Dillon turned his back. He gave orders in the barbarous dialect of the mountains. His voice was authoritative. Men obeyed him and dragged uniformed figures out of a light half-track that was plainly a staff car. Dillon beckoned, and Coburn moved toward him. The important thing as far as Coburn was concerned was to get Janice to safety. Then to report the full event.
* * * *
“I…I’m not sure…” began Janice, her voice shaking.
“I’ll prove what I said,” raged Coburn in a low tone. “I’m not crazy, though I feel like it!”
Dillon beckoned again. Janice slipped off the donkey’s back. She looked pitifully frightened and irresolute.
“I’ve located the chap who’s the mayor of this village, or something like that. Take him along. They might not believe you, but they’ll have to investigate when he turns up.”
A white-bearded villager reluctantly climbed into the back of the car. Dillon pleasantly offered to assist Janice into the front seat. She climbed in, deathly white, frightened of Coburn and almost ashamed to admit that his vehement outburst had made her afraid of Dillon, too.
Dillon came around to Coburn’s side of the vehicle. “Privately,” he said with a confidential air, “I’d advise you to dump this mayor person where he can reach authority, and then go away quietly and say nothing of what happened up here. If the Greeks are using some contrivance that handles an affair like this, it will be top secret. They won’t like civilians knowing about it.”
Coburn’s grip on his revolver was savage. It seemed likely, now, that Dillon was the only one of his extraordinary kind about.
“I think I know why you say that,” he said harshly.
Dillon smiled. “Oh, come now!” he protested. “I’m quite unofficial!”
He was incredibly convincing at that moment. There was a wry half-smile on his face. He looked absolutely human; absolutely like the British correspondent Coburn had met in Salonika. He was too convincing. Coburn knew he would suspect his own sanity unless he made sure.
“You’re not only unofficial,” said Coburn grimly. His hand came up over the edge of the staff-car door. It had his revolver in it. It bore inexorably upon the very middle of Dillon’s body. “You’re not human, either! You’re not a man! Your name isn’t Dillon! You’re—something I haven’t a word for! But if you try anything fancy I’ll see if a bullet through your middle will stop you!”
Dillon did not move. He said easily: “You’re being absurd, my dear fellow. Put away that pistol.”
“You slipped!” said Coburn thickly. “You said the Greeks played a trick on this raiding party. But you played it. At Ardea, when you climbed that cliff—no man could climb so fast. No man could run as you ran down into this village. And I saw that body you’re wearing when you weren’t in it! I followed you up the cliff when—” Coburn’s voice was ragingly sarcastic—”when you were taking pictures!”
Dillon’s face went impassive. Then he said: “Well?”
“Will you let me scratch your finger?” demanded Coburn almost hysterically. “If it bleeds, I’ll apologize and freely admit I’m crazy! But if it doesn’t…”
The thing-that-was-not-Dillon raised its eyebrows. “It wouldn’t,” it said coolly. “You do know. What follows?”
“You’re something from space,” accused Coburn, “sneaking around Earth trying to find out how to conquer us! You’re an Invader! You’re trying out weapons. And you want me to keep my mouth shut so we Earth people won’t patch up our own quarrels and join forces to hunt you down! But we’ll do it! We’ll do it!”
The thing-that-was-not-Dillon said gently: “No. My dear chap, no one will believe you.”
“We’ll see about that!” snapped Coburn. “Put those cameras in the car!”
The figure that looked so human hesitated a long instant, then obeyed. It lowered the two seeming cameras into the back part of the staff car.
Janice started to say, “I…I…”
The pseudo-Dillon smiled at her. “You think he’s insane, and naturally you’re scared,” it said reassuringly. “But he’s sane. He’s quite right. I am from outer space. And I’m not humoring him either. Look!”
He took a knife from his pocket and snapped it open. He deliberately ran the point down the side of one of his fingers.
The skin parted. Something that looked exactly like foam-rubber was revealed. There were even bubbles in it.
