She walked confidently to the door and opened it. Then she said warmly: “You are very intelligent, Mr. Coburn. We approve of you very much. But nobody will believe you.”
The office door closed.
Coburn turned stiffly to the man he’d called to hear him. “Should I have shot her, Hallen?”
Hallen sat down as if his knees had given way beneath him. After a long time he got out a handkerchief and painfully mopped his face. At the same time he shivered.
“N-no.…” Then he swallowed. “My God, Coburn! It’s true!”
“Yes,” said Coburn bitterly, “or you’re as crazy as I am.”
Hallen’s eyes looked haunted. “I—I…” He swallowed again. “There’s no question about the Bulgarian business. That did happen! And you were there. And—there’ve been other things.… Rumors.… Reports that nobody believed.… I might be able to get somebody to listen.…” He shivered again. “If it’s true, it’s the most terrible thing that ever happened. Invaders from space.… Where do you think they came from, Coburn?”
“The creature that looked like Dillon could climb incredibly fast. I saw it run and leap. Nothing on Earth could run or leap like that.” Coburn shrugged. “Maybe a planet of another sun, with a monstrous gravity.”
“Try to get somebody to believe that, eh?” Hallen got painfully to his feet. “I’ll see what I can do. I…don’t know that I can do anything but get myself locked up for observation. But I’ll call you in an hour.”
He went unsteadily out of the door. Coburn instantly called the Breen Foundation on the telephone. He’d left Janice there less than an hour before. She came to the phone and gasped when she heard his voice. Raging, he told her of Helena, then cautioned her to be especially careful—to be suspicious of everybody.
“Don’t take anybody’s word!” snapped Coburn. “Doubt everybody! Doubt me! Until you’re absolutely certain. Those creatures are everywhere.… They may pretend to be anybody!”
After Coburn hung up on Janice, he sat back and tried to think logically. There had to be some way by which an extra-terrestrial Invader could be told instantly from a human being. Unmask and prove even one such creature, and the whole story would be proved. But how detect them? Their skin was perfectly deceptive. Scratched, of course, they could be caught. But one couldn’t go around scratching people. There was nothing of the alien creature’s own actual form that showed.
Then Coburn remembered the Dillon foam suit. The head had been hollow. Flaccid. Holes instead of eyes. The creature’s own eyes showed through.
But he’d have to make certain. He’d have to look at a foam-suited creature. He could have examined Helena’s eyes, but she was gone now. However, there was an alternative. There was a Dillon in Salonika, as there was a Helena. If the Dillon in Salonika was the real Dillon—if there were a real Dillon—he could look at his eyes. He could tell if he were the false Dillon or the real one.
* * * *
At this hour of the afternoon a Britisher would consider tea a necessity. There was only one place in Salonika where they served tea that an Englishman would consider drinkable. Coburn got into a cab and gave the driver the address, and made sure of the revolver in his pocket. He was frightened. He was either going to meet with a monster from outer space, or be on the way to making so colossal a fool of himself that a mental asylum would yawn for him.
He went into the one coffee-shop in Salonika which served drinkable tea. It was dark and dingy inside, though the tablecloths were spotless. He went in, and there was Dillon.
Coburn’s flesh crawled. If the figure sitting there with the London Times and a cup of tea before him were actually a monster from another planet…
But Dillon read comfortably, and sipped his tea. Coburn approached, and the Englishman looked up inquiringly.
“I was…up in the mountains,” said Coburn feverishly, “when those Bulgarians came over. I can give you the story.”
Dillon said frostily: “I’m not interested. The government’s officially denied that any such incident took place. It’s merely a silly rumor.”
It was reasonable that it should be denied. But it had happened, nonetheless. Coburn stared, despite a consciousness that he was not conspicuously rational in the way his eyes searched Dillon’s face hungrily. The eyes were different! The eyes of the Dillon up in the mountains had been larger, and the brown part—But he had to be sure.
Suddenly, Coburn found himself grinning. There was a simple, a perfect, an absolute test for humanity!
