The Aliens [сборник]

"All right then," snapped Burt. "Go away! Nobody'd believe us if we told our story, anyhow!" But his mind leaped ahead to what he'd be able to report to the FBI. If the scraps of plastic weren't too good as evidence, still his story and Norma's and the blunders the creature was sure to make. "You will come with me," said the alien without emphasis. "You will be convenient for me, for a time."

Burt felt cold. But there was Norma. He clenched his hands. After all, the thing did have what it said was an atom bomb. If it had landed from space, and the drama in the sky had been its escape from its pursuers, he couldn't risk Norma's life on a guess that it bluffed about emergency weapons. Men would take emergency weapons along if they were forced to land on what to them would be a savage and a hostile world.  "I've got other plans," said Burt shortly. "What would I gain by helping you?"

If the creature needed him, he'd play hard to get. Make a bargain for knowledge; scientific information to pass on for' human use.

But the alien did not answer. It was carefully examining~ exactly the place that Burt had just searched, for scraps of~ the brown plastic. It found a few morsels he'd missed. It~ moved to put them somewhere which was not where the'~pockets of Burt's clothes were. It corrected its mistake. It ignored Burt's query. He repeated it. -;

"I said, what would I get out of helping you?"

The so-human head turned with its utterly unhuman, unwinking regard.

"You do not understand," it said flatly. "Humans kill rats -and mice because they are inconvenient. They keep dogs because they are convenient. You are intelligent. You can -choose to be convenient or not. You will tell me now."

Completely without emotion, it reached inside the shirt it' wore and brought out the exotically shaped metal object it -had indicated was a weapon. It was convincingly without feeling one way or another.

"We will go now," it said flatly.

It did not care. Burt felt a raging humiliation because it would kill him with neither regret or elation. But he said urgently:

"You just sit here, Norma, and-don't tell anybody anything about this. They wouldn't believe you, anyhow."

The figure said as indifferently as before:

"She may be convenient. She will come also."

"No!" raged Burt. "No! You shan't-"

"I can kill her," said the alien without interest. "It does not matter."

Norma stood up. She sobbed just once. She moved very stiffly. She groped for Burt's arm and clung to it. She moved jerkily. She walked out of the house. Burt moved with her, to steady and support her. The thing followed them out. It went to the cover of the well from which' the cottage water- supply was drawn. It lifted the cover with an ease which spoke of terrifying physical strength.

"For your information," it said, "you will look."

It pointed its metal object down toward the water in the well. There was a sudden flash of intolerable brightness from the weapon. The creature drew back its hand. And steam roared up out of the well in a monstrous gush that rose trel top high. It rolled and curled among the upper branches.

"Now," said the creature, "you will drive."

Burt took the wheel. He felt utterly sickened. Norma sat beside him, her face like chalk. The creature got into the back of the car. "Drive westward," it commanded coldly. "I will stay out of sight. My face is not properly colored yet." Then it added matter-of-factly, "You understand what I will do if I am inconvenienced." It sank down impossibly to the floor-of the back of the car. Norma looked at it. Her expression became one of utter horror. Burt stared down. The body that h~d looked so human, looked human no longer. It had folded in upon itself. It had no bones. The flexible mask which was its face had visibly become detached from whatever was behind it. For its own idea of comfort, the fugitive from space had ceased to fill the legs of the trousers and the sleeves of the shirt. It was impossible to guess what its normal shape might be. it looked simply shapeless. But its voice came up from the floor-boards. Burt's voice. "Drive westward. And I shall not want attention drawn to this car." From the mass, the mound, the blob of whatever-it-was inside the collapsed garments, the voice which was Burt's own sounded like something out of a madman's nightmare. Burt drove away, his hands clenched tightly on the wheel. Norma sat stiffly beside him, her cheeks like marble.

Before dusk fell, Burt said in a low tone to Norma:

"We'll need some gas soon. if I were alone, I'd let the car run out of it. But-when I stop for gas, you get out and walk around. To powder your nose-anything. Try to slip away."

They were then better than a hundred miles from the lake and the place where the alien had landed. They had come partly through the mountains in whose foothills the vacation resort was located. They rode along a wide smooth highway, with some mountains against the setting sun, but western foothills visible between them.

Norma licked her lips. Four hours of driving, without a word or movement of the creature in the back of the car. Nothing had happened to reassure her, but it is not possible to sustain an acute emotion of any sort for a very long time. The hysterical horror which had cowed her as much as fear had become merely a numbed dread. - ' -Burt showed greater signs of strain. He felt not only responsibility for Norma's safety, but that it was through him that the alien was clothed and partly disguised, and might ultimately become able to conceal itself, with untoward results for all human beings. The creature might be a criminal among its own kind. It might have been pursued by interstellar avengers in the nature of police. If it were a criminal, and could hide on Earth and ultimately escape, Earth might become a galactic hideout for criminals of its stripe, ultimately to be destroyed simply to root them out. On the other hand, there -might be legal warfare among the stars, and the creature might draw upon Earth the destructive weapons of a galactic civilization, or-even worse-make Earth in some sort a military base for the interstellar nation it belonged to.