First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster

by Murray Leinster

  He reached the corner where he should turn to his boardinghouse. He stopped and looked and listened. There is a feeling about living in a small town. It isn’t just a place, but this place. Not just a town, but this town. The noises were not just noises, but So-and-so’s dog barking, or Mrs. Something’s daughter Kate shouting cheerfully to her deaf grandfather, or So-and-so working on the garage he was building by lantern-light. The mountains to the west and south and north weren’t impersonal. They had their names and outlines and variegated look at different seasons. Even the stars seemed like very particular stars, individual to this place.

  Ben lifted his eyes to look at them.

  The fireball went over.

  It was a bright spot of flame with a long burning tail behind it, moving deliberately from west to east. It was much too bright to be an aeroplane’s light. The trailing tail of fire proved that it wasn’t a man-made thing. It rolled across the roof of stars, somehow steadily, somehow solidly, faster than any plane could move, and yet not darting to extinction like an ordinary shooting star. Ben Lyon watched it interestedly. It should be an extra-big meteor—a big hunk of stone or metal from somewhere between the stars—which packed air before it and raised it to incandescence as it rushed across the sky. Being big, it would be visible at a greater height than small shooting stars, and so would seem to move more slowly.

  He watched it all the way across the sky. He moved two steps to keep it in view past the fir tree at the corner. It went on like an express train, away past the nearer mountains to the east. He thought it was slowing, but he could not be sure. When the mountaintops hid it, it was still plowing its way onward through the night. Once he thought it brightened for half a second and then went back to its steady glare. But he wasn’t certain. It disappeared.

  Then, long, long seconds after it had passed, he heard a whispering noise that seemed to come from the west and pass overhead and die away to the east. It wasn’t loud. It sounded like it might be the ghost of something following after the fireball. But it was the noise the thing had made up where the air was vastly thin. It had taken so long to get down to the ground, just as a steamer’s wake may not reach shore until the steamer has gone on out of sight.

  Ben looked at his watch. 9:06. He’d leave an item about it to be run in the newspaper while he was off fishing in the mountains. He went comfortably on to his boardinghouse, went up to his room and got ready for bed. He was all packed for the fishing trip. He wondered mildly about the fireball. Sometimes they exploded into two or three parts. Sometimes they dwindled and burned out. Sometimes they fell to earth.

  There were not many people in the mountains to the east. If the fireball did reach ground it was unlikely to be seen. It would land unnoticed, and vegetation would grow over it, and if it was metal it would rust away and if stone it would crumble, and the thing that had come so many thousands of millions of millions of miles to Earth would be indistinguishable from any other rock. Its origin and adventures would never be guessed at.

  Ben hadn’t the faintest idea that the fireball was unusual in any way, or that its coming would have any other consequences than those of an ordinary shooting star—which was none at all.

  In the morning he had to wait for the bus on which the man who would run the newspaper in his absence would arrive. He showed his substitute the few things needful and read the news of the great world in the newspapers brought by the bus. He discovered that the fireball wasn’t even Tateville’s private phenomenon, but had been watched all the way across the state before passing overhead here. It had flamed along a four-hundred-mile path—sometimes brighter and sometimes dimmer—before passing on into the mountains. The professor of astronomy at the University had been queried, and he pointed out that it had approached Earth at a very shallow angle, as witnessed by its long visible flight. Perhaps, he suggested, it had merely hit Earth’s atmosphere a glancing blow and had bounced on out into space, and was now speeding on through emptiness again to continue its travels for some thousands of millions of years to come.

  Ben left a memo for an item in the Tateville Record and went on out of town, riding the horse that was his principal extravagance. Fishing was both a reason and an excuse for long camping trips among the mountains. He’d stop at Tom Hartle’s very tiny ranch in a valley a day’s ride away and pick up Tom, and the two of them would start off. There’d be a pack horse, and fly rods in the back, and there were places in the wilds where golden mountain trout were to be found, and there was a certain lake where fighting bass waited. He thought of such things as he rode out of town into apparent wilderness. He and Tom had been in the war together, and they didn’t talk about it, but they did share the outlook of a common experience and a mutual distrust of civilized life. Ben felt an enormous restfulness come over him as the last sign of civilization disappeared behind him.

