The Aliens [сборник]

Burt had the door of the car open to rush to the aid of the driver. He could not hope to do anything, but the action was automatic.

"The driver is dead," said his own voice from the back of the car. "The energy killed him as it blasted the truck. Get back in the car."

Burt plunged toward the flames.

His arms and legs-his whole body-became as water. He felt himself tumbling to the concrete. Norma cried out. Burt lay on the road. He had no feeling in any of his members. He could only see and hear. The voice said placidly:

"Get back in the car."

The power of motion returned to Burt's limbs and body.

He panted incoherently at the thing from space, his fists clenched as he staggered upright. The voice said tonelessly:

"I will be inconvenienced if I need to throw you in the flames. Get in the car." Norma cried out pleadingly. And Burt came out of a moment of fury so horrible as to be unrememberable. The truck burned terribly, but there was no outcry from inside it. There had been none. If the driver had been alive, at the least there would have been screams. -'

Burt gasped and choked and parted almost unintelligibly:

"I'll kill you for this! I'll kill you! I'll kill-"

"Get in the car!" cried Norma shrilly. "Please! For my sake!"

And the idea of Norma alone with the creature and purest horror was the one thing that could move Burt just then. He stumbled toward the car. He did not want to. He would have preferred to be killed. But there was Norma, and there was the other fact that if he were killed nobody but Norma would know that the creature from space did exist and was on Earth.

He slid under the wheel, drunk with hatred.

"Drive on, now," said the alien. Burt drove on, his hands shaking and tightening convulsively. The creature in the back said calmly:

"I have studied your memories. I think you plan to disobey me. Whenever I think you plan to disobey me I shall kill a human. You will blame yourself. You will be right. If you do disobey-me I will kill you and all other humans nearby."

Burt's teeth clamped together as he drove. He was half-blind with rage. Beside him, Norma trembled. The car went on and on and on. They passed a car coming from the direction in which they were headed. It would encounter the still-burning tank-truck. A little later, they passed an interurban bus, bound the same way. A fierce hope sprang up in Burt that when the truck was discovered-But there had been no missile. A blast of pure heat-pure energy-had exploded and ignited ~he truck's cargo. Examination of the burned-out shell would tell nothing to men who did not even suspect that a weapon like the alien's could exist.

There was simply no answer to the situation.

Miles-later-and here the land was nearly flat-the lights of the town glittered very near. Here the traffic was heavier.

There were many cars on the highway. As the town drew nearer and nearer, highway-speed could no longer be maintained. Burt found himself trailing another car. Its brake-lights flashed on. Burt slowed sharply.

A fast truck came roaring out of the town. It had the regulation headlights, and extra bright red warning-lights which flicked on and off beside them. Traffic bunched and pulled aside to -give it right of way. It went rushing past the red warning-lights securing it right of way. Its noise diminished toward the highway cut in which the truck had exploded. It had been discovered-still burning-and help telephoned for.

The traffic near the town resumed its normal speed, once - the rescue-truck had gone on its way. His voice came from the creature in the back.

"I do not identify that truck from your memories," said the voice. "Why did the other cars make way for it?"

Burt had not seen red warning-lights used in exactly that arrangement before, but of course he knew its purpose.

"It's a rescue truck," he said, hating. "It's going to try to help the poor devil you killed back yonder. They'll be too late, but they'll try." There was a pause. Burt's features were drawn and savage. The alien said reflectively:

"It is not in your memories. How did you know?"

"The blinking lights," snapped Burt. "They were red. It couldn't be anything else."

"Red," said the thing in the back. "That is what you call a color. Colors are important to you humans?"

"To us humans, yes," said Burt harshly.

Silence again. The town was very near. Houses appeared on either side of the highway. Street-lights. The alien pressed itself into the darkest corner.

"Here you will buy the colors for my face and skin," it said tonelessly once more.

"I will buy it," agreed Burt in the very quintessence of quiet hate. "I will not give you an excuse to kill anybody else. There's a drug-store ahead. Fm going to buy greasepaint and lipstick and-powder. I have money to pay for it."

The creature said: "I know. Your memories have told me of the need for money, now that I am on your world.

First I need to make this face look just right." The car was actually in the town by this time. For two or three blocks there was a narrow street with residences rising abruptly from the sidewalk-line. The traffic here ran bumper-to-bumper. Sidestreets were wider, and Burt could tell that many were tree-lined, with branches meeting above the pavement. The air was full of the smell of engine-exhausts. Ahead, traffic-lights glinted red and green and there was a brightness which would be the business section of,whatever town this might be. There would certainly be a drug-store here.