"_Cloud Two to Angel One! Acknowledge, please. Over._"
"Okay, guys!" he snapped. "Roger, wilco, over and out!" He switched
off the set, angrily.
But what was he angry about?
He wasn't sure. Something was wrong, somewhere. Somehow, things just
weren't working out right.
"They're--coming here?" Gwyn asked hesitantly.
"Sure," he retorted, his tones unnecessarily brusque. "They're coming
here."
"Oh." She gripped the steering wheel and stared ahead, not looking at
him.
"Gwyn--" Morrow started around the car, around to her side to open the
door and lift her out--
A faint, whining sound came from above as he reached the front of the
car. He stopped and looked up, startled.
The sleek, black ship settled down to the white snow before them. A
sort of strangling gasp came from Gwyn, then she was out of the car and
standing beside him, clutching his arm tightly.
The thick door swung open on the faintly gleaming hull. A figure in
bright, snug garments, with a dark globe of a giant head, floated out
of the door and came gliding toward them. It swung its legs down and
settled to a crouch in the snow in front of them.
"Well?" the strange, dark globe-head drawled. "Don't I rate an
introduction?"
* * * * *
The batteries were installed. The old ones they replaced were stored on
the cargo deck to be recharged when the ship had returned home.
The forward lounge was bright, warm, and cheerful, with the
ultra-modern interior fittings and deep, foam-rubber chairs and the
moonlit snow and trees outside the long port-holes' slits. Gwyn sat
between Smitty and Morrow, holding her cup out for Foster to pour her
coffee. Foster poured with a deft flourish. He had his jacket tied
around his waist as an apron.
"I've always maintained," he observed with mock seriousness, "that the
woman's touch is absolutely essential to the success of any project
attempted by man!"
"Quite true," Smitty agreed, going along with the gag. "Though I'm not
a lace-curtains man, mind you. Just lace." He grinned wolfishly at Gwyn.
"Being a married man, myself," Foster went on, pouring himself a cup
of coffee, "I have so accustomed my tastes to minor discrepancies as
practiced by the fairer sex that I'm no longer disturbed by such. Nylon
stockings and underthings hanging all over the bathroom, for example.
As one gets used to that sort of thing--"
"Hear, hear!" Smitty chanted.
Foster sprawled in a dignified pose in the chair facing them. "As one
gets used to it," he continued unmindfully, "it fades to its proper
insignificance. Then a man can truly visualize the worth of feminine
companionship--the slippers, the evening paper, the scratching of one's
back--"
Gwyn was laughing. The tension was going out of her shapely, young
body. Her gaze was mirthful, speculative--especially when her glance
slid over to Morrow.
"One finds," Foster went on, "that the prime essence of--of--"
He broke off with a violent sneeze.
Morrow finished his coffee, set his cup aside, and rose. "We'd better
take off," he said flatly. He turned and faced them.
Smitty and Foster were looking at him with a silent reproof. Gwyn's
eyes were on the floor. She set her cup aside, untouched.
Morrow returned their look without expression. Something danced and
giggled and rolled, hugging its sides with laughter, inside him, but he
kept it off his face.
"Gwyn!" he said. His tone was sharp, insistent.
She stood up uncertainly. "I'd--I'd better be getting home, too," she
said.
"Right." He nodded. "We've got to get off before sunrise catches
us--we'll be safe over the Pennsylvania brush country."
"All right." She moved toward him, toward the bulk-head door at his
back.
He reached out and touched her shoulder, stopping her before him. "When
we get back, I'll write you," he said gruffly. "Meanwhile, you can be
straightening out your affairs here, and--in a couple of weeks or so--"
She looked at him, then. Eyes wide open and shining, lips parted.
"Well, don't just _stand_ there!" Smitty bellowed indignantly. "Go on
and _kiss her_!"
* * * * *
It was hardly a month later when Morrow stood in the doorway of the
sawmill-workshop, his arm around Gwyn, and said, "We need a good
mechanical engineer! Can't get anywhere without him--"
And a small, gray-haired man sat up in bed, a few nights later, and
stared at the two strange creatures standing before him. Their heads
were dark, featureless globes. Their bodies were covered with a bright,
shimmering skin. He noted vaguely that the female of the species was
stacked quite well.
"Can't do anything without a good structural engineer!" the little man
snapped angrily, a few months later, as they were standing around a
littered workbench.
A slender, middle-aged woman stepped off the bus and walked up the
quiet, dark street toward her home. Then she froze, a scream stuck in
her throat, as several weird creatures swarming out of the shadows....
A Northern Airlines pilot glanced out at the port wing of the giant,
humming stratoliner. His mouth fell open, then he grabbed his
co-pilot's shoulder and pointed out toward the wingtip.
Two sleek, fish-like little ships were flying perfect formation with
the big plane, their black silhouettes outlined sharply in the warm
summer moonlight.
An Air Force pilot rode his powerful, deadly jet-fighter across the
desert country, thinking of the wife and children waiting for him in
Los Angeles. Suddenly, he tensed, staring over the side. Far below, a
black shape was outlined against the gray earth.
