He jerked his head and regarded me with unfocused eyes. "Huh? Wash matter, ole fren? I'm wish ya. Wish ya ta the end. Washer trouble, huh?"
I said, "John, listen. You're in danger. We've got to get you out of here. Out of town. Back to New York. Right away! Do you understand?"
He nodded limply. I wasn't sure whether he really understood or not. But if he could only walk, it wouldn't make much difference.
If only he didn't pass out ... it wasn't very far. Just back to the door, then into the elevator instead of going onto the street at this level. Then, on the third level, only the few feet necessary to catch a bus or a cab to take us to the strato-port.
If hecouldn'twalk, I didn't know what I'd do. Whoever the telenosis operator was, I was sure he had followed us to this bar through Maxwell's mind. That's the way telenosis works. Alcohol sets up a complete barrier, and contact is broken entirely; but about all a blow on the head does is immobilize the victim—visions, commands and other impressions can still penetrate, and the operator can still receive whatever sensations his victim may have.
Maxwell hadn't been unconscious enough for us to be safe. Someone wanted our blood. We had to move fast.
And if he couldn't manage to walk at all....
He couldn't, exactly. But he could get to his feet and lurch and stumble along after a fashion.
It accomplished the same purpose.
I got him to the third level, and we stood at the entrance of the bar while I got myself oriented.
I had made a tactical error. Vehicles going to the strato-port stopped on the other side of the street. And to get there, I would now have to walk Maxwell all the way down to the end of the block to a pedestrian cross-walk, then halfway back up the other side.
The alternative was to go down again and cross in the middle of the block on the pedestrian level, which is what I should have done in the first place.
But I wanted to get as far away from the bar as possible and as soon as possible. So I shrugged and turned to my left, shoving and dragging Maxwell with me.
As I did so, my defense mech started clicking.
Maxwell stumbled and nearly fell. I shoved him against the side of a building and leaned against him to keep him up. The liquor had hit him hard. If he once went down, there would be no getting him up. Not by me.
We did better after I wrapped one of his arms around my shoulder. I could carry part of his weight and I had better control of him. I kept him as close to the storefronts as possible, to minimize the possibility of being recognized from a moving vehicle in the street.
It didn't do a bit of good.
They'd probably spotted us as soon as we stepped away from the bar entrance. For all I know, they had been waiting for us since we entered the bar.
Three of them. Sitting there in the illegally parked light passenger sedan just ahead of us.
I saw it when we were still fifteen feet away. I saw it, and I knew what it was, and I stopped.
The sedan wasn't really parked. It was just pulled over close against the curb, moving slowly toward us.
When I stopped, the sedan moved up quickly even with us, and two men stepped out.
I edged Maxwell toward a drugstore entrance a few feet to the left, but the men from the sedan were at our side in an instant.
"Hey, friend, got a match?" one of them asked for the benefit of a passing couple who glanced at us.
I recognized him. A deep criss-crossed scar ran from above his right cheekbone vertically down his cheek, ending in a big dent in his jaw bone. His lips were thick and loose.
For just an instant I was motionless, frozen, my right hand holding Maxwell's arm over my shoulder, my left hand gripping the quietly ticking defense mech.
Then I moved almost without thinking about it.
I released my grip on Maxwell's arm, shoving him against the thug that I didn't recognize. At the same time, I swung my defense mech, aiming at the head of my scarfaced acquaintance. He raised his arm, but the heavy case slammed into it and bounced off his forehead.
It probably broke his arm, and possibly fractured his skull. I didn't wait to find out.
Holding tightly to the defense mech, I darted into the store entrance. I left Maxwell blindly clutching the assailant into whose path I had thrown him. I didn't worry about Maxwell. They could have him. If I got away, they wouldn't dare kill him. And if I didn't get away, they would kill both of us.
The escalator was just inside the door to the right, and I ran down the downward-moving steps, doubling back to the left at the bottom, and out the door on the pedestrian level. I turned left again and ran to the corner, crossed the street and ran three-fourths the length of the block.
I glanced backward and didn't see anyone running after me, so I entered a late-hour department store. I wasn't safe yet, and I didn't feel safe, but I felt encouraged enough to slow down to a fast walk through the aisles of the men's clothing section.
