The Alien MEGAPACK®

by Talmage Powell

  “Because Valerie and Pete were in tune, and Valerie and I were not. And Pete is a brilliant scientist—capable of bringing some good out of all the evil scientists have made possible. With Valerie, they think he will do that. They implied he’d do some of his work on this planet and some—somewhere else. I still don’t know where—the Wilsons claimed to come from. Does it matter?… Valerie and Pete—they went with the Wilsons, you know. Sometime they’ll be around again, I think. If I ever see Valerie again, I know she’ll still have that look in her eyes that’s all for Pete. I suppose she felt that pull toward him without admitting it, when they met not long before that trip we took. I suppose she would never have admitted it—But after the Wilsons showed how open minded Pete was—is; and how believing Valerie is—how different I am—was—

  “And, after we all saw Irene—when she went into Dikon’s arms there in the door—” Schwartz rose abruptly.

  “That will do!” he said. “We have all we need. No sense in prompting any more of these ravings—”

  Dr. Johnson slipped a case from his pocket and flipped it open. Inside was a shiny hypodermic needle. Lester looked down, not caring now.

  “Wait—Oh, wait! Oh, look!” cried the young nurse.

  She was staring at the desk.

  But the machine was still recording, and Dr. Johnson called attention to it.

  “You’ll excuse me, Dr. Schwartz, but I do want to tie up the medical case. Since I believe you’ve concluded it is to be diagnosed as requiring treatment—” To Lester he said: “We haven’t touched tonight on your leaving the island—or the Wilsons, or Valerie’s and Peter Kyle’s leaving. Or—the way you say you got your burns. Will you give us that again?”

  Lester answered woodenly:

  “At the end I went berserk. I—well, I attacked Wilson. I was accusing him of wanting to deflect Kyle from his work in my Foundation. I think I called him a spy—”

  “My theory—” Dr. Johnson injected smugly.

  “I—I hit him Perhaps I shook him about a bit—Then, I thought I was on fire! Literally burning.

  “I didn’t see the Wilsons leave, or Pete and Valerie, because I ran then and got the boat and rowed ashore and climbed to the road. People came by in a car and brought me—”

  The phone on the desk rang. They all saw now what the nurse had been staring at. Around the cradled phone was a faint nimbus of light, glowing in the dusk.

  It was she, the nurse, who ran and lifted the receiver; but all of them heard the voice, which filled the room with its almost inaudibility.

  “I am—Dikon. I can just manage the phone for a while,” it said. “Just manage it, without using enough force to burn the girls hand.”

  Brown Eye looked at her hand in wonder. It had not occurred to her that she might be hurt by the brightness. Some part of Lester’s heart that had died revived at this seemingly little thing. The nurse was as brave as that—and not thinking of herself very much at all—like Valerie!

  “Can you hear me?” That was Dr. Johnson.

  “Yes, perfectly. You are a doctor, and you—Listen, Doctor! You are not to do that thing to Lester Norman. There is to be no—what is your word?—No lobotomy.”

  Dr. Johnson swore, as a man swears who seldom does it; which is with a peculiar viciousness.

  “I’m not a dupe for any damned séance stuff with bells and lights and voices—” he said then. “Whoever’s talking—from wherever—you are no spirit. And I—”

  “I’m certainly not the ghost of your Aunt Miranda, Doctor!” the clear, far away voice said. “Although—There is a spirit in nearly everything, of some kind. Even in you. Even small things may be imbued—or used—Why, nothing is insignificant, not even a blade of grass. Or, for example—”

  A small and shocking thing happened then.

  The unscreened windows were wide open to the night. Something came in through the window where the moth had entered. Something white and more than white; bright—and more than bright; and it drifted across the room and poised oddly in a dark corner. It fluttered up and down there in one spot, dazzling in the semidarkness.

  It was about face-high to the seated men and woman; it was almost shapeless and yet—perhaps because of its wing-like fluttering—it resembled a winged creature; not very large, but not quite tiny either. It was, perhaps, about six inches high, and five across.