Dillon said suspiciously: “What the devil are you staring at me for?”
Coburn continued to grin uncontrollably, even as he said in a tone of apology: “I hate to do this, but I have to be sure.…”
He swung. He connected with Dillon’s nose. Blood started.
Coburn zestfully let himself be thrown out, while Dillon roared and tried to get at him through the flying wedge of waiters. He felt an enormous relaxation on the way back to his office in another cab. He was a trifle battered, but it was worth it.
* * * *
Back in the office he called Hallen again. And again Hallen answered. He sounded guilty and worried.
“I don’t know whether I’m crazy or not,” he said bitterly. “But I was in your office. I saw your secretary there—and she didn’t feel pins stuck in her. And something did happen to those Bulgarians that the Greeks don’t know anything about, or the Americans either. So you’re to tell your story to the high brass down in Athens. I think you’ll be locked up afterward as a lunatic—and me with you for believing my own eyes. But a plane’s being readied.”
“Where do I meet you?” asked Coburn.
Hallen told him. A certain room out at the airport. Coburn hung up. The telephone rang instantly. He was on the way out, but he turned back and answered it. Janice’s voice—amazingly convincing—came from the instrument. And at the first words his throat went dry. Because it couldn’t be Janice.
“I’ve been trying to get you. Have you tried to reach me?”
“Why, no. Why?”
Janice’s voice said: “I’ve something interesting to tell you. I left the office an hour ago. I’m at the place where I live when I’m in Salonika. Write down the address. Can you come here? I’ve found out something astonishing!”
He wrote down the address. He had a feeling of nightmarishness. This was not Janice—
“I’m clearing up some matters you’ll guess at,” he said grimly, “so I may be a little while getting there. You’ll wait?”
He hung up. And then with a rather ghastly humor he took some pins from a box on the desk and worked absorbedly at bending one around the inside of the band of the seal ring he wore on his right hand.
* * * *
But he didn’t go to the telephoned address. He went to the Breen Foundation. And Janice was there. She was the real Janice. He knew it instantly he saw her. She was panic-stricken when he told her of his own telephone experience. Her teeth chattered. But she knew—instinctively, she said—that he was himself. She got into the cab with him.
They reached the airport and found the office Hallen had named. The lettering on it, in Greek and French, said that it was a reception room for official visitors only.
“Our status is uncertain,” said Coburn drily. “We may be official guests, or we may be crazy. It’s a toss-up which status sticks.”
He opened the door and looked carefully inside before he entered. Hallen was there. There was a lean, hard-bitten colonel of the American liaison force in Greece. There was a Greek general, pudgy and genial, standing with his back to a window and his hands clasped behind him. There were two Greek colonels and a major. They regarded him soberly.
“Howdo, Coburn,” said Hallen painfully. “You’re heading for Athens, you know. This is Miss Ames? But these gentlemen have…ah…a special concern with that business up-country. They’d like to hear your story before you leave.”
“I suppose,” said Coburn curtly, “it’s a sort of prel
iminary commission in lunacy.”
But he shook hands all around. He kept his left hand in his coat pocket as he shook hands with his right. His revolver was in his left-hand pocket now too. The Greek general beamed at him. The American colonel’s eyes were hard and suspicious. One of the two Greek colonels was very slightly cross-eyed. The Greek major shook hands solemnly.
Coburn took a deep breath. “I know my tale sounds crazy,” he said, “but…I had a telephone call just now. Hallen will bear me out that my secretary was impersonated by somebody else this afternoon.”
“I’ve told them that,” said Hallen unhappily.
“And something was impersonating Dillon up in the hills,” finished Coburn. “I’ve reason to believe that at this address”—and he handed the address he’d written down to Hallen—”a…creature will be found who will look most convincingly like Miss Ames, here. You might send and see.”
The American colonel snorted: “This whole tale’s preposterous! It’s an attempt to cash in on the actual mystery of what happened up-country.”
