THE VISIT

                                                    FOREWORD.

“The Visit” is part one of a trilogy of novellas, sadly never completed.  It was written in 1969, when I was in my very late teens, and decades before the world’s military powers became (necessarily) obsessed with security and secrecy.

There was a good reason for not finishing the three stories:- having created a weapon which effectively destroyed a planet, I found it impossible, given my (lack of) scientific knowledge at that age, to create a counter-weapon which would save a planet.

I would probably still have a problem with that today, if I attempted it.

Apart from some minor grammatical corrections, the story has not been changed at all from the original 1960’s manuscript.

“The Visit” was inspired by two things:- partly by a film called “Rage” starring the late Glen Ford,  but mostly by a true event that occurred on October 24th 1967, when two policeman in a police car chased a UFO along some country lanes in Devon. (Their brief interview -- the remainder is still classified – is available on the internet.)

Having re-read the story, and scanned the pages, (written on an old-fashioned ‘steam’ typewriter),  into my computer in 2012, I was struck by two things which are interestingly and intriguingly (one might even say, chillingly) prophetic.

Firstly, there is a situation in this story described as ‘subliminal education’.

Reading through the description  it is immediately apparent that  ‘subliminal education’ is, in fact,  nothing less than ‘Virtual Reality’,  conceived and put to use long before the “digital age” and some 20 years before Virtual Reality was invented.

Secondly,  scientists have long suspected, - and now it has been definitively ascertained – that the planet “Nordia” referred to in the story once had an atmosphere,  and water,  and may have sustained life.  (There are several websites, if you want to check it out.)

But no longer....now it is a dry, barren, dusty place.....simply because all the planet's hydrogen evaporated into space........

The cause of the barrenness of the planet is the same as in my story.

The reason for the evaporation of that gas has not yet, as far as I know, been proven.

So....could it be that my story has the answer?

Nah !!!.... Couldn't be !

But then again....are we sure about that?

David Barry

England 2012

                                                  THE VISIT

They’ll come back, of course. We don’t know when, or how long they’ll stay, but one thing we’re sure of. 

They’ll come back.

Ever since the Moon landing by the Yanks, back in ‘69, there’s been a whole lot of speculation about creatures from Outer Space, bug eyed monsters, weird spaceships and the like, and you can pick up almost any kid’s comic and find something about the big American cities under relentless and devastating attack from little green men, or big blue ones, or something like that. Most people seemed to think that we’d be visited sooner or later if there was anyone, or anything, up there, but the idea seemed to be that all this would happen in the States, if and when it did happen.

Which explains why there was such a stir when the first Sphere landed in the heart of Wiltshire. God knows why they sent me to watch the damn thing, I’m no expert on flying saucers, but send me they did; at three fifteen one freezing cold November morning, from the Heavy Artillery Regiment of His Majesty’s Army, based at Tidworth Army Training Camp, out into the countryside about two miles from Salisbury.

What had happened was that two stalwart members of the British Police Force had sighted an Unidentified Flying Object travelling parallel with the old A 345 road, and had given chase. Their description of it must have given someone the heebie-jeebies and he called in the Army.  Investigate it, they told me. They backed me up with a tank transporter, although by the time that lumbering great thing got near enough to be any good-, they could have captured us, examined, hung, drawn and quartered us, and buried us to boot. Still, the thought of it somewhere behind us gave a certain amount of relief.

      When I arrived at the layby where the Sphere was supposed to be     hovering, all I could see was a police car and two worried looking policemen. There was no sign of any Sphere, glowing pink or blue or any other colour. My Sergeant, a big burly friend that I’d known for years, stopped the jeep in the layby. The two policemen came running up to us. Bill, my Sergeant, looked up at the sky.

“Can’t see anything’’,   he said.

I looked up. There were plenty of stars all bright and twinkling, some little wisps of cloud, and not much else. I pulled my coat collar up around my ears and shivered. Every time someone spoke you could see their breath in the cold air.

“Nope,”  I agreed.  “Must be a college rag.”

The two policemen reached us.

“Morning,”  I said. “Where’s this Sphere, then?”

The taller one of the two, who turned out to be the driver, coughed.

“Sorry, fellahs, it disappeared.”

“Hell!”  I said.

I couldn’t have cared less where the damn thing was. All I could think was that I’d been dragged out into a freezing cold night on a wild goose chase. The other policeman spoke.

“Bloody good job if you ask me!”

“You’d better give me the whole story,” I said resignedly.

The driver pulled out a battered pack of cigarettes and offered them round.

“Well, we noticed this funny blue thing up in the sky, see, and we started to follow it, ‘cause it looked a bit weird. It kept to the road, which we thought was most obligin’ , and about a mile back it sort of rose up and down quickly, three times, like as if it was going over three big bumps.”

I puffed my cigarette.

“What did you do?”

“Flashed me lights at him,” said the driver.

Bill McGuffy had been listening to this without comment, muffled up in his coat like some great beetle, and now he turned to me with a bored expression.

“Come on, Dave. Let’s go home. It’s just a massive hoax.”

“Seems that way,” I agreed.

We all looked up and round again to satisfy ourselves that it was just a massive hoax. The clear night sky was quite empty.

“Okay,” said the driver dubiously. “I’d better have your names for my report.”

“Oh.”  I pointed to Bill. “That’s Sergeant Bill McGuffy.”

Bill pointed to me.

“And that’s Captain David Armstrong.”

The driver scribbled this information down in his inevitable notebook.

“Thanks,” he said. “Well, we’re off. I’ve got a wife keeping my bed warm, and Christ, am I cold!”  He grinned, and they both turned and walked towards their car.

Bill hopped into the driving seat of the jeep and I stepped up onto the running board. No longer feeling so tolerant towards the tiny twinkling stars, and wishing I was back in my bed, I glanced up for a final look round.

And suddenly I felt very ill.

High up in the night sky, I could see a perfect sphere, glowing blue.

It didn’t move, and no sound came from it. It just hung there, for all the world like a great eye, watching us broodingly.

I grabbed McGuffy’s arm.

“Look!” I said quiet1y.

Bill looked up.  “Clever,” he murmured.

I turned round and called the policemen.

“Is that it?”

The policemen whipped round and stared upwards. The driver gaped at it.

“Cripes !”

The little one took one glance and dashed for the car, shouting,  “I’ll tell the Chief !”

I stared at the thing again. It was about a hundred feet up. Was it my imagination or was it getting bigger? My eye caught a star just off one edge of it and focused on that. After a few seconds it blinked out, obliterated by the blue thing. Damn me if the thing wasn’t coming down right over our heads. From somewhere nearby a sound registered. It was the little cop jabbering excitedly into his radio.

“Alpha one zero to M2QW. Chief, it’s back! It’s coming down just over our heads!”

“Have those Army fellows arrived?” The man at the other end of the radio sounded brisk and efficient.

“Yes,”  said the policeman, glancing at me. “They’re here.”

“Good,” said the radio. “Stay there and see what happens, but if things start to get dicey, leave them to the Army.”

The little policeman grinned maliciously.

“With pleasure!” he said. He hooked the microphone back and came to stand next to me. Bill, ever to be relied upon, murmured in my right ear.

“It’s nearly on top of us.”

I hadn’t seen him get out of the jeep, but now he was standing next to me, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, watching the sphere warily.

I followed his gaze.  Sure enough, it had sunk steadily lower until it was only forty feet up. I was just about to order everyone well clear when it stopped. Suddenly, we heard a far off rumble. It wasn’t from the sphere.

The tank transporter had arrived. Ponderously it rounded a bend in the road and pulled to a stop in the layby about forty yards away. I started to walk towards it, and some sixth sense made me look up. The sphere had risen about twenty feet and was now moving slowly towards the transporter. The back of my neck prickled.

The damn thing was keeping pace with me, right over my head.

I reached the cab of the lorry and motioned to the driver, a Corporal I recognised from the Camp. He wound his window down. He too was watching the sphere. It had stopped again, just in front of the lorry.

“What the hell is it doing?” he asked.

I didn’t try to give him an answer so I just said, without smiling, “Inquisitive, isn’t it?”

Behind me, I heard a gasp. My head jerked round and up. The sphere had started to sink again. It began to radiate some heat. We watched it silently for several moments.

“I don’t like this,” I said. “We shall all fry if it comes much closer.”

By now, I was starting to sweat. My coat, instead of feeling like a personal heater, began to feel more like a Turkish bath. I turned to the driver of the transporter.

“Granger, get your lorry back about sixty feet.” I ordered.

“Right, sir.”

Without waiting to watch him do it, I ran back towards the jeep. As I passed under the sphere, which was too damn close, I felt my face run with sweat. I shouted to the policemen.

“Move out of it!”

I jumped aboard the jeep, and McGuffy let in the clutch with a jerk.

The jeep pulled to a stop behind the police car at the other end of the layby. I motioned to the two policemen to stay in the car and turned to look out of the back of the jeep.

The Sphere was no more than twenty feet above the ground and still sinking. Now I could get a clear look at it.

It was about fifty feet in diameter, completely spherical and there were no vision ports, protuberances, flashing lights or any of the other expected paraphernalia. It was just a plain sealed ball and it was giving off an even blue glow and a hell of a lot of heat.

In the driving seat of the jeep, Bill started to  remove his coat.

When it was five feet off the ground, the sphere stopped and remained motionless for several seconds. I looked at Bill. He was frowning at it, the sweat pouring down his face.

“What do you think?” I asked, more to break the growing tension than anything else.

“I dunno,” he growled, “but I wish to God it was anywhere but here.”

“Why? Are you afraid it’s the Reds?”

Bill shook his head.  “I haven’t got a clue, but I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I don’t think I’d pine away if I never saw another one. I don’t like it, any of it, but I suppose we’re stuck with it.”

I looked at it again. It didn’t register for a moment, what I saw.  When it did I felt stone cold, despite the heat the thing was exuding. Very slowly, the blasted thing was moving towards Granger and his tank transporter, travelling parallel with the ground and about five feet above it. I never moved so fast in my life. I was out of the jeep and grabbing the loud hailer out of the back before you could have said Russian.

“Granger! Back up! Back up!”  I bellowed. I heard the engine start and the heavy clunk as the lorry went into gear. Bill leapt out of his seat and dashed round the Jeep.

“What’s it doing?” he gasped, his shocked face glowing eerily blue in the reflected light.

I craned forward trying to make out what the thing was up to, but as it effectively blocked the road it was impossible to see the lorry or anything else on that side of the Sphere.

There was a crunch and the sound of bushes being uprooted. Bill and I looked at one another.

“It’s killed him,” I said flatly.

Bill, staring hard at the Sphere, grabbed my arm. The Sphere was rising rapidly. Now we could see the lorry, bent in half across the road like some monstrous reptile with its back broken; the trailer’s rear set of wheels firmly embedded in a ditch and the cab facing us like a nightmarish staring head.

“Granger!” I yelled. “Granger! Are you alright?”

Two voices answered immediately, a little on the quavery side.  “Yes sir. We are.”

