“I told you so!” insisted Jackie. “It wasn’t one of your crazy little bats I saw. It was bigger than I am; it looked at me for a minute, and then flew away.”
Envers put his hand on the youngster’s shoulder, and looked into his eyes for a moment. The face was flushed and the small body trembled with excitement and indig-nation.
“All right, son,” said the doctor gently. “Remember, neither your father nor I have ever heard of such a thing as you describe, and it’s only human for him to try to make believe it was something he does know about. You forget it for now, and get some sleep; in the morning we’ll have a look to find out just what it might have been.”
He watched Jackie’s face carefully as he spoke, and noted suddenly that a tiny lump, with a minute red dot at the center, was visible on his throat at almost the same point as Jimmy’s wound.
He stopped talking for a moment to examine it more closely, and Wade stiffened in his chair as he saw the action. Envers, however, made no comment, and sent the boy up to bed without giving the father a chance to resume the argument. Then he sat in thought for several minutes, a half smile on his face. Wade finally interrupted the silence.
“What was that on Jackie’s neck?” he asked. “I same sort of thing that — “
“It was not like the puncture in Jimmy’s throat, replied the doctor wearily. “If you want a medical opinion, I’d say it was a mosquito bite. If you’re trying to connect it with whatever happened to the other boy, forget it; if Jackie knew anything unusual about it, he’d have told you. Remember, he’s been trying to put stuffing in a rather unusual story. I’d stop worrying about the whole thing, if I were you; Jimmy will be all right when we get these strep bugs out of his system, and there hasn’t been anything wrong with his brother from the first. I know it’s perfectly possible to read something dramatic into a couple of insect bites — I read `Dracula’ in my youth, too — but if you start reading it back to me I’m quitting. You’re an educated man, Jim, and I only forgive this mental wandering because I know you’ve had a perfectly justifiable worry about Jimmy.”
“But what did Jackie see?”
“Again I can offer only a medical opinion; and that is — nothing. It was dark, and he has a normal imagina-tion, which can be pretty colorful in a child.”
“But he was so insistent — “
The doctor smiled: “You were getting pretty positive yourself when I walked in, Jim. There’s something in human nature that thrives on opposition. I think you’d better follow the prescription I gave for Jackie, and get to bed. You needn’t worry about either of them, now.” Envers rose to go, and held out his hand. Wade looked doubtful for a moment, then laughed suddenly, got to his feet, shook hands, and went for the doctor’s coat.
Like Wade, Tes had a few nagging worries. As Thrykr turned away from the controls, satisfied that the ship was following the radial beam emanating from the broadcaster circling Sol, she voiced them.
“What can you possibly do about that human being who saw you?” she asked. “We lived for three Earth days keyed up to a most unpleasant pitch of excitement, simply because of a law which forbade our making ourselves known to the natives of that planet. Now, when you’ve done exactly that, you don’t seem bothered at all. Are you expecting the creature to pass us off as supernatural visitants, as they are supposed to have accounted for the original surveyors?”
“No, my dear. As I pointed out to you before, that idea is the purest nonsense. Humanity is obviously in a well-advanced stage of scientific advancement, and it is unthinkable that they should permit such a theory to satisfy them. No — they know about u, now, and must have been pretty sure since the surveyors’ first visit.”
“But perhaps they simply disbelieved the individuals who encountered the surveyors, and will similarly dis-credit the one who saw you.”
“How could they do that? Unless you assume that all those who saw us were not only congenital liars but were known to be such by their fellows, and were nevertheless allowed at large. To discredit them any other way would require a line of reasoning too strained to be entertained by a scientifically trained mind. Rationalization of that nature, Tes, is as much a characteristic of primitive peoples as is superstition. I repeat, they know what we are; and they should have been permitted galactic intercourse from the time of the first survey — they cannot have changed much in sixty or seventy, years, at least in the state of material progress.
“And that, my dear, is the reason I am not worried about having been seen. I shall report the whole affair to the authorities as soon as we reach Blalhn, and I have no doubt that they will follow my recommendation — which will be to send an immediate official party to contact the human race.” He smiled momentarily, then grew serious again. “I should like to apologize to that child whose life was risked by my carelessness, and to its parents, who must have been caused serious anxiety; and I imagine I will be able to do so.” He turned to his wife.
“Tes, would you like to spend my next vacation on Earth?”
Technical Error
Seven spacesuited human beings stood motionless, at the edge of the little valley. Around them was a bare, jagged plain of basalt, lit sharply by the distant sun and unwavering stars; a dozen miles behind, hidden by the abrupt curvature of the asteriod’s surface, was a half-fused heap of metal that had brought them here; and in front of them, almost at their feet, in the shallow groove scraped by a meteor ages before, was an object which caused more than one of those men to doubt his sanity.
Before them lay the ship whose heat-ruined wreckage had been left behind them only minutes ago — perfectly whole in every part. Seven pairs of eyes swept it from end to end, picking out and recognizing each line. Driving and steering jet pits at each end; six bulging observation ports around its middle; rows of smaller ports, their transparent panes gleaming, obviously intact, in the sun-light; the silvery, prolate hull itself — all forced themselves on the minds that sought desperately to reject them as impossibilities. The Giansar was gone — they had fled from the threat of its disordered atomic engines, watched it glow and melt and finally cool again, a nearly formless heap of slag. So what was this?
None of them even thought of a sister ship. The Giansar had none. Spaceships are not mass production articles; only a few hundred exist as yet, and each of those is a specialized, designed-to-order machine. A spaceman of any standing can recognize at a glance, by shape alone, any ship built on Earth — and no other intelligent race than man inhabits Sol’s system.
Grant was the first to throw off the spell. He glanced up at the stars overhead, and figured; then he shook his head.
“We haven’t circled, I’ll swear,” he said after a moment. “We’re a quarter of the way around this world from where we left the ship, if I have allowed right for rotation. Besides, it wasn’t in a valley.”
The tension vanished as though someone had snapped a switch. “That’s right,” grunted Cray, the stocky engine man. “The place was practically flat, except for a lot of spiky rocks. And anyway, no one but a nut could think that was the Giansar, after leaving her the way we did. I wonder who left this buggy here.”
“Why do you assume it has been left?” The query came, in a quiet voice, from Jack Preble, the youngest person present. “It appears uninjured. I see no reason to suppose that the crew is not waiting for us to enter at this moment, if they have seen us.”