “She sounded madder than hoptoads. If I—if Howard Wilcox does go home, his story had better be good.” He took a gulp of beer. “Better than Yangan Dal’s story, anyway.” He was getting more human by the moment.
But then he was back into it again. He stared at pie. “I maybe should have told you how it happened from the beginning. I was shut up in a room on Mars. In the city of Skar.
I don’t know why they put me there, but they did. I was locked in. And then for a long time they didn’t bring me food, and I got so hungry that I worked a stone loose from the floor and started to scrape my way through the door.
I was starving. It took me three days—Martian days, about six Earth days—to get through, and I staggered around until I found the food quarters of the building I was in. There was no one there and I ate. And then—”
“Go on,” I said. “I’m listening.”
“I went out of the building and everyone was lying in the open, in the streets, dead. Rotting.” He put his hands over i his eyes. “I looked in some houses, other buildings. I don’t ll know why or what I was looking for, but nobody had died indoors. Everybody was lying dead in the open, and none of the bodies were withered, so it wasn’t kryl that killed them.
“Then, as I told you, I stole the targan—or I guess I really didn’t steal it, because there was no one to steal it , from—and flew around looking for someone alive. Out in the country it was the same way—everybody lying in the _ 1 open, near the houses, dead. And Undanel and Zandar, the same.
“Did I tell you Zandar’s the biggest city, the capital? In the middle of Zandar there’s a big open space, the Games Field, that’s more than an Earth-mile square. And all the people in Zandar were there, or it looked like all. Three million bodies, all lying together, like they’d gathered there to die, out in the open. Like they’d known. Like everyone, everywhere else, was out in the open, but here they were all together, the whole three million of them.
“I saw it from the air, as I flew over the city. And there was something in the middle of the field, on a platform. I went down and hovered the targan—it’s a little like your helicopters, I forgot to mention—I hovered over the platform to see what was there. It was some kind of a column made of solid copper. Copper on Mars is like gold is on Earth. There was a push-button set with precious stones set in the column. And a Martian in a blue robe lay dead at the foot of the column, right under the button. As though he’d pushed it—and then died. And everybody else had died, too, with him. Everybody on Mars, except me.
“And I lowered the targan onto the platform and got out and I pushed the button. I wanted to die, too; everybody else was dead and I wanted to die, too. But I didn't. I was riding on a streetcar on Earth, on my way home from work, and my name was—"
I signaled Barney.
“Listen, Howard,” I said. “We’ll have one more beer and then you’d better get home to your wife. You’ll catch hell from her, even now, and the longer you wait, the worse it’ll be. And if you’re smart, you’ll take some candy or flowers along and think up a really good story on the way home. And not the one you just told me.”
He said, “Well—”
I said, “Well me no wells. Your name is Howard Wilcox and you’d better get home to your wife. I’ll tell you what may have happened. We know little about the human mind, and many strange things happen to it. Maybe the medieval people had something when they believed in possession. Do you want to know what I think happened to you?”
“What? For Heaven’s sake, if you can give me any explanation—except tell me that I’m crazy—”
“I think you can drive yourself batty if you let yourself think about it, Howard. Assume there’s some natural explanation and then forget it. I can make a random guess what may have happened.”
Barney came with the beers and I waited until he’d gone back to the bar.
I said, “Howard, just possibly a man—I mean a Martian —named Yangan Dal did die this afternoon on Mars. Maybe he really was the last Martian. And maybe, somehow, his mind got mixed up with yours at the moment of his death. I’m not saying that’s what happened, but it isn’t impossible to believe. Assume it was that, Howard, and fight it off. Just act as though you are Howard Wilcox—and look in a mirror if you doubt it. Go home and square things with your wife, and then go to work tomorrow morning and forget it. Don’t you think that’s the best idea?”
“Well, maybe you’re right. The evidence of my senses—” “Accept it. Until and unless you get better evidence.” We finished off our beers and I put him into a taxi. I reminded him to stop for candy or flowers and to work up a good and reasonable alibi, instead of thinking about what he’d been telling me.
I went back upstairs in the Trib building and into Cargan’s office and closed the door behind me.
I said, “It’s all right, Cargan. I straightened him out.” “What had happened?”
“He’s a Martian, all right. And he was the last Martian i left on Mars. Only he didn’t know we’d come here; he thought we were all dead.”
“But how— How could he have been overlooked? How could he not have known?”
I said, “He’s an imbecile. He was in a mental institution in Skar and somebody slipped up and left him in his room when the button was pushed that sent us here. He wasn’t out in the open, so he didn’t get the mentaport rays that carried our psyches across space. He escaped from his room and found the platform in Zandar, where the ceremony was, and pushed the button himself. There must have been enough juice left to send him after us.”