“Get the hell out of that lorry!” I shouted. “Take cover in the bushes until you get a chance to work your way round to us.”

I turned to Bill.

"Get the walkie-talkie out and call up Sunray,” I told him.

Suddenly,  I realised that the two policemen were standing behind me.

“Effectively disposed of your gun, hasn’t it?” said one.

“Eh! What are you talking about?” I snapped.

“Well, look at it.” He pointed to the transporter.  “You aren’t never goin’ to get that off that lorry now, are you?”

I stared at him and then turned slowly to look at the tank. Bill, holding the walkie-talkie, stopped dead in his tracks.

That policeman was right. The barrel of the tank pointed harmlessly away across a field. And a child of seven would have seen that it couldn’t have been off loaded without getting the lorry clear of the ditch first.

I hadn’t seen it though. I looked at Bill again.

“Impossible,” I said.

Bill shrugged and held out the radio. I took it and still stared at him.

“It must be the Reds, then,” I said, fishing for some support.

I got it from the police driver.

“Ar,” he said.

I pressed the transmit button on the radio.

“Midnight calling Sunray. Come in please. Over.”

Somebody had been stirred up enough to allocate a code name for the operation, and for our C.O. back at base.

“Sunray here, over.”

I glanced at Bill and spoke into the radio uncertainly.

“Sir, this thing’s playing tricks with us. It’s forced the transporter across the road, blocking both lanes.”

“Has it shown any signs of hostility?”

“No, sir. In fact - ”

I paused. What I was about to say was going to sound bloody silly. How do you explain to your C.O. that you think a big blue ball has gently but firmly removed all threat of weaponry?

“Go on, man!” Sunray snapped his teeth audibly.

I know what he’d think if I told him; -  that I was talking a lot of balls.

I drew a deep breath as Bill nodded to me.

“Well, sir, the fact is, it looked as if it was gently nudging our armament out of the way.”

I waited for the explosion.

“What the hell are you blathering about, Midnight?"

I squirmed mentally, picturing the big red face, the whiskers quivering, the grey eyes glaring at me across the desk.

“Well, sir, it sank to about five feet off the ground, and then nosed forward towards the lorry. I ordered Granger to back up, and his trailer veered off into the hedge. The transporter is now stuck.   In a ditch.”

There was silence while these morsels of information were digested, then Sunray’s voice boomed into the night.

“That’s absolutely preposterous!”

“Yes, sir,” I agreed.

Bill took the radio.

“McGuffy here sir. The Captain’s right, sir. That’s just how it 1ooked.”

“What ruddy balderdash!” the radio spluttered. “You say the lorry is blocking the road? That was probably the whole intention!  If you’re not careful you’ll be hemmed in!”

Bill put just the right amount of respect and reproach into his next words.

“No, I don’t think so sir. The other end of the road is clear, and no attempt has been made to block it.” His lips added a silent  ‘yet’.

Grudgingly, Sunray gave us our point.

“Alright,  you’re out there, not me. What’s it doing now?”

I glanced up and reached for the radio again.

“Just sitting in the air, about twenty feet up.”

“Do you want reinforcements?”

“No thank you, sir,” I said hurriedly. “In fact I’d be dead against anything or anybody coming near it at this stage.”

God alone knew what would have happened if we’d had fleets of tanks and armoured cars on the scene. That was something I preferred not to think about. Now I was going to suffer for asserting my independence.

“Right Midnight,” the radio blared. “I’m leaving this in your hands entirely for the moment. But I want to know everything that happens the moment it happens. Understand? And if I think you need help, you’ll get it.”

“Understood sir, and thank you. I’ll keep you genned up. Out.”

I handed the radio back to Bill.  The little policeman tapped me on the arm.

“I’ve just reported to my Chief. We’ve been instructed to stay with you. Security. We’ve to go back to Tidworth with you and meet some bods there.”

“That’ll be Wee Willie Wilkes,”  I nodded.  The two men looked at one another.

“We call him that,”  I said. “He’s a top man in space research and he’s been hanging round the Camp for the last six weeks.”

The little one gawped at me.

“Space research!” he echoed. His eyes flicked up to the Sphere and back to me. “Do you mean that they think that thing’s from - from somewhere else?”

I nodded slowly.  “It’s possible,” I said at last. “If you are under security now it won’t hurt for you to know that. They don’t know, not for sure. But they’ve checked with the Reds and they deny all knowledge of anything like this.”

The policemen looked relieved.

“Well, they would, wouldn’t they?” said the driver. “I mean, they aren’t goin’ ta admit they got a thing a-spying of us, are they?”

I shrugged.  “I’m only repeating what I’ve heard. This chap Wilkes has been showing a keen interest in all these sightings, anyway.”

“Yeah!” the little one breathed. “We got some mates that’s seen one.

“There’ve been quite a few floating round,” I said, unconscious of the pun for a moment. “But right now we’re interested in this one.”

I turned to look at it again, and my eyes popped out on stalks.

While we’d been talking the Sphere had landed bang in the middle of the road.

I don’t think any of us moved for a full five seconds, and then the two policemen took a pace backwards, I took a pace sideways and grabbed the radio from Bill McGuffy, and the only movement he made was to let his jaw drop several inches.

“Midnight to Sunray. It’s landed sir.”

The radio clicked with annoyance.

“Where? Not in the middle of the blasted road?”

“Yes, sir. About fifty feet away.”

Then I noticed something funny. Icicles on my face.  “That’s funny,” I said.

“What is?”

I hadn’t realised that I still had my finger on the button.

“Damn it man, what’s happening?”

I could just picture him going apoplectic at his end.

“Nothing’s happening at the moment sir,” I said hastily. “It’s just that when it was airborne it was giving off an intense heat. Now it’s not.”

“Don’t go near it! Keep at least fifty feet away from it!”

The Old Man sounded quite alarmed.

“Understood sir. It’s between my jeep and the lorry. I’ll keep my jeep between it and me.”

“Right. What’s it look like?”

I took another deep breath.  “Well, like a huge ball bearing really. No vision ports, lights, or anything. There isn’t even a door as far as I can see, unless it’s on the other side. It’s not blue, as we thought though: a kind of metallic grey. It’s only blue when it’s moving. About fifty feet in diameter. It doesn’t make any noise, either.”

“Hmm.” The Old Man thought for a moment. “Well, don’t take your eyes off it, and if it looks as if it’s going to turn funny, just shout one word. Keep the communication open."

“Yes sir.”

The Old Man turned to speak to someone in the background, but I caught his words.

“I think it’s about time I woke up the Ministry of Defence."

I gave the radio back to Bill and the four of us gathered behind the jeep. The Sphere was still stationary in the middle of the road.

We waited like that for half an hour;  freezing bloody cold and chain smoking to try and get some warmth inside us. After twenty minutes we dished out the last of the cigarettes.

I was staring at the end of my last smoke, trying to kid myself that the tiny red glow really would burn me if I touched it and savouring my very last drag, when there was a sort of strangled gasp from my right. The two policemen were staring goggle-eyed at the Sphere. I followed their line of sight.

A section of the Sphere, about seven feet by four, was starting to dissolve slowly. I whistled softly under my breath.

“Whee! Here we go!”

As we watched, the section grew less and less opaque.  Bill started a running commentary for the Old Man’s benefit.

“Midnight to Sunray. A section of this thing is dematerialising, sir.”

“Right. If anything comes out that looks remotely like a weapon, get the hell out of there.”

“Yes sir.”

By now we could almost see through the door, or whatever it was. It was rather like looking through a thick piece of fibreglass. We could just make out some sort of semicircular console, but no details. Bill dutifully passed this on. The Old Man was more concerned with something else.

“Any sign of any occupants?”

“No sir, not yet anyway.”

“Alright, keep your eyes open. And boy, I said open!”

Crouched behind the jeep, we watched the Sphere. The little policeman was on my far right, peering round the edge of the jeep and Bill was in a similar position on my left. From within the Sphere a light began to glow; white, like a magnesium flare. It rapidly got brighter and brighter. Bill forgot he had open communication.

“Blimey!” he said. “We don’t like this, do we!”

The Old Man was on to him like a shot.

“What! What don’t you like, McGuffy!”

Bill looked at me half guiltily, half apologetically. I’ll never forget that look. It was almost as if he was asking me to forgive him for past faults and mistakes. And it was the last look he ever gave me.

“A bright light from inside, sir,” he explained. “I’m bloody sure the Russians couldn’t dream up a show like this without us hearing something about it in advance.”

The light was now far too bright to look at. All four of us, as if at some unspoken command, crouched lower behind the jeep.

On my right, the little policeman suddenly screamed.

“My face! God! My face!”

He reeled back, stumbled, and went sprawling on the ground. Before I could do anything, Bill let out a similar scream of agony.

“God! Help me! I can’t see!”

I watched the two men in horror. Their skin was puckering up, blistering, shrivelling, even as I looked at them.  Their clothes were smouldering, and their hands, thrown up to protect their faces, were a mess of scorched flesh.

I clutched at the Jeep, and that was hot too. I looked at Bill again.

His face was a horrible red blotch. The skin was peeling off his bone and forming a red mush on the ground before it dried and became a ghastly brown dust. Their screams died away into the night.

The sweat was running down my face, and it wasn’t all to do with the reflected heat from the jeep. Somewhere I could hear a voice. Slowly, it dawned on me that the radio was still blaring out from where Bill had dropped it at my feet.

“Midnight! Midnight! What the hell is going on! Are you alright? Midnight! Answer man! MIDNIGHT!”

I tried to look at the Sphere, and my head would only move sluggishly, as if I was buried in a morass. The light was diminishing slowly and I could see that the section in the casing of the Sphere was beginning to solidify again. Slowly, I reached for the walkie-talkie.

I couldn’t take my eyes off what was left of the man who until  two minutes ago had been my Sergeant and friend. I felt the radio being taken from my hands. It was Granger.  I shuddered and swallowed and then turned to look at the Corporal. His voice trembled.

“Sunray. Sunray. Come in p1ease.”

His mate’s face loomed over his shoulder and he stared in horror at the bodies.

“Christ! I ain’t never seen no-one killed before!”

He turned away and I heard him being violently sick. Out of the corner of my eye I saw  movement. I turned to look.

The Sphere rose silently up into the night sky and disappeared.

                                                                                Chapter Two.

It took an hour for the helicopter to arrive. By that time we’d covered the bodies and regained something of our self control. We’d all been sick.

The chopper brought Wilkes the space scientist and Marshall, the Minister of  Defence. Before they got too close, I went to meet them.                

“Good morning sir, I’m Armstrong,”  I said to Marshall.

“Ah!” said Marshall.

He was a middle aged man going bald and even at five o’ clock in the morning in the middle of Salisbury Plain he still wore a suit. He shivered and peered over my shoulder.

“Are those the ah -  er -”

I nodded. “I must warn you sir, that you’ve never seen anything so bad.”

Marshall looked ill.

“Um, yes. Well, I want to see them anyway.”

“As you wish sir,” I said. “Willie, do you want to join us or not?”

Wilkes looked unconcerned at the prospect.