I had to get to a visiphone, first of all, and call Newell in New York. And then—well, I wasn't sure. Hide, somewhere. Keep from being captured.
It took me three minutes of rapid wandering through the building to find a row of visiphone booths. I placed the call. While I waited, nervously crossing and uncrossing my legs, peering intermittently out the window to see if there was any sign of pursuit, I had time to think.
I had time to think, but I didn't think. Not really. I was thinking of what I was going to tell Newell. Thinking of Maxwell being dragged away by Grogan's "secretaries," and wondering what would happen to him. But I didn't really think, and maybe it's just as well.
A little less than nine agonizing minutes elapsed before Newell's plump face appeared on the screen.
"You're late tonight," he said. "I was just on the verge of calling you. How're things going?"
I told him quickly, and with a minimum of detail, what had happened since our last session.
"It's Grogan, after all," I said. "I'd recognize that scarfaced gorilla of his anywhere. Get Grogan and—"
The boss nodded. "We'll get him. You let me worry about that. You've got to.... You say they were beaming telenosis on Maxwell? How the devil did they get his wave-band so soon?"
"You can worry about that one, too," I told him.
"Okay. Never mind. Where are you now? Never mind that either. Just stay there. Call the nearest police station and have them send someone after you. Get in a nice snug cell and stay put. We'll take care of Grogan and Maxwell. Okay, now. Don't waste any time."
We hung up together. Then I quickly dialed the operator and asked for the nearest sectional police station.
When the face of the desk sergeant flashed on the screen, I told him, "My name is Earl Langston. My life is in immediate danger. I'm in a vp booth near the Pacific Street entrance, number four, of Underhill's department store, second level."
"Stay where you are," the sergeant replied. "We'll have someone after you in ten or fifteen minutes."
In a surprisingly short time, an overweight, gray-uniformed policeman with a face like a bulldog rapped at the door of the booth.
I stood up and opened the door.
"Earl Langston?" he asked. I nodded and followed him to an elevator. We went up to the third level and then through a maze of aisles and departments before going out a door that opened on a parking lot.
The policeman led me to an unmarked auto and opened the back door for me. Two dogs barked at my heels as we walked to the vehicle. I shooed them off before I closed the door.
I leaned back on the soft cushions with a sigh and set the heavy defense mech on the edge of the seat beside me, still holding the handle loosely with one hand.
The motor purred as we moved slowly out of the parking lot and into the street.
I paid no attention to where we were going. Just breathed another sigh and closed my eyes. At last, I could begin to relax. In just a few minutes, now, I'd be safe. I hadn't realized how tense I was. My neck muscles ached and my stomach slipped slowly from my chest cavity back down to where it belonged.
It seemed a long time ago that I had abandoned Maxwell to Grogan's thugs.... What had happened to him since then? How long ago had it been? Only half an hour? Not much longer, anyway.
Now again I had time to think, and this time I did think. I began to ask myself questions—to wonder about certain things.
How had Grogan learned Maxwell's wave-band so soon?
What was Grogan doing with a telenizer in the first place, and what was he up to? Just personal revenge against me?
How did I know for sure that itwasGrogan?
That question startled me. I opened my eyes and sat up straight. In moving so suddenly, my hand knocked over the defense mech and it thudded to the floor. As I bent quickly to pick it up, it started clicking again.
Several things occurred to me at once, then, and my stomach wadded itself into a tight ball and shot up again to press against my heart. My neck and back muscles tightened.
The first thing that struck me, I think, was that the defense mech had started clickingagain. It had been clicking before.... As Maxwell and I left the bar, the defense mech had begun clicking steadily. Then—sometime—it had stopped. Probably when I hit Scarface with it. But I hadn't noticed. And for thirty minutes—closer to forty-five, now....
There was no particular sequence to the flood of realizations that rushed my consciousness next and left me feeling weak and shaky.
The desk sergeant had said ten minutes. The policeman had gotten there in less than five. We were driving, not through side streets toward a police station, but along a high-speed lane of a main thoroughfare, away from the city. Two dogs had yapped at my heels. The "police" vehicle was unmarked—unusual if not illegal.
When I looked at the driver, he was not, of course, a policeman.
He was one of Grogan's bodyguards—the one into whose arms I had thrown Maxwell not long ago.
