The Alien MEGAPACK®

by Talmage Powell

  I’d had a couple more shots from the rye bottle before bedding down, and what they had done to my visual coordination was atrocious. I saw the intruder, and marked the details, but I wasn’t sure he was really there. There seemed to be kind of a mist between us—where had I seen its like before? Or did the trouble lie in optic nerves frayed by alcohol?

  I mumbled a protest. The man shifted one of his hands, and I saw the thin, metal tube he gripped in heavy fingers. He didn’t blink, or try to smile. He stared at me out of that cold, blank face of his. “Wake up,” he said brusquely. “I haven’t all night!”

  His thick lips scarcely moved. I grunted, “Who’re you?”

  “Who I am means nothing to you, Bradley. I represent people who require your cooperation—”

  I noticed how he put it. “Require.”

  “We are willing to pay you for your service.”

  The difference, I thought, between being inside the law and outside. Outside, they offer to pay for cooperation. I sat up, hugging the blankets around my knees.

  “Every time a different canary,” I said, “but the same old tune.”

  “You have had two offers tonight.” He paused to let the significance sink in. “We’ve been watching. Your race has a saying about a third time being a charm, Bradley. This is it. My organization—”

  “Get out of here with your organization!”

  “Don’t be hasty, Bradley.” His tone was low, rough-edged. “My organization has a certain…interest…in the man you know as Coleman the Great. You may as well know this, that he is a dangerous criminal whom we are trying to apprehend.”

  “Apprehend him, then! Why bother me?”

  “He protects himself well. We need a man, such as yourself, having personal access to him…”

  “I don’t buy,” I sneered. “I’m not even taking the job!”

  “You better had,” he said calmly.

  “Threats, yet!”

  His expression didn’t change. He lifted his hand and the metal tube in it seemed to point directly at me. His thumb moved on the polished metal. Flame crackled thinly by, a foot from my left arm. My bicep and ribs jolted as if smashed with a sledgehammer. The headboard of the bed heaved and crackled; smoke vomited from my pillow, reeking of burned feathers.

  I threw myself off the bed, yelling, and sprawled on the floor, rubbing my arm and sobbing with pain. The stranger laughed, a deep belly chuckle with round, nasty undertones. “I missed you by a foot! Perhaps now you will go to work for Coleman?”

  “He may, but let him decide,” said a new voice.

  The intruder snapped around. I gawked from my pose, frozen on the floor. Willie stood there, indistinct, similar to my visitor, and the same as—

  He held the twin to my guest’s flame-spitting tube.

  The stranger’s neck bulged until the cords stood out. He began to shout, in a foreign language. Willie shouted back at him, but their voices came to me subdued, as from far away. Willie kept saying something that sounded like “Bilfax,” calling the other by name.

  Bilfax pointed his tube at Willie, his thick features distorted with fury. It spat a thin needle-bolt of flame. I expected to see Willie smoke and collapse, but the bolt struck the hazy, opalescent field surrounding him and darted all over it in instantaneous crackling sheets of flame. The air stank of ozone.

  Willie said something again and waved his tube weapon, safe in his protective bubble. He wasn’t stupid enough to fire at Bilfax, similarly protected. Bilfax abruptly vanished, leaving me alone with Willie.

  I struggled half up from the floor, clutching the bed.

  “Sorry for the trouble, Gil. I should have kept closer watch on you.”

  “Are you all right, Gil?” another voice broke in. It was Cleo’s, and she stood beside Willie; she hadn’t been there an instant before. She looked at me, and a pretty picture I must have made, with my pajamas slewed around slaunch-wise, my hair no doubt standing on end with sheer terror.

  “I’m glad you’re all right,” she smiled, worry gradually easing out of her eyes. Had she been worried over me?

  “How…how…?”

  She understood what I meant. “Nothing supernatural, Gil. Roy has a…matter transmitter…”

  “A mass-space matrix de-analysis scanner,” Willie said helpfully.