  There was a gasp. Then Dr, Chenkov moved, stood up and walked to where it fluttered, and the fluttering stopped. But the object did not fall as it should have done, had it been impossibly dancing on a wandering zephyr. No, it remained still, but also still suspended in midair. And now you could see what it was—for the white dazzle faded, and it was just a pale leaf from a large-leafed tree, probably a big maple.

  After a moment the leaf moved away, dancing ever so little again, and brightening ever so little again. Out through the window it moved, the window through which it had entered. And the voice on the telephone again impossibly and softly filled the room:

  “It’s as well you didn’t touch it, Doctor.”

  There was silence now, complete and heavy. And then the voice resumed.

  “No lobotomy, gentlemen. This is an order. An order from me which will be made officially by your Superintendent of Hospital, Dr. Schwartz. And he wont hesitate, because if he disobeys, he knows that I can ruin him.”

  The Superintendent did not answer this, but Dr. Johnson did.

  “What could you do to ruin our head doctor?” he demanded. Whoever you are—whatever—you cant do anything to ruin him—”

  There was the sound of a laugh that was no more kindly because of its faraway softness.

  “I can expose him, you see!” said the voice. “You Earth creatures always find angelic beings rather funny—or fairytale fairies, the bright little creatures that bring kindly gifts—Its never been too hard to make you believe in the darker things you call superstitions, you know. And sometimes your dark superstitions that you lock away deep—deep—Though, actually, a witch was burned in Mexico in 1955!—Well, sometimes they are quite true. If you could only believe in good things—as you can’t resist believing in evil ones! You take ill visitants to your hearts. You set them in high places. You make them lords of life and death, and let them lead you into destruction and wholesale slaughter—”

  A queer sound interrupted him, and it seemed to come from the superintendent of the hospital, from the hard, assured Dr. Schwartz. Now that gentleman got unsteadily to his feet and headed for the door. But the voice—and perhaps something else, for there was now a queer odor in the room like the after-smell of a lightning bolt—stopped him.

  “Never mind him! Look at his shadow on the wall!” the voice commanded.

  They did.

  A strange white light was pouring in at the window through which had come and gone the badly behaved leaf. The light played full on Dr. Schwartz, and did indeed cast a sharply silhouetted shadow on the wall. Very black was the shadow. And its shape—

  “God,” cried Dr. Johnson; and there was no doubt that it was a prayer.

  “I could make his true shadow visible wherever he goes,” said the voice.

  Dr, Chenkov sank back into his chair, deeper; and covered his face with his hands.

  “Give your order, Dr, Schwartz,” said the voice.

  And the Superintendent of the hospital gave the order.

  “Release the patient.” He tried twice to go on, and only stuttered, and finally succeeded, “If his burns are healed, release him. And—”

  “Yes?” The voice seemed to be prompting him, now, almost in kindness.

  “Let the girl go with him the nurse, He’s—He’ll need a little—care. Is that all right? May I go? I’m—not well.”

  “Go, by all means. Lester?”

  Lester looked uncertainly at Brown Eyes. She was looking at him. The voice prompted aga
in.

  “Her—position in this hospital—is—well, hardly tenable. She has fought for you. Together you can orient yourselves, and things. You can find your way together—and you’ll want to leave here at once, Lester, and your burns are almost healed, but you aren’t over the shock of them. There are after effects. You need her, Lester—”

  The voice went farther away and faded out. After a questioning moment, Brown Eyes cradled the receiver carefully, still looking at Lester. Lester stood up straight, feeling himself out a little, before he spoke, and when he did, it was to Brown Eyes.

  “Please, will you?” he said humbly.

  She put out her hand and he took it. But they stopped at the door into the corridor hearing Dr. Schwartz’s voice, hoarse and strangled and strange:

  “Dikon—come back. You’ve had your way—again. So—why? Why don’t you leave us alone? You and your shiny, interfering friends. That silly kidnapping. The imbecilic questionnaire. You didn’t do it just to get this commonplace young man’s girl away from him—or to load his stupid little mind with things we don’t let people know or believe in.”

