The Puppet Masters (2 page)

“But what is the problem?” I asked. “Or do we play this one entirely by ear?”

“Mmmm…possibly.”

“Okay. But when you’re dead, it’s nice to know why you’re dead, I always say. Eh, Mary?”

“Mary” did not answer. She had that quality, rare in babes and commendable, of not talking when she had nothing to say. The Old Man looked me over, his manner not that of a man who can’t make up his mind, but rather as if he were judging me as I was at that moment and feeding the newly acquired data into the machine between his ears.

Presently he said, “Sam, you’ve heard of ‘flying saucers’.”

“Huh? Can’t say that I have.”

“You’ve studied history. Come, now!”

“You mean
those
? The flying-saucer craze, ’way back before the Disorders? I thought you meant something recent and real; those were mass hallucinations.”

“Were they?”

“Well, weren’t they? I haven’t studied much statistical abnormal psychology, but I seem to remember an equation. That whole period was psychopathic; a man with all his gaskets tight would have been locked up.”

“But this present day is sane, eh?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.” I pawed back through the unused drawers of my mind and found the answer I wanted. “I remember that equation now—Digby’s evaluating integral for second and higher order data. It gave a 93.7 percent certainty that the flying-saucer myth, after elimination of explained cases, was hallucination. I remember it because it was the first case of its type in the history of science in which the instances had been systematically collected and evaluated. Some sort of a government project, God knows why.”

The Old Man looked benignly avuncular. “Brace yourself, Sammy. We are going to inspect a flying saucer today. Maybe we’ll even saw off a piece for a souvenir, like true tourists.”

“S
een
a newscast lately?” the Old Man went on.

I shook my head. Silly question—I’d been on leave.

“Try it sometime,” he suggested. “Lots of interesting things on the ’casts. Never mind. Seventeen hours—” he glanced at his finger watch and added, “—and twenty-three minutes ago an unidentified spaceship landed near Grinnell, Iowa. Type, unknown. Approximately disc-shaped and about one hundred fifty feet across. Origin, unknown, but—”

“Didn’t they track a trajectory on it?” I interrupted.

“They did not,” he answered, spacing his words. “Here is a photo of it taken after landing by Space Station Beta.”

I looked it over and passed it to Mary. It was as unsatisfactory as a telephoto taken from five thousand miles out usually is. Trees looking like moss…a cloud shadow that loused up the best part of the pic…and a gray circle that might have been a disc-shaped space ship and could just as well have been an oil tank or a water reservoir. I wondered how many times we had bombed hydroponics plants in Siberia, mistaking them for atomic installations.

Mary handed the pic back. I said, “Looks like a tent for a camp meeting to me. What else do we know?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing! After
seventeen hours
? We ought to have agents pouring out of their ears!”

“Ah, yes. We did have. Two within reach and four that were sent in. They failed to report back. I dislike losing agents, Sammy, especially with no results.”

Up to then I had not stopped to wonder about the Old Man himself being risked on a job—it had not looked like risk. But I had a sudden cold realization that the situation must be so serious that the Old Man had chosen to bet his own brain against the loss of the organization—for he
was
the Section. Nobody who knew him doubted his guts, but they did not doubt his horse sense, either. He knew his own value; he would not risk himself unless he believed coldly that it would take his own skill to swing it and that the job
had
to be done.

I felt suddenly chilly. Ordinarily an agent has a duty to save his own neck—in order to complete his mission and report back. On this job it was the Old Man who must come back—and after him, Mary. I stood number three and was as expendable as a paper clip. I didn’t like it.

“One agent made a partial report,” the Old Man went on. “He went in as a casual bystander and reported by phone that it must be a space ship although he could not determine its motive power. We got the same thing from the newscasts. He then reported that the ship was opening and that he was going to try to get closer, past the police lines. The last thing he said was, ‘Here they come. They are little creatures, about—’ Then he shut off.”

“Little men?”

“He said, ‘creatures’.”

“Peripheral reports?”

“Plenty of them. The Des Moines stereocasting station reported the landing and sent mobile units in for spot cast. The pictures they sent out were all fairly long shots, taken from the air. They showed nothing but a disc-shaped object. Then, for about two hours, no pictures and no news, followed later by close ups and a new news slant.”