The Greek general protested gently. His English was so heavily accented as to be hard to understand, but he pointed out that Coburn knew details of the event in Náousa that only someone who had been there could know.
“True enough,” said the American officer darkly, “but he can tell the truth now, before we make fools of ourselves sending him to Athens to be unmasked. Suppose,” he said unpleasantly, “you give us the actual facts!”
Coburn nodded. “The idea you find you can’t take is that creatures that aren’t human can be on Earth and pass for human beings. There’s some evidence on that right here.” He nodded to the Greek major who was the junior officer in the room. “Major, will you show these other gentlemen the palm of your hand?”
The Greek major frowned perplexedly. He lifted his hand and looked at it. Then his face went absolutely impassive.
“I’m ready to shoot!” snapped Coburn. “Show them your hand. I can tell now.”
He felt the tensing of the others in the room, not toward the major but toward him. They were preparing to jump him, thinking him mad.
But the major grinned ruefully: “Clever, Mr. Coburn! But how did you pick me out?”
Then there was a sensation of intolerable brightness all around. But it was not actual light. It was a sensation inside one’s brain.
Coburn felt himself falling. He knew, somehow, that the others were falling too. He saw everyone in the room in the act of slumping limply to the floor—all but the Greek major. And Coburn felt a bitter, despairing fury as consciousness left him.
IV
He came to in a hospital room, with a nurse and two doctors and an elaborate oxygen-administering apparatus. The apparatus was wheeled out. The nurse followed. The two doctors hurried after her. The American colonel of the airport was standing by the bed on which Coburn lay, fully dressed.
Coburn felt perfectly all right. He stirred. The American colonel said sourly: “You’re not harmed. Nobody was. But Major Pangalos got away.”
Coburn sat up. There was a moment’s bare trace of dizziness, and that was gone too. Coburn said: “Where’s Miss Ames? What happened to her?”
“She’s getting oxygen,” said the colonel. “We were rushed here from the airport, sleeping soundly just like those Bulgarians. Major Pangalos ordered it before he disappeared. Helicopters brought some Bulgarians down, by the way, and oxygen brought them to. So naturally they gave us the same treatment. Very effective.”
The colonel looked both chastened and truculent. “How’d you know Major Pangalos for what he was? He was accepted everywhere as a man.”
“His eyes were queer,” said Coburn. He stood up experimentally. “I figured they would be, if one looked. I saw the foam suit that creature wore up-country, when he wasn’t in it. There were holes for the eyes. It occurred to me that his eyes weren’t likely to be like ours. Not exactly. So I hunted up the real Dillon, and his eyes weren’t like I remembered. I punched him in the nose, by the way, to make sure he’d bleed and was human. He was.”
Coburn continued, “You see, they obviously come from a heavy planet and move differently. They’re stronger than we are. Much like the way we’d be on the moon with one-sixth Earth gravity. They probably are used to a thicker atmosphere. If so, their eyes wouldn’t be right for here. They’d need eyeglasses.”
“Major Pangalos didn’t—”
“Contact eyeglasses,” said Coburn sourly. “Little cups of plastic. They slip under the eyelids and touch the white part of the eye. Familiar enough. But that’s not all.”
The American colonel looked troubled. “I know contact lenses,” he admitted. “But—”
“If the Invaders have a thick atmosphere at home,” Coburn said, “they may have a cloudy sky. The pupils of their eyes may need to be larger. Perhaps they’re a different shape. Or their eyes may be a completely alien color. Anyhow, they need contact lenses not only to correct their vision, but to make their eyes look like ours. They’re painted on the inside to change the natural look and color. It’s very deceptive. But you can tell.”
“That goes to Headquarters at once!” snapped the colonel.
He went out briskly. Coburn followed him out of the room to look for Janice. And Janice happened to be looking for him at exactly the same moment. He was genuinely astonished to realize how relieved he was that she was all right.
He said apologetically: “I was worried! When I felt myself passing out I felt pretty rotten at having failed to protect you.”
