He began to look for the Doctor's house.
It was a high, narrow building near the end of the block. There was no
light in any of the windows.
He strode up to the front door without hesitation, forcefully punched
the bell.
Lights came on upstairs. Something came clumping down the hall toward
the door, opened it.
Bosco was an old, old man in a shining bathrobe. In the light of the
hall his alien nose was keen and obvious.
"Emergency," said Web quickly, "are you the Doctor?" He stepped inside
the door before the old man, startled, could answer. He stood poised
upon a thick carpet, listening for sounds from other parts of the
house. The house was silent.
"I am Doctor Bosco," the old man said weakly, nervously, "what is it
you want? Who sent you to me?"
"I need your help," Web said. He thought: this one doesn't know me.
"Can you come?"
"But ... but ... but ... I do not leave this house. I am not ... I
cannot go out. You will have to find someone else." He reached past Web
to open the door again. Web decided to make his move.
* * * * *
The arm reached by him. He closed his hand upon the wrist.
The alien froze, stared with enormous horror straight up into his eyes.
The wrist in Web's grip was remarkably gaunt and brittle. With a quick
downward motion he could break it, and both of them knew it.
The old man started to back away, moaned once with a bubbling hum, and
collapsed.
Web bent down to look at the man. He wasn't dead, but he was out cold.
Scared damn near to death. Web was amused, grinned once very swiftly.
If this was a sample, these aliens weren't much.
He picked up the old man, light and wispy as a bundle of leaves, and
carried him under one arm into the big living room which opened off of
the hall. He thought better of turning on a light, slumped the old man
on a couch and sat down beside him.
A street bulb outside the house threw a white soft glow of light into
the room. That was enough to see by for his purposes. He moved over on
the couch to a position from which he could see the door. And then, in
darkness, he waited.
It was several minutes before the old man moved. Web had time to think,
to form a plan. The first thing that moved in Web's mind was a wonder
of why in heck the old man should have fainted, and then it occurred
to him that this thing here was alien, truly alien, and probably had a
science so far beyond ours as to be impossible to comprehend. He would
undoubtedly be long-lived. Web thought; could just as well be immortal.
But anyway, no matter what else he was, it was pretty sure that he
lived a long while, and death, any death, was a rare thing among his
people. Hence the unusual, to an Earthman, fear of dying. It figured.
Humans fear dying all right. But a lot of them face it every day as
part of their jobs, because life on Earth must be something like a
jungle compared to the germ-free, war-free, super-sanitary world of the
future. Death to a man like this would be quite a fearful thing.
And so the collapse.
And a weapon for Web.
He smiled in the darkness, cruelly, as the alien stirred. He would find
out from this man whatever he wanted to know.
Awake at last, with Web above him like a huge black mountain, the old
man nearly fainted again. But he managed to recover slowly, in a state
of really pitiful terror. He had known from the beginning that Web
was not a Galactic--a Galactic would never have approached in person.
The thought helped him to survive. But even then this Earthman was a
barbarian, an unaccountable man with no scruples against killing, and
Web was perfectly right about the fear of death. The alien talked.
For a while he babbled, but then it began to make sense.
He told about the coming extinction of his race, and the plan for
interbreeding which would save it. He had been on Earth, he said, for
several years, choosing specimens for test purposes. The tests had
proved positive and the first step of selection was almost completed.
He had been stationed as a real doctor with a real practice, so that he
would have the opportunity of giving preliminary physical examinations
and passing on the names of potentially acceptable candidates. And
there were many doctors like him spread all over the world. Since the
United States was by far the Earth's healthiest country of any size,
most of the selecting had been done right here.
"But what did you do with the men in the satellite?" Web asked, doing
his best to follow but fast losing ground.
"How did you know--?" And then the alien almost collapsed again. He had
heard, undoubtedly, of the one man that had escaped from the satellite.
But that had been a Galactic--
"Why did you do that, kill all those men, and how?"
Web shook him, the alien yelped feebly, then babbled it out.
"The satellite was in a very dangerous position. It could see all our
intercontinental travel, the ships we have going and coming daily. It
would undoubtedly warn the planet of what it saw. But we could not
simply destroy it. Blame for that might conceivably be placed on your
enemies, and you are such unstable peop--that is--we--there was no need
for a general war. We could not risk that, being ourselves just as
vulnerable to atomic attack as any life. So we--removed the men on the
satellite."
"How, dammit, how?"
When he swore the alien jumped.
"Through devices which you--if you do not already know, you cannot
be--oh--yes--I will tell, I will tell--" The old man searched
desperately for an explanation. "Your body has--every body is held
together by electric forces. By million upon millions of tiny electric
currents. The atoms of any body are kept in position by a--by an
attraction between them. Now, if that attraction is nullified, the
atoms will drift apart, disperse. The atoms will no longer exist in
any form. That was what happened to the men in the satellite. They
were--turned off."
Web sat perfectly still for a long moment. Then he said swiftly,
viciously:
"But why didn't it get me?"
The alien writhed on the couch.
"Your blood must be different. We thought you were a Galactic. Your
body chemistry is unusual, your--your charge is different."
Once again Web sat in silence, trying to follow that. Galactic and
different blood. But he wrenched his mind away. The sun would be up
soon and he would have to be out of here quickly. He would need to know
where their main base was. Then it was the army's turn. Although what
could the army do?
He got the location out of the old man. It was surprisingly near to
Chicago.
And the time of the first take-off, the first shipment, would be that
night.
He rose to leave. Then he turned back to the old man.
He debated it for a moment, but saw nothing else possible. The old man
knew who he was and where he was going, and what he knew. He could not
leave the old man to warn the others. The old man knew that too, looked
up at him and saved him the trouble.
He died just before Web's great hands reached him.