Cargan whistled softly. “Did you tell him the truth? And is he smart enough to keep his trap shut?”
I shook my head. “No, to both questions. His I. Q. is about fifteen, at a guess. But that’s as smart as the average Earthman, so he’ll get by here all right. I convinced him he really was the Earthman his psyche happened to get into.” “Lucky thing he went into Barney’s. I’ll phone Barney in a minute and let him know it’s taken care of. I’m surprised he didn’t give the guy a mickey before he phoned us.”
I said, “Barney’s one of us. He wouldn’t have let the guy get out of there. He’d have held him till we got there.” “But you let him go. Are you sure it’s safe? Shouldn’t you have—”
“He’ll be all right,” I said. “I’ll assume responsibility to keep an eye on him until we take over. I suppose we’ll have to institutionalize him again after tha
t. But I’m glad I didn’t have to kill him. After all, he is one of us, imbecile or not. And he’ll probably be so glad to learn he isn’t the last Martian that he won’t mind having to return to an asylum.”
I went back into the city room and to my desk. Slepper was gone, sent out somewhere on something. Johnny Hale looked up from the magazine he was reading. “Get a story?” he asked.
“Nah,” I said. “Just a drunk being the life of the party. I’m surprised at Barney for calling.”
SENTRY
He was wet and muddy and hungry and cold and he was fifty thousand light-years from home.
A strange blue sun gave light and the gravity, twice what he was used to, made every movement difficult.
But in tens of thousands of years this part of war hadn’t changed. The flyboys were fine with their sleek spaceships and their fancy weapons. When the chips are down, though, it was still the foot soldier, the infantry, that had to take the ground and hold it, foot by bloody foot. Like this damned planet of a star he’d never heard of until they’d landed him there. And now it was sacred ground because the aliens were there too. The aliens, the only other intelligent race in the Galaxy ... cruel, hideous and repulsive monsters.
Contact had been made with them near the center of the Galaxy, after the slow, difficult colonization of a dozen thousand planets; and it had been war at sight; they’d shot without even trying to negotiate, or to make peace.
Now, planet by bitter planet, it was being fought out.
He was wet and muddy and hungry and cold, and the day was raw with a high wind that hurt his eyes. But the aliens were trying to infiltrate and every sentry post was vital.
He stayed alert, gun ready. Fifty thousand light-years from home, fighting on a strange world and wondering if he’d ever live to see home again.
And then he saw one of them crawling toward him. He drew a bead and fired. The alien made that strange horrible sound they all make, then lay still.
He shuddered at the sound and sight of the alien lying there. One ought to be able to get used to them after a while, but he’d never been able to. Such repulsive creatures they were, with only two arms and two legs, ghastly white skins and no scales.
MOUSE
Bill Wheeler was, as it happened, looking out of the window of his bachelor apartment on the fifth floor on the corner of 83rd Street and Central Park West when the spaceship from Somewhere landed.
It floated gently down out of the sky and came to rest in Central Park on the open grass between the Simon Bolivar Monument and the walk, barely a hundred yards from Bill Wheeler’s window.
Bill Wheeler’s hand paused in stroking the soft fur of the Siamese cat lying on the windowsill and he said wonderingly, “What’s that, Beautiful?’’ but the Siamese cat didn’t answer. She stopped purring, though, when Bill stopped stroking her. She must have felt something different in Bill—possibly from the sudden rigidness in his fingers or possibly because cats are prescient and feel changes of mood. Anyway she rolled over on her back and said, “Miaouw,” quite plaintively. But . Bill, for once, didn’t answer her. He was too engrossed in the incredible thing across the street in the park.
It was cigar-shaped, about seven feet long and two feet in diameter at the thickest point. As* far as size was concerned, it might have been a large toy model dirigible, but it never occurred to Bill—even at his first glimpse of it when it was about-fifty feet in the air, just opposite his window—that it. might be a toy or a model.
There was something about it, even at the most casual look, that said alien. You couldn’t put your finger on what it was. Anyway, alien or terrestrial, it had no visible means of support. No wings, propellers; rocket tubes or anything else—and it was made of metal and obviously heavier than air.
But it floated down like a feather to a point just about a foot above the grass. It stopped there and suddenly, out of one end of it (both ends were so nearly alike that you couldn’t say it was the front or back) came a flash of fire that was almost blinding. There was a hissing sound with the flash and the cat“under Bill Wheeler’s hand turned over and was on her feet in a single lithe movement, looking out of the window. She spat once, softly, and the hairs on her back and the back of her neck stood straight up, as did her tail, which was now a full two inches thick.
Bill didn’t touch her; if you know cats you don’t when they’re like that. But he said, “Quiet, Beautiful. It’s all right. It’s only a spaceship from Mars, to conquer Earth. It isn’t a mouse.”
