Stan blinked. “You’re kidding. Look, this is a joke, right?”
The probe floated over to the sofa, pausing to hover right before Stan’s startled eyes. “You suspect a hoax, and this is understandable. Please notice that I am not suspended by any wires or strings.”
Stan waved a trembling hand around the probe. It was as good as its word. “OK. I see that.”
“Ship,” said the lizard. “Show him where you crash-landed. That will prove we’re not a hoax, won’t it?”
It was a spaceship. By God, it was a spaceship! Kerwin Frees’s hands shook as he let the foliage fall back into place. He took a step back from the mound of uprooted shrubbery. It had crash-landed here and had been carefully concealed. And there were signs that it was under repair.
By whom?
He glanced up the hill toward the little cabin on Perelandra Circle. By someone in that house?
He turned back to the ship, his camera bouncing against his chest. Evidence. That was what he needed. He pulled a couple of handsful of greenery away from the vessel and began shooting. He was between shots, looking for a different vantage point, when he heard someone approaching from uphill.
As often as he had allowed himself to imagine an encounter of the third kind, as often as he had invented his response, he had never imagined he might panic. But he did. He stumbled to the bow of the ship and threw himself into a ramble of underbrush, just barely able to twist into a position from which he could see the stern before he was forced to freeze.
A man appeared first—a bearded man in a forest-green shirt and jeans. Frees had no time to be disappointed before “it” came into view—a reptilian alien life-form in bright fuchsia. It was a sundress, he realized, a woman’s sundress. That fact had barely registered when he noticed the sleek metallic object floating between the two other figures.
The reptile, speaking, began pulling camouflage away from the vessel. Words floated back to Frees’s ears—English words. “See?… This… Ship… Believe us?”
Another voice spoke. The reptile’s mouth wasn’t moving, nor was the man’s. It must be coming from the floating “droid” which bobbed about the stern. A moment later, it began moving forward toward Frees’s hiding place. His throat felt as if a peach pit was stuck in it.
“As you can see,” the floater intoned in perfect English, “the bow planes have suffered the most damage. We are currently attempting to procure the materials necessary to repair them.”
“Will you really be able to do that?” asked the human, and Frees’s eyes were drawn to his face. It was a familiar face. He was certain that if his brain wasn’t caught in some insidious form of paralysis, he’d be able to put a name to it.
“Ship is fully capable of self-repair,” said the reptile. “We need only the materials. That’s why we… availed ourselves of your cabin.”
The man was nodding. “And my face.” He sighed. “OK. I believe you. Good God, do I have any choice?” He turned to look at the reptile. “How can I help?”
The reptile’s mouth widened, not quite showing an amazing set of teeth. “Don’t show the whistle on us, please.”
“Blow the whistle,” said the droid. “Whatever. Please don’t do it. Let us continue with our ruse. We ll be out of your chair soon, I promise.”
“Out of your hair,” said the droid.
“Whatever. We’ll be out of it. What do you say?”
The man glanced back and forth between the two aliens. “Can I see inside the ship?”
Kerwin Frees was gasping by the time he made it back up to the road. He was closer to the house than he’d meant to be, but the aliens and their human cohort were still downhill in the ship. He started to turn toward where his car was concealed, but caught sight of the vehicle sitting in the driveway of the cabin. He hesitated only a moment before hurrying to investigate it. It was a small Japanese sedan, fairly new. He slipped in through the passenger door and went speedily through the glove box in search of—ah—registration.
Stan Schell. Now he knew where he’d seen the guy before—on the back cover of several science fiction novels in his massive collection… and in a number of widely separated newspapers. Science fiction writer and advice columnist, what a combination.
The revelation gave him pause. He glanced around the property. No other vehicles—no camera crews. Nobody. OK, not a movie, then. Could it be a hoax? A publicity stunt of some sort?
He had no way of knowing, but he had ways of finding out.
The ship was real. At least insofar as Stan could tell. Not that he had much experience with these things except on paper, but the craft was not a Roswell Special—there wasn’t an ounce of tinfoil in it, nor one stick of balsa wood. It was made of metal and something that was like plastic or fiberglass. It was big, too—nearly as big as a semi—and complicated-looking.
Inside, they showed him which systems were working, pointed out where repairs needed to be made, let him sit at the controls. He kept trying to be skeptical, to pass it all off as an elaborate hoax, but he doubted anybody but Steven Spielberg could create a hoax anywhere near this elaborate. As far as he knew, Steven Spielberg had no reason to be playing jokes on a little-known science fiction writer.
He found another reason to disbelieve the hoax angle—Ted Barnett had assured him that the advice column with his face on it had been appearing and gathering loyal readers for months. It had evidently become a household word in homes where no Stan Schell novel had ever been read. Meanwhile Stan (I-don’t-read-that-section) Schell had gone unawares—where was the hoax in that? Maybe it was a conspiracy intended to see how long it would take a writer to discover his identity was being plagiarized. Maybe it was a test case to see if an identity could be plagiarized. Maybe…
Maybe these were aliens.
“Pardon?”
The lizard was looking at him through its gigantic orange eyes, its hands (or whatever) folded before its chest in a prayerful gesture. In his sister’s sundress. His laughter, already uncontrollable, segued into a fit of hiccups.
“Ship! There’s something wrong with Stan Schell!”
Oh, there certainly was. Either he was going not-so-quietly mad, or he was receiving the most extravagant gift the Universe could offer a writer of science fiction.
“He is laughing,” said the probe. “And he is experiencing something called hiccups. Not a life-threatening situation. There are several suggested cures—we might try startling him.”
The lizard was silent for a moment then said, “I believe we already have.”
Back at the house, Stan and the aliens had tea and cheese puffs. Then, “Arlen” composed answers to his letters. He kept the answer Scan had made to the first of these—out of respect, he said, for their host.
Oddly, Stan wanted nothing more than to sleep. Overwhelmed, he supposed, and he surprised himself by actually being able to sleep. He curled up on his bed and slumbered deeply until his cell-phone woke him.
It was his agent.
“Well?” he said “Did you find anything?”
Only two aliens and a wrecked space shuttle. Nothing to get excited about. “Yeah. Someone’s been using the cottage as a… base of operations. It’s not… quite what I thought it was, though. Look, I’ll have to explain it to you later. It’s… complicated.”
“Well, so’s this. I just got a call from The Tonight Show.”