by Hal Annas
He lit a cigarette and walked up and down, working on the problem, and I could feel the thought-waves as they washed about the room and lifted ashes out of the tray. Finally he looked at me in that peculiar intense way that makes his eyes cross, and said, “I’ve got it.”
I backed off. You never know what’s going to happen when an idea creeps up on him. He’s just as likely to pass a beaker of ammonia under your nose as to offer you a drink and drop the glass before your hand closes on it.
“Stand still,” he said.
I didn’t like it, but I stood still. After all, I was his guest, had eaten his supper and hoped to borrow a twin sawbuck off him.
Stepping close, he took my ears in his hands and swung my head in a rotating motion. “That’s the way to start a clock,” he said. “Never shake it up and down. Give it a rolling motion. Ah! There she goes again slick as oil.”
He didn’t have to tell me because I knew I was ticking. Being inside myself put me at a disadvantage. The ticking wasn’t loud, and anyone on the outside noticing it might merely think he’d gone crazy. Inside, as I was, I could hear it plain and it was disturbing.
He pushed me into a chair at the table, drew the telephone close and called Bill Bright. “Is that you, Bill?” he said. “Well, listen, Bill, I’ve got this guy over here, Bill, and he’s got a clock inside his head. I’m not kidding, Bill, and it’s no gag, Bill, so you’d better come on over.”
We had a few drinks while waiting, and when Bill arrived, looking like an unembalmed cadaver, they took turns shaking my head and listening. They tried to figure out whether the ticking was keeping pace with their watches, but it was hard to listen to both at the same time and they finally accused me of putting in an off-beat just to confuse them.
They smoked cigarettes and walked up and down and Alan said, “It’s a Swiss clock,” and Bill said, “No, it’s a Dutch clock.” They argued about that, and I went on drinking, and finally Bill wanted to know, “How did it get in there?” Alan stared at me and his eyes began to cross and I shook a bit, and not only my head, for they might take a notion, I thought, to make a firsthand investigation, and I always did get nervous around people who take things apart.
Bill shouldered Alan aside and said, “Maybe somebody else is putting in the off-beat. Maybe it’s some kind of code. Get a pencil and paper.”
Alan got them and sat beside me and Bill called out the signals: “One two three pause one pause two pause three pause one two three . . .”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Alan complained. “Tap him between the eyes with an ash tray.”
“Wait a minute,” Bill said. “Maybe the slow ones are meant for dashes. That would make it three dots three dashes three dots. That’s SOS in wireless code.”
“But wireless doesn’t tick,” Alan argued. “It goes da-da-da and dit-dit-dit. Tap him gently with a bottle, but make sure the bottle is empty.”
“That’s the way wireless sounds,” Bill admitted. “But suppose it was a Morse sounder? It would go ta-la-la tick-lick lick ta-la-la.”
“The hell it would! The Morse code is different. The letter S is the same, but instead of three dashes the letter 0 in Morse is dot space dot.”
“Yeah, but they could be using wireless code on a Morse sounder.”
“Who’s they?”
“Huh?”
They seemed stunned. Finally Alan said, “You mean, that isn’t a clock inside him, but a Morse sounder?”
“That’s what I figure.”
“And they’re using the wireless code?”
“Yeah.”
Alan grabbed the telephone and called Ella Lauroo. “Is that you, Ella?” he said. “Well, listen, Ella, this guy has got a Morse sounder inside his head, Ella, and they’re using wireless code, Ella, and we can’t figure it out, and you being a ham, Ella, you gotta come over right away.”
Ella brought her portable typewriter because, she explained, it might be a fast sender and would run under the table if she had to put it down with a pencil.
She’s one of those half-pint girls, the cuddly kind, who would, if they were taller, be models or in a chorus line. Her eyes are big and smoky, her features bright and innocent, but her figure is that of a wanton, or what some men think a wanton’s figure should be, and her platinum hair in no way changes this idea.
She placed the typewriter on the table, wound in a sheet of paper, pulled my head close against her ear and said, “All right, let’s go.”
I eased my chair still closer, breathed in the scent of her hair and enjoyed a long luxurious sigh.
“We have to start him,” Alan explained, taking my ears in his hands.
She listened briefly and turned to Bill. “There’s a lot of static, and in that ticking way it’s hard to read, but I can make it out. The sender wants to know who’s receiving. Give me something to tap on his head.”
“A hammer?”
“No. That would be too clumsy. Alan, your cigarette lighter will do. I’ll just tap out my initials and tell him to go ahead.”
The lighter drummed on my head and suddenly the ticking became fast and furious, and Ella’s hand flew over the keyboard of the typewriter.
With my head against her ear, and her hair in my eyes, I couldn’t see what she was writing, and didn’t much care, for I was doing what I’d wanted to do for a long time, and was thinking of the next move. I was working myself up to putting my arm across the back of her chair and letting my hand rest on her shoulder, but something about the ticking must have made me drowsy. The next time I knew anything, I was falling out of the chair.
She’d merely leaned forward to pull the paper out of the typewriter and my head had slipped off her shoulder. I caught myself as she stood up and began studying the writing. Alan and Bill moved close and looked over her shoulders.