  It barely made sense, but with personal force shields and matter transmitters available, I began to understand some of Coleman’s so-called illusions.

  “We’ll see you tonight,” said Cleo, “after the show.”

  She disappeared.

  “Good night, Gil,” said Willie, and vanished in turn.

  I groped for the rye on the nightstand. I didn’t bother with a glass. I let the bottle gurgle until empty.

  I sat on the edge of the bed in my pajamas and held my head in my hands, the raw fumes of the rye smarting my palate. I had had too much for one night—not whisky—events!

  I stared at where the most recent event had enacted itself, but there was nothing there to give me a clue I had not been dreaming. I let the thought take hold. Surely, it was simpler to believe I had fallen out of bed and the whole affair had dreamed itself in the split instant of my fall.

  I laughed shakily, cuddling the empty bottle.

  I sat for a while, listening to the rain that had started up again. It beat on the window and sloshed on the fire escape, and I tried to chase the fragments of the dream from my brain.

  To fall asleep immediately, I feared, would drop me back into the dream. Bilfax was a character I didn’t want to meet again—not even in dreams.

  I turned to punch up my pillow. That’s when I saw the seared streak through cover, case and feathers. A singed smell came up, strong. I jerked the pillow aside. The head-board was split, blackened and shattered…and the wall behind it, the plaster burned off, exposing charred lath. And my arm and rib cage still ached numbly.

  I began to shake and sweat started out all over me. I thought of mean-looking people named Bilfax, of needle-flame weapons that maimed just by missing close. Of people knocking around, in and out of my room, by matter transmitter. What did it all add up to? I hadn’t been dreaming!

  I remembered the force shields protecting Bilfax and Willie, and remembered, too, where I had seen their like before—around Cleo when Coleman shot at her on the stage. I had seen what that shield did to the charge from Bilfax’s weapon—I knew what it had done to the bullets from Coleman’s revolver. He had fired real bullets, of course. The shield had passed them around her. And then, the two had exchanged places by means of the matter transmitter. Illusion? Science—beyond anything I had ever heard of! No wonder the B. I. S was interested—and Gregor…what country did he represent, anyway?

  I could guess. And who was Bilfax?

  CHAPTER 3

  At first, Coleman the Great seemed older than I had guessed, and then I decided it was more expression than appearance. He was tired. Weariness tugged the corners of his mouth down, hooded his eyes, made flaccid his thin cheeks. The fine, sensitive nostrils seemed collapsed against the bridge of his nose.

  He was still dressed in the traditional black cutaway and cloak he wore on the stage. Cleo hadn’t changed to I street clothes, either, but she had thrown a robe over her bare shoulders, concealing her G-string costume.

  When she introduced me to Coleman the Great, I had the feeling that she was herself in awe of him. He slumped in a chair. The mirror lights shone on his platinum hair as he looked up at me.

  “I’m glad you’ll be with us, Gil,” he said, calling me by my first name, before I had even spoken to him.

  There was power in his voice, a quiet kind of power. He seemed to take for granted that I had accepted. I wondered what Cleo had told him. He had scanned me with one swift look of his remarkable gray eyes, and he knew. I knew, too, I wanted to work for him.

&nbs
p; I said, “It will be an honor, Mr. Coleman.”

  He smiled. “Everybody calls me Roy, Gil.”

  I grinned. “Okay, Roy!”

  “Would you wait while we change? We’re rather quick at it.”

  Willie was at the stage door, shepherding two taxis. Tom and Joe got into one, Willie got into the front seat of the other, and Coleman, Cleo and I had the back. We bumped along toward the Carlton with a subdued whine of the turbine engine.

  “We’ve another day here,” Coleman said, “then we move on to Miami for a week’s engagement, then to New Orleans…” He discussed the itinerary.

  I listened. My mind was already at work, probing the angles, working out the details of the publicity. By the time we reached the hotel, I had the general plan of my campaign mapped out, depending, of course, on details I’d pick up later from Cleo.