The pseudo-Dillon said, “You see, you don’t have to be afraid of him. He’s sane, and quite human. You’ll feel much better traveling with him.” Then the figure turned to Coburn. “You won’t believe it, but I really like you, Coburn. I like the way you’ve reacted. It’s very…human.”
Coburn said to him: “It’ll be human, too, when we start to hunt you down!” He let the staff car in gear. Dillon smiled at him. He let in the clutch, and the car leaped ahead.
* * * *
In the two camera-cases Coburn was sure that he had the cryptic device that was responsible for the failure of a cold-war raid. He wouldn’t have dared drive away from Dillon leaving these devices behind. If they were what he thought, they’d be absolute proof of the truth of his story, and they should furnish clues to the sort of science the Invaders possessed. Show the world that Invaders were upon it, and all the world would combine to defend Earth. The cold war would end.
But a bitter doubt came to him. Would they? Or would they offer zestfully to be viceroys and overseers for the Invaders, betraying the rest of mankind for the privilege of ruling them even under unhuman masters?
Janice swayed against his shoulder. He cast a swift glance at her. Her face was like marble.
“What’s the matter?”
She shook her head. “I’m trying not to faint,” she said unsteadily. “When you told me he was from another world I…thought you were crazy. But when he admitted it…when he proved it…”
Coburn growled. The trail twisted and dived down a steep slope. It twisted again and ran across a rushing, frothing stream. Coburn drove into the rivulet. Water reared up in wing-like sheets on either side. The staff car climbed out, rocking, on the farther side. Coburn put it to the ascent beyond. The trail turned and climbed and descended as the stony masses of the hills required.
“He’s—from another world!” repeated Janice. Her teeth chattered. “What do they want—creatures like him? How—how many of them are there? Anybody could be one of them! What do they want?”
“This is a pretty good world,” said Coburn fiercely. “And his kind will want it. We’re merely the natives, the aborigines, to them. Maybe they plan to wipe us out, or enslave us. But they won’t! We can spot them now! They don’t bleed. Scratch one and you find—foam-rubber. X-rays will spot them. We’ll learn to pick them out—and when some specialists look over those things that look like cameras we’ll know more still! Enough to do something!”
“Then you think it’s an invasion from space?”
“What else?” snapped Coburn.
His stomach was a tight cramped knot now. He drove the car hard!
* * * *
In air miles the distance to be covered was relatively short. In road miles it seemed interminable. The road was bad and curving beyond belief. It went many miles east and many miles west for every mile of southward gain. The hour grew late. Coburn had fled Ardea at sunrise, but they’d reached Náousa after midday and he drove frantically over incredible mountain roads until dusk. Despite sheer recklessness, however, he could not average thirty miles an hour. There were times when even the half-track had to crawl or it would overturn. The sun set, and he went on up steep grades and down steeper ones in the twilight. Night fell and the headlights glared ahead, and the staff car clanked and clanked and grumbled and roared on through the darkness.
They probably passed through villages—the headlights showed stone hovels once or twice—but no lights appeared. It was midnight before they saw a moving yellow spot of brightness with a glare as of fire upon steam above it. There were oth
er small lights in a row behind it, and they saw that all the lights moved.
“A railroad!” said Coburn. “We’re getting somewhere!”
It was a railroad train on the other side of a valley, but they did not reach the track. The highway curved away from it.
At two o’clock in the morning they saw electric lights. The highway became suddenly passable. Presently they ran into the still, silent streets of a slumbering town—Serrai—an administrative center for this part of Greece. They threaded its ways while Coburn watched for a proper place to stop. Once a curiously-hatted policeman stared blankly at them under an arc lamp as the staff car clanked and rumbled past him. They saw a great pile of stone which was a church. They saw a railroad station.
Not far away there was a building in which there were lights. A man in uniform came out of its door.
Coburn stopped a block away. There were uneasy stirrings, and the white-bearded passenger from the village said incomprehensible things in a feeble voice. Coburn got Janice out of the car first. She was stiff and dizzy when she tried to walk. The Greek was in worse condition still. He clung to the side of the staff car.