The Old Man shut up. I said, “Well?”

“The whole thing was a hoax. The ‘space ship’ was a sheet metal and plastic fraud, built by two farm boys in some woods near their home. The fake reports originated with an announcer with more sense of humor than good judgment and who had put the boys up to it to make a story. He has been fired and the latest ‘invasion from outer space’ turns out to be a joke.”

I squirmed. “So it’s a hoax—but we lose six men. We’re going to look for them?”

“No, for we would not find them. We are going to try to find out why triangulation of this photograph—” He held up the teleshot taken from the space station. “—doesn’t quite jibe with the news reports—and why Des Moines stereo station shut up for a while.”

Mary spoke up for the first time. “I’d like to talk with those farm boys.”

I roaded the car about five miles this side of Grinnell and we started looking for the McLain farm—the news reports had named Vincent and George McLain as the culprits. It wasn’t hard to find. At a fork in the road was a big sign, professional in appearance: THIS WAY TO THE SPACESHIP. Shortly the road was parked both sides with duos and groundcars and triphibs. A couple of hastily-built stands dispensed cold drinks and souvenirs at the turn-off into the McLain place. A state cop was directing traffic.

“Pull up,” directed the Old Man. “Might as well see the fun, eh?”

“Right, Uncle Charlie,” I agreed.

The Old Man bounced out with only a trace of limp, swinging his cane. I handed Mary out and she snuggled up to me, grasping my arm. She looked up at me, managing to look both stupid and demure. “My, but you’re strong. Buddy.”

I wanted to slap her, but gave a self-conscious smirk instead. That poor-little-me routine—from an agent, from one of the Old Man’s agents. A smile from a tiger.

“Uncle Charlie” buzzed around, bothering state police, buttonholing people to give them unasked-for opinions, stopping to buy cigars at one of the stands, and in general giving a picture of a well-to-do, senile old fool, out for a holiday. He turned back to us and waved his cigar at a state sergeant. “The inspector says the whole thing is a fraud, my dears—a prank thought up by some boys. Shall we go?”

Mary looked disappointed. “No space ship?”

“There’s a space ship, if you want to call it that,” the cop answered. “Just follow the suckers, and you’ll find it. It’s ‘sergeant’, not ‘inspector’.”

“Uncle Charlie” pressed a cigar on him and we set out, across a pasture and into some woods. It cost a dollar to get through the gate and many of the potential suckers turned back. The path through the woods was rather deserted. I moved carefully, wishing for eyes in the back of my head instead of a phone. According to the book six agents had gone down this path and none had come back. I didn’t want it to be nine.

Uncle Charlie and Sis walked ahead, Mary chattering like a fool and somehow managing to be both shorter and younger than she had been on the trip out. We came to a clearing and there was the “space ship”.

It was the proper size, more than a hundred feet across, but it was whipped together out of light-gauge metal and sheet plastic, sprayed with aluminum. It was roughly the shape of two giant pie plates, face to face. Aside from that, it looked like nothing in particular. Nevertheless Mary squealed. “Oh, how exciting!”

A youngster, eighteen or nineteen, with a permanent sunburn and a pimply face, stuck his head out of a sort of hatch in the top of the monstrosity. “Care to see inside?” he called out. He added that it would be fifty cents a piece more and Uncle Charlie shelled out.

Mary hesitated at the hatch. Pimple face was joined by what appeared to be his twin and they started to hand her down in. She drew back and I moved in fast, intending to do any handling myself. My reasons were 99 percent professional; I could feel danger all through the place. “It’s dark in there,” she quavered.

“It’s perfectly safe,” the second young man said. “We’ve been taking sightseers through all day. I’m Vinc McLain, one of the owners. Come on, lady.”

Uncle Charlie peered down the hatch, like a cautious mother hen. “Might be snakes in there,” he decided. “Mary, I don’t think you had better go in.”

“Nothing to fear,” the first McLain said insistently. “It’s safe as houses.”

“Just keep the money, gentlemen.” Uncle Charlie glanced at his finger. “We’re late as it is. Let’s go, my dears.”

I followed them back up the path, my hackles up the whole way.

We got back to the car and I pulled out into the road. Once we were rolling, the Old Man said sharply, “Well? What did you see?”