  “Will you come up?” she asked me.

  Neither of them had mentioned last night. I had questions about that, but Coleman looked dreadfully tired. I shook my head, “I’ve got a lot to do, and only a day to do it in. Suppose I join you when you’re ready to leave town?”

  We made plans then to travel south together. I waved, and the taxi scooted off with me, toward the ’copter park. I didn’t see the other cab drift away from the curb and fall in behind mine, but I knew later it must have.

  The supermarket section was still open, and I entered there, making my way toward the public room. Weary clerks stood around, clock watching as the hands crawled toward eleven.

  The emptiness of the place made it easy to notice the man who entered behind me. I looked casually, and the man turned, studying a rack of magazines. I recognized him from his hat and coat, the stoop of his big shoulders. My tail was Johnson, the B. I. S. man.

  I drifted along the row of cash registers, taking my time, and paused in the door of the public room. Although the market closed promptly at eleven, the bar would be open to midnight. I ambled across the public room to the neon-lighted entrance.

  * * * *

  The girl had brought my martini by the time Johnson sauntered by. He looked down and his face lit up as artificial as the neon sign outside.

  “What a surprise!” I said. “I hope you had no trouble following me from the hotel?”

  “That’s what I like about you. You observe things.”

  He sat. His smile was probably as pleasant as he could make it, but his yellow teeth didn’t help. He looked ready to bite.

  “Have a drink?”

  He nodded and I called the girl over. I toyed with my glass, waiting for his to arrive. It came, finally.

  “I guess you took my advice,” he said over the rim of his glass.

  “You must have had the cab wired for sound,” I thrust. “It happens that I don’t take advice—I decided it pleased me to accept Coleman’s offer.”

  “May it please you also to work with us.”

  I twisted my glass, making wet marks on the table. “So I work with you. What am I supposed to discover—Coleman magicking military secrets out of Washington? Why don’t you do your own gum-shoeing?”

  Johnson swilled half his drink and laughed. “You see too much TV.”

  “I’m just curious,” I said, “how I can best serve my country’s interests. I don’t know anything about Coleman. If you say he’s a bad ’un, maybe he is. I’ve got no more sympathy for subversives than you have.”

  Johnson sobered. “I’m not passing judgment on Coleman; all you have to do is see what you see and report.”

  “What am I supposed to see?”

  “Anything. We aren’t particular.”

  “Even unimportant things?”

  “Especially. They might be important to us.”

  “How do I report?”

  “Directly to me.”

  “Where will you be?”

  He fumbled for a card, passed it over. “If I’m not around, phone me at that number. It’s the office. They’ll get in touch with me.”

  I pocketed the card. “I don’t suppose it’ll do any good to ask you what I’m looking for?”

  “That’s right. And you’re not much more in the dark than I am.”

  I frowned at my drink, thinking. I had too many questions in my head to sort them all out. Too many implications were snarling me up, too. I had wanted to talk to Cleo tonight—Lord, how I had wanted to talk to her! But there would be time and opportunity for that later.

  I wasn’t sorry I had decided on the spur of the moment, at it were, to hook up with Coleman. He inspired me with confidence. And there was Cleo, too. Whatever this bloodhound of the law was after, I was sure he was baying up the wrong tree. I was glad enough to go along with him, just to prove him wrong.

  I drained my drink. “Okay, I’m with you.” Ice rattled in the glass as I put it down.. “‘One if by land and two if by sea’—sit tight, Paul Revere’s out for his ride! Suppose Gregor tries to grab the reins?”

  “Never mind Gregor. We’ve got him tabbed.”

  I tried a shot in the dark. “You’ve tabbed Bilfax, too, I guess.”

  Johnson was the picture of a frozen sleuth. “Who?” He shook his big shoulders. “Who’s Bilfax?”

  I laughed, a nasty, jeering sound. “I made him up! Put the drinks on your expense account!”