“We tell the truth,” said Coburn curtly, “when we talk to the police. We tell the whole truth—except about Dillon. That sounds too crazy. We tell it to top-level officials only, after they realize that something they don’t know anything about has really taken place. Talk of Invaders from space would either get us locked up as lunatics or would create a panic. This man will tell what happened up there, and they’ll investigate. But we take these so-called cameras to Salonika, and get to an American battleship.”
He lifted Dillon’s two cameras by the carrying-straps. And the straps pulled free. They’d held the cases safely enough during a long journey on foot across the mountains. But they pulled clear now.
Coburn had a bitter thought. He struck a match. He saw the leather cases on the floor of the staff car. He picked up one of them. He took it to the light of the headlights, standing there in the resonant darkness of a street in a city of stone houses.
The leather was brittle. It was friable, as if it had been in a fire. Coburn plucked it open, and it came apart in his hands. Inside there was the smell of scorched things. There was a gritty metallic powder. Nothing else. The other carrying-case was in exactly the same condition.
Coburn muttered bitterly: “They were set to destroy themselves if they got into other hands than Dillon’s. We haven’t a bit of proof that he wasn’t a human being. Not a shred of proof!”
He suddenly felt a sick rage, as if he had been played with and mocked. The raid from Bulgaria was serious enough, of course. It would have killed hundreds of people and possibly hundreds of others would have been enslaved. But even that was secondary in Coburn’s mind. The important thing was that there were Invaders upon Earth. Non-human monsters, who passed for humans through disguise. They had been able to travel through space to land secretly upon Earth. They moved unknown among men, learning the secrets of mankind, preparing for—what?
III
They got into Salonika early afternoon of the next day, after many hours upon an antique railroad train that puffed and grunted and groaned among interminable mountains. Coburn got a taxi to take Janice to the office of the Breen Foundation which had sent her up to the north of Greece to establish its philanthropic instruction courses. He hadn’t much to say to Janice as they rode. He was too disheartened.
In the cab, though, he saw great placards on which newspaper headlines appeared in Greek. He could make out the gist of them. Essentially, they shrieked that Bulgarians had invaded Greece and had been wiped out. He made out the phrase for valiant Greek army. And the Greek army was valiant enough, but it hadn’t had anything to do with this.
From the police station in Serrai—he had been interviewed there until dawn—he knew what action had been taken. Army planes had flown northward in the darkness, moved by the Mayor’s, and Coburn’s, and Janice’s tale of Bulgarian soldiers on Greek soil, sleeping soundly. They had released parachute flares and located the village of Náousa. Parachutists with field radios had jumped, while other flares burned to light them to the ground. That was that. Judging by the placards, their reports had borne out the story Coburn had brought down. There would be a motorized Greek division on the way to take charge of the four-thousand-odd unconscious raiders. There was probably an advance guard there now.
But there was no official news. Even the Greek newspapers called it rumors. Actually, it was leaked information. It would be reasonable for the Greek government to let it leak, look smug, and blandly say “No comment” to all inquiries, including those from Bulgaria.
But behind that appearance of complacency, the Greek government would be going quietly mad trying to understand what so fortunately had happened. And Coburn could tell them. But he knew better than to try without some sort of proof. Yet, he had to tell. The facts were more important than what people thought of him.
The cab stopped before his own office. He paid the driver. The driver beamed and said happily: “Tys nikisame, é?”
Coburn said, “Poly kala. Orea.”
* * * *
His office was empty. It was dustier than usual. His secretary was probably taking a holiday since he was supposed to be out of town. He grunted and sat down at the telephone. He called a man he knew. Hallen—another American—was attached to a non-profit corporation which was attached to an agency which was supposed to coöperate with a committee which had something to do with NATO. Hallen answered the phone in person.
Coburn identified himself. “Have you heard any rumors about a Bulgarian raid up-country?” he asked.
“I haven’t heard anything else since I got up,” Hallen told him.
“I was there,” said Coburn. “I brought the news down. Can you come over?”