  He traveled at leisure, and by a way which avoided even the scattered habitations of the wilderness. When he reached Tom’s place it was already dark, but he had stopped before sunset, and a string of speckled beauties hung from his saddlebow.

  Tom wasn’t at the ranch. There was nobody at all in sight or hearing about the ranch house. But Ben made himself at home, cooked the trout, feasted happily and afterward sat and smoked comfortably on the ranch-house porch. The horses in the corral made noises from time to time. Tom Hartle and only two hands ran this very small spread in the mountains, and it was utterly peaceful here. To sit on the dark porch and know complete stillness felt very good to a man who’d had his fill of civilization during wartime.

  There were sudden snortings at the corral. There was a pounding of hoofs. The horses were disturbed. They acted frightened. Ben listened. Of course nothing dangerous to a horse would come actually to the ranch corral. Of course! But the stirring increased. It sounded panicky. There was the sound of kicking.

  He got a flashlight and rifle and went down to see. The horses were sweating and frightened. He went around the outside of the corral fence, using the flashlight and looking for tracks. He found nothing.

  He stayed with the horses until they quieted down. Then he went back to the house. He settled comfortably in his chair again. He struck a match and relighted his pipe. Tom and the hands would be back presently. If they’d expected to be gone long, Tom would have left a note for him.

  Quietness. Stillness. Peace—with innumerable tiny sounds in the starlight. Ben smoked and deliberately soaked himself in tranquility.

  A voice in the darkness said, “Hello.”

  “Hi,” said Ben cheerfully. “Tom?”

  There was a distinct pause. Then the voice said, “No, not Tom. Who’re you?”

  Ben grunted. In five words the voice had become wholly familiar. It was whiskered, ancient Stub Evans, so wholly worthless that nobody else would hire him even for his keep. But Tom Hartle paid him carefully calculated wages that let him get drunk once a month but not stay drunk enough to harm him.

  “Hello, Stub,” said Ben. “This is Ben. Come up and set.”

  Again a pause. Then the voice said, “I’m not Stub.”

  But it was Stub’s voice. Unquestionably.

  “Whoever you are,” said Ben, “come up and set a while. Don’t stay out there in the dark. Where’s Tom?”

  The voice did not answer. It was curiously unnatural. People don’t act that way. Ben felt a peculiar unease. For some reason he picked up the flashlight he’d found for his trip to the corral. He turned it on. He heard an abrupt movement. It was as if Stub had made a frightened, panicky dash out of possible range of the light-beam. And when Ben swept the light around he did not see Stub or anybody else.

  “What’s the trouble, Stub?” he demanded. “What are you hiding for?”

  A long pause. Then Stub’s voice said, “I’ve got my reasons. Put out the light. I want to ask a question.”

  Ben got up. He felt queer. He found that he’d picked up the rifle he’d carried down to the corral. But he snapped off the light. He was distinctly, unrea
sonably uneasy.

  “Well?” he said. “What’s the matter? Drunk?”

  A very slight pause. Then, “No, I’m not drunk.” The intonation of the voice did not match the words. Ben realized that, while it was Stub’s voice, in denying drunkenness it did not convey Stub’s indignation at such a question. “I want to ask you if—” There was another pause. “It is hard to say. If you see a very strange thing will you kill it?”

  Ben found the hairs at the back of his neck standing up. He’d no reason to feel that way, but he did. He grew irritated.

  “Stop it, Stub!” he said impatiently. “Come up on the porch or go to hell! I don’t feel like playing games!”

  Far away, there was a remote, high-pitched yelping. And immediately there was movement in the darkness nearby. Something rustled swiftly away into the night. Ben swore irritably. He snapped on the flashlight, and its dot of light darted here and there. But it showed nothing but the absolutely familiar details of Tom Hartle’s ranch-house surroundings. Ben went down from the porch. He heard a rustling a little distance off. He swept the flashlight that way.