He was staring straight ahead at the road, his spread-nosed face composed. He hadn't noticed anything.
I took a deep breath and leaned back again, half-closing my eyes. But I did not relax. The clicking of the defense mech seemed thunderous to me, but if the driver heard it, he gave no indication. Perhaps it would have meant nothing to him if he did hear it.
I tried to think of the problem at hand, but my mind refused to cooperate. It kept rushing back to events of the recent past and demanding reasons and explanations.
When the defense mech faltered and quietly stopped clicking, I was aware of it this time. My first impulse was to hit it with my hand and try to make it work again, but I restrained myself.
I controlled my thoughts firmly, holding them tight and shaping them carefully in my mind before letting them go.
The driver was again a policeman in the gray police uniform. We were once more driving slowly through city streets instead of speeding along a highway. Two dogs ran beside the auto, barking—the same two dogs that I had shooed before I closed the door.
I formed my thoughts:I know who you are. It's no secret any more. But why? What are you trying to do?
There was no reply.
It could mean one of two things. Either he simply didn't want to answer, or else he wasn't on the machine in person but was playing an impression-tape on my wave-band. I tried again.
You're licked, you know. Already you're licked. Even if my call to Newell was nothing but a telenosis dream—even if no one knows anything about this but me, you're still licked—
No reply. None of any kind. I'd expected at least to get a sinister chuckle, or a flood of horrors. But there was nothing more nor less than what there had been—the policeman driving through quiet city streets, and the dogs barking.
Then it was just a recording, prepared in advance. My mind was not being followed in person. Not right now.
But that was no help and no assurance. I still didn't dare get out of the car. Or knock the driver over the head and take over the car myself. At ninety miles an hour, and with a visual impression of moving slowly along city streets, that would be a sure form of suicide.
Or would it?
Apparently I had no choice but to wait until we arrived at our destination and then do what I could—which might not be much.
Lord, if I could make another vp call before we got there!
Careful, though. Even with no operator at the telenizer, I had to watch out for thought leakage. My thoughts were surely being recorded, and certain kinds of thoughts might trigger automatic precautionary measures.
I gave the defense mech a hard bang with my hand. It clicked twice. I got a brief glimpse of the highway flashing past and the lights of other vehicles.
Then the clicking stopped, and we were back in town, crawling along. I hit the defense mech again, a series of lighter blows, and it obediently clicked and this time continued clicking; and we were on the highway again.
Making an effort to control my breathing and to muffle the sound of my rapidly pounding heart, I leaned forward and examined the controls of the auto intently.
There was a phone. Not a visiphone, of course, but a phone nonetheless. A means of communication. There was also a luminous radar dial that might or might not mean automatic controls.
Which might or might not be in operation.
I concentrated on the hands and feet of the driver. Neither moved perceptibly. The course of the vehicle was straight and constant, though, so that didn't prove anything.
"Hey, where in hell is this police station?" I asked.
With a slight backward-turning motion of his head, the driver replied, "Almost there. Just a few minutes now."
As his head moved, his hands moved the wheel a bare fraction. The auto did not swerve.
I took a deep breath and hit the driver on the side of the head with my doubled right fist as hard as I could. He slumped, and I hit him again. His hands slid from the wheel ... and the car continued on its course.
I clambered into the front seat with the driver.
As I lifted the mike, the auto started slowing down, and I thought for a moment it wasn't electronically controlled after all. That was a horrible moment, and I clutched at the wheel instinctively, but the car still did not swerve.
So I quit worrying about that and dialed the number.
The conversation, once I had the call through, took quite a little while. I had to convince the man that I was serious. While I was talking, arguing frantically, the auto was slowing almost to a stop, maneuvering over to the turning lane on the right, making the turn and following a narrow road that crossed under the highway.
The urgency of my voice must have been pretty convincing, because the voice on the other end finally said, "Well, I'll do what I can, Mr. Langston, but it'll take time. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. And so help me, if this is a joke—"
"It's no joke," I pleaded. "Believe me, it isn't. Please make it as fast as you can. Civilization may be at stake." On that deliberately ominous note, I hung up.
Immediately I began thinking of the things I should have done, the machinery I should have set in motion instead of the one thing I had done. By all means, I ought to have notified the police directly. My notion that telenosis influenced all the police desk sergeants in town was hysterical, baseless. Well, I could call back, even now—
But I couldn't.