Quickly, the pilot radioed his flight h.q. and fired his guns, blasting
their muzzle-covers away. Then he peeled over into a dive and went
screaming downward. The black shape appeared on his sights, his thumb
pressed the fire-button--no time to set up for auto-fire--
And then, the black shape was gone!
The wind stopped screaming around the little ship as Smitty cut
its gravitors back in, halting its helpless plunge. He pointed its
needle-nose up the black maw of a deep canyon and glanced upward,
grinning as he thought what must be going through that jet jockey's
mind. _Which way'd he go?_
Just let 'em try following a "spaceship" through one of these twisting
canyons! At a jet-fighter's thousand-mile-an-hour combat speed, just
let 'em try!
But, as Morrow discovered, a heliocopter could follow anywhere. It
wasn't when he and Gwyn drove into Stockton to get married, but later,
when they were playing follow-the-leader in silvery wonderland of
clouds under a full moon. He and Gwyn wore gravitor-units strapped to
their backs, with the harness incorporated into a swim-suit attire,
without helmets or any other garments. It was a warm summer night
filled with cool breeze that caressed their skin as they circled and
skimmed over and around the bright masses of cloud.
A civilian pilot riding his little ram-jet heliocopter southward toward
'Frisco saw them gliding around the clouds at approximately the same
moment Morrow caught sight of him. The 'copter gave chase. Morrow and
Gwyn parted, trying to confuse the pilot, but the 'copter swung on its
whirling blades and went after Gwyn. Its speed was greater than hers
and it was rapidly overtaking her--the pilot jockeying it into position
so its blades would strike her. Apparently, the pilot had a morbid
sense of humor.
Seeing this, Morrow swung back, intercepted the chase, and swooped low
under the 'copter, trying to unnerve the pilot. But the pilot merely
waved at him and laughed, shouting something about "_Gonna get one of
you, anyway!_" that Morrow barely heard.
He circled and dived at the 'copter again, fumbling at his belt.
This time, he pulled up to the side of the 'copter's teardrop cabin,
stopping himself by slamming both feet against the cabin. Startled, the
pilot jerked the controls and the 'copter dipped its blades at Morrow.
He had just enough time before cutting his gravitor and plunging free
to fire his flash-bulb pistol directly into the pilot's face.
Checking his fall several hundred feet below, he looked up and saw the
'copter wallowing precariously on auto-controls, its pilot pressing
his hands over his eyes. Gwyn came swooping downward, her dark hair
billowing out behind her, and called anxiously to Morrow--when he fell,
she'd thought the 'copter blades had struck him.
They lost themselves in the starry blackness before the pilot regained
his sight.
That spring season, the newspapers broke out in a rash of headlines
and front-page stories about ships from outer space and life on other
worlds, quoting eye-witness reports and authoritative comments. By
summer, the latest best-seller book was a loosely-written volume
entitled THE MONSTERS ARE AMONG US!
Those fortunate members of a certain group of thirty-seven men and
women broke into grins every time they heard the book mentioned. This
group had laid out a collective sum of slightly over a hundred thousand
dollars for the construction of a small vacation resort in the Nevada
desert.
It was a rather special resort. The buildings were built cheaply, yet
were designed by certain talented engineers so that their structures
were considerably stronger than those of conventional buildings using
costlier materials--a not too difficult feat, considering the outmoded
building codes which governed most construction--and were surprisingly
sleek and ultra-modern, as well.
The members of this group usually continued their work in plants and
laboratories outside. Each year, when their vacation-time came up,
they would rush off to a little radio repair shop in Stockton and have
a quiet talk in the back room with its youthful proprietor. That night,
they would drive up into the mountains to an old, abandoned sawmill,
where a strange ship would drop out of the darkness to greet them....
* * * * *
It was a deep, twisting canyon east of the Kawich Range. Sand-stone
cliffs towered up nearly three hundred feet on each side and a
spring-fed stream trickled along the boulder-strewn floor, curling
around clumps of stunted pine trees and dense brush. The wind sometimes
tore through the canyon with a deep, mournful whistle.
Farther up, the canyon widened out. A pile of giant boulders formed an
island in the middle of the floor and cliff-dwellers had built their
dwellings in a large cave half-way up on one wall. Those dwellings were
now occupied and joined by slender spans to the three sleek towers
rising up from the island. At the foot of the island, a flat space had
been cleared and long, low sheds built around it.
In the middle tower overlooking the clearing, which was now occupied by
a slender, black ship. Morrow sat before the observation wall of his
living room and gazed downward. He wore a simple pair of trunks on his
tanned body, and socks and sneakers on his feet.
The man sitting in the chair next to him was tall, broad-shouldered,
and husky. There was a two-day growth of beard on the lean face and
the soiled white trousers and shirt looked as though they had been
slept in. The man's eyes were cautious and tense when he glanced over
his shoulder.
Smitty was standing behind his chair. Smitty wore the same casual
attire that Morrow did, with the addition of a cartridge belt and
holstered pistol about his thighs. The brown hand resting on the
pistol-butt--it was a Colt .45 revolver--gave their visitor silent
confirmation to the fact that he was, essentially, their prisoner.
