Big Book of Science Fiction (4 page)

“One of those things you were
talking about,” said Jack sardonically. “One of the things you refuse to be
interested in, that couldn’t possibly affect us. Remember?”

“The thing the radio was talking
about?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. We’d
better get out of here. This place may fall in on us, or burn, or something.”

“An’ we’ll all be kilt,” crooned
Molly.

“Shut up, Molly! Iris, I’m going
to poke around. Better go on out and pick us a place to pitch the tent—if 1 can
find the tent.”

“Tent?” Iris gasped.

“Boy oh boy,” said Molly.

“Jack Garry, I’m not going to go
to bed in a tent. Do you realize that this place will be swarming with people
in no time flat?”

“O.K.—O.K. Only get out from
under what’s left of the house. Go for a swim. Take a walk. Or g’wan to bed in
Molly’s room, if you can find it. Iris, you can pick the oddest times to argue!”

“I’m not going out there by myself!”

Jack sighed. “I should’ve asked
you to stay in here,” he muttered. “If you’re not the contrariest woman ever
to— Be quiet, Molly!”‘

“I didn’t say anything.”

Meeew-w-w!

“Aren’t you doing that
caterwauling?”

“No, Daddy, truly.”

Iris said, “I’d say a cat was
caught in the wreckage except that cats are smart and no cat would ever come
near this place.”

Wuh-wuh-muh-meeee-ew-w-w!

“What a dismal sound!”

“Jack, that isn’t a cat.”

“Well, stop shaking like the
well-known aspen leaf.”

Molly said, “Not without aspen
Daddy’s leaf to do it.”

“Molly! You’re too young to make
bad puns!”

“Sorry, Daddy. I fergot.”

Mmmmmew. Mmm—m-m-m.

“Whatever it is,” Jack said, “it
can’t be big enough to be afraid of and make a funny little noise like that.”
He squeezed Iris’ arm and, stepping carefully over the rubble, began peering in
and around it. Molly scrambled beside him. He was about to caution her against
making so much noise, and then thought better of it. What difference would a
little racket make?

The noise was not repeated, and
five minutes’ searching elicited nothing. Garry went back to his wife, who was
fumbling around the shambles of a living room, pointlessly setting chairs and
coffee tables back on their legs.

“I didn’t find anyth—”

“YIPE!”

“Molly! What is it?”

Molly was just outside, in the
shrubbery. “Oh . . . oh— Daddy, you better come quick!”

Spurred by the urgency of her
tone, he went crashing outside. He found Molly standing rigid, trying to cram
both her fists in her mouth at the same time. And at her feet was a man with
silver-gray skin and a broken arm, who mewed at him.

~ * ~

“—Guard
and Navy Department have withdrawn their warnings. The pilot of a Pan American
transport has reported that the object disappeared into the zenith. It was last
seen eighteen miles east of Normandy Beach, New Jersey. Reports from the
vicinity describe it as traveling very slowly, with a hissing noise. Although
it reached within a few feet of the ground several times, no damage has been
reported, Inves—”

“Think of that,” said Iris,
switching off the little three-way portable. “No damage.”

“Yeah. And if no one saw the
thing hit, no one will be out here to investigate. So you can retire to your
downy couch in the tent without fear of being interviewed.”

“Go to sleep? Are you mad? Sleep
in that flimsy tent with that mewing monster lying there?”

“Oh heck, Mom, he’s sick! He
wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

They sat around a cheerful fire,
fed by roof shingles. Jack had set up the tent without much trouble. The
silver-gray man was stretched out in the shadows, sleeping lightly and emitting
an occasional moan.

Jack smiled at Iris. “Y’know, I
love your silly chatter, darling. The way you turned to and set his arm was a
pleasure to watch. You didn’t think of him as a monster while you were tending
to him.”

“Didn’t I, though? Maybe ‘monster’
was the wrong word to use. Jack, he has only one bone in his forearm!”

“He has what? Oh, nonsense,
honey! ‘Tain’t scientific. He’d have to have a ball-and-socket joint in his
wrist.”

“He
has
a ball and socket
joint in his wrist.”

“This I have to see,” Jack
muttered. He picked up a flash lantern and went over to the long prone figure.

Silver eyes blinked up at the
light. There was something queer about them. He turned the beam closer. The
pupils were not black in that light, but dark-green. They all but closed— from
the sides, like a cat’s. Jack’s breath wheezed out. He ran the light over the
man’s body. It was clad in a bright-blue roomy bathrobe effect, with a yellow
sash. The sash had a buckle which apparently consisted of two pieces of yellow
metal placed together; there seemed to be nothing to keep them together. They
just stayed. When the man had fainted, just as they found him, it had taken
almost all Jack’s strength to pull them apart.

“Iris.”

She got up and came over to him. “Let
the poor devil sleep.” >

“Iris—what color was his robe?”