The car was moving at a relatively slow speed—but still over fifty miles an hour, on a narrow unpaved, downgrade road. Through the side window I saw dark trees and shadowy brush gliding by.
And then through the window I saw lighted storefronts, mail boxes, a few vague pedestrians on smooth sidewalks, and two dogs running tirelessly beside the car, barking as they ran....
Repeated pounding on the heavy black box did not restore reality.
Now I did not dare use the phone again or even think about it. I was sitting beside the driver, and the driver was sitting erect at the wheel.
On a sudden, stupid impulse, I struck at the driver's head, and my hand went through it without touching anything. I groped with my hand until I felt the man's limp head where my eyes said his shoulder was.
With a suppressed shudder, I drew my hand away and sat back in the seat to wait. It couldn't be long now.
The car turned a corner and continued at a much slower pace. It went perhaps a hundred yards before it pulled to the curb and stopped. Across the street I saw the police station. The entrance looked like any other store or business entrance, but a marquee-sign above the entrance read: "Section 4 Police Station."
The driver sat motionless behind the wheel. He would not move, I knew, until....
I shrugged, picked up the defense mech, and opened the door.
Pedestrians walked by along the sidewalk, and autos glided in both directions on the street. Dogs yapped at my heels. I ignored them. They did not exist.
But I knew the police station did exist.
I walked directly toward the entrance—a long kitty-corner across the street. When a powerfully humming auto headed toward me, I closed my eyes and braced myself and continued walking.
It is not a pleasant sensation to be run down by a car—even a dream-car with no substance.
My skin was prickly and my palms moist. I could feel the blood pounding in my head.
The door to the police station was open. A short flight of stairs went up to another door that was closed. I did not ring the bell, but opened the door and stepped into the reception room.
The room was empty except for the uniformed policeman sitting at the radio bank on the other side of the railing with his back to me. He wore earphones.
As the door clicked shut, the policeman turned in his swivel chair to face me.
"Hello, Langston, we've been expecting you," he said.
It was Isaac Grogan.
I smiled and replied with calmness that amazed me:
"Yes, I daresay you have, Zan Matl Blekeke."
Maxwell and I were alone in the small, bare, brightly lighted but windowless room.
Blekeke had spent a half-hour after my arrival trying to find out how much I knew. But after my initial shocker—letting him know that I recognized him—I had kept my mind closed tightly; and I was keeping it closed now. Blekeke was still listening in—I had no doubt of that. Maxwell knew it too, for he made no attempt at conversation.
He sat with his back to the walls in one corner, and I crouched in another corner, and we sat there, staring at the walls and at each other, not daring to speak or to think.
After about ten or fifteen minutes the door opened, and Blekeke stepped in. He was wearing earphones, and a wire trailed behind him. In one hand he carried a blaster.
He smiled broadly and nodded, once at each of us. "Something show you," he said. "Watching."
He pushed a button on the wall beside the door and the lights died. For an instant everything was black, and I braved myself. Then the wall beside Blekeke glowed, flickered—and a scene in black and white came into focus.
"This observer room," Blekeke said. "Show what camera top meeting hall see."
The scene was dim; a half-moon bobbed and splashed in ocean waves in the background. In the right foreground, close and large, dark and dull, was the spaceship.
It was Martian, but not military. An old cargo carrier. Its rear jets were extinguished, but the ship was vibrating.
Leaving?I wondered—and Blekeke caught my thought over the telenizer earphones.
No—just arriving, was his answer in my mind.But it leave again very soon. You with. Soon no matter what you know. What did. Soon gone.
How soon?I demanded.
Blekeke spoke aloud: "Very soon. Fifteen, twenty, half-hour minutes. Looking more. All way right."
I looked at the extreme right edge of the picture, where a rough, shadowy hillock arose. While I watched, an opening appeared in the hillock and a dim human figure emerged. It stood erect and walked across the stretch of gravel beach toward the spaceship. Another figure came from the hillock aperture and followed the first.
The thought came from Blekeke:Cultists. Evidence. Prove my success.
Success in what? Why? How?
Blekeke pushed the button on the wall again, and the lights were suddenly on, and the wall bare.
"No harm tell you now," he said. "Gone soon. No matter."
