“And now the number-one tune on the charts, I’ll Never Forget Your Nose.” William listened to the music as he fished around in his dresser drawer for something to use as an antenna. He found a coil of wire that had come out of an old doorbell he had taken apart. He unwound a few feet of wire and clamped the end between his teeth. “And that’s the local news in the Trinidad, Colorado, area.” William knew he wasn’t anywhere near Colorado. He listened to the station—sure enough, it was a radio station in Trinidad, Colorado. He let go of the wire, and the station switched back to the familiar local one. “. . . and tonight be sure to tune in when Barry Garble talks to a man who has lived underwater for the past fifteen years.”
William thought of another trick to play with his tooth radio. He had just heard the back door slam. His mother was home from the market. William went downstairs to see her. There was a radio in the kitchen. To turn it on, you pushed a button. To turn it off, you pushed the same button again. William helped his mother put away the groceries. Then he asked her for a cookie and a glass of milk.
While his mother was getting a cookie, William clenched his teeth. “The President has a cold today, and did not come to work,” the tooth radio said.
William’s mother reached up and pushed the button to turn off the kitchen radio, which turned it on. “Are you tired? Depressed? Miserable? Stupid? Klunkie’s Pills, made with real extract of chopped chicken livers, will—”
She pushed the button again. William clenched his teeth. “The President’s physician said that the President should get plenty of rest, drink liquids, and stay out of drafts.”
William’s mother was getting annoyed. She pushed the button again hard. William unclenched his teeth. The kitchen radio came on. “Klunkie’s Pills cure asthma, chills, fever, and—”
She pushed the button so hard that the radio almost fell off the shelf. William clenched his teeth. “Back in 1957, President Eisenhower had a cold—”
She pushed the button. She was getting red in the face. “. . . malaria, mange, baldness, pimples, thrips—”
William’s mother pulled the plug. “What is wrong with this radio?” she said. “I’ll have your father look at it when he gets home.”
William was almost choking on the cookie. He was having a hard time not laughing. Before he left the room, he clenched his teeth for a couple of seconds. “President Coolidge had a cold in . . .”William’s mother looked at the dangling plug. William had to run upstairs so she wouldn’t hear him laughing.
When William’s father came home, he spent a lot of time whispering in the kitchen with William’s mother. That wasn’t usual, but William didn’t pay any special attention to it. At the supper table he noticed that his parents were smiling and winking at each other quite a lot. He thought they must be in an extra good mood.
“Something is wrong with the kitchen radio,” William’s mother said. William waited, and listened to the radio station inside his head. A station break was coming. He clenched. “This is WXXO Radio—”
“Did someone say radio?” William’s father asked.
William clenched. “. . . radio all day and all night—”
“Have some carrots,” William’s mother said.
William clenched his teeth as hard as he could. “AND NOW THE NEWS. TODAY A LARGE CARDBOARD CARTON OF FROZEN POTATO PANCAKES WAS SIGHTED FLOATING IN OUTER SPACE—”
“Do you want some more milk, William?” his mother said.
What was wrong? Why couldn’t his parents hear the radio? William had been clenching his teeth as hard as he could. The radio tooth was so loud it almost gave him a headache.
“You’ll never guess who I met downtown today,” William’s father said. “It was Dr. Horwitz, the dentist who takes care of William’s teeth.”
“He’s an awfully nice man,” William’s mother said. She was starting to giggle.
“Yes he is,” William’s father said, “a very nice man, and so interesting. He told me some fascinating things about dentistry.”
So that was it. Horwitz had finked. William decided that he was going to bite Dr. Horwitz’s finger one of these days.
“And guess who happened to come by while we were talking,” William’s father went on.
“Who was it, dear?” William’s mother was laughing so hard she could hardly talk.
“It was Mr. Wendel, William’s teacher,” his father said, “and he had something fascinating to tell us. It seems that someone in William’s class was playing a radio today, and Mr. Wendel just couldn’t find it. The poor man finally had to send the whole class home.”