"So it took you just six months to find us, did it?" Morrow asked
musingly. "Too bad about the shipping records on those plastic
construction materials--you must have traced down the shipments from
every company in the country before you found that."
"We traced nearly all of them," the visitor conceded. "In fact, this
one would've escaped our notice if you'd used any half-reasonable
company in Stockton to cover up your use of the materials."
Morrow took cigarettes and matches from the pocket of his trunks and
proceeded to light up, calmly. It was nearing sunset and the canyon was
already plunged into a blue twilight, in which the lights in the towers
and on the small landing field below glowed softly, in soothing pastel
colors.
The visitor sat unmoved through the silence. He had been caught
inside the old sawmill and flown to the hidden base the night before.
His credentials said he was an agent of the United States Bureau of
Internal Security, that his name was David Lyle. Morrow glanced at him,
speculatively.
"I've told you all I dare about our group, here," he said. "I've told
you some of the things we've done--"
"Without explaining them," Lyle interjected wryly.
Morrow smiled. "You wouldn't grasp the technical end of it if I
had told you. It's as if I were the first man to invent the wheel
and had gathered a few others about me who were now developing the
propellor, the fly-wheel, gear-ratios and the piston engine. We can
generate enough electrical power in this canyon site to light a large
metropolitan city, and we're now working on a means of using broadcast
power and perhaps harnessing atomic energy. We already suspect some
of the chemical and medical possibilities inherent in gravitor-field
conditions--"
"And you have the answer to interplanetary travel at your fingertips!"
Lyle muttered dourly.
"Yes, but without the financial means to do it," Morrow agreed.
"Interplanetary travel won't be important for another hundred years
anyway--if it is at all--since it will take that long for the world's
population to reach any dangerous numbers."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Mankind is due to reach the stage of population where he can no
longer feed himself on Earth," Morrow explained. "He simply won't be
able to raise enough food on this one planet to feed such numbers.
Either that, or there'll be three or four atomic wars in the next few
generations--if there's one, there'll be several wars--and population
will cease to be a problem.
"There's been some talk of birth-control as the only logical answer
to this overpopulation. It may be used, but I doubt its logic. You'll
have to tell some people they simply can't have children, and on a
world-wide scale you're going to have many cases where they disregard
authority and have children anyway. Then, to make your authority stick,
you'll have to take those unauthorized children away from their parents
and kill them. You'll need a world dictatorship to do that.
"The only answer that's really logical is when this world gets too
small to support mankind, go out and settle a couple more. That's
where interplanetary travel becomes important, and not before. The
astronomers claim there is very little likelihood of any native species
of intelligent beings living on either Mars or Venus. I only hope
they're right!
"But that isn't answering our present problem, is it?" Morrow grinned
reflectively. "We could kill you, Mr. Lyle, but that would gain us
nothing. There would be other agents following you. Also, it doesn't
sit well with our attitude."
"Just what _is_ your 'attitude' as you call it?" Lyle demanded.
Morrow glanced at him through narrowed eyes and replied, "Just what
would _your_ attitude be if you were in our position, Mr. Lyle?"
* * * * *
Later, as Morrow sat alone, Gwyn came out of the kitchen and joined
him, perching herself on the arm of his chair.
"It'll work out all right, Bill," she murmured soothingly, running her
fingers through his hair. "Don't worry about it."
Morrow shook his head. "We've got to let him go, Gwyn. We can't hold
him."
"Then let's just face it," she replied, using her practical feminine
approach. "The government is going to learn about our project. What can
they do about it? Can they throw us into prison and confiscate all we
have here? What'll they do with it? Without us, they won't understand
it!"
"How much _will_ they understand, I wonder!" Morrow said dubiously.
"Will they realize this could ignite the present world tension into a
raging war?"
Gwyn looked out on the silent, brooding canyon. "Would it, Bill? I
mean--I'm not doubting you, darling--but are you sure?"
Morrow sighed wearily. "No," he said. "Not sure. I'd just rather not
risk it."
"Well, if it happens, it won't be our fault." Gwyn slipped her arms
around him and settled down in his lap. "Don't worry, Bill--"
It was nearly midnight when Morrow stood down on the field, with the
gleaming, black ship looming beside him, and watched Smitty and Lyle,
the agent, walking out toward him.
"Finished your inspection, Lyle?" he called out, his voice sharp,
brittle.
"Yah. I've finished." Lyle strode up with a thoughtful expression
creasing his forehead. "You got quite a lay-out here."
"Thanks." Morrow hooked his thumb at the ship's open hatchway. "Climb
in, Boy Scout. We're taking you back to Uncle."
"Ah-hmmm--just a sec, Morrow." Lyle paused, lighting a cigarette. "I've
been thinking about that question you asked me--what my attitude would
be in your place."
"Yes?" Morrow stiffened warily.
Lyle grinned. "One of the things that surprises me is that of all the
people in your group, none has spilled the beans. How come nobody
talked?"
"If you had what we've got, would you talk about it?"
Lyle chuckled, flicking the ash from his cigarette. "We're back to
attitudes, then--right?" He looked up, his gaze suddenly intent. "I
think I've got an answer to your question now, Morrow."