But in tens of thousands of years this part of war hadn’t changed. The flyboys were fine with their sleek spaceships and their fancy weapons. When the chips are down, though, it was still the foot soldier, the infantry, that had to take the ground and hold it, foot by bloody foot. Like this damned planet of a star he’d never heard of until they’d landed him there. And now it was sacred ground because the aliens were there too. The aliens, the only other intelligent race in the Galaxy … cruel, hideous and repulsive monsters.
Contact had been made with them near the center of the Galaxy, after the slow, difficult colonization of a dozen thousand planets; and it had been war at sight; they’d shot without even trying to negotiate, or to make peace.
Now, planet by bitter planet, it was being fought out.
He was wet and muddy and hungry and cold, and the day was raw with a high wind that hurt his eyes. But the aliens were trying to infiltrate and every sentry post was vital.
He stayed alert, gun ready. Fifty thousand light-years from home, fighting on a strange world and wondering if he’d ever live to see home again.
And then he saw one of them crawling toward him. He drew a bead and fired. The alien made that strange horrible sound they all make, then lay still.
He shuddered at the sound and sight of the alien lying there. One ought to be able to get used to them after a while, but he’d never been able to. Such repulsive creatures they were, with only two arms and two legs, ghastly white skins and no scales.
MOUSE
Bill Wheeler was, as it happened, looking out of the window of his bachelor apartment on the fifth floor on the corner of 83rd Street and Central Park West when the spaceship from Somewhere landed.
It floated gently down out of the sky and came to rest in Central Park on the open grass between the Simon Bolivar Monument and the walk, barely a hundred yards from Bill Wheeler’s window.
Bill Wheeler’s hand paused in stroking the soft fur of the Siamese cat lying on the windowsill and he said wonderingly, «What’s that, Beautiful?» but the Siamese cat didn’t answer. She stopped purring, though, when Bill stopped stroking her. She must have felt something different in Bill—possibly from the sudden rigidness in his fingers or possibly because cats are prescient and feel changes of mood. Anyway she rolled over on her back and said, «Miaouw,» quite plaintively. But, Bill, for once, didn’t answer her. He was too engrossed in the incredible thing across the street in the park.
It was cigar-shaped, about seven feet long and two feet in diameter at the thickest point. As far as size was concerned, it might have been a large toy model dirigible, but it never occurred to Bill—even at his first glimpse of it when it was about fifty feet in the air, just opposite his window—that it might be a toy or a model.
There was something about it, even at the most casual look, that said alien. You couldn’t put your finger on what it was. Anyway, alien or terrestrial, it had no visible means of support. No wings, propellers; rocket tubes or anything else—and it was made of metal and obviously heavier than air.
But it floated down like a feather to a point just about a foot above the grass. It stopped there and suddenly, out of one end of it (both ends were so nearly alike that you couldn’t say it was the front or back) came a flash of fire that was almost blinding. There was a hissing sound with the flash and the cat under Bill Wheeler’s hand turned over and was on her feet in a single lithe movement, looking out of the window. She spat once, softly, and the hairs on her back and the back of her neck stood straight up, as did her tail, which was now a full two inches thick.
Bill didn’t touch her; if you know cats you don’t when they’re like that. But he said, «Quiet, Beautiful. It’s all right. It’s only a spaceship from Mars, to conquer Earth. It isn’t a mouse.»
He was right on the first count, in a way. He was wrong on the second, in a way. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves like that.
After the single blast from its exhaust tube or whatever it was the spaceship dropped the last twelve inches and lay inert on the grass. It didn’t move. There was now a fan-shaped area of blackened earth radiating from one end of it, for a distance of about thirty feet.
And then nothing happened except that people came running from several directions. Cops came running, too, three of them, and kept people from going too close to the alien object. Too close, according to the cops’ idea, seemed to be closer than about ten feet. Which, Bill Wheeler thought, was silly. If the thing was going to explode or anything, it would probably kill everyone for blocks around.
But it didn’t explode. It just lay there, and nothing happened. Nothing except that flash that had startled both Bill and the cat. And the cat looked bored now, and lay back down on the windowsill, her hackles down.
Bill stroked her sleek fawn-colored fur again, absent-mindedly. He said, «This is a day, Beautiful. That thing out there is from outside, or I’m a spider’s nephew. I’m going down and take a look at it.»
He took the elevator down. He got as far as the front door, tried to open it, and couldn’t. All he could see through the glass was the backs of people, jammed tight against the door. Standing on tiptoes and stretching his neck to see over the nearest ones, he could see a solid phalanx of heads stretching from here to there.
He got back in the elevator. The operator said, «Sounds like excitement out front. Parade going by or something?»
«Something,» Bill said. «Spaceship just landed in Central Park, from Mars or somewhere. You hear the welcoming committee out there.»
«The hell,» said the operator. «What’s it doing?»
«Nothing.»
The operator grinned. «You’re a great kidder, Mr. Wheeler. How’s that cat you got?»
«Fine,» said Bill. «How’s yours?»
«Getting crankier. Threw a book at me when I got home last night with a few under my belt and lectured me half the night because I’d spent three and a half bucks. You got the best kind.»
«I think so,» Bill said.
By the time he got back to the window, there was really a crowd down there. Central Park West was solid with people for half a block each way and the park was solid with them for a long way back. The only open area was a circle around the spaceship, now expanded to about twenty feet in radius, and with a lot of cops keeping it open instead of only three.
Bill Wheeler gently moved the Siamese over to one side of the windowsill and sat down. He said, «We got a box seat, Beautiful. I should have had more sense than to go down there.»
The cops below were having a tough time. But reinforcements were coming, truckloads of them. They fought their way into the circle and then helped enlarge it. Somebody had obviously decided that the larger that circle was the fewer people were going to be killed. A few khaki uniforms had infiltrated the circle, too.
«Brass,» Bill told the cat. «High brass. I can’t make out insignia from here, but that one boy’s at least a three-star; you can tell by the way he walks.»
They got the circle pushed back to the sidewalk, finally. There was a lot of brass inside by then. And half a dozen men, some in uniform, some not, were starting, very carefully, to work on the ship. Photographs first, and then measurements, and then one man with a big suitcase of paraphernalia was carefully scratching at the metal and making tests of some kind.
«A metallurgist, Beautiful,» Bill Wheeler explained to the Siamese, who wasn’t watching at all. «And I’ll bet you ten pounds of liver to one miaouw he finds that’s an alloy that’s brand new to him. And that it’s got some stuff in it he can’t identify.