She frowned. "Why, no--Harry and I have been working for thirty-six
hours straight. Haven't seen anybody, haven't heard anything. Why?"
"You wouldn't believe me. Where's your newsbox?"
She came around the desk and put her hands on his shoulders. "Pete,
you know I haven't one--it bores me or upsets me, depending on whether
there's trouble or not. What--"
"I'm sorry, I forgot," he said. "But you have a scanner?"
"Yes, of course. But really, Pete--"
"You'll understand in a minute. Turn it on, Lorelei."
She gazed at him levelly for a moment, kissed him impulsively, and then
walked over to the video panel on the wall and swept a mountain of
papers away from in front of it. She turned the selector dial to "News"
and pressed the stud.
A faint wash of color appeared on the panel, strengthened slowly, and
suddenly leapt into full brilliance.
Lorelei caught her breath.
It was a street scene in the Science City of Manhattan, flooded by
the warm spring sunshine. Down on the lowest level, visible past the
transport and passenger tubes, the parks and moving ways should have
been dotted with colorful, holiday crowds. The people were there,
yes but they were flowing away in a swiftly-widening circle. They
disappeared into buildings, and the ways snatched them up, and in a
heartbeat they were gone.
There were left only two blood-red, malignant monstrosities somehow
defiling the air they floated in; and below them, a pitiful huddle of
flesh no longer recognizable as human beings. They were not dead, those
men and women, but they wanted to be. Their bodies had been impossibly
joined, fused together into a single obscene, floundering mass of
helpless protoplasm. The thin moaning that went up from them was more
horrible than any cry of agony.
"The Invaders are here, citizens," the commentator was saying in a
strangled voice. "Stay off the streets. Hide yourselves. Stay off the
streets...." His voice droned on, but neither of them heard it.
* * * * *
Lorelei buried her head on his chest, clutching at him desperately.
"Peter!" she said faintly. "Why do they broadcast such things?"
"They have to," he told her grimly. "There will be panics and suicides,
and they know it; but they have to do it. This isn't like a war, where
the noncombatants' morale has to be kept up. There aren't going to be
any noncombatants, this time. Everybody in the world has to know about
them, so that he can fight them--and then it may not be enough."
The viewpoint of the teleo sender changed as the two red beings soared
away from their victims and angled slowly up the street. Peter reached
out to switch off the scanner, and froze. The girl felt his muscles
tense abruptly, looked back at the scene. The Invaders were floating
up the sloping side of a tall, pure white structure that dominated the
rest.
"That's the Atlas building," she said unbelievingly. "Us!"
"Yes."
Silently, they counted stories as the two beings rose. Forty-five ...
forty-six ... forty-seven ... forty-eight. Inevitably, they halted.
Then they faded slowly. It was impossible to say whether they had gone
through the solid wall, or simply melted away.
The man and woman clung together, waiting.
There was a thick, oppressive silence, full of small rustlings and
other faint sounds that were no longer normal. Then, very near, a man
screamed in a high, inhuman voice. The screamed dwindled into a throaty
gurgle and died, leaving silence again.
Peter's lips were cold with sweat. Tiny nerves in his face and arms
were jumping convulsively. His stomach crawled. He thrust the girl away
from him and started toward the inner room.
"Wait here," he mouthed.
She was after him, clinging to his arms. "No, Peter! Don't go in there!
_Peter!_" But he pushed her away again, woodenly, and stalked forward.
There was a space in the middle of the room where machinery had been
cleared away to make room for an incompleted setup. Peter walked down
the narrow aisle, past bakelite-sheathed mechanisms and rows of animal
cages, and paused just short of it.
The two red beings were there, formless bodies hazy in midair, the
distorted, hairless skulls in profile, staring at something outside his
range of vision.
* * * * *
Peter forced himself forward another step. Little Harry Kanin,
Lorelei's assistant, was crumpled in a corner, half supported by the
broad base of an X-ray chamber. His face was flaccid and bloated. His
glazed eyes, impassive yet somehow pleading, stared at nothingness
straight ahead of him.
The Invaders ignored Peter, staring expressionlessly down at Kanin.
In a moment Peter realized what they were doing to him. He stood,
paralyzed with horror, and watched it happen.
The little man's body was sagging, ever so slowly, as if he were
relaxing tiredly. His torso was telescoping, bit by bit; his spread
legs grew wider and more shapeless, his cheeks caved in and his skull
grew gradually flatter.
When it was over, the thing that had been Kanin was a limp, boneless
puddle of flesh. Peter could not look at it.
There was a scream in his throat that would not come out. He was beyond
fear, beyond agony. He turned to the still-hovering monsters and said
in a terrible voice, "Why? Why?"
The nearest being turned slowly to regard him. Its lips did not move,
but there was a tiny sound in Peter's brain, a thin, dry whispering.
The scream was welling up. He fought it down and listened.
"_Wurnkomellilonasendiktolsasangkanmiamiamimami...._"
The face was staring directly into his, the bulging eyes hypnotic. The
ears were small, no more than excresences of skin. The narrow lips
seemed sealed together; a thin, slimy ichor drooled from them. There
were lines in the face, but they were lines of age, not emotion. Only
the eyes were alive.
"_... raswilopreatadvuonistuwurncchtusanlgkelglawwalinom...._"
"I can't understand," he cried wildly. "What do you want?"
"_... morofelcovisyanmamiwurlectaunntous._"
He heard a faint sound behind him, and whirled. It was the first
time he had realized that Lorelei had followed him. She stood there,
swaying, very pale, looking at the red Invaders. Her eyes swiveled
slowly....
"_Opreniktoulestritifenrelngetnaktwiltoctpre._"
His voice was hoarse. "Don't look! Don't--Go back!" The horrible,
mindless noise in his throat was almost beyond his power to repress.
His insides writhed to thrust it out.
She didn't see him. Her eyes glazed, and she dropped limply to the
floor.
The scream came out then. Before he knew, even, that he could hold
it back no longer, his mouth was wide open, his muscles tensed, his
fingernails slicing his palms. It echoed with unbelievable volume in
the room. It was a scream to split eardrums; a scream to wake the dead.
* * * * *