“I suppose so. I’m more interested in the Sphere though.”

We walked over to where the bodies were. Marshall took one look and grabbed my arm.

“My God!  I had no idea ---!”

I threw the coat back over Bill’s body. Even Wilkes looked shaken.

Willie was, without doubt, everyone’s idea of what a professor should be. He was small, both in height and stature and he sported a little grey beard which was the only thing he kept looking tidy. His jacket and trousers were creased as if he had been sleeping in them, which was quite likely, and whatever you talked to him about he always sounded as if he hadn’t the time to explain it, even his pet subject, space.   But we got on well together. He grilled me for three hours on that Sphere when we got back to Camp and kept making me go over points until he was satisfied.

All this, however, wasn’t until the bodies had been removed from Salisbury and the vehicles driven back to Tidworth. All the paint on my jeep had blistered. The other policeman was taken to hospital suffering from shock.  By the time all the confusion had been cleared  it was eight a.m., and there was the usual large gathering of morbid sensation hunters and clamouring pressmen. l didn’t get to bed until three in the afternoon, by which time I was dog-tired, fed up to the teeth with Willie and his apparently inexhaustible supply of what I thought were totally irrelevant questions; and doped up to the eyeballs with drugs which the medics had pumped in to me to try and lessen the effects of the shock I had received at Salisbury.

The reports which I had to make to the various interested parties,  (which ranged from my C.O. to Willie,  and, through the Old Man, from the First Lord of the Admiralty to the Society for Psychical Research) kept me busy for the next three weeks. I became enmeshed in a web of publicity, with paperwork,  press conferences, TV appearances, discussion groups, radio interviews and the like. Publicity I don’t mind; sensation seeking, morbid troublemongers, I loathe.

Eventually, however, I found myself freed of these irksome commitments, and I managed to corner Wilkes one day in the office that had been put at his disposal, and ask him what he thought about it all.

He took a long time before he answered, offering me a cigarette and lighting one himself thoughtfully. And when he did speak I could have kicked him.

“What is your personal opinion, Dave?”

“No comment!” I said sharply.

That was the reply that I had given to everybody who had asked me that question. I was not permitted to give my own views about the affair, merely to report on and confirm incidents I had witnessed. I’d been warned that any other answer would have far reaching consequences for me.

“Come on, Willie,” I said, annoyed. “I’ve had enough of this. I’ve been on the receiving end of too many unanswerable questions lately to play games. Now I want to ask a few questions of my own, and get a few straight answers. All I want to know is what you, as a space research scientist, think about the whole God-awful mess.”

Willie sighed, and then tipped his chair back. He stroked his beard with one hand and held his cigarette between two nicotine stained fingers of the other.

“Well, this is strictly unofficial Dave,  and of course highly confidential, but we, and by that I mean the proverbial ‘Authorities’, are sure about one thing. That Sphere didn’t come from any country on Earth.”

I blew out cigarette smoke.  “Well,” I said, “that’s nothing new. Everybody thinks it’s the Martians anyway. Tell me something I don’t know.”

Willie waved his hand angrily.

“To start with, you don’t know anything. You certainly don’t know that they were Martians, and I hope you’re not going to follow the stupid, blind reasoning of an uninformed public,  and assume that just because they are not from Earth, they have to come from Mars.  I can assure you that the likelihood of life on Mars is nil. Secondly, I wish you would treat the matter a little more seriously. You’re adopting the attitude that most laymen take; that it’s all rather a joke. It isn’t. It’s deadly serious.”

“Just a minute,” I interrupted hotly. “You seem to forget that I saw two men killed that night. I know it’s serious. I just don’t understand, that’s all. And I’m not assuming they were Martians, either. I merely meant that the general public thinks that they, whoever they were, came from another world. And in a layman’s mind that’s synonymous with Martians.”

“Exactly!” said Willie triumphantly. “What did I just say about blind reasoning?”

“Yes, I know,” I said patiently. “But if they aren’t Martians, who, or what, are they?”

Willie gazed at me for a moment.

“Did you say,  aren’t Martians or weren’t Martians, Dave?”

I blinked and thought.  “Aren’t, didn’t l?”

Willie nodded and suddenly tipped his chair forward so that he could lean on the desk.

“Yes, you did. Do you, I wonder, realise what you’re implying?”

“I’m not implying anything,” I said.

Willie stubbed out his cigarette.  “Oh yes you are,” he answered. “You were referring to an incident that happened three weeks ago, weren’t you?”

I nodded.

“Well,” Willie went on, “you just referred to the occupants of the Sphere in the present tense.”

I must have looked blank, because he waved his arm again.

“Don’t you realise?” he asked impatiently. “You weren’t referring to the existence of an alien people as a past incident. You treated them as if they were here, now. As if they were something that has to be contended with at this moment in time and not something that is over and done with. As if you were expecting to have to deal with them again, in fact.”

He thumped the desk with his forefinger to give emphasis to his last words.

I remained silent for a moment and stubbed out the last of my cigarette.

“You’re making a play on words,” I said at last.

“Oh rubbish!” snorted the scientist. He leaned forward again.

“Admit it, Dave. You’re expecting them back, aren’t you?”  When I didn’t answer he tipped his chair back against the wall again. “lf it makes you feel any better,” he said, “so are we.”

I drew my breath in slowly.

“Then you must have formed some ideas about them,” I prompted.

Willie wagged a forefinger at me.

“You haven’t answered my question yet,” he said infuriatingly.

I sighed.  “I suppose it’s inevitable,” I said quietly.

Willie grinned.  “That’s better,” he said. “Welcome to the circle of believers.”

“Now who’s not being serious?” I shot back at him.

“Oh, piffle!” he snorted. "Don’t try and catch me out.”

He stood up and walked over to a filing cabinet. From the top drawer he extracted a thin file, and from the bottom drawer he took out a bottle of whisky and two glasses. He turned to me and his eyes twinkled.

“While I’m pouring you a man’s drink, have a look at this file. It contains several reports of sightings of these alien craft from all over the world. You’ll probably find it interesting.”

It took me fifteen minutes to sort through the file, and it certainly made interesting reading. The level of the whisky in the bottle dropped considerably during this time. When I had finished I laid the file on the desk and looked at Willie. He was sitting with his feet up on the corner of the desk, a cigarette between his lips and a glass of whisky in his hand. He wore a benign expression and looked absolutely ridiculous.

“Alright, Marlon Brando,” I said. “I’ve finished.”

He swivelled his head and stared at me.  “Cheeky pup,” he said without malice. “Alright, notice anything?”

I refilled my glass.

“Yes, I did,” I said seriously.

Willie swung his feet off the desk and brushed some ash from his jacket. He removed his cigarette and said, “Let’s hear it then.”

“Point number one,” I began, ticking it off on my finger, “is that the reports are all very well corroborated. Never has a Sphere been seen by one person, or even two, except in the case of the Arctic Weather Post, but always by five or six people.”

Willie held up his hand, and I took the opportunity to gulp some whisky.

“They have been seen by single persons,” he corrected me, “but we didn’t bother to keep a note of them in this particular file. We have a much thicker file in London containing details of uncorroborated sightings, because we consider that we have enough factual evidence in here,” he tapped the file, “without cluttering up the place unnecessarily.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, point number two is that all the sightings, in this file anyway, are of Spheres, as opposed to Flying Saucers,  and they are all reported to have been glowing blue. Never purple, or pale blue, but always blue.”

Willie nodded.  “Go on.”

“Three. All the sightings are from all over the world, from the Arctic to the Equator; from America to India, and from England to Siberia.”  I paused, partly because I was saving this one till last, and partly because I hoped that Willie would think I’d missed it. He did. I saw the twinkle in his eyes fade slowly, and I held up my hand to forestall him.

“No, I haven’t missed it, Willie.  Four, all the dates of appearances of Spheres in this file are after the date of the landing at Salisbury.”

“Capital!”

Willie leapt up from his seat and started pacing up and down. “And what conclusions have you come to in view of all that,” he asked judicially, and swung round to face me abruptly.

I pondered for a minute.

“Well, they could be sizing up the planet, both literally and figuratively; they could be trying to fathom out something about us, such as how many there are of us; they could be looking for another place to land, or they could be trying to discover what interplanetary defences we have, if any, against their attack.”

I wasn’t prepared for Willie’s reaction. He looked at me for a few seconds and then said quietly;  “You blasted idiot!”

He went behind his desk and sat down again. He stared a bit longer and then roared: “You idiot! I thought you had an iota or two of sense there for a minute, and then you go and make a typically stupid remark for which you have no grounds and shatter what little faith I had in you as an ally into the bargain.”

I stared at him, amazed.  “What are you talking about?”

He thumped the desk angrily and the glasses rattled.

“Give me one reason for your last assumption!”  He stood up and leaned over me. “Wait! Before you go blundering on let’s go over what you said.”

He paused and fiddled with a pen.  “I’ll grant you the first premise; that they’re sizing up the planet, that goes without saying. Anybody in their right mind would want to know about the territory they intend visiting, especially in a case like this where interplanetary travel is involved. It follows, therefore, that the second statement is also correct. Of course they want to know something about us. I don’t know about the third idea, though. That opens up a whole field of speculation which I’ll come to later on.”  He looked at me, still angry.

“But your fourth conclusion is just what I might have expected. You narrow-minded, ignorant, stupid fool.”

I recoiled from this outburst again.

“Alright Willie,” I said peevishly. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, but it seems the obvious conclusion.”

There was a pause. Willie stared into the corner of the room after resuming his seat for so long that I began to think that I’d really annoyed the old man to such an extent that he didn’t want to discuss it with me anymore. I stood up, and Willie waved his hand at me again without looking up.

“No, sit down, Dave. It’s me who should apologise.”

He turned to face me with a slight smile.  “Sorry, I should, not me should.”

He sighed, and suddenly looked old and tired. I wondered what went on in his brain. As if reading my thoughts, he started to talk, quietly, as if he’d said it all many times before and received the same response each time.

Scorn.

“You're perfectly right, of course, about the attack. It is the most obvious conclusion. But my own personal views are something different. I don’t think those creatures intended us any harm.”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted.  “You can’t really be serious about that. That Sphere deliberately killed two men, and yet you can sit there and say quite calmly that you don’t think they intended us any harm?”

Willie held up his hand and settled himself more comfortably. He pulled out his cigarettes again.

“Hang on a tick, Dave,” he said tiredly.  “This is only my own personal view. I don’t expect  you to agree with it; no-one agrees with it. They all think I’m a fool, that I’ve been too long in the business and it’s addled my brain. Some of them even think I’m showing the first signs of senility.”

He leaned over the desk for my proffered light, puffed out a cloud of smoke then dropped heavily back into his chair.

“I had hoped, just for a moment back there, that I might be able to indoctrinate you, so to speak, in my line of reasoning. But for your remark about the attack I would have tried. But when you said it I realised that your thoughts were predetermined just like everybody else’s. Yes, I meant what I said. I do not think that those two men were killed deliberately.”

He leant forward and spoke earnestly.