He leaned against the wall and crossed his fragile arms across his huge red chest. He said:
"Mars home dying. You know. Need more somewhere. Earth best, but some Earthmen deciding not want." He shrugged. "Dear Late Doctor—" he did not bother making the mystic sign—"was brilliant man. Dr. Homer Reighardt—know name? Psychiatrist. Very old. No, I not kill; death natural. I wanted live longer, but...." he shrugged again. "Learned much from, howso. He founded cult. I his servant after joining. He idea very innocent—cure not really sick with mild 'nosis."
He smiled modestly. "I also brilliant person. Learn tech part much rapid. Apply own idea, which not so innocent. Fact, very insidious. Telenize right persons, theywantMartian then! Vote to let come, yups?"
Maxwell broke in: "Then why didn't you start in on the right people at once? Why not set up your headquarters in Belgrade and telenize the World Council members, instead of playing around with a bunch of hypochondriacs here?"
Blekeke held up his hand. "So fast not so. Must work with what got. Doctor machine very simple, and he telling me not all. Not trusting even me all way. Needing much work, then. Muchness development. Six months I working, then need testing. SRI, oaks? So now have proof for Mars government, which verysome cautious. Demanding evidence."
This time I broke in. "Blekeke," I said, with some of the respect I was beginning to feel for him, "you're a patriot, I guess, and I have to admire you for that. But you're also a damned fool. You can't get away with this—and I think you know it. There are just too many loop-holes."
"Where loop-hole?"
"Well, in the first place, I made a phone call before I got here—while I was in the car and my defense mech was on. As a result, the police will be here in a very few minutes—probably before you can get to the rocket—"
Blekeke smiled blandly. "Where second place?"
"In the second place, assuming that you do get to the spaceship and take off before the police get here, it still won't matter. Theyknow, now, who has been operating the telenizer. They can track you down. You'll be picked up long before you get to Mars." I stood up and strode purposefully toward him. "Give me the blaster, dammit. You're licked before you're even started."
Blekeke frowned and pointed the blaster at my chest. "Please. So fast not so. Go back corner, please."
I obediently returned to the corner and sat down. It had been worth a try.
The Martian lowered the weapon and smiled. "You too brave. I not like kill. But pfoof for loop-hole. All plugged. Looking what front-door camera see. Polices here now."
He pushed the button on the wall.
A police auto was screeching to a halt in the driveway before the big house, and a half-dozen uniformed men, armed with deadly blasters, were piling out. Another car was whipping around the final curve.
I knew that Maxwell was giving me a look of gratitude, but suddenly I wasn't sure it was warranted. I had assumed on a sort of blind faith that the police would get here in time—but as I watched the scene, I didn't feel so good.
For the policemen were not charging the house. They were not even looking at it.
They were milling around, aimlessly. No, not aimlessly, exactly. They were lookingforsomething; but they weren't seeing it. One of them got back in the car and used the radio, and the others wandered around, glancing unseeingly in all directions.
"Mass telenosis?" I asked quietly, not taking my eyes from the scene, feeling my heart pound harder as I caught a glimpse of the bobbing, slower lights of another vehicle on the road far back.
Blekeke said, "Yups. Plug all loop-hole. Police not see house, not see ship. No one see ship leave, not knowing Blekeke on board. Complete vanish." He shrugged. "Ship keep commercial schedule. Take auxiliary power to right course, then switch rocket. Stopped on way, maybe, so what? Telenize searchers, yups?"
"What about the house?" I asked.
"Go boom when we leave," Blekeke said.
Maxwell said, "Judas! Everyone will just assume that we and Blekeke and all the cultists have gone boom, too. That's likely to end the investigation right there. Slow it down plenty, at least."
Blekeke nodded applaudingly. "Yups. Is so."
He pushed the wall-button and we had the spaceship scene again. Men and Martians were loading large crates into the port of the ship. The other bulky boxes were being moved across the beach from the opening in the hill.
"Leaving soon now," Blekeke said as he switched the lights on. "That most of vital equipment. Other going boom. We work awful quickness, yups?"
"Just how do you mean?" I asked, more to kill time than out of real curiosity.
"Ha! You not knowing how quickness we work since morning—since getting Maxwell brain band on measure machine Sun Ray...."
