The Aliens [сборник]

The tiny hamlet about them slept soundly There were seven cars waiting for assurance of safety. But the short-wave report did sound as if all danger was over. It seemed extremely plausible that the maniac-or the alien from space-had been killed and his body destroyed in a burned-down empty store-building.

But Burt had had a shock. The alien had followed his choices of ways to go. It was possible, at least, that it had been able to anticipate that Burt would ultimately make Norma choose the way he drove. If that were true-at the moment when knowing Burt's mind would do no good-the alien would abandon the direct chase. It would go on to something else. It would not abandon its emergency weapon. It could not.

But it could know exactly how Burt would react.

He thought very grimly as he finished encasing the weapon. The alien could not anticipate that. It couldn't reason that Burt would find a loose fence-wire and have time to make use of it to make the weapon useless-for a time, at least. But there had to be a decision the alien could anticipate, which it would do it no good to know in advance. It would be completely implacable. It had to have its weapon back. It couldn't be allowed to have it. So it had to be trapped and killed, once and for all. There was one decision it would do the alien no good to be able to foresee. Burt lifted his head from where he worked on the weapon.

"Norma," he said quietly, "You've got to make a plan. Goad or bad, it doesn't matter. But it has to be yours. Now listen…"

He talked quietly. Presently there was a staccato noise from the trooper s car-the short-wave set. When it ended, there were stirrings Burt got out as one of the waiting cars droned into low and started off along the highway. Others were whirring their starters. Burt asked questions. The fire had been put out and the body of the man in the eighty-mile car had been examined. He was a big man, six feet and over in height. He should have been a powerful man. He could have been capable of the maniac's atrocities. Traffic was permitted to move, again.

Burt went back and took the wheel

"It wasn't the creature, but a human being," he told Norma. "The creature's bound to be hiding now. It'll be waiting for us. Where?"

Gray dawn began, and it was a matter of only ten or fifteen miles to the town where both Burt and Norma lived. Before them, on a narrow highway, there was a long procession of clumsy, make-shift, slatted farm-trucks. Burt came up to the last of them and glanced at Norma. She shook her head slightly. He fell in behind the line, not trying to pass. She said:

"I feel foolish, telling you what to do."

Burt said carefully: "The creature can figure out every decision I'll make, including the decision that it can figure out what I'll decide. But it doesn't know what you'll decide. So you know what we want to do, and you're deciding the moves toward it. That is the one way to outguess the creature." Norma protested: "But we're betting our lives on acting illogically."

They were. In order to have any real hope of living on, Burt and Norma had to convince somebody the FBI preferably-that the alien was real and what he was, and that he simply must,be captured. Obviously, they must produce that belief without giving the thing from space a chance to kill them first. Since he knew their purpose and had-to put it mildly-no scruples at all, the last item was difficult. Their danger was not one particle less than it had been. The alien was infernally intelligent, and its desperation was complete. It would even risk detection to get its weapon back, because its enemies might not ever learn of its landing, but it could not survive on earth unarmed. Because it was not human!

The car trailed the odorous line of farm-trucks toward the city. The dawn light strengthened. Presently Burt said somberly:

"The thing'll have changed its appearance by now. It knows it can't go on when everybody screams as soon as they see it."

"But it's color-blind! What can it do?"

"It's got my memories," said Burt bitterly. "It'll think of sun-glasses to hide its eyes-and there's at least one pair in nearly every car's glove-compartment. It'll think of a false beard to hide its face and mouth. I'd be willing to bet that somewhere there's been a beauty-salon window smashed so somebody could snatch a wig off a mannikin. It could make a beard. I wore a false one, once, in amateur theatricals! I'll bet I could describe it by now. Soft hat pulled down low. Long coat and beard. Dark glasses. Probably a cane or a crutch to walk with. It'll figure out that it can't' just melt into the human race and have nobody look at it. You notice unusual things about a commonplace man-pallor, or anything else. But in an unusual figure, the odd is commonplace!"