"It's perfectly safe," the second young man said. "We've been taking sightseers through all day. I'm Vine 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.
"Boss," I said, "about time to git, isn't it?"
Without looking around he answered, "We're as safe here as anywhere. Safer, probably. This building may be swarming with them."
"Swarming with what?"
"How would I know? Swarming with whatever he was." He pointed to Barnes's body. "That's what I've got to find out."
Mary gave a choked sob, the first honest feminine thing I had known her to do, and gasped, "He's still breathing. Look!"
The body lay facedown; the back of the jacket heaved as if the chest were rising. The Old Man looked at it and poked at it with his cane. "Sam. Come here."
I came. "Strip it," he went on. "Use your gloves. And be careful."
"Booby trap?"
"Shut up. Use care."
I don't know what he expected me to find, but he must have had a hunch that was close to truth. I think the bottom part of the Old Man's brain has a built-in integrator which arrives at a logical necessity from minimum facts the way a museum johnny reconstructs an extinct animal from a single bone.
I took him at his word. First pulling on gloves-agent's gloves; I could have stirred boiling acid with my gloved hand, yet I could feel a coin in the dark and call heads or tails-once gloved, I started to turn him over to undress him.
The back was still heaving; I did not like the look of it-unnatural. I placed a palm between the shoulder blades.
A man's back is bone and muscle. This was jelly soft and undulating. I snatched my hand away.
Without a word Mary handed me a fancy pair of scissors from Barnes's desk. I took them and cut the jacket away. Presently I folded it back and we all looked. Underneath the jacket the body was dressed in a light single, almost transparent. Between this shirt and the skin, from the neck halfway down the back, was something which was not flesh. A couple of inches thick, it gave the corpse a round-shouldered, or slightly humped, appearance.
It pulsed like a jellyfish.
As we watched, it slid slowly off the back, away from us. I reached out to peel up the singlet, to let us at it; my hand was knocked away by the Old Man's cane. "Make up your mind," I said and rubbed my knuckles.
He did not answer but tucked the end of his cane under the bottom of the shirt and worried it up the trunk. The thing was uncovered.
Grayish, faintly translucent, and shot through with darker structure, shapeless-it reminded me of a giant clot of frogs' eggs. It was clearly alive, for it pulsed and quivered and moved by flowing. As we watched it flowed down into the space between Barnes's arm and chest, filled it and stayed there, unable to go farther.
"The poor
devil," the Old Man said softly.
"Huh? That?"
"No. Barnes. Remind me to see to it that he gets the Purple Heart, when this is over. If it ever is over." The Old Man straightened up and slumped around the room, as if he had forgotten completely the gray horror nestling in the crook of Barnes's arm.
I drew back a bit and continued to stare at it, my gun ready. It could not move fast; it obviously could not fly; but I did not know what it could do and I was not taking chances. Mary moved closer to me and pressed her shoulder against mine, as if for human comfort. I put my free arm around her.
On a side table there was an untidy stack of cans, the sort used for stereo tapes. The Old Man took a double program can, spilled the reels on the floor, and came back with it. "This will do, I think." He placed the can on the floor, near the thing, and began chivvying it with his cane, trying to irritate it into crawling into the can.
Instead it oozed back until it was almost entirely under the body. I grabbed the free arm and heaved what was left of Barnes away from the spot; the thing clung momentarily, then flopped to the floor. After that, under dear old Uncle Charlie's directions, Mary and I used our guns set at lowest power to force it, by burning the floor close to it, into the can. We got it in, a close fit, and I slapped the cover on.
The Old Man tucked the can under his arm. "On our way, my dears."
On the way out he paused in the partly open door to call out a parting to Barnes, then, after closing the door, stopped at the desk of Barnes's secretary. "I'll be seeing Mr. Barnes again tomorrow," he told her. "No, no appointment. I'll phone first."
Out we went, slow march, the Old Man with the can full of thing under his arm and me with my ears cocked for alarums. Mary played the silly little moron, with a running monologue. The Old Man even paused in the lobby, bought a cigar, and inquired directions, with bumbling, self-important good nature.
Once in the car he gave me directions, then cautioned me against driving fast. The directions led us into a garage. The Old Man sent for the manager and said to him, "Mr. Malone wants this car-immediately." It was a signal I had had occasion to use myself, only then it had been "Mr. Sheffield" who was in a hurry. I knew that the duo would cease to exist in about twenty minutes, save as anonymous spare parts in the service bins.
The manager looked us over, then answered quietly, "Through that door over there." He sent the two mechanics in the room away on errands and we ducked through the door.
We ended up presently in the apartment of an elderly couple; there we became brunets and the Old Man got his bald head back. I acquired a moustache which did nothing for my looks, but I was surprised to find that Mary looked as well dark as she had as a redhead. The "Cavanaugh" combination was dropped; Mary got a chic nurse's costume and I was togged out as a chauffeur while the Old Man became our elderly, invalid employer, complete with shawl and temper tantrums.
A car was waiting for us when we were ready. The trip back was no trouble; we could have remained the carrot-topped Cavanaughs. I kept the screen turned on to Des Moines, but, if the cops had turned up the late Mr. Barnes, the newsboys hadn't heard about it.
We went straight down to the Old Man's office-straight as one can go, that is-and there we opened the can. The Old Man sent for Dr. Graves, the head of the Section's bio lab, and the job was done with handling equipment.
We need not have bothered. What we needed were gas masks, not handling equipment. A stink of decaying organic matter, like the stench from a gangrenous wound, filled the room and forced us to slap the cover back on and speed up the blowers. Graves wrinkled his nose. "What in the world was that?" he demanded. "Puts me in mind of a dead baby."