“Let’s take it stage by stage, Dave. Just assume for a moment that you are one of those creatures. Oh, and I don’t mean bug-eyed monsters, either. I’ll bet you a pound to a pinch of sh-salt that they’ll look like us.  Where was I? Ah, yes. Assume you’re one of them. Now, you’re going to visit another planet, right?  Give me one reason why I should assume you’re going to be hostile.”

“Well, I suppose there’s no reason for you to think that,” I replied cautiously. That’s always assuming you know I’m coming.”

“Um, yes, alright,” said Willie.  “Let me put it another way. Why should any human being think that any alien race should be hostile?”

I frowned.  “Well, they just would.”

“Ah, but why?” asked Willie, thumping the desk. “I’ll tell you. Only because they’ve seen too many films and read too many books which dealt with the annihilation of Man.  No-one ever stops to think about a friendly invasion. But it is possible, isn’t it? Can you honestly tell me that there is less than a fifty-fifty chance that any other worlds making contact with us would be friendly?”

I thought about that for a moment.

“No, I can’t,” I admitted.

“Right.” Willie leant back, looking pleased. “That’s a point in your favour, anyway,” he observed drily. “Most people won’t even grant me that premise.  Now, having accepted that as a basis to work from, let’s move back to our original supposition. Your visit to Earth could be friendly, agreed, and there is no reason for me as a human being to assume that you’re going to blast me into eternity.”

I nodded.

“Okay," he went on, warming to his theme, “now, I won’t ask you what you’d do when you landed, because that’s an unfair question. But let’s assume you got down safely, unmolested by us, and started to disembark, if that’s the right word.”

He leant forward again, his eyes glinting.

“Isn’t it conceivable that something in your craft, either machinery, or some preparation you had to make, or – well, something, at any rate, was harmful to humans? Couldn’t that be what killed those two men?”

“Oh, hang on!” I said. “You’re taking an awful lot for granted, Willie. You have no basis at all for these assumptions.”

Willie leaned back and sighed slowly.

“Those are my views, Dave,” he said in a monotone. “Shall I give you something to back them up?”

“Do,” I said, interested despite myself.

“Well,”  he began, “you seem to have forgotten one important fact. When the Sphere was travelling in front of those two policemen at Salisbury, it did something which no-one seems to rate as very important. Can you recall what that was?”

“Yes, it dipped three times.”

“And what does that suggest to you?”

I paused.  I thought I saw what he was getting at.

“Contact,” I said.

“Exactly,” said Willie, tapping ash fastidiously into an ashtray. “Now, that spacecraft dipping is a fact. This is also a fact, but a rather abstract one. They killed two men, yes, but if they were of a hostile nature, these people, why did they land first? Why did they kill only two men and not several million in one fell swoop, if you’ll excuse the pun, and finally, why did they make what we have agreed was a preliminary sign of friendly contact?”

There was silence for several minutes as I pondered all this. Willie was obviously waiting to see what effect this revelation of his had on me, and I must admit it gave me food for thought. He was quite right, of course. Who would expect an alien people to be friendly? And, in point of fact, there was no reason at all why the deaths of Bill McGuffy and the little policeman couldn’t have been an accident. At the same time though, it all sounded highly improbable.

“Alright,” I said. “Tell me more.”

Willie looked at his watch.

“I can’t,” he said. “I’ve got an appointment in London this afternoon and I’m going to be late as it is. I’m glad to see you’re thinking about it, however. We’ll have a further chat later on and I’ll tell you what I think the next stage will be. Now, for Heaven’s sake get out of my way. I’m in a hurry.”

Within a few minutes he had flung some papers into a battered briefcase and disappeared.

                                                                                *   *   *   *   *   *  

I wandered out into the yard, thinking about what he’d said.  I certainly didn’t think he was senile. Oldish, testy, and a real, gen-u-ine absent minded professor, yes. But he knew what he was talking about alright. Despite his remarks about people taking no notice of his views on the Spheres, I knew damn well that he was highly respected in scientific circles. On the other hand, all this stuff about a friendly invasion was a bit hard to swallow. I could appreciate any scepticism he might have encountered.

And yet, damn it, there was no reason at all why somebody from another world shouldn’t want to make friends with us. It was analogous with flying, space flight and landing on the Moon. At one time no-one ever thought that such things could be accomplished, much less come to pass.  Ergo, why shouldn’t a friendly visit from our neighbours in space be the next item in the field of interplanetary travel?

I’d just noticed that the weather seemed to be in company with my ruminations; a cold, yellow, muggy November day, when my attention was arrested by Corporal Granger who had come flying out of the mess door with a scared look on his face.

“Captain!” he shouted. “Captain Armstrong, sir! They’ve done it!”

I turned to face him as he came skidding across the yard, his shouts first preceded then followed by miniscule puffs of breath.

“Who,” I enquired patiently, saluting him, “has done what, where?”

“Them things, sir! The Spheres! One of them ‘as gawn an’  landed in the middle of London!”

                                                                                Chapter 3

I flew to London in a helicopter with the Old Man.

If you didn’t know from the publicity where it had landed, you’d never have guessed. Of all the damn fool places to land anything, never mind an alien spacecraft, they’d picked the worst.

Hyde Park.

We never did find out why they chose that particular spot and now  we never will know. As Marshall, the Minister of Defence was to observe later they certainly had a sense of the dramatic.

Everybody knows what rush hour is like round Hyde Park Corner.  Well, in those days the traffic was far worse. But the chaos that greeted our eyes as we hovered over Knightsbridge made those rush hour jams look puny.

For as far as the eye could see up Park Lane, there was just a solid mass of vehicles.  The Park side of the road was thronged with people, pressing against the railings and pushing and shoving one another in an effort to get a grandstand view. The Corner itself and indeed Knightsbridge, Piccadilly and Grosvenor Place, were all a solid jam. Dotted here and there we could see police cars and vans, and the chopper was low enough for us to distinguish the policemen as they vainly tried to control the people who were still swarming towards the Park and instigate some kind of order into the melee.

We landed in the forecourt of the Royal Army Barracks in Knightsbridge. It took fifteen minutes to clear a path for us to the Park. Inside the railings the public had been moved away, thank God, but I noticed the police Superintendent who had the thankless job of trying to control the crowds kept casting dubious glances at the railings, as if he was wondering how much longer they would stand up to the pressure from the throng of people on the other side.

Granger had been wrong on one point of his excited message. The Sphere had not landed. It was hanging motionless in the sir about fifty feet above the grass. It could well have been the same one that landed at Salisbury. There was no visible difference between them. Grouped just inside the railings were several uniformed policemen, about twenty newspaper and media reporters and photographers and Marshall, the Minister of Defence.

We entered through a gap in the railings which was closed immediately we had all passed through, much to the annoyance of the nearest members of the public. As we approached the group I could see that they were looking very worried, and the Superintendent was giving a fresh set of instructions to his men in the hope that the situation would not deteriorate any further; even if they couldn’t hope to clear the present mess.

Marshall turned to us with a gratified expression.

“Ah! Brigadier! And Captain Armstrong. I’m glad you’ve arrived. As you can see, the situation is already somewhat out of hand.”

He made it sound as if the crowds of people were our responsibility.

“Yes, I do see,” said the Brigadier drily. “Obviously it’s too late to move all these people now. Not that that is my concern, of course,” he added.  “But I will be responsible for their safety. The police are adequately equipped to enforce a mass exodus from this area, should it be necessary. But as long as they don’t break through those railings I think they will be alright. That is, as far as any of us will be, if that thing decides to land.”

This was the cue for everyone to look up. The Sphere was in exactly the same position.

“What worries me,” mused Marshall nervously,  “is if those people are still inflamed over the incident at Salisbury. If they decide to take matters into their own hands that craft, it’s occupants and everyone in the way will be –er--  ah-- seriously hurt.”

“If we don’t all get our chips first,” put in a reporter brightly.

“Get that blasted lot out of the way,” the Old Man whispered to me.

It took but a few seconds to move them out of earshot. When I returned Marshall was looking even more worried.

“I only hope I haven’t made a terrible mistake about these people.”  He looked round at the crowds, anguished. I didn’t envy him his job.

“There’s not much point in worrying,” said the Old Man practically. “If there’s going to be trouble we have nothing here to stop it. We’ll be dead in seconds.”

Marshall considered this remark with obvious disfavour.

“I suppose there’s no chance of  them being friendly,” he asked in a small, hopeful voice.

“A fairly good chance, I’d say,” I put in quickly.

If I ever got back to Tidworth alive, it was obvious from the expression on the Old Man’s face that I would be worse off than if I met my mortal end here and now.

Marshall looked startled.  Some of the reporters moved closer to hear what was going on.

“Get back, you blasted nuisances!” bellowed the Brigadier. “I’ll damn well put you outside the railings if you don’t keep out of the way.”

Marshall was looking at me with a strange expression. “Are you really serious?” he asked.

I glanced at the Old Man.

“Er- yes, sir. I am.  I’d say there’s a possibility of them being  -er- amicable.”

“How can you make such a preposterous statement?” Marshall glanced up. “You saw two men killed, horribly, at Salisbury. And yet you think they may be peaceable.”

I wished Willie was here to help me out. As the helicopter had gone to collect him after dropping us he was due at any time now, but that was no help at the present moment. I had to battle on by myself.

“May I make a suggestion?” I ventured.

“Do!” cut in the Old Man ominously. He used his do-and-I’ll-have-your-guts-for-garters voice.

“Well,” I went on, throwing caution to the winds, “we never had a chance at Salisbury. The white light from the Sphere burnt everything within a certain radius. But if we keep well back now it’s possible that we might not be affected. After that, well, we’ll have to play it by ear.”

It sounded tame and unconvincing. I felt as if I’d put my one and only, precious, neck on a guillotine.

There was a silence. The Brigadier looked at Marshall, and Marshall looked at the Brigadier.

“I suppose we could try that,” the Old Man said grudgingly. “Anyway, what alternative have we got? If we can shield ourselves from that light, or ray, or whatever it is, we shall at least be alive.”

“But the people!” wailed Marshall. “They won’t stand a chance. They’ve got no protection!”

“Neither have we,” I pointed out.

This was soon rectified. After several bellowed orders from the Old Man a line of vehicles was arranged parallel with the railings inside the Park. It also helped to clear a space on Park Lane which the police managed, very commendably, to keep clear. The Brigadier surveyed the results with his hands on his hips. That meant he was satisfied. It was when he tapped his stick on his legs that you had to take cover.

“Well, that ought to offer us some protection. And them too,” he added.

We looked at the Sphere again.  It still hadn’t moved. It crossed my mind that there would be an awful hue and cry if it didn’t land. I could just imagine what would happen if it suddenly rose into the sky and vanished. Even though we had taken every reasonable precaution at this late stage to protect the public from what, or whoever, might emerge from the Sphere if and when it did land.

Marshall was still bothered.

“Ah- Brigadier,” he began awkwardly, “I must confess I’m still a little worried about the security of the situation.”

“Don’t be,” replied the Old Man brusquely. “It’s too late. And anyway, if you tried to keep whatever happens from the public, you’d have a full-scale riot on your hands.”

