«I’m sure it’s not an advertising stunt.»
«Why didn’t you notify me right off? What you mean by holding out on a thing like this?»
«I didn’t think of notifying you,» Peter told him. «I wasn’t trying to hold out on anything.»
«You new around here, ain’t you?» asked the sheriff. «I don’t recollect seeing you before. Thought I knew everyone.»
«I’ve been here three months.»
«Folks tell me you ain’t farming the place. Tell me you ain’t got no family. Live here all by yourself, just doing nothing.»
«That’s correct,» said Peter.
The sheriff waited for the explanation, but Peter offered none. The sheriff looked at him suspiciously in the smoky lamplight.
«Can you show us this here Flying Saucer?»
By now Peter was a little weary of the sheriff, so he said, «I can tell you how to find it. You go down past the barn and cross the brook …»
«Why don’t you come with us, Chaye?»
«Look, Sheriff, I was telling you how to find it. Do you want me to continue?»
«Why, sure,» the sheriff said. «Of course I do. But why can’t you …»
«I’ve seen it twice,» said Peter. «I’ve been overrun by people all the afternoon.»
«All right, all right,» the sheriff said. «Tell me how to find it.»
He told him and the sheriff left, followed by his two deputies.
The telephone rang.
Peter answered it. It was the radio station he’d been listening to.
«Say,» asked the radio reporter, «you got a Saucer out there?»
«I don’t think so,» Peter said. «I do have something out here, though. The sheriff is going to take a look at it.»
«We want to send out our mobile TV unit, but we wanted to be sure there was something there. It be all right with you if we send it out?»
«No objections. Send it along.»
«You sure you got something there?»
«I told you that I had.»
«Well, then, suppose you tell me …»
Fifteen minutes later, he hung up.
The phone rang again.
It was the Associated Press. The man at the other end of the wire was wary and skeptical.
«What’s this I hear about a Saucer out there?»
Ten minutes later, Peter hung up.
The phone rang almost immediately.
«McClelland of the Tribune,» said a bored voice. «I heard a screwball story …»
Five minutes.
The phone rang again.
It was the United Press.
«Hear you got a Saucer. Any little men in it?»
Fifteen minutes.
The phone rang.
It was an irate citizen.
«I just heard on the radio you got a Flying Saucer. What kind of gag you trying to pull? You know there ain’t any Flying Saucers …»
«Just a moment, sir,» said Peter.
He let the receiver hang by its cord and went out to the kitchen. He found a pair of clippers and came back. He could hear the irate citizen still chewing him out, the voice coming ghostlike out of the dangling receiver.
He went outside and found the wire and clipped it. When he came back in again, the receiver was silent. He hung it carefully on the hook.
Then he locked the doors and went to bed.
To bed, but not immediately to sleep. He lay beneath the covers, staring up into the darkness and trying to quiet the turmoil of speculation that surged within his brain.
He had gone walking in the morning and found a machine. He had put his hand upon it and it had given him a gift. Later on, it had given other gifts.
«A machine came, bearing gifts,» he said into the darkness.
A clever, calculated, well-worked-out first contact.
Contact them with something they will know and recognize and need not be afraid of, something to which they can feel superior.
Make it friendly—and what is more friendly than handing out a gift?
What is it?
Missionary?
Trader?
Diplomat?
Or just a mere machine and nothing more?
Spy? Adventurer? Investigator? Surveyor?
Doctor? Lawyer? Indian chief?
And why, of all places, had it landed here, in this forsaken farmland, in this pasture on his farm?
And its purpose?
What had been the purpose, the almost inevitable motive, of those fictional alien beings who, in tales of fantasy, had landed on Earth?
To take over, of course. If not by force, then by infiltration or by friendly persuasion and compulsion; to take over not only Earth, but the human race as well.
The man from the radio station had been excited, the Associated Press man had been indignant that anyone should so insult his intelligence, the Tribune man had been bored and the United Press man flippant. But the citizen had been angry. He was being taken in by another Flying Saucer story and it was just too much.
The citizen was angry because he didn’t want his little world disturbed.
He wanted no interference. He had trouble enough of his own without things being messed up by a Saucer’s landing. He had problems of his own—earning a living, getting along with his neighbors, planning his work, worrying about the polio epidemic.
Although the newscaster had said the polio situation seemed a little brighter—no new cases and no deaths. And that was a fine thing, for polio was pain and death and a terror on the land.
Pain, he thought.
For the first time in many days, there has been no pain.
He lay stiff and still beneath the covers, examining himself for pain. He knew just where it lurked, the exact spot in his anatomy where it lurked hidden out of sight. He lay and waited for it, fearful, now that he had thought of it, that he would find it there.
But it was not there.
He lay and waited for it, afraid that the very thought of it would conjure it up from its hiding place. It did not come. He dared it to come, he invited it to show itself, he hurled mental jibes at it to lure it out. It refused to be lured.
He relaxed and knew that for the moment he was safe. But safe only temporarily, for the pain still was there. It bided its time, waited for its moment, would come when the time was right.
With careless abandon, trying to wipe out the future and its threat, he luxuriated in life without the pain. He listened to the house—the slightly settling joists that made the floor boards creak, the thrum of the light summer wind against the weathered siding, the scraping of the elm branch against the kitchen roof.
Another sound. A knocking at the door. «Chaye! Chaye, where are you?»
«Coming,» he called.
He found slippers and went to the door. It was the sheriff and his men.
«Light the lamp,» the sheriff said.
«You got a match?» Peter asked.
«Yeah, here are some.»
Groping in the dark, Peter found the sheriff’s hand and the book of matches.
He located the table, slid his hand across the top and left the lamp. He lit it and looked at the sheriff from across the table.
«Chaye,» the sheriff said, «that thing is building something.»
«I know it is.»
«What’s the gag?»
«There’s no gag.»
«It gave me this,» the sheriff said.
He threw the object on the table.
«A gun,» said Peter.
«You ever see one like it?»
It was a gun, all right, about the size of a .45. But it had no trigger and the muzzle flared and the whole thing was made of some white, translucent substance.
Peter picked it up and found it weighed no more than half a pound or so.
«No,» said Peter. «No, I’ve never seen one like it.» He put it back on the table, gingerly. «Does it work?»
«It does,» the sheriff said. «I tried it on your barn.»
«There ain’t no barn no more,» said one of the deputies.