He was right on the first count, in a way. He was wrong on the second, in a way. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves like that.
After the single blast from its exhaust tube or whatever it was the spaceship dropped the last twelve inches and lay inert on the grass. It didn’t move. There was now a fanshaped area of blackened earth radiating from one end of it, for a distance of about thirty feet.
And then nothing happened except that people came running from several directions. Cops came running, too, three of them, and kept people from going too close to the alien object. Too close, according to the cops’ idea, seemed to be closer than about ten feet. Which, Bill Wheeler thought, was silly. If the thing was going to explode or anything, it would probably kill everyone for blocks around.
But it didn’t explode. It just lay there, and nothing happened. Nothing except that flash that had startled both Bill and the cat. And the cat looked bored now, and lay back down on the windowsill, her hackles down.
Bill stroked her sleek fawn-colored fur again, absent-mindedly. He said, “This is a day, Beautiful. That thing out there is from outside, or I’m a spider’s nephew. I’m going down and take a look at it.”
He took the elevator down. He got as far as the front door, tried to open it, and couldn’t. All he could see through the glass was the backs of people, jammed tight against the door. Standing on tiptoes and stretching his neck to see over the nearest ones, he could see a solid phalanx of heads stretching from here to there
He got back in the elevator. The operator said, “Sounds like excitement out front. Parade going by or something?”
“Something,” Bill said. “Spaceship just landed in Central
Park, from Mars or somewhere. You hear the welcoming committee out there.”
“The hell,” said the operator. “What’s it doing?”
“Nothing.”
The operator grinned. “You’re a great kidder, Mr. Wheeler. How’s that cat you got?”
“Fine,” said Bill. “How’s yours?”
“Getting crankier. Threw a book at me when I got home last night with a few under my belt and lectured me half the night because I’d spent three and a half bucks. You got the best kind.”
“I think so,” Bill said.
By the time he got back to the window, there was really a crowd down there. Central Park West was solid with people for half a block each way and the park was solid with them for a long way back. The only open area was a circle around the spaceship, now expanded to about twenty feet in radius, and with a lot of cops keeping it open instead of only three.
Bill Wheeler gently moved the Siamese over to one side of the windowsill and sat down. He said, “We got a box seat, Beautiful. I should have had more sense than to go down there.”
The cops below were having a tough time. But reinforcements were coming, truckloads of them. They fought their way into the circle and then helped enlarge it. Somebody had obviously decided that the larger that circle was the fewer people were going to be killed. A few khaki uniforms had infiltrated the circle, too.
“Brass,” Bill told the cat. “High brass. I can’t make out insignia from here, but that one boy’s at least a three-star; you can tell by the way he walks.”
They got the circle pushed back to the sidewalk, finally. There was a lot of brass inside by then. And half a dozen men, some in uniform, some not, were starting, very carefully, to work on the ship. Photographs first,. and then measurements, and then one man with a big s
uitcase of paraphernalia was carefully scratching at the metal and making tests of some kind. '
“A metallurgist, Beautiful,” Bill Wheeler explained to the Siamese, who wasn’t watching at all. “And I’ll bet you ten pounds of liver to one miaouw he finds that’s an alloy that’s brand new to him. And that it’s got some stuff in it he can’t identify.
“You really ought to be looking out, Beautiful, instead of lying there like a dope. This is a day, Beautiful. This may be the beginning of the end—or of something new. I wish they’d hurry up and get it open.”
Army trucks were coming into the circle now. Half a dozen big planes were circling overhead, making a lot of noise. Bill looked up at them quizzically.
“Bombers, I’ll bet, with pay loads. Don’t know what they have in mind unless to bomb the park, people and all, if little green men come out of that thing with ray guns and start killing everybody. Then the bombers could finish off whoever’s left.”
But no little green men came out of the cylinder. The men working on it couldn’t, apparently, find an opening in it. They’d rolled it over now and exposed the under side, but the under side was the same as the top. For all they could tell, the under side was the top.
And then Bill Wheeler swore. The army trucks were being unloaded, and sections of a big tent were coming out of them, and men in khaki were driving stakes and unrolling canvas.
“They would do something like that, Beautiful,” Bill complained bitterly. “Be bad enough if they hauled it off, but to leave it there to work on and still to block off our view—”
The tent went up. Bill Wheeler watched the top of the tent, but nothing happened to the top of the tent and whatever went on inside he couldn’t see. Trucks came and went, high brass and civvies came and went.
And after a while the phone rang. Bill gave a last affectionate rumple to the cat’s fur and went to answer it.
“Bill Wheeler?” the receiver asked. “This is General Kelly speaking. Your name has been given to me as a competent research biologist. Tops in your field. Is that correct?”
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