  The room grew bright again. The voice of the one called Dikon seemed to vibrate in the light.

  “Call it recruiting,” Dikon said. “You know that our war is universal. Decay spreads like a virus, and your kind breed the decay of materialism back through the animalistic—down past the amoeba—down into slime. There’s nothing so delightfully, materialistically devouring as the amoeba, is there? Eat and be eaten, and you want men to believe in only what they call the tangible things, and that is the end of that road. Devour and die.

  “So we recruit. Looking for men and women, as you look. Like you, we want them to believe in tangibles. But they must be able to learn the real tangibles are things of light—of being able to really love again.

  “The questionnaire? A basic probe. A thing to find out some who can be recruited—before it is too late.”

  Again the strangled voice—but this time it was not much more than a croak.

  The light faded. Lester Norman and the girl walked away hand in hand.

  A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE, by Charles V. De Vet

  Originally published in Science Fiction Stories, November 1959.

  The second day on the planet we made contact with one group of natives—the race the survey team had named the “Pinks.”

  Several times, as we sat and followed the shade around the space ship, we had gotten glimpses of pink-orange bodies through the pineapple-top trees; and late in the afternoon an old female, followed by two male children, came out into the clearing and stood watching us cautiously.

  “Sit still,” Pastor Gorman said softly. “Any movement might frighten them.”

  After a few minutes the Pinks edged closer to the pile of wild yams we had placed between us and the woods, and we were able to observe them better.

  The old female must have stood over seven feet tall. Her body was covered with orange-streaked pink hair that was straggly and patchy. Her hide reminded me of a moth-eaten rug. Her small round head and long arms were entirely free of hair. She held her hulky shoulders bunched up around her neck and pendulous udders, starting low on her breast, hung down to her waist.

  The children were covered with a film of dust that had caked in oily spots of moisture. Evidently they had been perspiring heavily, after rolling in dirt. None of them wore clothing.

  A soft breeze brought the heavy odor of rancid bodies. “I can smell them from here,” I said.

  Gorman gave me a frown of disapproval. “They’re a primitive race,” he said. “Naturally they won’t be as sanitary as we are.”

  The three Pinks squat down beside the pile of yams and began to eat, tearing off the tough casings of the vegetables with their teeth and spitting them on the ground. After they’d eaten their fill of the yams, they gathered the remainder in their arms and moved quickly away from us. Several dozen other Pinks, who had come out of the woods while they ate, met them and snatched at the yams. There was a brief, snarling, teeth-snapping scrabble, and our late visitors lost the bulk of their spoil.

  Pastor Gorman was quite pleased. “A successful beginning,” he said, pulling himself to his feet. “We’ve shown them we mean no harm. Soon we should be able to prove that we’re their friends. Then our work can begin.”

  Actually it was his work that would begin. I was only Johnny Zarwell, the pilot and owner of the space ship. I had contracted to bring him out here, to spend a year with him on this newly-discovered world, and bring him back again. The missionary work would be all his.

  Gorman was an old man, well into his seventies. After a lifetime of secular work, and realizing that he was approaching the end of his productive years, he had decided to add a last, dramatic, effort to his career. Something that would add weight and significance to his life. Without actually stating it as such, even to himself I believe, he probably saw himself as the Saint Patrick of this world. He would bring the word of God to the savages—humanoid—that had been found here; he would be the first, and would be remembered in their history. I suppose that could be called vanity, but I’m certain it was not a deliberate vanity, and it was a noble one. He was prepared to give everything—including his life if necessary—to teach them of the true God. Pastor Gorman was as thoroughly a good man as I have ever known.

  His church, a rather recent sect who called themselves the Repentants, had furnished the money to hire my ship, and I had flown him to this new world.