  He saw a fair-sized something dart behind a rock. It ran on two legs. It was nearly or quite as big as a man. But when one sees a man one knows it. Recognition is a simple matter, not depending on details. But Ben didn’t recognize this as a man. The hair at the back of his neck seemed to crawl. Chills ran up and down his spine. But the thing ran out of sight before he could be sure of anything but that it acted and moved like a man but wasn’t. It wasn’t human.

  He was still standing at that one spot, the flashlight beam darting nervously here and there, when Tom Hartle came loping up. Irritated, whining dogs ran with his horse, keeping much too close to the animal’s heels. They whimpered from time to time.

  “Hiya, Ben,” said Tom in the darkness. “Seen anything queer?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Ben slowly. He wasn’t quite willing to believe his eyes. “I’m not at all sure. But I heard something queer. Stub Evans was talking to me from the dark, but he wouldn’t come up to the porch—What’s the matter?”

  “You weren’t talking to Stub,” said Tom sharply. “He wasn’t here! He’s been off—”

  “But I know his voice,” protested Ben. “Only he talked queerly—”

  “It wasn’t Stub,” insisted Tom. “Here he comes now.”

  Two other horses were coming, more slowly than Tom had ridden. There was Brick Toohey riding the first horse and leading the second. And slung over the lead horse, hanging limply, his arms and legs swaying with the motion of the horse, was Stub Evans. Ben Lyon gaped at him.

  “Got to get him in the house now,” said Tom. To Ben he added, “He’s asleep. I can’t find anything else wrong with him. Can’t wake him up. But he’s not drunk.”

  It was completely impossible. The voice Ben had heard was specifically Stub Evans’, and no other. But he walked with the led horse to the ranch house, helped unload Stub and helped carry him inside. Stub slept, snoring. His pulse was strong and natural. His breathing was that of a man in the deepest possible natural slumber. He would have passed for dead drunk any day, except that there was no smell of liquor about him. Tom looked down at him, scowling.

  “There was a fireball in the sky last night,” he said dourly, “and it came down beyond the mountains over yonder.” He gestured with his thumb. “We heard the roaring. We went out on the porch. The thing came down out of the air, trailing fire behind it and spitting out fire ahead. We watched it down in the next valley over. Seemed like we heard it hit. There was a grumbling noise afterward. And I’d heard that fireballs or shooting stars were worth a little something. Stub went over to see if he could pick up the shooting-star stuff. He rode over about sunrise and didn’t come back. Along about three o’clock we went over to look for him. We found his horse, but no Stub. There was a dozen acres of new-fallen landslide where the fireball had hit. The shock started it sliding down. Stub couldn’t find anything in that mess! So we hunted for him. Along about sundown he hollered back to us. We went and found him. He was sound asleep against a tree. He’s been asleep ever since, just like he is now.”

  Ben frowned. He drew a deep breath.

  “Seemed funny,” added Tom harshly, “that he could call to us and then be so sound asleep when we came to him. It’s funnier that he was talking to you when he was slung across his horse, miles away.”

  Ben said, “I’d’ve sworn it was Ben—only he wouldn’t let me see him. And I—did see something queer.”

  “The dogs act queer,” snapped Tom, “their hackles stand up, and they snarl, and bark and yelp, but they won’t trail. They’ve been like that all the way over here. Something that scares them came this way. What was it?”

  Ben told his story, uncomfortably.

  “Stub’s voice spoke to me,” he finished doggedly, “whether or not he was with you. Whatever was using his voice wouldn’t come to the light, but asked if I saw something queer if I’d kill it. And I—went out and I saw something queer. I think I did. But it wasn’t a man.”

  “Where’d you see it?” asked Tom.

  Ben led the way. When he went out of the ranch-house door the dogs were clumped there, whimpering. Ben went through the starlit night with Tom and Brick, and the dogs came with them, but practically underfoot.