Bill’s face mirrored a goofy and impossible expression. “What do you make of it?” he said to Alan.
“It’s crazy,” Alan said. “Especially that part about a storm. The weather bureau forecast probably fair and warm with possible rain and snow. Not a word about a storm.”
“It doesn’t mean weather,” Ella put in. “It says the whole planet is in the path of a cosmic storm—like from the stars.”
“That’s it,” Bill affirmed. “And whoever sent it says he’s on a planet just outside our orbit. That would be Mars.” He turned and glared at me. “Are you by any chance making up all this?”
“Of course he isn’t.” Ella shook her head and patted me on the cheek. “He’s too—well, I mean, you have to have something—” She tapped her own head with a small pink finger, and it made me feel good, for I’d long felt that she admired me and would come to my defense against any accusation.
“That’s right,” Bill said. “He hasn’t—We have to take it at face value. But what do we do now?”
“We have to notify the authorities,” Alan said.
He got on the telephone and somebody referred him to somebody else and that somebody referred him again, and it went on like that for an hour, and then the ticking began again.
Ella put her arm around me and held my head close, and I heard her catch her breath and her respiration go up, and I knew then she loved me, for I was trembling.
“It says the storm will destroy the planet!” she exclaimed, snatching away. “The sender was interrupted earlier by what he describes as cosmic interference. He says our scientists can save the planet if they take measures in time. But now he’s interrupted again, just when he was beginning to tell me what to do.”
Bill and Alan stared at one another, their features running the gamut of expression from grotesque to vacuity, from vacuity to horror.
Ella herself was pale and short of breath. I reached out a hand to reassure her when, suddenly, she began rapping on my skull with her knuckles, raps inordinately heavy and which sounded like thunder inside my head.
And again she held me close and listened, and my intoxication with blissful emotions became such that,
but for lack of an appreciative audience, I would have swooned.
With a final vigorous and possibly vicious rap she drew away. “No use,” she said. “Not a tick; not a sound. Silent as all emptiness. And I’m going home.”
“You can’t leave,” Alan said. “I’ve started the machinery to round up a mob of physicists and astronomers for a meeting in the morning. We’ve got to have all the data to place in their hands. Now, suppose this guy begins ticking again, and you not here? Where would we be?”
“That’s right,” Bill said. “You can’t leave, Ella.”
“Have I got to sit here with his—his head on my shoulder all night?”
Both Bill and Alan shrugged. “He isn’t so bad,” Alan volunteered. “He can’t help it if his features are blank and his eyes glazed and he looks like something out of a nightmare. Hitch up your girdle, take in on your bra and get a grip on your courage. Think of the noble sacrifices made by other women. Thousands of them even live with men almost as ghastly as that. Surely you can make the sacrifice to preserve the planet and mankind.”
“That’s right,” Bill added. “Even horror is preferable to death.”
Ella looked at me for a long moment, finally smiled. “He’s so ugly he’s cute. It would be comical if it wasn’t tragic. I need a drink.”
“There’s a store nearby,” Bill said. “I’ll get a supply.”
Alan stayed on the telephone mostly while Bill was gone, and Ella watched me out of one big smoky eye and opened the other whenever she took a notion to pound on my head. It finally became irritating. Everytime I would doze I would be waked by that vigorous drumming, and every time I got excited enough by her charms to want to stay awake she would push me away.
Her strange actions were, of course, defensive measures. No proud girl can endure having the object of her passion fall asleep on her. On the other hand, she must do something to prevent herself from smothering him with kisses and making violent love to him when he is awake, and this measure often takes the form of a gentle push, made a trifle vicious by the heat of the emotion consuming her.
In this manner the night passed, my head on her shoulder one minute, her knuckles pounding on my skull the next, and then her kicking and slugging and pushing me away. It left us both a trifle irritable next morning, and we had to drink our breakfast rather than eat, which was the final proof of our love.
Bill and Alan joined us out of sympathy.
Because of our liquid breakfast we were fairly lush when the physicists and astronomers, led by that giant intellect Albert Magnusson, filed in at ten o’clock. After the introductions Magnusson turned to his conferees:
“We have come here at the behest of a man who is best known for the scope of his thinking. The scope is so broad it is exceedingly thin, but the nature of his claim is such that we cannot afford to bypass the opportunity for an investigation. Gentlemen, Mr. Alan Haynes claims that he and those with him here are in communication with intelligent life on the planet Mars.”
There was a brief moment of murmuring and stirring.
“Not only that,” Bill put in, raising his voice. “We’ve received a message telling us the earth is in the path of a cosmic storm which will destroy it.” He handed Ella’s typing to the great man.
After a brief study and consultation with the others, Magnusson said, “This mentions a planet, but doesn’t say which planet. Your inference that it is earth is logical but admissible of further investigation. I suggest that you demonstrate your ability to communicate with Mars, or any planet aside from our own, and see what added information can be gained.”
Alan looked at Ella, then me. “Go ahead,” he suggested. “Show them.”