“That certainly is fascinating,” William’s mother said. She was laughing so hard now that she had to hang onto the table to keep from falling out of her chair. “And what did Dr. Horwitz have to say about dentistry that was so fascinating?”
“It seems that Dr. Horwitz had just done a filling for one of his patients, and that filling turned out to work just like a radio.”
“Imagine that,” William’s mother said. “Was the patient anyone we know?”
“Now, let me think,” his father said. “I believe it was someone we know. Now who was it? Oh, yes! It was our very own son, William!”
William’s father and mother were both helpless with laughter. He hated it when they got this way. He was good and mad. Why did Dr. Horwitz have to go blabbing things? And why did Mr. Wendel have to turn up, and make things worse? Some day he was going to get even with those guys.
William’s parents were finished laughing, and were now at the wet-eyed and sighing stage. William got ready for the serious part.
“William, Mr. Wendel understands that there will be no more problems with radios in school,” his father said, “and Dr. Horwitz is of the opinion that your tooth will settle down in a day or two and stop receiving—but if it doesn’t, he can see you on Saturday and put a nice coating of epoxy on it. Meanwhile, no more tricks, and no listening to your tooth in bed. Now, see if you can get me the baseball scores on your molar, son.” At this point, William’s father collapsed into laughter again. William got up and walked straight out of the kitchen, into the backyard. He was disgusted. Adults never know a good thing when they see it. His tooth was one in a million, and his parents thought it was a big joke.
William stood in the backyard. He could hear his parents laughing inside the house. They thought the whole thing was funny. They didn’t care that they had just ruined everything for their only son. William was angry and miserable. It wasn’t going to be very much fun, having a one-in-a-million tooth, if it was going to be coated with epoxy in a few days. “If I ever have a little boy, and he is lucky enough to get a radio tooth, I’m going to do everything I can to help him enjoy it,” William thought.
William fished the piece of wire, the part of a taken-apart doorbell, out of his pocket. He played with the wire, idly, while standing in the backyard. It was a heavy, damp night. There was a storm brewing somewhere. Already, William could see a little glow in the sky now and then-lightning a long way off. He put one end of the wire in his mouth. “In East Trinidad, there will be a meeting of the Cowboy’s Mah Jong Club, behind the feed store at seven-thirty.” It was that station in Trinidad, Colorado. It was coming in very clear. William remembered that he had planned to try out a longer piece of wire. He had some up in his room, but he didn’t want to go back into the house. He didn’t want to see his mother and father. He was still mad at them. Then William had a bright idea.
All around the backyard was a metal chain-link fence. William could wrap one end of his piece of wire around a fence post, and the whole thing would act as one immense antenna. He cheered up. “I bet I get to hear China,” he said.
William twisted one end of his wire around a fence post. The other end he put in his mouth. Then he had a very unusual experience. He felt a thumping—like the thumping of a bass drum—and he heard a sort of rushing, buzzing noise. And he saw amazing colors, purple and red and blue. And his body did things all by itself. All the
se things seemed to be going on for a long time, but William knew they were happening very fast. And while all those things were happening, William was remembering all he knew about static electricity. He thought about when it is cold and dry, and you rub your feet on the carpet—and you touch the doorknob, and there is a snap, and you can see a little spark. It seemed to William that the chain-link fence had stored up a very big charge of static electricity, and William had bitten right into it. He noticed that he was lying in the grass and having a hard time catching his breath. Nothing hurt him, but he had a very funny taste in his mouth.
Then William noticed that his tooth was not receiving. At first, he thought the tooth had gone completely dead. Then he was able to hear some faint static. But there was no program. There was no WXXO. William clenched his teeth. The static got louder. William listened. He was lying in the grass, where he had landed when he got the shock. The static was kind of rhythmical, like music. It was interesting. William thought it was almost like a language.