“I’m halfway there now!” said Hallen as he slammed down the phone.
Coburn paced up and down his office. It was very dusty. Even the seat of the chair at his secretary’s desk was dusty. The odds were that she was coming in only to sort the mail, and not even sitting down for that. He shrugged.
He heard footsteps. The door opened. His secretary, Helena, came in. She looked surprised.
“I was at lunch,” she explained. She had a very slight accent. She hung up her coat. “I am sorry. I stopped at a store.”
He had paused in his pacing to nod at her. Now he stared, but her back was turned toward him. He blinked. She had just told a very transparent lie. And Helena was normally very truthful.
“You had a good trip?” she asked politely.
“Fair,” said Coburn. “Any phone calls this morning?” he asked.
“Not this morning,” she said politely.
She reached in a desk drawer. She brought out paper. She put it in the typewriter and began to type.
Coburn felt very queer. Then he saw something else. There was a fly in the office—a large, green-bodied fly of metallic lustre. The inhabitants of Salonika said with morbid pride that it was a specialty of the town, with the most painful of all known fly stings. And Helena abhorred flies.
It landed on the bare skin of her neck. She did not notice. It stayed there. Ordinarily she would have jumped up, exclaiming angrily in Greek, and then she would have pursued the fly vengefully with a folded newspaper until she killed it. But now she ignored it.
Hallen came in, stamping. Coburn closed the door behind him. He felt queer at the pit of his stomach. For Helena to let a fly stay on her neck suggested that her skin was…somehow not like its usual self.
“What happened to those Bulgarians?” demanded Hallen.
Coburn told him precisely what he’d seen when he arrived in Náousa after an eight-mile hike through mountains. Then he went back and told Hallen precisely what he’d seen up on the cliffside.
“His cameras were some sort of weapon. He played it on the marching column, it took effect and they went to sleep,” he finished. “I took them away from him and broug
ht them down, but—”
He told about the contents of the camera cases being turned to a gritty, sooty powder. Then he added: “Dillon set them to destroy themselves. You understand. He’s not a man. He’s a creature from some planet other than Earth, passing for a human being. He’s an Invader from space.”
Hallen’s expression was uneasy and compassionate but utterly unbelieving. Helena shivered and turned away her face. Coburn’s lips went taut. He reached down to his desk. He made a sudden, abrupt gesture. Hallen caught his breath and started up.
Coburn said curtly: “Another one of them. Helena, is that foam-suit comfortable?”
The girl jerked her face around. She looked frightened.
“Helena,” said Coburn, “the real Helena, that is, would not sit down on a dusty chair. No woman would. But you did. She is a very truthful girl. You lied to me. And I just stuck pins in your shoulder and you didn’t notice. They’re sticking in your foam suit now. You and the creature that passed for Dillon up-country are both aliens. Invaders. Do you want to try to convince me otherwise?”
The girl said evenly: “Mr. Coburn, I do not think you are well—”
Then Coburn said thickly: “I’m crazy enough to put a bullet through you if your gang of devils has harmed the real Helena. What’s happened to her?”
Hallen moved irresolutely to interfere. But the girl’s expression changed. She smiled. “The real Helena, Mr. Coburn,” said an entirely new voice, “has gone to the suburbs to visit her fiancé’s family. She is quite safe.”
There was dead silence. The figure—it even moved like Helena—got composedly to its feet. It got its coat. It put the coat on. Hallen stared with his mouth open. The pins hadn’t convinced him, but the utterly different voice coming from this girl’s mouth had. Yet, waves of conflicting disbelief and conviction, horror and a racking doubt, chased themselves over his features.
“She admits she’s not Helena!” said Coburn with loathing. “It’s not human! Should I shoot it?”
The girl smiled at him again. Her eyes were very bright. “You will not, Mr. Coburn. And you will not even try to keep me prisoner to prove your story. If I screamed that you attack me—”the smile widened—”Helena’s good Greek friends would come to my assistance.”
The Murray Leinster Megapack Page 79