Marshall looked taken aback.

“Oh, come now, Brigadier. I hardly think the public would resort to violence over such a matter.”

The Old Man shrugged.  “It’s entirely up to you,” he said,  “but I don’t advise antagonising them.”

I looked around at the crowds. There seemed to be some activity in the middle of the street. Something was forcing a passage through the crowds towards the Park. I could hear muffled shouts and curses and a moment later the cause of the rumpus appeared. It was Willie, complete with an escort of five tough looking policemen. The railings were opened up for him and he hurried through the gap.  The five policemen had to concentrate all their energy on preventing the crowd from pushing their way through the gap before the railing was replaced.

I was glad, in more ways than one, that Willie had made it in time. Apart from his support on the question of the occupants’ attitude, if it did land he’d have been disappointed not to see it.

He gave me a nod as he hurried over to us.

“Marshall. Brigadier. Too risky to land in the Park. Had to set down in Grosvenor Square and foot it from there. What’s the latest development?”

“Nothing that isn’t visible,” said the Old Man.

“Ah.”  Willie looked up at the Sphere. “Well, come on. Land if you’re going to,” he addressed it. “We haven’t got all day.”

I looked at the Brigadier. He was smiling faintly. He saw me watching him and winked.

“The Captain has put forward a most interesting theory,” he said to Willie.

“Oh, really,” said the scientist absently, his eyes glued to the Sphere. “What is it?”

“Oh, he thinks they may be friendly,” said the Old Man airily, staring at the grass. “Not an entirely original supposition, I believe?”

Willie slowly turned to look at me. “Oh! Does he?” he echoed, his eyes boring into mine. “How interesting!”

I thought he was going to ask me what basis I had for my theory but he didn’t. He turned to look at the Sphere again.

It began to get rather cold. It was cold anyway, but standing round waiting for something to happen allowed the cold to seep through our coats and freeze our bones. It was at this point that Marshall made his remark about the visitor’s sense of the dramatic.  And then suddenly, there was a hush. It was an almost tangible thing. The murmurs from the crowd stopped abruptly and the shuffling of the reporters behind us was stilled. I didn’t need to look up to see what was happening, but like the thousands of people gathered around my head swivelled up and I looked at the Sphere.

It was sinking, very, very slowly.  Lower and lower it came until it was only ten feet off the ground. Not a murmur, not a cough or a shuffle disturbed the silence.  Somewhere, far away, I could hear the muted hum of traffic but the silence over one of the busiest parts of London was more noticeable than any noise. The Sphere remained motionless, poised ten feet above the ground and about fifty yards away from us.

One of the reporters whispered and the sound carried like a shout.

“It’s going to land! God help us, it’s going to land!”

As the whisper died away the silence closed in again. We waited.  No-one moved.

And then the Sphere sank a little lower, until it had halved the distance between it and the ground. Another pause, and then it settled on the grass without even a rustle.

There was a mighty gasp from the crowd of watchers and then silence again.

Marshall looked at me and I anticipated his words.

“If this is the same procedure as at Salisbury,” I said urgently, “a section of the casing will start to dissolve. If the white light appears, get behind a car or some other protection. I’ll shout to the crowd.”

Again we awaited. I noticed that Marshall and the Old Man had little beads of sweat standing out on their foreheads. I put my hand up to my own face. Damn it, so did I. Willie was staring at the Sphere eagerly. The old boy must be realising one of his greatest ambitions, I thought. He was obviously in his element and had no fears about the occupants of the craft.

Marshall mopped his brow.

“I wish something would happen,” he said nervously.

“Patience man!” snapped Willie. “Would you come barging out if you were in their position?”

Marshall made no attempt to answer this rhetorical question.

“Look!” The Old Man gestured towards the Sphere.

Just as before,  a section about seven feet by four was dissolving. This time, however, it was far more rapid and we had no time to take cover. I opened my mouth to shout a warning and then closed it with a snap.

There was no white light.

If I had any doubts about the occupants of the Sphere being friendly, they were suddenly dispelled. Why, I don’t know. Up to that moment I still wasn’t sure whether I believed Willie’s theory, but when the door or whatever it was opened and revealed the interior of the Sphere, I suddenly felt that there would be no need to worry. That isn’t to say I wasn’t going to be cautious. I was scared stiff about what they would look like, but now I felt, illogically I know, that they would be peaceable.

The little group I was in could see the inside of the craft quite clearly. The most fantastic thing about it was that the opposite side, if such a thing is geometrically possible in a sphere, was completely transparent. We could see the grass and trees behind the Sphere as clearly as if we were looking through a large window.

The Old Man and I exchanged glances but before either of us had time to comment, there was a faint whine and a ramp slid smoothly out from beneath the door, then dropped at an angle until the end of it rested on the grass. A murmur ran round the crowds. I suddenly became aware of the scratching of twenty pens and pencils behind me. My stomach felt tight. I could feel my heart pounding.

And then there was movement from within the Sphere, and the creature appeared at the doorway.

Again there was a mighty gasp from the crowds, and then, of all things, a tremendous cheer. Evidently I was not the only one to consider them harmless. That cheer shook all of us. Marshall’s jaw dropped several inches and the Old Man’s eyebrows shot up to their ceiling. Even Willie looked puzzled.

At the distance we were, all we could see was that the creature, as Wilkes had prophesied, resembled us. It stood on two legs, had two arms, well, briefly, it could have been a man for all we could see. It was dressed in a black suit, one piece, rather like a track suit, and appeared to be wearing white boots. Willie looked round at us.

“Are you all going to stand there?” he asked scathingly. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

I stepped forward.

“Alright Willie. Obviously we’ve got to make the next move.”

“Do you really think it’s safe?” Marshall twittered.

“I suppose so, unless you can think of an alternative,” said the Brigadier heavily.

And so I found myself walking in a line with the others towards the Sphere. The figure in the doorway did not move as we approached it. It crossed my mind that the situation was somewhat ludicrous. I felt like Jesse James and his brothers preparing to gun down the local sheriff. The crowd had fallen silent again; waiting to see the outcome of our first contact with the creature. And as we neared the craft the alien’s features swam into focus like a movie film. My mouth suddenly felt dry.

                                                                                Chapter Four.

At first sight the creature looked horrible. Its suit was indeed one-piece and at the front, running from throat to abdomen, was a flap of material, presumably covering the fastening. The trouser part was quite tight fitting and the cuffs disappeared into ankle length white boots. These had a flap the same as the suit and the appearance was that of a fly-front zip. We discovered later that the flaps covered a magnetic strip. At the top of the suit was a little upright collar, edged with a white trim.

But its face!   Never have I seen anything as ghastly as that face. Marshall stopped suddenly and gripped the Old Man’s arm so hard that he winced. Wilkes stopped short and his jaw dropped. And I just stared with a terrible fascination.

Its skin was a reddish mauve colour and it was completely devoid of hair. Its head was the same colour as its face and it had a huge domed forehead which jutted out over its face. It had no eyes; just two fleshy lumps where its eyes should have been and its nose, whilst looking almost human, had the nostrils cut high into the flesh, giving the appearance of the nose slanting up towards the forehead. The centre piece of skin between the nostrils extended down to the top lip, which was rather thin and a more prominent mauve in colour. Its ears were tiny, embryonic things flat against the side of its head. Its hands, long and slender, were hanging loosely by its sides. There were no fingernails, and it wasn’t holding anything.

But the most horribly sickening thing about its appearance was its neck; for, just above the collar, was a large flap of skin, rather like a fish’s gills, and these flaps or gills were pulsating rapidly. I was at the end of the line and consequently getting a slightly off-centre view, and I could see from where I stood that the inside of the gills deep in its neck, was a rich blood red.

Marshall was looking sick.

“It’s horrible!” he whispered. “Absolutely sickening!”

“So that’s what killed Bill McGuffy,” was the Old Man’s shaken comment.

Willie Wilkes was the first to pull himself together.

“Well at least it isn’t carrying any weapon now,” he pointed out.

Marshall released his grip on the Old Man’s arm.

“For all we know it may have something concealed,” he answered testily.

Willie shook his head, still staring at the creature.

“What are you going to do?” asked the Old Man.

“I don’t know,” said Marshall helplessly. “What does one do when one is visited by an alien culture? There is no precedent.”

“It is rather a problem,” Willie agreed, stroking his beard. “Of course, we have no idea how to communicate with it.”

“Perhaps we ought to wait for it to make a move,” ventured Marshall.

“And what if it is waiting for us?”  I asked.

“Well, we can’t just stand here and gawp at it all day!” Marshall snapped. “We must do something!”

“I suggest we approach a little closer,” said Willie.

So we did. The Jesse James bit again. When we were about fifteen feet away, the creature made its first move.

Slowly it raised its hands and held them out in front of its chest, arms extended, palms cupped.

The crowd murmured again.

“Is that a warning?” Marshall asked urgently.

“It looks to me like a peace offering,” said Willie “I think we ought to treat it as one, anyway.”

“Well, if you’re sure…” Marshall sounded dubious.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” snapped Willie. “We can still be careful.”

And so we burnt our boats, counted our chickens, and put all our eggs in one basket for good measure. We walked until we were standing at the foot of the ramp.

Our visitor, looking, if possible, even more ghastly at short range, lowered its arms. And then, to my amazement, shock, horror and fright, it crooked a finger slowly and beckoned to me!

I felt the Old Man’s hand on my arm. We were all staring at the creature. Again it beckoned to me. I shook my head, slowly and deliberately. The creature surveyed us for a moment, its enormous fleshy eye protuberances seeming to face each one of us in turn. Then it turned abruptly on its heel and disappeared inside the Sphere.

The crowd let out an uneasy mutter. We looked at one another quickly.

The creature reappeared as suddenly as it had gone, standing in the same position at the top of the ramp. Only this time it was carrying a large box shaped object.

Marshall took a step backward, only to find himself held by the Old Man’s arm, which had shot out like a piston behind him.

“If it’s a weapon, running won’t save you,” said Willie drily.

Even as he spoke, the creature had started to walk down the ramp.

Halfway down, which was only about four feet, it stopped, bent down,  and carefully deposited the box-thing on the ramp. Then it straightened up, backed up the ramp to the top and pointed first to the box-thing and then to me.

“That’s put the onus on us,” I said flatly.

“That’s put the onus on you,”  Willie corrected me. “Obviously you’ve been chosen to be the – the whatever-it-wants-you-to-be.”

“Thanks!” I said. “What am I supposed to do?”

Willie looked at the box.  “Well, I don’t think it can be a bomb,” he said, “because if it was it would blow him, - I assume it’s a him, - and his craft to smithereens when it went off. It might be electrically charged, though. Anyone who touches it might be burned to a crisp.”

“Well, leave it alone, then,” Marshall said, not unreasonably.

“How can we?” Wilkes waved his arm. “It’s obviously meant for us.”

He looked up at the alien. “What is it, my good fellow?”

The creature promptly lifted both its hands and placed them over its tiny ears.  Then it placed its right hand sideways over its mouth.