  * * * *

  The next day Pastor Gorman and I spent the early hours of the morning digging up wild yams in the forest. He went unarmed, but I carried an electric pistol at my waist; I had no intention of dying a martyr’s death, if I could help it.

  When we’d gathered a couple pecks of yams we carried them to the center of the clearing, and withdrew to the ship. Soon a young Pink, then a flood of others, left the woods and descended on the waiting meal. Each Pink, grabbed as many yams as he could get to and ran off to eat them. Within a half minute the yams had all vanished.

  An old female—probably the same one that had visited us the day before—stayed behind. She had been too slow to get any of the yams and now evidently was hoping we had more.

  Pastor Gorman saw this as his opportunity. He took two steps toward her, and as she gathered herself for flight he spoke quietly. “We are friends.” We had both learned their simple language from the tapes the survey team had made.

  The old female said nothing, but stood watching him warily.

  “We will not hurt you,” Gorman tried again.

  “Hungry,” the old female said.

  “We will feed you,” Gorman assured her.

  “Big hungry,” she said, accenting the adverb.

  “Wait in that place.” Pastor Gorman went into the ship and came out with a loaf of bread and a tin of canned beef. He opened the can and started toward the female.

  She retreated, keeping approximately ten yards distance between them. Pastor Gorman placed the can and the loaf of bread on the ground and returned to where I stood.

  The female approached the food, sniffing, and with drops of saliva dripping from the corners of her mouth. She snatched up the loaf and bit off large chunks and swallowed them greedily. When she finished she took up the can of beef and sniffed at it. She turned it around in her hands several times, spilling the meat to the ground. Disregarding the dropped food she continued to examine the can until she lost interest and tossed it aside.

  “I made a mistake,” Pastor Gorman whispered to me. “I just remembered that they’re yegetarians.”

  “Hungry,” the old female whined.

  “Come with another sun,” Gorman said, moving one arm around in a circle.

  “Hungry,” the female repeated.

  Pastor Gorman shook his head and held his hands out to show that they were empty.

&nb
sp; The female made a disgruntled noise in her throat and left us.

  Gorman smiled with satisfaction. “I think we’ve made out first friend,” he said. “She will bring the others to us.”

  * * * *

  We saw the planet’s other humanoid race the next day.

  The Pinks had eaten the food we had dug in the early morning, and were circling around us, never coming within reach, but seeming to have lost their earlier fear. Pastor Gorman spoke to several of them, but they shied off, too timid to speak.

  Suddenly the Pinks scattered, uttering bleating cries as they disappeared into the woods. It took us a minute to locate the cause of their alarm: Two brown-skinned humanoids at the far edge of the clearing.

  They stood regarding us, evidently very puzzled. After a minute they began moving slowly toward us, cautiously but without apparent fear. Their skin was a light brown color, with a purple cast, and as far as we could see, hairless. They were spindly-limbed, with big stomachs, yet they moved with a wiry agility. Their lower cuspid teeth grew up over their lips and gave them a ferocious appearance. This, I suppose, was the reason the survey crew had named them the “Uglies.” They wore hide cloaks that covered their backs and sides and were knotted across their chests. Each had a stone knife tied in the knotted cord on his chest, and each held a long, stone-tipped spear.

  As they came near they raised their weapons slightly, and I brought my hand cautiously up to my pistol butt. I wore the pistol always when I was outside.

  “Whatever you do, don’t shoot one of them,” Gorman cautioned. “That would be disastrous.”

  “If they make a move to throw those spears I’m going to defend myself,” I gritted lowly.

  “Don’t. Please,” he pleaded. “We can run inside if they prove hostile.” He edged over to the open port of the space ship and I followed.

  “Pale babies,” one of the tanned savages said unexpectedly.

  I saw Pastor Gorman’s eyebrows raise and his face work slightly as he sought the meaning of the words. The Uglies’ language was a bit more complicated than that of the Pinks, but we had had no trouble learning it.