He said, “I guess I was feeling masterful or something. You see, for once I’m the hero of my own yarn and I’ve figured the plot line out. It has to be this way. It will give the newspaper that hired me to sneak in here a tremendous scoop, and it will make me rich and famous and I can marry you.”
“After you ask me, maybe. But tell me what this is all about.”
“You see, darling, mankind has had an enormous fear of these things, but actually the truth of the matter is that...”
“Bud, would you kindly move the love scene over into that corner out of the way?” a strange voice said.
Larry turned quickly, and saw a weary-looking man in a white smock and a tool apron standing just inside the doorway.
“Now see here!” Larry said. The man ignored him. He turned and shouted down the ramp. “Hey, Al!” he yelled. “Tell Joe and Charlie to keep an eye on those potbellies on the north side.”
The weary one brushed by Larry and Alice, setting his gasoline lantern down, pulling a pair of pliers out of his tool apron. With the pliers he deftly opened four scimitar-shaped knife switches, wedged little strips of bake-lite across the contact points so that the switches could not close.
There was a distant shout. The weary one went to the doorway. “What’s that? Did the trick? Okay, tell Mr. Sweeney that I’m deactivating the whole works.”
The weary one went back to the board and whistled softly between his teeth as he blocked the major control switches across the top of the panels. Slowly the clicking died out. The room became silent.
“May I ask the meaning of this?” Larry inquired with all the dignity he could muster.
“How’d you two get in here? Didn’t you see the signs?”
“I am employed by the Express Courier and, at the risk of my life, sir, I came in here to...”
The weary one chuckled. “Sweeney catch you in here and it will be at the risk of your life, bud. How about shoving off and taking your dolly with you, eh?”
“We’ve been in here for over an hour and...”
“Oh, I guess the signs weren’t up then. Take a look at them on your way out.”
Woodenly Larry Graim ducked under the low door frame and went down the ramp, Alice following him. She made an odd sound in her throat. He glared furiously at her and she worked so hard to keep her face straight that she nearly strangled. They stood at the top of the ramp that led out to the ground. All activity had ceased. The pot bellied plasterers had stopped applying the transparent liquid. They sat in a ragged circle, their spatulate hands folded.
Four trucks stood near the partially completed dome. A jeep roared over and skidded to a stop. An oversized man with crimson hair and a face like broken concrete piled out and roared, “Can’t you read? Git offa the area, you two.”
Larry pulled himself up. “Sir, I want to have it known that I...”
“Do you git or do I take the slack of your pants and see how far I can throw you?”
Alice tugged at Larry. He walked along with her, half dazed. A hundred feet beyond the ships that formed the spokes of a huge wheel, with the dome as the hub, they found the perimeter signs.
“They can’t do this to me,” Larry said. “It spoils the plot!”
Again she had to pull him along. The Express Courier representative was gone. They went, in Alice’s car, down to the newspaper building. Together, they went up to the news room. The city editor was roaring at copy boys, at the reporters, at the switch-board girl. The slot man on the copy desk was roaring at the men on the rim.
After twelve minutes the city editor noticed Larry Graim. “Well, whadda you want? Who are you?”
“I’m Lawrence Graim and I was hired to...”
“Graim? Oh sure, Graim. Look, kid. It just didn’t pan out, see? Tell you what you do. Hack out a feature. Maybe we can use it in a few days. We’ll pay space rates. Come back Tuesday.”
“Could you please tell me what has happened?”
“Buy a paper, kid. It’s all in there.”
Larry Graim and Alice sat in his room. She had her shoes off, her legs tucked under her. “You make the best darn coffee, honey,” she said.
“Intrepid young hero’s claim to fame,” he said with bitterness.
“Good coffee is something useful.”
“Oh, dandy. I was such a smart guy. And all the time the Samson organization had figured it out and they were quietly buying up the land where the ships had taken over before they moved in. Now they’ve turned one complete installation over to the government, just as a public relations gesture. They’re working on the control devices and within a few weeks they hope to have that automatic equipment doing anything they tell it to. See their ads? They’ll pave so cheap that they’ll be low bidder on every road contract they want. Yeah, I was a real smart guy.”
“Who were they, Larry?” she asked softly. “The ones who started it all?”
He shrugged. “We’ll probably never know. Maybe they’re all dead by now. Some wise old race at the other end of the universe. They were expanding. They needed new planets. So they set up a fleet for completely automatic preparation. The brain ship — that big baby in orbit around us — led the others like a hen with several thousand baby chicks. Find the planet, map it, pick the spots, build the domes, and the buildings and move along. Then when the actual bosses arrived, there were the housing projects all set for them. But that fleet has been going a million years too long. Or a billion. We don’t even know that. It must have been a frighteningly efficient project at first. Now it is just blundering along. And so long as there is one ship left, it will keep on going. We could have stopped it if we could have grabbed the brain ship.”
The soft radio music stopped and a man began to speak with excitement in his tone. Larry turned it higher.
“...that’s right, folks. Every ship all over the world that hasn’t been immobilized lifted about nine minutes ago. Already, on the sunny side of the earth, they are so high that they can’t be seen. A report has come in that, in Egypt, there are two domes, complete and perfect in every respect. The United States, with a head start, contains the greatest number of immobilized ships. And, believe me, we’re going to find out all the secrets of those ships. The President today said that the world should be thankful for this technological gift from some unknown...”
Larry clicked the radio off. “Gone,” he said dolefully.
“Gone to find a new planet. The ten thousandth planet, or the hundred thousandth,” she said. “When we get to Mars, we’ll probably find there the domes that they built.”
He looked at her and smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile. “And so tomorrow I go back to the method of least squares and the geometric graph paper. How thrilling! There I was, with the plot all figured out...”
She came over to him and curled into his lap, warm and soft as a kitten. She kissed the angle of his jaw. “You’ve still got the gal, darling.”
“Yes, but...” he said.
She stopped his lips in an entertaining manner.
“Yes, but...” he said again.
Again she rendered speech improbable.
“I begin to see what you mean,” he said shakily.
She sighed. “Besides, Lambie, you need me. You need a fresh viewpoint. You’ve been writing the same tired old story for years. Now, of course, space ships are out, the same as the atomic bomb. In the next story we write, how about a theme based on a culture where...”
He stared at her. “The next story we write?”
“Of course! I’m marrying you because it is the duty of every fan to help improve the level of science fiction.”