“God!” the Old Man ejaculated. “It understood him!”

The alien nodded twice. Again it put its hands over its ears, and nodded while it did so. Then it repeated its performance with its mouth and shook its head from side to side.

“Ah!” cried Willie delightedly. “I’ve got it! It can hear us and probably understand our gestures or intonations to some extent, but it can’t talk to us. That box-thing must be the key to it being able to speak our language.  Or we its,” he added soberly.

The alien nodded encouragement.

“Go on, then,” Willie said.  “Pick up the box.”

Not without some trepidation, I complied. The box had some weight to it, but at least it didn’t  burn me or give me any nasty shocks.

“Over here,”  called Willie, and, walking backwards, I joined him a few feet away and set the box down on the grass. Willie crouched down to examine it.

Running round the top, about an inch and a half in from the edges was a very thin crack. Willie’s exploratory fingers pressed the edge of the lid formed by this crack , and it suddenly sprang up at the front, leaving a gap big enough to get his fingers underneath. He looked up at the Old Man, who nodded slowly.

“Go on. See what it is.”

I glanced at the alien. It was watching us; its face expressionless.

Willie had by now lifted the lid and revealed a machine looking something like a computer memory bank. There were  two reels with a silver tape connecting them, running through a housing at the back of the box. On either side of these reels were two oval pads, shaped vaguely like a human hand. It was rather reminiscent of a simple tape recorder.

“That’s not much!” Marshall said disparagingly.

Willie, ignoring this remark, held his hands above the machine and washed them gently together, like a gourmet preparing to eat his favourite succulent dish.

“Right,” he said. “let’s give this a try, then.”

Carefully he placed his hands on the pads. As soon as he touched them, the reels began to turn, anti-clockwise. “It doesn’t hurt, at any rate,” he said comfortably.

While this had been going on certain sounds had drifted into my brain and I suddenly realised that the crowd in the street were shouting at us.

“Oi! What’s going on?   ‘Oo is it and where’d it come from?” one man demanded.

“Yes, come on! Don’t keep it to yourselves! Let us know what’s happening!” shouted another. And, “What’s that box thingy for?” I heard from a woman near the railings.

Marshall turned to the Old Man, looking even more harassed.

“That’s all we need! What are we going to tell them?”

“I wouldn’t tell them anything, yet,” he replied. “Wait till we know a little more ourselves.”

Marshall nodded. “Yes, quite so.”

At this moment Wilkes stood up and brushed his hands together absently.

“Well, the reels stopped turning so I assume that the performance is over.”

“I suppose he wants it back now,” I said.

“I should imagine so, “ Willie agreed.

I picked up the box and took it back to the ramp. The alien nodded once and walked down to collect it. This time he turned his back on us as he disappeared into the Sphere.

“Well, at least he trusts us,” said Willie.

“Hmmph!” was Marshall’s rejoinder. “I daresay the blasted thing’ll disappear now with all the secrets contained in that little box intact, not to mention the Professor’s scientific knowledge, and us left standing here like the chimpanzee’s tea-party.”

“You’re wrong,” said the Old Man quietly. “Look.”

We looked.

The alien had reappeared at the top of the ramp. This time he was wearing a smaller version of one of the discs from the machine on his wrist. The silence had become oppressive again. Even the crowd seemed to realise that this was an even more crucial moment.

And then the alien opened its mouth for the first time, revealing two rows of rather pointed teeth. It reminded me of a stuffed, grinning, barracuda I’d once seen. It surveyed us all for a moment, then spoke.

“I have no wish to learn any secrets of your planet, Mr Marshall. Please rest assured that my intentions are entirely peaceable and not dangerous to your civilisation in any way.”

His voice was deep and resonant and had a curiously soothing quality.

“How the hell did he speak in English!” gasped the Old Man.

The alien turned to him. “Professor Wilkes has supplied me with all the information I require to master the intricacies of your language, Brigadier.”

“A translator machine?” asked Willie, nodding eagerly.

“Correct, Professor,” said the alien gravely. “The machine is like one of your computer memory banks, except that it is more complicated. In effect, and put simply, your brain and all its knowledge, feelings and idiosyncrasies is now duplicated inside my computer. The knowledge is relayed to me using the same  method that you used just now.”

“The disc on your wrist?” asked Willie.

The alien nodded once more.

“Fascinating! Fascinating!” breathed Willie.

The voice of Marshall interrupted this little tête-a-tête.

“Now, now, gentlemen,” he said reproachfully, as if we’d all been Naughty Boys, “I’m sure we all have many questions that we would like to put to our esteemed visitor, but may I suggest that we retire to a more discreet location?”

“What happened to the two men at Salisbury,” I asked quietly.

“Captain ---!” began Marshall, but the alien held up his hand.

“The Captain, indeed, all of you, are entitled to an explanation for that tragic incident,” he said. He looked at me, and I shivered.

“I am deeply sorry about the deaths of those two men,” he went on. “What can I say or do in recompense? Will you believe me when I tell you it was an accident?”

“Aaah!” breathed Willie.

“An accident?” the Old Man echoed.

The creature let out a sigh.

“Yes, an accident. We very nearly abandoned the whole project of landing on your planet because of that accident. But we decided that our contact with you was of such importance that we would risk your hostility.”

“Can you tell us in detail?” asked Willie.

“Certainly, but before I do, if you have no objection, I would like to step onto your planet.”

“My deah fellow! But of course.”  Marshall, however, took a step back as the alien walked a little further down the ramp. In fact, I must admit, we all, with the exception of Willie, moved away slightly as the creature stepped onto the grass.

For the next few minutes, all was chaos. The crowd went absolutely mad, breaking through the railings and police barriers and surging forward to get a closer view. I noticed that none of them ventured nearer than about ten feet though. The newspaper reporters and photographers had a field day once they had recovered from their initial shock, and for quite a while we were unable to quieten the people sufficiently to speak to the creature again. When we did, it spoke first.

“Really, gentlemen, this is all most flattering. But  we are not here for pleasure alone. There is a purpose for my visit and I have a strict timetable, so please, let us not delay further in finding a suitable venue for our discussion.”

“Of course, of course!” Marshall gushed, then stopped abruptly. “Did you say we?”

“I did,” concurred the alien. “There are two of us.”

“I  see,”  murmured  the  Minister,   glancing  furtively  at  the  Sphere.  “Tell  me,  what will your –ah--- colleague do while we are in conference?”

The creature pondered for a second.

“May I suggest that he stays here and talks to these people? There are no doubt many things that they would ask, and we are not without our questions too.”

“Er – yes, quite so,” said Marshall. He glanced at the Old Man.

“It’s alright with me,” he said. “The cat is well and truly out of the bag now and I doubt if we could do anything to prevent their curiosity, anyway.”

“Good,” said Marshall. “That’s settled then.”

“Excuse me,” I said, “but there is a political conference at the Hilton next week. Perhaps we could use their conference room for our purposes?”

“That would be excellent, Captain. Could you arrange it?”

I glared at Marshall. Then I beckoned a policeman and whispered a few words. He scurried off, --at least, he forced his way through hundreds of people,-- to the Hilton to arrange the room. I looked at Marshall again. I was damned if I was going to miss anything after coming this far.

Willie was standing right next to the creature. I shuddered. The sight of its neck pulsating made me feel ill.  Why doesn’t it give the old boy his namesake, I thought. But Willie was far too interested to worry about feeling ill. He was asking the alien about Salisbury again.

“Perhaps you could explain as we walk,” he suggested.

“Of course,” said the alien. “Incidentally, I do have a name, which, as far as I can translate it, is Zil.”

“Zil,” repeated Willie.

He was just like a school kid walking beside a comic-strip hero that had miraculously come to life.

“About those two men,” Zil began. “As I have already stated, it was entirely an accident. We have for some time been planning to visit this planet. Oh.”

He stopped walking. “Really this is all so interesting that I have forgotten something of great importance. Would you mind if I returned to the globe for a moment? It concerns the purpose of my visit.”

“Not at all.”

The crowd had closed in behind us as we left the Sphere. Now we had to force a passage back again, although it wasn’t too bad as no-one was inclined to get too near the creature. As we arrived at the bottom of the ramp another alien, exactly the same as Zil but perhaps a little shorter, appeared at the doorway and started down the ramp.

“This is Kyne,” said Zil. “He will answer all the questions that he is asked and probably ask some in return.”

Marshall nodded to the other creature, who promptly smiled back, showing his murderous looking teeth.

“I will be quick, “ said Zil somewhat pedantically, and disappeared from sight. A few minutes later he came out of the Sphere carrying what looked like a large metal box.

“Would you oblige me by carrying this,”  he said to me. “There is some more equipment and I cannot manage it all.”

“Germs!”  whispered the Old Man suddenly in my ear. “What if they’ve brought some virus with them?”

“Oh, Christ, don’t!” I said. “It’s too late now anyway.”

Further discussions were stopped, however, by Zil’s reappearance with another two boxes.

I could see that Willie was bursting with curiosity, but he kept silent about their contents.

After several more minutes we managed to get started again.  Kyne was already busy answering a myriad questions from those lucky members of the public who were near enough to be heard, and, when possible, asking a few back. Cigarettes had him completely stumped. He couldn’t make head or tail of them.

“There is so little time,” Zil said suddenly. “I have ---”  he paused, “ – forty five minutes here, that is all.”

“I see,” said Marshall, who by now had plucked up enough courage to walk beside him.

Not me. I kept the Old Man between us.

“Salisbury,” said Zil as we headed towards the railings again. “I really must explain about it. As I started to say, we have for some time been intending to visit this planet and we have made several trips here already to study the atmosphere and humidity. The globe that you saw at Salisbury,” he looked at me, “ was piloted by a youngster named Yanil. It was his job to observe human reactions when one of our craft appeared at close quarters. Other craft were detailed to appear in various other places at other times.”

I glanced at Willie but he was watching the alien.

“So,” Zil went on,  “everything was proceeding smoothly. Yanil manoeuvered his craft up and down to observe reactions, and the men following him in the car  flashed their lights at him. They rightly took his movement as a sign of communication.”

Zil paused, then went on more quietly.

“And then, I’m afraid, he rather lost his head. He knew that there was a form of weaponry on the way and in order to show that he meant no harm he forced it back across the road in such a way that it could do no harm to him or anyone else. Then he disobeyed a strict order. He landed. Then he disobeyed a second order. He started to adapt his body to Earth’s gravity and atmospheric pressure. There are cubicles in each craft for that express purpose. Meanwhile, he had disobeyed yet another order. Not to dematerialise the globe. I am afraid that he did. Worse, he did it whilst still in the cubicle and the rays involved were too strong for those two unfortunate men who were directly in line. They suffered from an intense overdose of radiation.”

He stopped walking and peered eyelessly round.

“I really am so very sorry,” he said. “ We felt sure you would be hostile to us in view of it.”

“What happened to Yanil?” asked the Brigadier, the disciplinarian in him coming to the fore.

