And halfway between sitting and rising, Bill Wheeler looked even more dazed for a second. He shook his head as though to clear it.
He said, «What was I talking about, Beautiful? I’m getting punchy from not enough sleep.»
He walked over to the window and stared out, gloomily, rubbing the cat’s fur until it purred.
He said, «Hungry, Beautiful? Want some liver?»
The cat jumped down from the windowsill and rubbed itself against his leg affectionately.
It said, «Miaouw.»
NATURALLY
Henry Blodgett looked at his wrist watch and saw that it was two o’clock in the morning. In despair, he slammed shut the textbook he’d been studying and let his head sink onto his arms on the table in front of him. He knew he’d never pass that examination tomorrow; the more he studied geometry the less he understood it. Mathematics in general had always been difficult for him and now he was finding that geometry was impossible for him to learn.
And if he flunked it, he was through with college; he’d flunked three other courses in his first two years and another failure this year would, under college rules, cause automatic expulsion.
He wanted that college degree badly too, since it was indispensable for the career he’d chosen and worked toward. Only a miracle could save him now.
He sat up suddenly as an idea struck him. Why not try magic? The occult had always interested him. He had books on it and he’d often read the simple instructions on how to conjure up a demon and make it obey his will. Up to now, he’d always figured that it was a bit risky and so had never actually tried it. But this was an emergency and might be worth the slight risk. Only through black magic could he suddenly become an expert in a subject that had always been difficult for him.
From the shelf he quickly took out his best book on black magic, found the right page and refreshed his memory on the few simple things he had to do.
Enthusiastically, he cleared the floor by pushing the furniture against the walls. He drew the pentagram figure on the carpet with chalk and stepped inside it. He then said the incantations.
The demon was considerably more horrible than he had anticipated. But he mustered his courage and started to explain his dilemma.
«I’ve always been poor at geometry,» he began …
«You’re telling me,» said the demon gleefully.
Smiling flames, it came for him across the chalk lines of the useless hexagram Henry had drawn by mistake instead of the protecting pentagram.
VOODOO
Mr. Decker’s wife had just returned from a trip to Haiti—a trip she had taken alone—to give them a cooling off period before they discussed a divorce.
It hadn’t worked. Neither of them had cooled off in the slightest. In fact, they were finding now that they hated one another more than ever.
«Half,» said Mrs. Decker firmly. «I’ll not settle for anything less than half the money plus half the property.»
«Ridiculous!» said Mr. Decker.
«Is it? I could have it all, you know. And quite easily, too. I studied voodoo while in Haiti.»
«Rot!» said Mr. Decker.
«It isn’t. And you should be glad that I am a good woman for I could kill you quite easily if I wished. I would then have all the money and all the real estate, and without any fear of consequences, A death accomplished by voodoo can not be distinguished from a death by heart failure.»
«Rubbish!» said Mr. Decker.
«You think so? I have wax and a hatpin. Do you want to give me a tiny pinch of your hair or a fingernail clipping or two—that’s all I need—and let me show you?»
«Nonsense!» said Mr. Decker.
«Then why are you afraid to have me try? Since know it works, I’ll make you a proposition. If it doesn’t kill you, I’ll give you a divorce and ask for nothing. If it does, I’ll get it all automatically.»
«Done!» said Mr. Decker. «Get your wax and hatpin.» He glanced at his fingernails. «Pretty short. I’ll give you a bit of hair.»
When he came back with a few short strands of hair in the lid of an aspirin tin, Mrs. Decker had already started softening the wax. She kneaded the hair into it, then shaped it into the rough effigy of a human being.
«You’ll be sorry,» she said, and thrust the hatpin into the chest of the wax figure.
Mr. Decker was surprised, but he was more pleased than sorry. He had not believed in voodoo, but being a cautious man he never took chances.
Besides, it had always irritated him that his wife so seldom cleaned her hairbrush.
«ARENA»
Carson opened his eyes, and found himself looking upward into a flickering blue dimness.
It was hot, and he was lying on sand, and a sharp rock embedded in the sand was hurting his back. He rolled over to his side, off the rock, and then pushed himself up to a sitting position.
«I’m crazy,» he thought. «Crazy—or dead—or something.» The sand was blue, bright blue. And there wasn’t any such thing as bright blue sand on Earth or any of the planets.
Blue sand.
Blue sand under a blue dome that wasn’t the sky nor yet a room, but a circumscribed area—somehow he knew it was circumscribed and finite even though he couldn’t see to the top of it.
He picked up some of the sand in his hand and let it run through his fingers. It trickled down onto his bare leg. Bare?
Naked. He was stark naked, and already his body was dripping perspiration from the enervating heat, coated blue with sand wherever sand had touched it.
But elsewhere his body was white.
He thought: Then this sand is really blue. If it seemed blue only because of the blue light, then I’d be blue also. But I’m white, so the sand is blue. Blue sand. There isn’t any blue sand. There isn’t any place like this place I’m in.
Sweat was running down in his eyes.
It was hot, hotter than hell. Only hell—the hell of the ancients—was supposed to be red and not blue.
But if this place wasn’t hell, what was it? Only Mercury, among the planets, had heat like this and this wasn’t Mercury. And Mercury was some four billion miles from—
It came back to him then, where he’d been. In the little one-man scouter, outside the orbit of Pluto, scouting a scant million miles to one side of the Earth Armada drawn up in battle array there to intercept the Outsiders.
That sudden strident nerve-shattering ringing of the alarm bell when the rival scouter—the Outsider ship—had come within range of his detectors—
No one knew who the Outsiders were, what they looked like, from what far galaxy they came, other than that it was in the general direction of the Pleiades.
First, sporadic raids on Earth colonies and outposts. Isolated battles between Earth patrols and small groups of Outsider spaceships; battles sometimes won and sometimes lost, but never to date resulting in the capture of an alien vessel. Nor had any member of a raided colony ever survived to describe the Outsiders who had left the ships, if indeed they had left them.
Not a too-serious menace, at first, for the raids had not been too numerous or destructive. And individually, the ships had proved slightly inferior in armament to the best of Earth’s fighters, although somewhat superior in speed and maneuverability. A sufficient edge in speed, in fact, to give the Outsiders their choice of running or fighting, unless surrounded.
Nevertheless, Earth had prepared for serious trouble, for a showdown, building the mightiest armada of all time.
It had been waiting now, that armada, for a long time. But now the showdown was coming.