“This is just crazy,” he said moodily. “What difference will that particular piece of film make?”
“For you, a lot of difference,” I promised him. ‘Because if it doesn’t come on just the way I want it—you’re fired.”
The main feature that night was Meet Me In Manhattan—a movie which had an unusually large number of bit parts for Simpson’s alien to choose from. During the supporting programme I stood in my niche at the back of the hall trying to reassure myself about the possible consequences of my plan. If the alien existed only in my fevered imagination no harm would be done; and if it was real I was doing a service for mankind by exposing it. Put like that, there was nothing to worry about, but the normally amiable dimness of the familiar hall seemed to be crawling with menace and by the time the main feature started I was too jumpy to stay in one place.
I went out to the lobby and spent some time scanning the few late arrivals. Jean Magee, who runs the box office, kept staring through her window at me, so I walked outside to check that the squad car promised by Bart Wightman was in the vicinity. There was no sign of it. I debated trying to get him on the phone, then noticed a vehicle which might have been a police cruiser parked near the end of the block. It was raining a little, as is usual on a Wednesday night, so I turned up my collar and walked towards the car, glancing back at the theatre every now and again. The incongruous architecture of the yellow cube looked more out of place than ever in the quiet street, and its neon sign fizzed fretfully in the rain, like a time bomb.
I was nearing the car when the reflections on the wet pavement and store windows dimmed abruptly. Spinning on my heel, I saw that the marquee lighting had faded out. The theatre remained in darkness for a good ten seconds, longer than on previous Wednesdays, then the lighting came on strongly again.
Suddenly scared stiff, I sprinted towards the car and saw its police markings. One of the windows rolled down and a policeman stuck his head out.
“This way,” I shouted. “This way.”
“What’s the trouble?” the officer demanded stolidly.
“I … I’ll explain later. Just then I heard running footsteps and turned to see Porter Hastings belting towards me in his shirtsleeves. I began to get a ghastly premonition.
“Jim,” he gasped. “You’ve got to get back there—all hell has broken out.”
“What do you mean?” The question was rhetorical on my part, because I suddenly knew only too well what had happened. “Did you project that piece of film as I instructed?”
“Of course, I did.” Even under stress he still found time to look indignant at his professionalism being queried.
“The exact frames which were in the gate?”
He looked guilty. “Well, you didn’t say anything about that. I ran a bit of the film to see what it was.”
“And did you wind it back to the frames I wanted?”
There was no time—and no need—for him to answer, because at that moment a wild commotion broke out farther down the street. The police officers in the car, Porter Hastings and I got a grandstand view of something which hasn’t been seen on Earth for over fifteen hundred years—a Roman legion fighting its way out of a tight corner. Their helmets, shields and short swords glinted as they formed a tight square under the marquee, ready to take on all comers. And above their heads, with an irony I was in no mood to appreciate, my neon sign spelled out the word: COLOSSEUM.
“There must be an explanation for this,” one of the policemen told me as he reached for his microphone to call headquarters, ‘and all I can say is, it had better be a good one.”
I nodded glumly. I had a good enough explanation—but I had an uneasy feeling that my Wednesday night trade was ruined for ever.
…And Isles Where Good Men Lie
Lt. Col. John Fortune spat out a piece of chocolate wrapping paper and swung round in his swivel chair. Half a million miles beyond the orbit of the Moon the cylindrical bulk of Nesster spaceship Number 1753 carried out a similar rotation….
Still spitting noisily, Fortune pushed himself up and walked heavily to the window. Half a million miles beyond the orbit of the Moon the ship made a minute course correction….
It was determined to land in Fortune’s lap.
Or that was the way it seemed as he stared out across the Icelandic airfield on which United Nations Planetary Defence Unit N186 was based. It was a cold October afternoon and over the plateau the clouds were seahorses of frozen grey steel, moving across the sky with senseless clockwork precision. In the distant centre of the field a silver tactical transport rose vertically and drifted away, the punishing roar of its multiple lift jets animating the floor under Fortune’s feet.
He had been intensely aware of Nesster ship 1753 since the moment, a week previously, the sweeping fans of the Lunar deep radar had shown it to be cruising north of the Line. He had promptly developed a suspicion that this one, this single out-of-line ship, was heading straight for his sector, and since then he had been able to feel it boring down through the sky towards him. When he walked or drove or changed position in any way he felt Number 1753 swing its blunt nose on to new bearings with the intent passion of a rifleman seeking the moment of maximum vulnerability. Which was crazy, Fortune told himself, because if anybody was going to be alarmed it ought to be the Nessters on board that ship.
Lt. Griffin, the Unit’s information officer, came in from the adjutant’s office and saluted, his neat golden head almost luminescent in the gloom. He glanced reproachfully at the top three buttons of Fortune’s trousers which Fortune had undone to ease the after-lunch pressure around his middle.
“We’re almost ready to begin, sir,” Griffin said. “We’ve got eight reporters and six cameramen.” There was the faintest possible emphasis on the last word, which was Griffin’s way of saying, smarten yourself up, slob, you’re supposed to look like a hero.
Fortune fingered his staining shirt buttons. “What is it about the public relations business,” he asked conversationally, ‘which makes it attract people who are completely hopeless in private relations?”
Griffin’s blond eyebrows moved an eighth of an inch upwards, which for him was a violent display of emotion. ‘Being purely an information officer,” he said, making a fine distinction which was lost on Fortune, “I’m not qualified to say much about public relations practitioners, but I suppose one is likely to encounter misfits in all walks of life, sir,” His gaze travelled significantly round the drab green walls of Fortune’s office then he walked out quickly.
A slob and then a misfit. Fortune pulled in his stomach angrily and did up the buttons. I must lose weight, he thought in sudden desperation, no more starch for a whole month.
From the outer office came sounds of Griffin organising his little group of local pressmen who were out to make the most of the possibility of Iceland’s first Nesster landing. The country’s first landing would be a big sensation, but the fact that the Col. Fortune would be there to handle it was an out-and-out gift—the legendary Captain Johnny back in action again after a lapse of four years, complete with piratical name and swashbuckling reputation. Yes, if it came off it would be a newsman’s dream, and Fortune wanted nothing to do with it. He had done his share of defending the planet against the invaders during that first incredible year of 1983, but there was a limit to the amount of guilt he was prepared to accept.
Griffin herded the pressmen in from the adjutant’s office. The reporters sat on the chairs which had been borrowed from other offices for the occasion and the cameramen moved to strategic corners.