“He has been executed,” said Zil matter-of-factly. “He put all our lives and our entire visit in jeopardy. And it is important to us that we communicate with you about a certain matter, even if it is only this once.”

“Bit harsh, execution,” the Old Man murmured to me. But Zil overheard him.

“It is our way,” the alien said simply.

We continued walking, crossing Park Lane and the pavement.

“How did Yanil know there was a weapon on the way?” I asked.

“He saw it,” the creature replied. “Through the side of  the craft. It is transparent all round except for a section behind the computers. We can see out but no-one can see in, as I believe you would put it. Also, it does away with unnecessary and sometimes dangerous vision ports.”

Further talk was prevented by virtue of the fact that we had reached the Hilton. Within ten minutes we were ensconced in the conference room. The place was packed with people:-  reporters, TV and newsreel cameras, battery upon battery of lights, tape machines and what-have-yous. While he talked Zil proceeded to set up the equipment from his boxes.

                                                                              Chapter Five.

It would be useless trying to describe it. It looked like a weird projector and served a similar purpose as we were to discover, but it had no visible power supply and what principle it worked on, God and Zil alone knew. Willie kept firing questions at him, about his clothes, food, culture, everything. Some of them Zil refused to answer.

“That will have to wait until a future trip,” he said at one point. “There are some things about our technology that I have been instructed not to divulge. Yet. I hope that you will not think it offensive.”

Willie assured him  that he had no need to worry, but as the question was ‘how is your sphere powered?’ I guessed that he was bitterly disappointed.  When Willie asked him where he came from he suggested that we got hold of an astronomical chart. This was duly procured, and Zil, having finished tinkering with his machine, showed us his home planet.

“That,” he said, sounding both proud and sad, “is Nordia.”

Marshall peered over his shoulder and gave a strangled gasp.

“Nordia?” he gasped. “That’s Mars!”

It took a second to sink in, and then I couldn’t resist looking at Willie. He caught my eye and had the grace to blush.

“At least, that was my home,” Zil corrected himself. “Now, I live on this small moon.”

He pointed to Deimos, one of Mars’ two moons.

“You live there!” Wilkes ejaculated.

Zil nodded.

“And that is why we have come to this planet,” he said.

The noise died away. Everyone, including the alien, settled in his or her chair and prepared to listen to Zil.

                                                                                   *   *   *   *   *   *

“Before I come to the point of this visit,” he began, “there are certain things I must explain. I have to signal my planet at a certain time and at a certain distance from Earth on my return journey. If I do not, my superiors will assume that I am either dead or incarcerated. If that happens, they will retaliate. Now please do not become unduly alarmed; we do not intend harm, as I have said. It is merely a precaution we have taken in case you proved hostile to us in view of the deaths of those two men. I say this to you to impress upon you that it is imperative that I leave here in no more than thirty minutes. So please, no more questions.”

He paused and studied the map in front of him.

“What do you call this?” he asked, pointing to something.

I was sitting on his right and as he leaned forward over the map I saw the gill pulsating slowly. I gulped.

“That’s the Ring of Asteroids,” Willie said.

Zil nodded and settled back in his chair.

“First, I must go back many millions of Earth years,” he said. “That which you call the Ring of Asteroids was once a planet. It was larger than Earth, much larger, and larger than Nordia. It had a people on it and they were evolving in exact parallel with you. When the cataclysm occurred they were about fifty years in advance of you, as you are now. Do I speak clearly?”

Willie answered for us. “Yes, yes, do go on. What was this cataclysm?”

“Well, these people had something which you also have.”  He paused and looked around.

“They had nuclear weapons.”

There was an excited outburst from the listeners in the room.

Willie held up his hand and when the noise subsided, Zil went on.

“Yes, I told you they were evolving in parallel. They first had the atom bomb, then the H-bomb. And all the time they wanted to invent bigger and more powerful ones. And then one day they tested one that was too big. The planet blew up.”

Zil paused, and I looked around. Most of the reporters had stopped writing, they were too interested in Zil’s narration. I suppose they intended remembering it as best they could. Anyway, there were the tape recorders and cameras.

“When this happened,” Zil continued, “all my people lived on Nordia. They were very nearly all wiped out, but a few survived and built up the race again. Earth felt the effect of that tremendous explosion. You had at one time in your history a stage where huge animals dominated the planet. There were many swamps and jungles.”

“The prehistoric ages,” supplied Willie.

“These animals died out suddenly, for no apparent reason other than lack of food. Well, that was not the only cause of their sudden extinction. It was partly because of that terrible nuclear explosion. The planet was a long way from Nordia, but the pieces that were left, -- that which you now call the Ring of Asteroids --  were blasted into space and eventually ended up in their present positions.

And Nordia also suffered. The explosion fractionally altered the orbit of its moon. As you can imagine, the effect was not felt for a long time, but then my people realised that it was getting farther and farther away. Our tides and water systems were being affected. So Xyphea was built.”

“Xyphea?” interrupted Willie. “Would you show us please?”

Zil pointed to the map.

“Ah! Deimos, the second moon,” Willie nodded. Then the realisation hit him. “Do you mean to say that that moon is man-made? I’m sorry, I mean, did your people build it? And put it into orbit?”

“It was built in space, in orbit,” said Zil.

Willie’s mouth opened and shut like a fish, but, like the rest of us, he was so thunderstruck that he just couldn’t speak.

“It was built to compensate for the movement of our natural moon,” the alien went on. “It was a tiny planet all of its own, but no-one lived there except a few scientists and technologists. And now I come to the point of my visit. But instead of my trying to narrate facts about a planet which you have never, and now will never, see, I am going to use this machine --”  he pointed to the projector-thing – “to show you exactly what happened. The machine is what you would perhaps call a subliminal experience projector, which means you will see the story as a series of pictures in your own mind.  Have no worry, however, since it is not harmful in any way. But if anyone present does feel a little dubious about undergoing such an experience, I shall understand, and certainly shall not be offended.”

He waited for a moment, but no-one moved.

“Very well, then,” said Zil. He reached over to the machine and fiddled with something. Then he began to narrate again.

The effect of the machine was really weird. It was as if I could see a movie film in my own mind. I could still see Zil and the rest of the assembled people, but over them was a visual transcription of the story that Zil was narrating. The experience was not unpleasant.

“On Nordia, water was our biggest problem,” said Zil quietly. “It was stagnating, slowly, because of the movement of the moon, but worse still it was slowly evaporating. But the planet was beautiful.”

While he had been speaking a view of what could only have been his planet had passed in front of my eyes.

The ground was a yellow ochre colour and rather dusty. In the foreground was a patch of reddish blue plants looking something like Dock-leaves. In the far distance was a city. There were four towers spaced out to form a quadrant, each one standing at least six hundred feet tall  and  taking  up  about  seven  or  eight  acres of ground space at their bases.   They were massive, and appeared to be built of  red stone. They had balconies at various intervals round their circumferences. There were no windows as such, only gaps in the stone. Between the towers was an area of the same dusty yellow surface and on the extreme left of the city was a canal about thirty feet wide. The water level was up to the banks of the canal.

“We had foliage, -  luscious, healthy plants,” Zil continued. “We had magnificent cities. And we had water, although we had to exercise great care in the use of it. We built upwards, in towers, and downwards in tunnels so as to leave the surface area free for recreation and irrigation. All our cities were connected underground by horizontal shafts. For surface transport we used smaller versions of my globe, some without tops, some exactly the same. And we had a weapon.”

The picture in my mind faded. All attention was focused on the creature as he went on.

“Yes, we too had a weapon which we continued to develop although we knew it could destroy us all. It was a vapour. When it was released into our thin atmosphere it would travel,  folding  over  on  itself  like  the  waves  in  your  seas.  It took only seconds  to work.  And it evaporated water completely.”

He paused for a moment and looked eyelessly round at us.  “And although we knew it could be the end of Nordia, our scientists continued to build bigger and more powerful machines to dispel this vapour. Like the age-old civilisation that destroyed itself, we had a restive element on Nordia and eventually war broke out.

"And they used the vapour,” Willie interjected softly.

Zil nodded slowly.  On his temples two tiny pulses began to beat, causing the flesh to undulate beneath his skin.

“Yes,” he said. “They used the vapouriser.”

Again a picture formed in my mind. This time there were hundreds of the alien people round the bases of the towers. They were fleeing away from the city. They all appeared to be very similar. There were no visible differences between the sexes, except that the females had a typically feminine gait. They all wore suits like Zil’s but some were in two pieces instead of one and some were different colours. In some cases the footwear was different, although the predominant colour was white.  The scene changed to show a pleasure garden full of the fleeing creatures.

“Our people had no chance at all,” continued the alien quietly. “They tried to run but it was useless.”

The garden contained all types of peculiar plants; some being small shrubs with long slender leaves pointing straight up like reeds, others looking like  rows of spiky bushes. Some were red, some were brown.

“The southern region of Nordia used the vapouriser first,” explained Zil. “They were at war with us, the Northern sector. We retaliated, of course, but our planet was already dying.”

The aliens were still running hither and thither in the garden. I could even sense their cries;- a weird, reedy wail, as if all the breath was being forced out of their lungs. There were some more plants; thick, knotty looking trunks with tendrils sprouting from them and creeping across the ground to form a carpet of matted vines. These were blue, and as the walkways between the beds of plants were the same dusty yellow colour as the rest of the ground, the contrast was quite striking.

Another bed contained some tall plants with a thin stem and a single flower  like an inverted tassle at the top. These flowers were all different colours; reds, blues, whites, and even orange. Suddenly, a group of the fleeing creatures appeared and within seconds the vegetation was just a heap of coloured foliage scattered on the ground.

“After a few minutes, the vapour reached our main canal.”

And then I was looking at the canal again. On the left bank a wisp of pink mist appeared. Behind it came another, and another, folding over and over in a sickening, inexorable progress towards the water.  The first of the mist touched the canal and the second wave overtook it and covered the water. There was a brief pause and then the water shot up into the air in the form of a white gas. The banks of the canal sprayed upwards, hurling dust and soil with tremendous force all over the landscape. The gas billowed upwards, heaving and churning on itself until it suddenly exploded outwards and disappeared. When the debris had settled I could see that the pink mist had crept onwards, reaching the first of the plants at the edge of the garden. All that remained of the canal was a dusty trough gouged out of the soil.

The plants withered and crumbled slowly as the moisture in them evaporated. At the end there was just a heap of brown dust.

“Within a short time it was all over,” the alien went on. “Our water was gone, our cities enveloped in the vapour. Our vegetation shrivelled and died; our pleasure areas were reduced to dust. But some of us were not even destined to escape with our lives. It was horrible,” he added in a whisper.

The mist had reached the ranks of fleeing Nordians. As it touched their bodies they fell, wailing pitifully. The mist rolled over on itself and another wave of people were caught in it.

As they fell their exposed skin dried and flaked away. In places, lumps of flesh still adhered to the bone. Their clothes remained intact, but beneath them their ribs could be seen showing hollowly.

In one part of the garden was an ornamental rock pool surrounded by more of the tall plants with the coloured flowers. The hysterical crowds reached the edge of the pool and were trapped. The mist crept inexorably nearer.

