A buzz, the swift drone of wings, and she was beside him, perching on
his shoulder. Mel pointed.
She gave a lamenting little cry of recognition. As if it had been a
signal, the yellow circle darted sideways in a long streaking slant,
and vanished. Miss Green fled to report to the princess, while Mel
stayed at the window, and quickly returned to him again. Evidently she
was both excited and distressed, and he wondered what was wrong. If
that apparition of pale light had been one of their vessels, as her
behavior indicated, it seemed probable that its mission was to hunt for
survivors of the lost globe.
Miss Green seemed either less sure of that, or less confident that the
rescue would be easily effected. Some minutes later, she pointed to
a different section of the sky, where the yellow circle--or another
very like it--was now moving slowly about. Presently it vanished again,
and when it reappeared for the second time, it was accompanied by two
others.
Meanwhile, Miss Green might have been transmitting some understanding
of the nature of her doubts to Mel, because the ghostly vagrants
now gave him an immediate impression of insubstantiality: not
space-spanning luminous globes but pictured shapes projected on the
air. His theory of interplanetary travelers became suddenly much less
probable.
In the next few moments, the concept he was struggling with abruptly
completed itself in his mind, so abruptly, in fact, that there was no
longer any question that it had originated with Miss Green. The rescue
craft Mel thought he was seeing actually were just that.
But the pictures in the sky were only signals to possible survivors
that help was approaching. The globes themselves were elsewhere,
groping their way blindly and dangerously through strange dimensions
that had nothing to do with the ones Mel knew.
And they were still, in some manner his imagination did not even
attempt to clarify, very, very "far away."
* * * * *
"I was wondering what you'd done with the bird box," Maria de Guesgne
explained. "It's not there in the bush any more!"
Mel told her annoyedly that the bird box had been damaged by the storm,
and so he'd thrown it into the incinerator.
"Well," Maria said vaguely, "that's too bad." Her handsome dark eyes
were shifting about his living room meanwhile, not at all vaguely. Mel
had left the apartment door partly open, and she had walked right in on
her way to the market. When she wasn't drinking or working herself up
to a bout of creative painting, which seemed to put her into a tranced
sort of condition, Maria was a highly observant young woman. The
question was now how to get her out of the apartment again before she
observed more than he wanted her to.
"How does it happen you're not at work on Monday afternoon?" she
inquired, and set her shopping bag down on the armchair.
Keeping one eye on the kitchenette door, Mel explained about his
vacation. Miss Green hadn't been in sight for almost an hour; but he
wasn't at all sure she mightn't come out to inspect the visitor, and
the thought of Maria's probable reactions was unnerving.
"Two weeks?" Maria repeated chattily. "It'll be fun having you around
for two weeks--unless you're going off to spend your vacation
somewhere else. Are you?"
"No," Mel said. "I'm staying here--"
And at that moment, Miss Green came in through the kitchenette door.
At least, Mel assumed it was Miss Green. All he actually saw was a
faint blur of motion. It went through the living room, accompanied by a
high-pitched hum, and vanished behind Maria.
"Good Lord!" she cried, whirling. "What's that? _Oh!_" The last was a
shrill yelp. "It stung me!"
* * * * *
Mel hadn't imagined Miss Green could move so fast. Rising and falling
with furious menace, the sound seemed to come from all points of the
room at once, as Maria darted out of the apartment. Clutching her
shopping bag, Mel followed her out hastily and slammed the door behind
them. He caught up with Maria in the court.
She was rubbing herself angrily.
"I'm not coming into that apartment again, Mel Armstrong," she
announced, "until you've had it fumigated! That thing kept stinging me!
What was it, anyway?"
"A wasp, I guess." Mel felt weak with relief. She hadn't really seen
anything. "Here's your bag. I'll chase it out."
Maria stalked off, complaining about screens that didn't even protect
people against giant wasps.