  I swung jauntily out. Johnson looked stolidly after me and fumbled for his billfold.

  Ordinarily, I’m not keen at looking around, but the events of the past twenty-four hours had made me jumpy and observant. I stopped just short of putting my key in the lock of my apartment door.

  Either I had thoughtlessly left the light on in my living room, or—I pressed my ear against the panel. The apartment house hummed faintly with the myriad voices of heaters, refrigerators, TV sets and living occupants.

  I had learned caution. I retreated up the stairs. There was a carpety smell on the air, endemic with apartment house halls.

  Minutes later, I stole down the fire escape from the roof and paused on the landing outside my bedroom window. Luckily, it was unlocked.

  A fan of pale light seeped under my bedroom door. I crouched at the keyhole. If somebody was in my living room, he would be watching the hall door. I could see my big easy chair, but its back was toward me. But I could also see part of one armrest, and I saw a blue-sleeved elbow resting on it.

  Everything in me screamed to retreat. But somewhere along the line, I had to face things…or wind up like Henderson. I slipped out of my coat, thinking about Henderson.

  Okay, Paul Revere, I told myself, it’s now or never. I flung open the door and leaped. I went over the back of that chair like a tidal wave, grabbing as I went. My fingers found soft throat and gripped. I tumbled over, yanking, and pulled the interloper struggling to the floor.

  There was a high-pitched, strangled scream. Masses of hair—flaming red hair—cascaded in my face.

  I let go like the touch of her burned me and Cleo Parker sat up, making noises. There were tears of pain in her lovely, honey-gold eyes. I tried to help her up, but she pushed me away, ferociously. I can’t say I blamed her.

  She pulled herself shakily into the chair, rubbing her throat. “Do you welcome all your visitors like that?”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I thought it was Bilfax. There is Bilfax you know.”

  She understood. She grimaced wryly, tawny eyes scrunched up. I felt like hell, remembering I’d laid violent hands on the woman I loved. But just that momentary contact with her, frenetic as it had been, had awakened my nervous system to tempestuous fury. My pulse throbbed. I lit a cigarette, nervously, and offered her one.

  “I should have waited,” she admitted, drawing at the match I held. “Naturally, I thought you’d use the hall door.”

  “And so I would have, ordinarily. I suppose you dropped in by matter transmitter?”

  “I
t is unbelievable, isn’t it? Roy possesses science we haven’t dreamed of, Gil. And there are people who want to get it away from him. That’s why we have a bodyguard, and protective devices—”

  “Like personal force shields,” I said, “that turn away wrath. You aren’t wearing yours.”

  “Do I need it…around you? Oh, it’s wonderful and unbelievable, Gil, but it’s true. And now I must ask you to forget all about it.”

  I stuck out my jaw. “Forget? Why?”

  She said, “Get me a drink, Gil. Please.”

  “There’s rye in the kitchen. And ginger ale. Okay?”

  I got the unopened bottle and the ginger ale and mixed two drinks, stiff ones.

  “Here’s to old times!” I drank mine down.

  Cleo sat musing over her glass, her hair a heap of ruffled flame. She smiled, a ghost of expression. “To better times,” she said, and drank.

  “Now, what’s it all about?”

  “It’s all up, Gil. We aren’t going to need your services.” She held a check in her hand. “This will pay for your trouble…”

  I spurned the check, scowling. “‘Gil, we need you! Gil, we don’t need you!’ Blow hot, blow cold, woman, but why both with the same breath?”

  “Roy received an important message tonight. We are leaving within a few hours. Willie has sent wires to Miami and the other stops on our itinerary, canceling our engagements.”

  I picked up the bottle, poured myself a straight one, and tossed it. I offered her the bottle. “This will make you talk plainer.”

  She waved it away. “It’s sudden, Gil, but not unexpected—to us. Roy has just about accomplished what he has set out to do. But now he has to move fast…briefly, Gil, Roy is leaving the stage.”