The Aliens [сборник]

Norma stared at him, paling. Droplets of lake-water still stood on her tanned skin. She was the only human being -to whom Burt would have dared tell even so much, -though he had known her only a week. But she had seen the lights in the sky, last night, and anyhow it is possible to feel remarkably close to a person like Norma in a week.

"Does that sound crazy?" he demanded when he'd finished.

She shook her head.

"Did you see the morning paper?" she asked in turn. "It said-that there were stories of streaks of light in the sky last night. It said that phenomena like northern lights were rare as far south as this, but that they-aren't unknown. I wondered if the lights we saw were -auroral displays. But from what you say… "

"They weren't," said Burt.

"Then the thing that fell out of the sky on your car…"

"If you'll get dressed," he told her, "I'll show you where it happened. It came from a ship up there. Maybe it was a hundred miles high, at the very edge of the atmosphere. But there was a ship. -I'm going to make a phone call," he added abruptly. "Maybe I can find out something useful. Meet me here?' She smiled at him quickly and moved away. Just as a man can find it possible to tell a girl his inmost and most private thoughts after knowing her only a week, a girl can find possible the most unquestioning obedience, within limits, in a similar length of time. Burt made the phone-call. He was back at the parked car when Norma came out, immaculate though her hair was wetted a little where the edge of her swimming-cap had been. He opened the car door in silence. He started the motor and backed out from the curb.

"I just telephoned the FBI, long-distance," he told her. "I said I was a science-fiction writer, asking for information."

"Why?"

"If you say you're a writer," he said detachedly, "it's expected that the information you ask for will be on the wacky side. And you get all sorts of cooperation. It works anywhere. I told the FBI I was working on a story and explained that the character in my yarn needed to convince the FBI that he had encountered an alien from outer space. And I asked what sort of evidence he'd need, to appear somebody who wasn't a crackpot telling a story that shouldn't be true. Fellow at the FBI office gave me some good advice on how to make the thing convincing. Said to let him know when the yarn was printed."

Norma frowned a little. "Encountered…" "Yes," said Burt -grimly. "I'm going to try to find proof to convince the FBI that I did encounter a creature from another world, who landed on Earth from -a spaceship. I did. The thing that dropped on my car was a parachute, and a creature was in it."

Driving out of the village, he told her the rest of his story -from the instant he waked in his own bed, blindfolded, until the creature that spoke with his own voice went away -so it said-to hide in the woods until nightfall.

"I told it it needn't fear my talking," added Burt coldly, "because nobody would believe me. I didn't really believe it myself. How could a creature tumbling down out of the sky speak English? But no actual man could duplicate my voice! Something happened, and the only plausible guess happens to be lunatic. So rm going to try to get evidence to convince the FBI-whose business it would be to handle anything as important -as possible information about space-travel -and let them take over from there. I don't want any part of the business for myself!"

Norma shivered a little. But she said quietly:

"If you were-abnormal, Burt, you wouldn't be willing to allow for doubt. You'd resent anybody not believing you. But instead you act just the way a person should when up against something that's been thought impossible."

"Thanks," said Burt drily.

He drove. Norma frowned a little, beside him. He drove along the exact way he'd followed the night before. The highway curved and curved, encircling the lake. There were trees which thickened into woodland through which the car rolled.-There were little driveways branching off, with mail-boxes and the turnoffs. They led to the lake-shore cottages. There was the aromatic smell of pines, and the sound of insects, and there were faint, faint bird calls, and now and again a shingled cottage with an encircling screened porch.