“Red, with a ... but it’s
blue!”

“Is now. Iris, what on earth have
we got here?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. Some
poor thing that escaped from an institution for . . . for—”

“For what?”

“How should I know?” she snapped.
“There must be some place where they send creatures that get born like that.”

“Creatures don’t get born like
that. Iris, he isn’t deformed. He’s just different.”

“I see what you mean. I don’t
know why I see what you mean, but I’ll tell you something.” She stopped, and
was quiet for so long that he turned to her, surprised. She said slowly, “I
ought to be afraid of him, because he’s strange, and ugly, but—I’m not.”

“Me, too.”

“Molly, go back to bed!”

“He’s a leprechaun.”

“Maybe you’re right. Go on to
bed, chicken, and in the morning you can ask him where he keeps his crock of
gold.”

“Gee.” She went off a little way
then stood on one foot, drawing a small circle in the sand with the other. “Daddy.”

“Yes. Molly-m’love.”

“Can I sleep in the tent
tomorrow, too?”

“If you’re good.”

“Daddy obviously means,” said
Iris acidly, “that if you’re
not
good he’ll have a roof on the house by
tomorrow night.”

“I’ll be good.” She disappeared
into the tent.

“For kids,” Jack said admiringly,
“it never rains tomorrow.”

~ * ~

The
gray man mewed.

“Well, old guy, what is it?”

The man reached over and fumbled
at his splinted arm.

“It hurts him,” said Iris. She
knelt beside him and, taking the wrist of his good arm, lifted it away from the
splint, where he was clawing. The man did not resist, but lay and looked at her
with pain-filled, slitted eyes.

“He has six fingers,” Jack said. “See?”
He knelt beside his wife and gently took the man’s wrist. He whistled. “It
is
a ball and socket.”

“Give him some aspirin.”

“That’s a good . . . wait.” Jack
stood pulling his lip in puzzlement. “Do you think we should?”

“Why not?”

“We don’t know where he comes
from. We know nothing of his body chemistry, or what any of our medicines might
do to him.”

“He . . . what do you mean, where
he comes from?”

“Iris, will you open up your mind
just a little? In the face of evidence like this, are you going to even attempt
to cling to the idea that this man comes from anywhere on this earth?” Jack
said with annoyance. “You know your anatomy. Don’t tell me you ever saw a human
freak with skin and bones like that! That belt buckle—that material in his
clothes . . . come on, now. Drop your prejudices and give your brains a chance,
will you?”

“You’re suggesting things that
simply don’t
happen!”

“That’s what the man in the
street said—in Hiroshima. That’s what the old-time aeronaut said from the
basket of his balloon when they told him about heavier-than-air craft. That’s
what—”

“All right, all right, Jack! I
know the rest of the speech. If you want dialectics instead of what’s left of a
night’s sleep, I might point out that the things you have mentioned have all
concerned human endeavors. Show me any new plastic, a new metal, a new kind of
engine, and though I may not begin to understand it, I can accept it because it
is of human origin. But this . . . this man, or whatever he is—”

“I know,” said Jack, more gently.
“It’s frightening because it’s strange, and away down underneath we feel that
anything strange is necessarily dangerous. That’s why we wear our best manners
for strangers and not for our friends—but I still don’t think we should give
this character any aspirin.”

“He seems to breathe the same air
we do. He perspires, he talks ... I think he talks—”

“You have a point. Well, if it’ll
ease his pain at all, it may be worth trying. Give him just one.”

Iris went to the pump with a
collapsible cup from her first-aid kit, and filled it. Kneeling by the
silver-skinned man, she propped up his head, gently put the aspirin between his
lips, and brought the cup to his mouth. He sucked the water in greedily, and
then went completely limp.

“Oh, oh. I was afraid of that.”

Iris put her hand over the man’s
heart.
“Jack!”

“Is he . . . what is it, Iris?”

“Not dead, if that’s what you
mean. Will you feel this?”

Jack put his hand beside Iris’.
The heart was beating with massive, slow blows, about eight to the minute.
Under it, out of phase completely with the main beat, was another, an extremely
fast, sharp beat, which felt as if it were going about three hundred.

“He’s having some sort of
palpitation,” Jack said.

“And in two hearts at once!”

Suddenly the man raised his head
and uttered a series of ululating shrieks and howls. His eyes opened wide, and
across them fluttered a translucent nictitating membrane. He lay perfectly
still with his mouth open, shrieking and gargling. Then, with a lightning
movement, he snatched Jack’s hand to his mouth. A pointed tongue, light-orange
and four inches longer than it had any right to be, flicked out and licked Jack’s
hand. Then the strange eyes closed, the shrieks died to a whimper and faded
out, and the man relaxed.

“Sleeping now,” said Iris. “Oh, I
hope we haven’t done anything to him!”