The more William listened to the strange static, the more he felt that he could almost understand it. It wasn’t as though he could hear words coming through the crackling and whistling. It was the noise itself that had meaning. When William tried to listen hard, it was difficult to understand. When he just relaxed, and half-paid attention, it was almost possible to understand.
“William, we’re going now. We’ll be visiting across the street. Don’t lie there in the grass all evening.” It was William’s parents. A few months ago, there had been some big arguments about baby-sitters. William had finally persuaded his parents that he was old enough to be left by himself, at least when they were not going any farther away than the house of a neighbor across the street.
“I’ll go in soon,” William said. “I’m just looking at the sky.” He was not exactly lying. He was looking at the sky, while listening to the strange rhythmic static on his tooth. It looked as though it might not rain after all. The clouds were breaking up, and a few stars were showing.
The static was starting to make sense. It wasn’t like anything William had ever heard. He knew what the noises meant. He could tell the directions they came from. The noises were spacemen talking to one another.
Somehow, William’s tooth had been converted to receive the signals between the spacemen. Probably the charge of static electricity had done it. The static told William more than words ever did. He could tell that there were a number of different spacemen talking. Some were far away in spaceships, some were on the Earth. William could tell where the spacemen were in relation to one another. He could tell how fast they were moving, and in which direction. It was almost as if he could see the spaceships. It was like listening to a baseball game on the radio. He could see the players in their various positions. As new information came over the radio, William could move the players in his mind—play the game in his mind.
This was better than a baseball game. The field was thousands of miles—millions of miles. The players were spaceships that moved with such speed, they could go so fast and so far, that they would disappear in seconds and reappear in some other part of the sky. They reminded William of those bugs that scoot on the surface of water in summer.
William was listening to twenty or thirty conversations at once. He had no trouble sorting them out. He could tell where each spaceman was, and what he was talking about. Some of the conversations were about potato pancakes. Some spacemen were assembling huge piles of potato pancakes in remote places on Earth. Spaceships would come and collect the potato pancakes and speed away with them. Other conversations were about navigation, and spaceships keeping in touch with one another. Some of the conversations were about a boy, an earth-boy who was listening in. The spacemen knew that William was listening! It made him shiver.
One of the spaceships was getting closer! As it got closer, the static from the spaceship got louder and clearer. It seemed to William that the spaceship was getting bigger and bigger. It was zooming toward him. William decided to get up and go inside the house. He discovered that he couldn’t move. He couldn’t even twitch a finger. He could see the spaceship—a spot of light, a long way off. It was getting bigger and bigger. He could see it clearly. It was saucer-shaped, and glowing and spinning. The static from the spaceship was so loud that William couldn’t even hear his heart, which was pounding. Now the spaceship was directly over him, and falling. He was sure the thing was going to crush him. The static kept telling him not to be scared, but he was scared anyway. He was good and scared.
The saucer stopped falling, and just hung in the air, about twenty feet above him. William could see that it was made of metal. It had a reddish color, that changed to blue or green from time to time. It was spinning slowly, and rocking slightly from side to side. Up till now, William had not thought of screaming for help. He thought of it now, and gave it a try. The static was so loud that he couldn’t tell if anything was getting out.
He was still screaming, or trying to, when he started floating up. He was moving through the air slowly, as though something were drawing him up toward the spaceship, and he was spinning with the spaceship. It was a weird feeling. William didn’t like it. It must have taken about a minute for William to spin and float up to the saucer. When he had almost reached it, a hole appeared in the metal skin of the thing. It wasn’t like a door; it was a round hole that appeared in the metal, very small, and got larger as William got closer. As he passed through it, the hole closed again under him. He knew this because he found himself lying on a solid metal floor the moment he had gone through.
All around him were cardboard cartons. They were ordinary cartons, the kind that pile up behind the supermarket. They had advertising for cigarettes and toilet tissues printed on them. They were all different sizes and shapes, and they were all full of potato pancakes, fresh and frozen.