After a moment of thought, which brought tired lines to her features, Ella said, “We haven’t been in contact with Mars since last night. I’ll try again, but I know we won’t get anywhere. We just have to wait until the sender comes in.”
She rapped on my head with her knuckles, with the lighter and finally with a book. Alan and Bill took turns rolling my head round and around by the ears.
“Something’s stuck,” Bill offered. “Let’s turn him upside down and shake it loose.”
I would have rebelled but for the fact I was eager to get the ticking going so I could put my head on Ella’s shoulder.
Bill took one leg and Alan the other and tilted me head down and, being a bit unsteady, bounced my head against the floor, while the great men looked on in solemn and dignified deliberation.
When they tired of this they stood me upright again, and Ella came close, lifted a hand to my shoulder, and begged, “Please begin ticking. I can’t stand this much longer.”
Her nearness, her warmth, the scent of her hair, and her soft and earnest appeal overwhelmed me. I had reached the point where I could no longer restrain the demand for expression. I flung my arms about her and planted my lips firmly on hers.
She squirmed and kicked and finally bit my lip. I drew back and she turned to the others and squealed, “He’s ticking again. Listen!”
The great men came close and cupped their hands behind their ears. One of them remarked, “Highly interesting,” and another added, “It’s known that each cell in the body has a positive and negative pole. It is therefore not impossible that the current, converging on a specific point, would actuate the cells in such a manner as to make the sound to which we are listening.”
“Not impossible?” Bill scoffed. “You hear it, don’t you?”
“I was alluding to cause and effect,” the great man went on. “I was about to say that it now becomes apparent that this gentleman’s charge had become somewhat depleted and—”
“You mean, his battery had run down?” Alan interpreted.
“The analogy will serve. It is further apparent that upon contact of his osculatory organs with the reciprocative organs in possession of Miss Lauroo he became stimulated or recharged.”
“You mean, she primed him?” Bill put in. “And now he’s running on his own?”
“That expresses it in a rather primitive way. And while interesting, the problem is rather out of our field. It would be my suggestion that you have the gentleman examined by eminent doctors with the object in mind of permitting competent surgeons to explore thoroughly his cellular structural combinations, which may lead to an understanding of whether every man ticks, possibly on a subsonic level, when his electrical potential is brought to a sharp focus through stimulatory contact with a member of the opposite sex.
“It may be,” he went on, “that the ticking responds only to a specific member, let us say, the perfect mate, and that evolution is preparing mankind for an audible ticking age in which the dilemma of the female in choosing a fitting spouse would be immediately solved on the basis of whether or not the male in question made known his qualifications by a clocklike sound whenever she applied her lips to his with significant intensity.
“An interesting study,” he added, “but hardly one for a body of theoretical physicists and astronomers. That, it seems, should conclude our investigation and observations, unless, of course, others present wish to examine further into the matter.”
Alan and Bill looked limp and washed out. Ella had been pounding on my head for the past thirty seconds without getting the response she wanted.
Magnusson said, “May I borrow the message you informed me had come from Mars? I am interested in determining why you think it came from another planet.”
“Keep it,” Alan said in a sort of hopeless way, and they filed out.
They had been gone maybe five minutes when the off-beat came in with a furious desperation that almost split my skull. Ella went into action at the typewriter in a way that seemed inspired. She was receiving again, and when I tried to lift my head off her shoulder, Alan unfastened my necktie and looped it around her neck and mine.
Bill ran out to try to overtake the scientists.
The ticking stopped eventually and I got a look at what Ella had typed. It didn’t make sense.
It had in it such things as “Mass defect times the velocity of light squared,” and something about nuclei adhesion quanta versus gravitational repulsion in the atom.
I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but near the end was something easier:
“Learned your language and many other things from your broadcasts which reach us clearly, but owing to our lack of high power have been unable to exchange intelligence with your planet. We have no rivers, no coal, and very little combustibles of any nature. Our power is generated by windmills, but our atmosphere is thin and turns them slowly, and all but the most minute quantity of power is required to keep us warm in the polar regions, the only habitable parts of our planet . . .”
The message broke off at that point and jumped to this: “We learned that certain molecular structures functioned as receivers and were of extreme sensitivity, and we assume you are receiving through one of these. Without synchronization it is impossible to transmit a broad range of sounds. Your own simple codes solved this for us. And by cooperation we may save the planet.”
The message ended there. We were just about to comment when Bill returned.
“Caught Magnusson,” Bill said, “but he wouldn’t come back. Said that if anything convincing was received to call him at his home and his assistant would take down the gist of it.”
“A run-around,” Alan snorted. “Here we are on a planet about to be destroyed, in communication with a higher order of intelligence that might save us, and we can’t even get anybody to listen.”
“Call somebody connected with the government,” Ella suggested.
“What do you think those guys are connected with?” Alan said bitterly. “That’s the hell of it! We’ve shot our last bolt.”
“Then we’ve got to do something ourselves,” Ella persisted.
I was of this opinion myself, and a good way to begin, it seemed to me, was with a kiss. I was about to fling my arms around Ella when Alan said:
“I might as well call Magnusson and give him the data. It won’t do any good, but we can’t just sit here.”