Maxwell exclaimed; "Oh, hell, of course! Son of a blunder!That'show you got it."
I had already figured that out, and I guessed it was the information Blekeke had gained from Maxwell's mind that was forcing him to act now, before he had planned.
"When learned you planning 'vestigate SRI, had move fast," Blekeke corroborated. "So did. Not know you law man till then. Only that Langston mind stopped 'nosis. Not even knowing why. Worried for while—whew!" He wiped the mock perspiration from his brow and smiled.
I said, "The thugs who attacked Maxwell and me were Grogan's men. May I ask now—just out of curiosity—were they telenized, or was Grogan?"
Blekeke seemed happy to reply. "Grogan. Reighardt happened work on Grogan in CI. Also your brain wave number in file, but I getting first on Sun Ray machine."
I had wondered about that, and there was another question that was bothering me.
"When you started that blood dripping in the bathtub," I said, "was that a deliberate attempt to scare me away, or was that part of the standard treatment?"
"Standard," Blekeke replied. "Subject no longer trust own senses after. But recognize 'nosis, so trying frighten you. Work good on others."
I started to ask another question, but he switched on the spaceship loading scene again.
A crane was hauling the last huge crate into the hold. All the humans—the SRI cultists—were apparently aboard ship. None were visible. A few Martians stood near the ship, some of them looking toward the hillock opening, and some watching the loading.
Suddenly two policemen came into view on the screen, walking casually over the hill in which the opening was located. At the top they halted and looked out over the ocean.
One of the men looked over his shoulder and pulled a bottle from an inside pocket. He offered it to his companion, who shook his head. The man shrugged and took a deep swallow himself, tucking the bottle inside his jacket again.
I caught a sudden note of mild alarm from Blekeke's mind, which reminded me that he was still listening for careless thoughts of mine.
The policemen continued walking toward the beach, heading to the right of the spaceship. I saw one of the Martians step back into the shadow of the ship. The others followed the policemen with their eyes.
"We best going now," Blekeke said. He reached to turn off the picture....
And his hand froze. He saw the same thing I saw, and at just about the same time.
He saw a dog.
And he must have felt the triumphant, incoherent chortle that gushed from my mind.
The dog was a small, ragged, spotted terrier. It came trotting absentmindedly over the hill after the policemen, and at the top it stopped. It quivered. It sat down, pointed its nose at the spaceship and opened its mouth in a howl I could almost hear.
Then the scene was gone; the lights in the room glowed; Blekeke was pointing the blaster at me.
And his trigger finger was trembling.
He was shaking, very slightly, all over. His red-hued skin had turned a much paler shade.
I don't think I moved a muscle while I waited for him to speak.
"I should killing you," he said. "Right now, I should killing you. Then maybe killing me. Or make boom." He laughed shrilly, almost hysterically. "You very cleverish. Finding one weakener. Tell polices bringing dogs."
"Why, no," I said. "As a matter of fact, I told the dogs to bring the police."
That caught his interest. His hand on the blaster relaxed enough so that I could breath.
"That call I made from the car, coming here," I said. "It wasn't to the police. After the results of my first call to them, I thought it was just possible that you had somehow telenized all the desk sergeants. I wasn't thinking too sharp just then. Anyway, I called the city dog pound, instead. I told 'em to get as many dogs out here as fast as they possibly could."
Blekeke spoke in a very soft voice. "Cleverly, cleverly. And I giving self way."
"You sure did," I agreed. "There's dogs in every damn vision you dream up, you hate 'em so much. Same way some people have snakes."
Blekeke gestured with the blaster. He had regained some of his color, and he wasn't trembling. "Getting up now. We leaving. Not kill if not necessary."
Maxwell and I stood up. Blekeke backed through the door, motioning for us to follow. He walked us ahead of him along a corridor and down two flights of stairs, staying a safe distance behind us.
The entrance to the tunnel was in the basement, through a door that looked like any other door.
Blekeke took off the earphones he was wearing and tossed them aside.
"This 'nizer blow up with house," he said.
The tunnel was wide, straight and brightly lighted. The opposite end was a small black dot, but it didn't take us long to get there.
My thoughts were running wild, now that no one was listening.