The Old Man was swearing softly. "You are to find out," he said. "Use handling equipment. Work it in suits, in a germ-free compartment, and don't assume that it is dead."
"If that is alive, I'm Queen Anne."
"Maybe you are, but don't take chances. Here is all the help I can give. It's a parasite; it's capable of attaching itself to a host, such as a man, and controlling the host. It is almost certainly extra-terrestrial in origin and metabolism."
The lab boss sniffed. "Extra-terrestrial parasite on a terrestrial host? Ridiculous! The body chemistries would be incompatible."
The Old Man grunted. "Damn your theories. When we captured it, it was living on a man. If that means it has to be a terrestrial organism, show me where it fits into the scheme of things and where to look for its mates. And quit jumping to conclusions; I want facts."
The biologist stiffened. "You'll get them!"
"Get going. Wait-don't use more of it than necessary for your investigations; I need the major portion as evidence. And don't persist in the silly assumption that the thing is dead; that perfume may be a protective weapon. That thing, if alive, is fantastically dangerous. If it gets on one of your laboratory men, I'll almost certainly have to kill him."
The lab director said nothing more, but he left without some of his cockiness.
The Old Man settled back in his chair, sighed, and closed his eyes. He seemed to have gone to sleep; Mary and I kept quiet. After five minutes or so he opened his eyes, looked at me, and said, "How many mustard plasters the size of that thing Doc just carted out of here can arrive in a space ship as big as that fraud we looked at?"
"Was there a space ship?" I asked. "The evidence seems slim."
"Slim but utterly incontrovertible. There was a ship. There still is a ship."
"We should have examined the site."
"That site would have been our last sight. The other six boys weren't fools. Answer my question."
"I can't. How big the ship was doesn't tell me anything about its payload, when I don't know its propulsion method, the jump it made, or what supply load the passengers require. It's a case of how long is a piece of rope? If you want a horseback guess, I'd say several hundred, maybe several thousand."
"Mmm . . . yes. So there are several hundred, maybe several thousand zombies in the State of Iowa tonight. Or harem guards, as Mary puts it." He thought for a moment. "But how am I to get past them to the harem? We can't go around shooting every round-shouldered man in Iowa; it would cause talk." He smiled feebly.
"I'll put you another question with no answer," I said. "If one space ship lands in Iowa yesterday, how many will land in North Dakota tomorrow? Or in Brazil?"
"Yes, there's that." He looked still more troubled. "I'll answer it by telling you how long is your piece of rope."
"Huh?"
"Long enough to choke you to death. You kids go wash up and enjoy yourselves; you may not have another chance. Don't leave the offices."
I went back to Cosmetics, got my own skin color back and in general resumed my normal appearance, had a soak and a massage, and then went to the staff lounge in search of a drink and some company. I looked around, not knowing whether I was looking for a blonde, brunette, or redhead, but feeling fairly sure that I could spot the right chassis.
It was a redhead. Mary was in a booth, sucking on a drink and looking much as she had looked when she was introduced to me as my sister. "Hi, Sis," I said, sliding in beside her.
She smiled and answered, "Hello, Bud. Drag up a rock," while moving to make room for me.
I dialed for bourbon and water which I needed for medicinal purposes and then said, "Is this your real appearance?"
She shook her head. "Not at all. Zebra stripes and two heads. What's yours?"
"My mother smothered me with a pillow the first time she saw me, so I never got a chance to find out."
She again looked me over with that side-of-beef scrutiny, then said, "I can understand her actions, but I am probably more hardened than she was. You'll do, Bud."
"Thanks." I went on, "Let's drop this 'Bud-and-Sis' routine; I find it gives me inhibitions."
"Hmm . . . I think you need inhibitions."
"Me? Not at all. Never any violence with me; I'm more the 'Barkis-is-willing' type." I might have added that, if I laid a hand on her a
nd she happened not to like it. I'd bet that I would draw back a bloody stump. The Old Man's kids are never sissies.
She smiled. "So? Well, note it down that Miss Barkis is not willing, at least not this evening." She put down her glass. "Drink up and let's reorder."
We did so and continued to sit there, feeling warm and good, and, for the moment, not worried. There aren't many hours like that, especially in our profession; it makes one savor them.
One of the nicest things about Mary was that she did not turn on the sex, except for professional purposes. I think she knew-I'm sure she knew-what a load of it she possessed. But she was too much of a gentleman to use it socially. She kept it turned down low, just enough to keep us both warm and comfortable.
While we sat there, not saying much, I got to thinking how well she would look on the other side of a fireplace. My job being what it was, I had never thought seriously about getting married-and after all, a babe is just a babe; why get excited? But Mary was an agent herself; talking to her would not be like shouting off Echo Mountain. I realized that I had been lonely for one hell of a long time.
"Mary-"
"Yes?"
"Are you married?"
"Eh? Why do you ask? As a matter of fact I'm not-now. But what business-I mean, why does it matter?"
"Well, it might," I persisted.
She shook her head.
"I'm serious," I went on. "Look me over. I've got both hands and both feet. I'm fairly young, and I don't track mud in the house. You could do worse."
She laughed, but her laugh was kindly. "And you could work up better lines than that. I am sure they must have been extemporaneous."
"They were."
"And I won't hold them against you. In fact, I'll forget them. Listen, wolf, your technique is down; just because a woman tells you that she is not going to sleep with you tonight is no reason to lose your head and offer her a contract. Some women would be just mean enough to hold you to it."
"I meant it," I said peevishly.
"So? What salary do you offer?"
"Damn your pretty eyes. If you want that type of contract, I'll go along; you can keep your pay and I'll allot half of mine to you . . . unless you want to retire."
The Puppet Masters Page 2