I countered with, “Any doubt about that first report? The one that broke off?”

“None.”

“That thing over in the woods wouldn’t have fooled an agent, even in the dark. This wasn’t the ship he saw.”

“Of course not. What else?”

“How much would you say that fake cost? That was new sheet metal, fresh paint, and from what I saw of the inside through the hatch, probably a thousand feet, more or less, of lumber to brace it.”

“Go on.”

“Well, the McLain house hadn’t been painted in years, not even the barn. The place had ‘mortgage’ spelled out all over it. If the boys were in on the gag, they didn’t foot the bill.”

“Obviously. You, Mary?”

“Uncle Charlie, did you notice the way they treated me?”

“Who?” I said sharply.

“Both the state sergeant and the two boys. When I use the sweet-little-bundle-of-sex routine, something should happen. Nothing did.”

“They were all attentive,” I objected.

“You don’t understand. You can’t understand—but I
know
. I always know. Something was wrong with them. They were dead inside. Harem guards, if you know what I mean.”

“Hypnosis?” asked the Old Man.

“Possibly. Or drugs perhaps.” She frowned and looked puzzled.

“Hmm—” he answered. “Sammy, take the next turn to the left. We’re investigating a point about two miles south of here.”

“The triangulated location by the pic?”

“What else?”

But we didn’t get there. First it was a bridge out and I didn’t have room enough to make the car hop it, quite aside from the small matter of traffic regulations for a duo on the ground. We circled to the south and came in again, the only remaining route. We were stopped by a highway cop and a detour sign. A brush fire, he told us; go any farther and we would probably be impressed into firefighting. He didn’t know but what he ought to send me up to the firelines anyhow.

Mary waved her lashes and other things at him and he relented. She pointed out that neither she nor Uncle Charlie could drive, a double lie.

After we pulled away I asked her, “How about that one?”

“What about him?”

“Harem guard?”

“Oh, my, no! A most attractive man.”

Her answer annoyed me.

The Old Man vetoed taking to the air and making a pass over the triangulated spot. He said it was useless. We headed for Des Moines. Instead of parking at the toll gates we paid to take the car into the city proper, and ended up at the main studios of Des Moines stereo. “Uncle Charlie” blustered his way into the office of the general manager, us in tow. He told several lies—or perhaps Charles M. Cavanaugh was actually a big wheel with the Federal Communications Authority. How was I to know?

Once inside and the door shut he continued the Big Brass act. “Now, sir, what is all this nonsense about a spaceship hoax? Speak plainly, sir; I warn you your license may depend on it.”

The manager was a little round-shouldered man, but he did not seem cowed, merely annoyed. “We’ve made a full explanation over the channels,” he said. “We were victimized by one of our own people. The man has been discharged.”

“Hardly adequate, sir.”

The little man—Barnes, his name was—shrugged. “What do you expect? Shall we string him up by his thumbs?”

Uncle Charlie pointed his cigar at him. “I warn you, sir, that I am not to be trifled with. I have been making an investigation of my own and I am not convinced that two farm louts and a junior announcer could have pulled off this preposterous business. There was money in it, sir. Yes, sir—money. And where would I expect to find money? Here at the top. Now tell me, sir, just what did you—”

Mary had seated herself close by Barnes’s desk. She had done something to her costume, which exposed more skin, and her pose put me in mind of Goya’s
Disrobed Lady
. She made a thumbs-down signal to the Old Man.

Barnes should not have caught it; his attention appeared to be turned to the Old Man. But he did. He turned toward Mary and his face went dead. He reached for his desk.

“Sam! Kill him!” the Old Man rapped.

I burned his legs off and his trunk fell to the floor. It was a poor shot; I had intended to burn his belly.

I stepped quickly to him and kicked his gun away from his still-groping fingers. I was about to give him the
coup de grace
—a man burned that way is dead, but it takes him a while to die—when the Old Man snapped, “Don’t touch him! Mary, stand back!”

We did so. The Old Man sidled toward the body, like a cat cautiously investigating the unknown. Barnes gave a long bubbling sigh and was quiet—shock death; a gun burn doesn’t bleed much, not that much. The Old Man looked him over and poked him gently with his cane.