Mel found the apartment quiet again and went into the kitchenette. Miss
Green was poised on the top edge of the cupboard, a gold-eyed statuette
of Victory, laughing down at him, the laminated wings spread and raised
behind her like iridescent glass fans. Mel looked at her with a trace
of uneasiness. She had some kind of small white bundle in her arms,
and he wondered whether it concealed the weapon with which she'd stung
Maria.
"I don't think you should have done that," he told her. "But she's gone
now."
Looking rather pleased with herself, Miss Green glanced back over her
shoulder and piped a few questioning notes to the princess. There was
a soft reply, and she soared down to the table, folded her wings and
knelt to lay the bundle gently down on it. She beckoned to Mel.
Mel's eyes popped as she unfolded the bundle. Perhaps he really
shouldn't have been surprised.
He was harboring four guests now--the princess had been safely
delivered of twins.
* * * * *
At dusk, Miss Green widened the biggest slit in the bedroom screen a
little more and slipped out to do her own kind of shopping, with a
section of one of Mel's handkerchiefs to serve as a bag.
Mel left the lights out and stayed at the window. He felt depressed,
but didn't quite know why--unless it was that so many odd things had
happened since Sunday morning that his mind had given up trying to
understand them.
He wasn't really sure now, for example, whether he was getting
occasional flash-glimpses of those circular luminous vessels plowing
through another dimension somewhere, or whether he was half asleep and
imagining it. Usually it was a momentary glow printed on the dark air
at the edge of his vision, vanishing before he could really look at it.
He had a feeling they had managed to come a good deal closer during
the day. Then he wondered briefly whether other people had been seeing
strange light-shapes, too, and what they might have thought the
glimpses were.
Spots before their eyes, probably.
Miss Green was back with a soft hum of wings, on the outer window sill,
six feet from where he sat. She pushed the knotted scrap of cloth
through the screen. There was something inside it now; it caught for
a moment on the wires. Mel started up to help, then checked himself,
afraid of feeling some bug squirming desperately inside; and while he
hesitated, she had shoved it through. She followed it, picked it up
again and flew off to the living room. After a moment she returned with
the empty cloth and went out again.
She made eight such trips in the next hour, while night deepened
outside and then began to lighten as a half-moon shoved over the
horizon. Mel must have dozed off several times; at least, he suddenly
found himself coming awake, with the awareness that something had just
landed with a soft thump on the window sill outside.
It wasn't Miss Green. He saw a chunky shadow at one corner of the
window, and caught the faintest glint of green eyes peering into the
room. It was the cat from the courtyard.
In the same moment, he heard the familiar faint hum, and Miss Green
appeared at the opposite end of the sill.
* * * * *
Afterward, Mel realized he'd simply sat there, stiffening in groggy,
sleep-dazed horror, as the cat-shadow lengthened and flowed swiftly
toward the tiny humanoid figure. Miss Green seemed to raise both arms
over her head. A spark of brilliant blue glowed from her cupped hands
and extended itself in an almost invisible thread of fire that stabbed
against the cat's forehead. The cat yowled, swung aside and leaped
down into the court.
Mel was on his feet, shaking violently, as Miss Green slipped in
through the screen. He heard Maria open her window upstairs to peer
down into the court, where the cat was making low, angry sounds.
Apparently it hadn't been hurt, but no wonder Maria had suspected that
afternoon she'd been stung by a wasp! Or that Miss Green's insect
victims never struggled, once she had caught them!
He pulled down the shade and stood undecided in the dark, until he
heard her piping call from the living room. It was followed by an
impatient buzzing about the standing lamp in there, and Mel concluded
correctly that he was supposed to turn on the light.
He discovered her on the living room table, sorting out the plunder she
had brought back.
It wasn't a pile of electrocuted insects, as he had expected, but a
puzzlingly commonplace collection--little heaps of dry sand from the
beach, some small white pebbles, and a sizable bundle of thin twigs
about two inches in length. Since she was disregarding him, he shifted
the lamp over to the table to see what this human-shaped lightning bug
from another dimension was going to do next.
That was the way he felt about Miss Green at the moment....