  The dogs caught a scent and snarled and yelped, but did not go on ahead of the men. They stayed very close.

  The party reached the place where Ben had seen something which was not a man as it darted behind a rock. Here the dogs gave tongue to an ululating, panic-stricken uproar in the night. But they would not trail.

  Behind the rock where the thing had vanished there was a soft place in the earth and a track there. It was almost large enough to be the track of a man. But it wasn’t. None of the four of them had ever seen such a footprint before.

  They looked at it in the flashlight’s glow. The stars shone down from above the mountains. The night wind was still. There were very, very faint whisperings among the branches of nearby trees. Tom breathed hard.

  “You’re dead sure it talked to you, Ben?”

  “Something did,” said Ben. “In Stub’s voice. It asked if I’d kill something very strange if I saw it.”

  There was a pause. A dog sniffed at the track with its tail between its legs. It snarled and bristled and yelped all at once, but it shrank back from the print in the soft earth.

  “Remember?” said Tom detachedly. “There was a fireball last night.”

  A voice spoke abruptly from somewhere overhead. It spoke in the exact tone and pronunciation of Stub Evans, who was now sleeping heavily back in the ranch house. But it could not be Stub himself. Obviously.

  “I am a castaway,” said the voice from the hillside. “I want to make friends.”

  But then it couldn’t be heard any more. The dogs screamed their hatred of the thing that spoke. There was a tumult of snarls and yelpings and frenzied barkings in the night.

  Ben said, “I’m going up there.”

  He unlimbered the flashlight he had used before. Flicking the light back and forth before him he started to climb the hillside. The dogs seemed to go crazy. Tom shouted something Ben couldn’t make out as he went up the hill. Ben went onward, sweeping the light from side to side, and keeping the rifle that he’d grasped, like Tom when they left the house, ready.

  He knew of no movement, but something “plopped” to the ground before him, and instantly there was a flare of such monstrous heat and unbearable brightness that he stopped short without willing it. The flare was blue-white in temperature. He felt its savage heat upon him for an instant. He saw a weed-stalk burst into steam even though the brightness did not envelop it.

  But then he could not see anything but the image of the flame in his dazzled eyes. The light died, and he smelled baked earth and shriveled vegetation. He heard Tom shouting, downhill, and the screaming of the dogs. A dogged, obstinate defiance filled him. Something which called itself a castaway had use
d a weapon of heat and flame to warn him not to approach. It was not a human weapon. He could not face it. But he would not flee from it.

  He stood there, bristling, while the dogs screamed and snarled, and while Tom strove to yell above their din. The back of his neck crawled, but he glared with blinded eyes up at the blackness from which the deadly warning flame had come.

  A long time later, having given whatever was up on the hillside a dozen chances to kill him if it wished, he went slowly down the hill again.

  On the face of it, there was nothing else for him to do. On the face of it, too, there was nothing for the others to do but go back to the ranch house and engage in long and completely useless discussion. It was wasted time and speculation, because Stub Evans woke up abruptly, just about dawn, and told them facts they had not guessed at.

  He’d reached the spot where the fireball landed, he said, and saw that its impact had set off a landslide that buried it hopelessly in twelve acres of tumbled ground. He’d been indignant at having the ride for nothing, and he’d dismounted and begun to hunt for possible fragments of the thing from space that might have fallen short of the main body. As he hunted he felt creepy. Chills ran up and down his spine. And suddenly he couldn’t move. He was frozen where he stood—paralyzed, while something came up behind him and fumbled at his body and his garments. Presently something cold touched his temples. Up to this point he had felt the ghastly impotence of a creature fascinated by a snake, except that his helplessness was the more horrible because he could not see the thing that caused it. But when the coldness touched his temples he felt all sensation drain from him. He knew nothing. Nothing whatever. Everything was a blank to him until he waked back in the ranch house. He didn’t remember calling to guide Tom and Brick to where he lay sleeping heavily, nor the long ride over his saddle back to the ranch.