William discovered he could move again. He had a look at the room he was in. It was glowing with a greenish light that seemed to come from everywhere. The walls and floor and ceiling were made of metal. There was a little round thing on the ceiling, made of shiny metal. It was about the size of a tennis ball, and covered with little bumps. The room seemed to be a sort of storage room or closet.
“You have been captured by a spaceburger from the planet Spiegel.” It was the little round thing talking—a sort of loudspeaker. It was making the same sort of static noise that William had been receiving on his tooth. He understood it perfectly. “No harm will come to you. You will be treated fairly, and returned to your home,” the speaker went on. William was good and scared, even though the little round metal thing had told him that no harm would come to him.
“I want to go home,” William said.
“That is not possible at this time,” the speaker said, “but we will let you out of the storage hold.”
“Fine,” William said, “let me out.”
“First you must promise that you will not attempt to harm the spaceburger, and that you will abide by the regulations governing spacemen on board this craft.”
“I promise,” William said.
“Also you must promise not to tell anyone about the things you see and hear on the spaceburger,” the speaker said.
“I won’t say a word,” William said.
“In a few seconds a door will open, and you may go up the ladder,” the speaker said.
William was a little scared at the thought of meeting the spacemen. He had seen a lot of science-fiction movies. Maybe they were green and scaly, like lizards. Maybe they had heads like flies, with big weird fly-eyes. Maybe they were like green weeds, and talked in horrible whispers.
There was nothing to do but go and find out. A door opened—it just appeared in the wall, like the round hole William had floated through when he had been brought on board, and beyond it a ladder. William climbed the ladder. The ladder took him up into a metal corridor. It was glowing green like the storage hold, only brighter. It was hot in the corridor, and William could hear something buzzing. He
had an idea that he was somewhere near the engine, or whatever made the spaceburger go.
William walked along the corridor until he came to the end. There weren’t any doors, just smooth metal walls, glowing green. At the end of the corridor was another round shiny metal speaker, like the one in the storage hold. “Are you out there?” the speaker said.
“Yes,” William said. A door appeared, and William stepped into a room. He could tell it was the control room of the spaceburger. It looked like the control room of all the spaceships he had seen in movies, and on TV. There were lots of TV screens and flashing lights, and panels of buttons and dials. There was also a deep-fryer and a soft ice cream machine.
The spacemen weren’t at all what William had expected. They looked like ordinary earth-people, except that they were fatter than most. William guessed that they weighed at least 350 pounds apiece. There were seven or eight of them. They didn’t have the sort of uniforms that William had always seen spacemen wearing in movies. All the spacemen were wearing plaid sport jackets, and dacron slacks. They had knitted neckties, and black-and-white shoes with thick rubber soles. They all had crew cuts and they all wore eyeglasses made of heavy black plastic. The only thing about their clothing that was sort of nifty and spacemanlike was their belts. The belts were wide and made out of white plastic. They had silver buckles in the shape of a cheeseburger with a bolt of lightning going through it. Some of the spacemen had tie clips with the same design.
“I am Hanam, the Captain of this spaceburger,” one of the spacemen said. “We apologize for having to capture you, but we had a bad experience not long ago. It seems one of our spaceburgers picked up an earth person, and, even though he promised not to say anything about it, as soon as he was released, he went on a radio program and blabbed about everything he had seen. We can’t take the chance that you’ll do the same thing—especially now, so close to the invasion.”
“Invasion?” William said. “Are you going to invade Earth?”
“Of course we are,” Hanam said. “Don’t you ever go to the movies? Spacemen always invade places. We have been collecting all the potato pancakes we can find and shipping them back to our leader, Sargon, on the planet Spiegel—they’re his favorite. Now that we have collected most of the potato pancakes, we are getting ready to invade.”
Four Different Stories Page 8