The dogs had bothered Blekeke, but how badly? He seemed so damned sure of himself now. No hesitation at all. Or—was it merely resignation? I didn't know. But if he once got us aboard that spaceship, his plan had a ridiculously good chance of succeeding.
... And would that be so bad? Were his motives so ignoble, or his methods so very atrocious?
I drove that line of thought from my mind. I could think about that later....
From the outside entrance of the tunnel, the dark spaceship seemed disturbingly close, and the expanse between it and us free of impediments of any kind. Only fifty or sixty quick steps, and then.... The Martians at the ship saw us and climbed aboard. The ship was beginning to vibrate again.
The two policemen were wandering around by the water's edge. We could hear the dogs howling. Several others had joined in now, but we couldn't see them. They were above us.
"Walk slow to ship," Blekeke instructed, tenseness obvious in his voice. "Casual. Like nothing. I right behind."
Maxwell and I glanced at each other and stepped from the aperture to the gravelly beach and started walking very slowly and casually toward the spaceship.
We had gone about ten feet when we heard, in the short intervals when the dogs weren't howling, the crunching footsteps of Blekeke behind us. They were faltering.
I couldn't resist a backward glance.
I saw about a half-dozen dogs on the hill behind and above Blekeke. They were squatting on their haunches, noses pointed at the spaceship, and they were creating the damnedest racket I had ever heard. Surely the cops would at leastsuspectsomething!
Blekeke was walking stiffly, slowly, keeping the blaster pointed at us, making a visible effort not to turn around.
"Hey, you goddam dogs!" one of the policemen on the beach shouted. "Shut the hell up!" He picked up a rock and threw it, but he was too far away. The missile whizzed low over my head. I ducked instinctively, turning to see where the stone hit. It missed the dogs by a good fifteen or twenty feet.
Other policemen were appearing from the direction of the road, running anxiously toward the dogs, looking in the direction the dogs were pointing.
And seeing nothing.
Other dogs were appearing, too, some well within the vision of Blekeke—but another quick glance showed me that he was staring rigidly ahead and walking steadily.
We were entering the shadow of the spaceship. Less than twenty feet to go. Even in the dim light, I could almost distinguish the features of the Martian waiting there to haul us aboard.
The policemen on the beach were now walking back to join the others. The one who had yelled and thrown the stone now whistled shrilly, and shouted, "Commere, you lousy, flea-bitten mutts, and shut up!"
He whistled again. Insistently.
One dog stopped howling and slunk forward timidly, then halted.
The whistle was a shrill command.
I heard a soft gasp, perhaps a sob, from Blekeke.
The dog trotted slowly, reluctantly, forward, tail between its legs, growling and whining at the same time.
"Running! Running! Hurry!" Blekeke screamed.
Instead, I turned around to watch, and so did Maxwell.
The policeman continued to whistle. Another dog, a large, shaggy collie, left the pack. But it was not timid, and it paid no attention to the policemen—it had seen Blekeke, and it rushed at him, snarling and yapping.
The Martian made a gurgling noise. A shudder shook his frame, and he turned and fired.
I was watching, without really comprehending what I saw, the policeman who had been whistling. Abruptly he stopped whistling. He waslooking. But not at the dogs, nor at the other policemen. Not even at the shaggy collie that vanished suddenly in a blinding flash.
He was looking at the spaceship. And seeing it. He rubbed a hand across his eyes.
When the collie was hit, the terrier which had slunk forward turned. At five feet from Blekeke, it growled and leaped at him.
Blekeke collapsed. The blaster dropped from his hand, and he crumpled into a trembling, twitching, sobbing lump on the ground.
I rushed to grab the blaster, and Maxwell kicked the snarling, frightened dog away.
At the same time, the policeman yelled, "Jupiter! Itisa spaceship! I knew I seen somethin'. I may have had a drink, but I ain't crazy!"
He fired while he was yelling, and the Martian who had been leaning from the port ducked inside. The ship shuddered and rose quickly, with a rumble that was almost drowned by the racket the dogs were making.
The policeman rubbed his eyes. "Huh?... I coulda swore I saw a spaceship. Rightthere. Justnow. Just a second ago."
"Man, you reallyaredrunk," his companion said.
The house blew up an instant later. No policemen were killed or injured in the explosion. They were all gathered on the beach to see why the dogs were howling.
It took a bit of explaining.