What she did was to transport the twigs in two bundles to the top of
the cupboard, where she left them with the princess. Then she came back
and began to lay out a thin thread of white sand on the dark, polished
surface of the table.
Mel pulled up his armchair, poured himself a glass of brandy, lit a
cigarette, and settled down to watch her.
* * * * *
By the time Miss Green indicated to him that she wanted the light
turned out again, he had finished his second drink and was feeling
rather benevolent. She had used up all her sand, and about a square
foot of the table's surface was covered now with a confusingly
intricate maze of lines, into which she had placed white pebbles here
and there. Some of the lines, Mel noticed, blended into each other,
while others stopped abruptly or curved back on themselves. As a
decorative scheme, it hardly seemed worthwhile.
"Miss Green," he told her thoughtfully, "I hope it makes sense to you.
It doesn't to me."
She piped imperiously, pointing: the light! Mel had a moment of
annoyance at the way she was ordering him around in his own apartment.
"Well," he said, "I'll humor you this time."
For a moment after he had pulled the switch, he stood beside the table
to let his eyes adjust to the dark. However, they weren't adjusting
properly--a patch of unquiet phosphorescent glimmering floated
disturbingly within his field of vision, and as the seconds passed, it
seemed to be growing stronger.
Suddenly, Mel swore in amazement and bent down to examine the table.
"Now what have you done--?" he began.
Miss Green fluted soothingly at him from the dark and fluttered up to
his shoulder. He felt a cool touch against his ear and cheek, and a
burst of oddly pleasant tinglings ran over his scalp.
"Stop that!" he said, startled.
Miss Green fluted again, urgently. She was trying to tell him something
now, and suddenly he thought he understood.
"All right," he said. "I'll look at it. That's what you want me to do,
isn't it?"
Miss Green flew down to the table again, which indicated agreement.
Mel groped himself back into the chair and leaned forward to study the
curiously glowing design she had created of sand and pebbles.
He discovered immediately that any attempt to see it clearly merely
strained his vision. Details turned into vaguely distorted, luminous
flickerings when he stared at them, and the whole pale, spidery pattern
made no more sense than it had with the light on. She must have some
purpose in mind with it, but Mel couldn't imagine what.
Meanwhile, Miss Green was making minor adjustments in his position
which Mel accepted without argument, since she seemed to know what she
was doing. Small tugs and pushes told him she wanted his hands placed
on the table to either side of the design. Mel put them there. His
head was to be tilted forward just so. He obliged her again. Then she
was back on the table, and the top two-thirds of the pattern vanished
suddenly behind a blur.
After a moment, he realized she had opened her wings and blotted that
part from his sight.
* * * * *
In the darkness, he fastened his puzzled gaze on the remaining section:
a quivering, thinly drawn pattern of blue-white light that faded
periodically almost to the limits of visibility and slowly grew up
again to what was, by comparison, real brilliance. His head was aching
slightly. The pattern seemed to tilt sideways and move upward, as if it
were creeping in a slow circle about some pivot-point. Presently, it
turned down again to complete the circle and start on another round.
By that time, the motion seemed normal.
When a tiny shape of light suddenly ran across the design and vanished
again as it reached the other side, Mel was only moderately surprised.
The figure had reminded him immediately of Miss Green. After a while,
it crossed his field of vision in another direction, and then there
were two more....
He seemed to be swimming forward, through the pattern, into an area
of similar tiny figures like living silhouettes of light, and of
entrancingly delicate architectural designs. It was like a marionette
setting of incredible craftsmanship, not quite real in the everyday
sense, but as convincing as a motion picture which was spreading out,
second by second, and beginning to flow about him--
"Hey!" Mel sat up with a start. "You're trying to hypnotize me!"
Miss Green piped pleadingly. Clearly, she had only been trying to show
him something. And wasn't it beautiful? Didn't he want to see more?
Mel hesitated. He was suspicious now, but he was also curious. After
all, what could she do to him with her tricks?
Besides, he admitted to himself, the picture had vanished as soon as he
shifted his eyes, and it _was_ beautiful, like moving about through a
living illustration of a book of fairy tales.