She looked at him with nearly the same sort of surprised satisfaction. “I’m all right,” she said breathlessly. “I was worried about you.”
The roaring of motors outside the hospital interrupted them. More and more vehicles arrived, until a deep purring filled the air. A Greek doctor with a worried expression hurried somewhere. Soldiers appeared, hard-bitten, tough, professional Greek soldiers. Hallen came out of a hospital room. The Greek general appeared with one of the two colonels who’d been at the airport. The general nodded, and his eyes seemed cordial. He waved them ahead of him into a waiting elevator. The elevator descended. They went out of the hospital and there was an armored car waiting. An impressive escort of motorcycle troops waited with it.
* * * *
The Greek general saw Coburn’s cynical expression at sight of the guards. He explained blandly that since oxygen brought sleeping Bulgarians out of their slumber—and had been used on them—oxygen was handy for use by anybody who experienced a bright flash of light in his mind. The Bulgarian soldiers, incidentally, said that outside the village of Ardea they’d felt as if the sunlight had brightened amazingly, but they felt no effects for two hours afterward, when they fell asleep at Náousa. So, said the general almost unintelligibly, if anything untoward happened on the way to the airport, everybody would start breathing oxygen. A sensation of bright light would be untoward.
The armored car started off, with motorcyclists crowded about it with weapons ready. But the ride to the airport was uneventful. To others than Janice and Coburn it may even have been tedious. But when she understood the general’s explanation, she shivered a little. She leaned insensibly closer to Coburn. He took her hand protectively in his.
They reached the airport. They roared through the gateway and directly out upon the darkened field. Something bellowed and raced down a runway and took to the air. Other things followed it. They gained altitude and circled back overhead. Tiny bluish flickerings moved across the overcast sky. Exhaust flames.
Coburn realized that it was a fighter plane escort.
The huge transport plane that waited for them was dark. They climbed into it and found their seats. When it roared down the unlighted field and took to the air, everything possible had been done to keep anybody from bringing any weapon to bear upon it.
“All safe now!” said the voice of the American colonel in the darkness of the unlit plane, as the plane gained height. “Incidentally, Coburn, why did y
ou want to look at Pangalos’ palm? What did you expect to find there?”
“When I started for the airport,” Coburn explained, “I bent a pin around the band of a ring I wear. I could let it lie flat when I shook hands. Or I could make it stand out like a spur. I set it with my thumb. I saw Pangalos’ eyes, so I had it stand out, and I made a tear in his plastic skin when I shook hands with him. He didn’t feel it, of course.” He paused. “Did anybody go to the address I gave Hallen?”
Hallen said, in the darkness: “Major Pangalos got there first.”
The blackness outside the plane seemed to grow deeper. There was literally nothing to be seen but the instrument dials up at the pilots’ end of the ship.
The Greek general asked a question in his difficult English.
“Where’d they come from?” repeated Coburn. “I’ve no idea. Off Earth, yes. A heavy planet, yes. I doubt they come from our solar system, though. Somewhere among the stars.”
The Greek general said something with a sly up-twist of his voice. Whatever and whoever the Invaders were, he said, they did not like Bulgarians. If they’d knocked out the raiding party simply to test their weapons against human subjects, at least they had chosen suitable and pleasing subjects for the test.
* * * *
There was light. For an instant Coburn tensed. But the plane climbed and the brightness steadied. It was the top of a cloud bank, brilliantly white in the moonlight. They had flown up through it, and it reached as far ahead as they could see. A stubby fighter plane swam up out of the mist and fell into position alongside. Others appeared. They took formation about the transport and all flew steadily through the moonlight.
“I wish I knew,” said the American colonel vexedly, “if those creatures were only testing weapons, or if they were getting set to start bargaining with us!”
“Meaning?” asked Coburn.
“If they’re here,” said the colonel angrily, “and if they do mean to meddle in our business, they may set up a sort of auction with us bidding against the Iron Curtain gang for their friendship. And they’d make any deal!”
The Murray Leinster Megapack Page 80