“It rotted all the flesh from our bodies, leaving only the bone,” Zil said in a monotone.

Some  of the creatures were pushed by the crush into the pool. They climbed out, dripping wet, only to find themselves caught in the mist.

One of them was touched at the ankle. In a flash there was nothing left of his foot and he fell sprawling in the dust. He screamed, revealing his teeth and the inside of his mouth, which was a pale mauve, and writhed in agony. The next second he was dead as the mist rolled up his body. A wisp touched his hand and it dried instantly and crumbled into a purple dust, leaving just yellow coloured bone. His clothes, wet from the pool, were disintegrating as the mist touched them and his ribs and neck also suffered the same hideous drying process. And then the mist reached his head.

The skin shrivelled up, making his face hollow against his skull. His lips crumbled away, leaving his teeth bare to the air.  The flesh round his eye protuberances fell away, leaving the sockets in the bone underneath. His cheeks and the side of his head were gone and suddenly the top of his skull split open spilling out the flesh and tissue from his head. It dried instantly as the mist wafted by, leaving just a faint mark in the dust to show that there was once an intelligent being who had brains and who died on this spot.

Slowly the picture faded away.

I became aware of the other people in the room. No-one moved and it was very quiet, except that somewhere, someone was being violently sick. Marshall looked green and even the Old Man didn’t look too good. Willie was staring aghast at the alien; and I wished I was a hundred miles away.

“Zil,  I –  I --  what can we say?” Willie broke the silence at last. “It must have been terrible. I really am most frightfully sorry for you.”

Zil roused himself from his apparent daydream.

“Thank you, Professor, but I am afraid it is too late for apologies. There was nothing left alive on Nordia. But we were very lucky. A few escaped in some spheres to Xyphea, where they recolonised. All this, of course, was millennia before my time.

But you see, our people have twice suffered because of an intelligence using weapons which were too powerful for them to control, although, I admit, one of them was our own civilisation. And now we are afraid that Earth will be the next planet to endanger our already precarious existence.”

“Earth!” Marshall ejaculated. “How can Earth be any danger to you?”

“The nuclear arsenals,”  Willie said quietly.

Zil shifted his position slightly.

“You are heading the same way as that planet of long ago,” he explained. “You are always testing bigger bombs, more powerful weapons, and more of your nations are becoming nuclear powers. From three you have already enlarged to five. One day, someone will make one that is too big, just as they did.

But you are much nearer to us than they were. If you explode one that is too powerful, it may upset Xyphea’s orbit and we shall be flung into space. I need hardly explain that if that were to happen there would be no survivors at all. We cannot let this happen and this is why we have come to your planet. I imagine that Kyne is explaining all this to the people out there ---” he gestured towards the street – “but you people here are concerned more closely with weaponry, defence, war. It is to you that I appeal, stop these tests before you destroy our civilisation. It matters nothing to us if you destroy yourselves. That is not our prime concern.

If you do not kill yourselves and render your planet uninhabitable, we shall no doubt develop our relationship with you in the future. Now that you have ventured into space there are many things that we can teach you. We are approximately seven hundred years in advance of you, technologically, and we shall be happy to pass on to you all the science and culture that you can take, but we do not want our planet to die.”

There was silence for several minutes. The Old Man and I exchanged glances. Marshall looked at Willie but the scientist was staring at the floor. Zil was looking at the battery of lights in front of the table.

“I am sorry,” he said, “but I suddenly feel unwell. Could you remove those bright lights?”

One of the technicians switched them off.

“Thank you,” said Zil, sounding relieved. Willie roused himself from his reverie.

“Yes, I suppose it would be a disaster for Deimos if we let a bomb off as big as that.” He spoke thoughtfully, but then added firmly, “Oh, but that’s ridiculous. We would never let off one that was so big it would endanger ourselves.”

“I have no doubt the other planet thought that too,” said Zil drily, “ but they did.”

There was silence again.

Marshall reached thoughtfully for his water jug and started to pour a glass for himself. He looked at Zil sharply, just as the alien sat up abruptly.

“I’m dreadfully sorry,” said the Minister hurriedly. “It really was most thoughtless of me.”

“Ah – do not worry,” said Zil awkwardly. “It was just unfortunate.” He leaned forward and looked at the map.

“Tell me, Zil,” said Wilkes suddenly, “but please don’t misunderstand me, what would happen if we didn’t – er, -- I mean --”

“If you didn’t stop the tests?” Zil finished for him. “I think perhaps we would be forced to make the position a little clearer. But now you must not misunderstand me. We do not wish to harm you under any circumstances. Unless, of course, I fail to contact Xyphea in time and reassure them that all is well with Kyne and myself. We would like to be made welcome on this planet, and we should certainly extend a welcome to you on Xyphea. But it is of great importance to us that Xyphea is not endangered again. If it was, I am very much afraid that the vapouriser would be brought here.”

“Do you mean you still have the weapon?” Willie asked, aghast. “Even though it destroyed your world?”

“Yes,” said Zil with what sounded suspiciously like a sigh. “Ironic, is it not?”

No-one answered.

“Well,” said Marshall at last. “This is all rather a revelation. I –er-- oh dear, I’m sure we never thought that our tests would endanger anyone else from another planet. It’s all –er—rather difficult. However you may rest assured that we shall certainly discuss this matter in great detail with  the world powers responsible for the tests. I take it you chose this country because we are, so to speak, neutral?”

“Yes, and thank you, Mr Marshall. It is a great relief to us that you have accepted us without any unnecessary trouble. But now I am afraid I must leave. It would be most unfortunate if, after so satisfactory a visit, I failed to contact my home in time.” He rested his hand on the map.

Marshall stood up hurriedly.

“Yes indeed,”  he agreed. “Quite catastrophic, in fact. I do hope you haven’t left it too late.”

“No, there is still a margin of time,” Zil said, rising from his seat and starting to pack away his equipment.

“I see you have a slight scratch on your hand,” said Willie. “Did you sustain it on this planet?”

The alien looked at his hand.

“About two of your weeks ago,” he said, “I landed on another continent. I was to collect some geological samples. While I was on the ground I was attacked by a strange, ferocious looking animal. No damage was inflicted except for this slight mark where it just caught the back of my hand.”

“My dear fellow!” Marshall exclaimed. “It might be dangerous to you!”

“We carry a very comprehensive medical  outfit which will take care of most injuries,”  Zil assured him.

“Including terrestrial viruses?” asked Willie.

“Well, I think so. I have suffered no ill effects yet, anyway. And now, I must return to my craft.”

“Quite so,” said Marshall.

The assembly rose en masse. The alien put his hands over his tiny ears.

“When you come to Xyphea, you will find it remarkably quiet.”   This caused a chuckle.

I picked up my coat and started to prepare for the cold outside. Then I noticed that Willie had disappeared. I glanced at the door, just in time to se him shoving his way through the crowds of people. Now where’s he off to in such a rush, I thought. I hoped that our strange visitor would not think it rude, and suddenly realised I had taken quite a liking to Zil in spite of his rather horrific features.

It didn’t take long to force a passage through the crowds of people still lining the streets outside and make our way across to the Park. As we crossed Park Lane, Zil bent down and touched the road.

“Is this a type of stone?” he asked interestedly.

“Well no, not really,” Marshall answered. “ We call it macadam, or tar.”

The alien straightened up.

“I cannot translate those two words,” he said. “It is obviously a substance unknown to us.”

We crossed the road and entered the Park. The crowd fell back on either side to let us through. As we neared the Sphere I could see Kyne still talking to the public. He noticed us approaching and turned to face his colleague.

“They have listened?” he asked eagerly.

Zil nodded. “Yes they have. I do not think we shall need to worry too much any more.”

Kyne looked round at us gratefully.   Where the hell is Willie, I thought.

“Thank you,” he said soberly. “It means so much to us.”

Marshall looked embarrassed. “Oh.  Er – yes. Well, I’m glad you came in time to tell us of your concerns. Will you return,  perhaps,  one day?”

“I hope so,” Zil answered. “When I have returned to Xyphea and reported my visit I shall ask if I may lead another project, this time with some of our scientists and technologists.”

“We look forward to that time, Zil,” said Marshall gravely. He held out his hand, then looked down at it and laughed.

“Do you know what this means?” he chuckled.

Zil shook his head.

“It is a form of greeting, or parting,” Marshall explained. “Hold your hand out like mine.”

The alien complied and they shook hands firmly. Zil looked down at their clasped hands.

“I will remember,” he said.

I looked round again. It was obvious they would be leaving in a few minutes and there was still no sign of Willie. I couldn’t believe that he would not be interested in seeing them depart, but whatever had kept him from joining us I couldn’t begin to guess at.

The two aliens had finished saying goodbye and were at the top of the ramp. Kyne disappeared inside and Zil turned to face us.

“Until the future,” he said. He held his hands out, palms cupped as he had done before. “This is our way of salutation.”

Suddenly he swayed, and fell against the doorway of the craft. Kyne appeared from inside and supported him with an arm round his shoulder.

“Is he alright?” Marshall asked urgently.

Kyne nodded, with difficulty under the weight of the sagging body.

“Do not worry. I fear he is reacting from the long strain. He will be alright when he has rested.”

Marshall looked doubtful. “If you’re sure,” he said. “I do hope he is not ill from landing here.”

“No, I think not.” Kyne hoisted Zil’s inert body a little higher. It has been a time of great strain for all of us.”

Marshall nodded and stepped back.

“It is time,” said Kyne. “I wish you well.” He turned and helped Zil into the Sphere. We took a step backwards and the ramp slid slowly back into the craft.

I gave one last despairing look round for Willie Wilkes. He was nowhere to be seen. I shrugged, mentally, although I felt sorry. His loss.

The doorway began to solidify. The crowd had fallen silent again and the atmosphere seemed to match the murky gloom of the sky. Suddenly there was a muffled shout from the depths of the crowd. I swung round, and there was Willie, hurrying towards us and waving a large book.

“Stop them!” he shouted. “Don’t let them leave!”

I swung back again to the Sphere, just in time to see the casing harden completely.

“What’s the matter with him?” asked the Old Man, looking as if he thought Willie had gone round the bend at last.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but whatever it is, it looks as if he’s in earnest.”

Willie came charging up to us and stopped short when he saw that the Sphere had closed up.

“Oh, no!” he said softly. “Can we contact them?”

“I doubt it,” I began and then stopped as the Sphere rose silently into the sky. It dipped twice, then shot straight up until it disappeared.

“Oh, Christ!” Willie swore.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked Marshall irritably.

“Tell me,” said Willie, motioning us away from the crowds, “did anything happen before they left?”

“As a matter of fact, something did appear to be amiss with Zil,” Marshall told him. “Why?”

Willie sagged slightly and stared at Marshall. “What happened, exactly?”

“He fell against the side of the Sphere,” said Marshall with some asperity. “Seemed weak. But if you’ll kindly explain --”

He stopped as Willie turned to look silently across the Park.

“Will you explain yourself!” thundered the Old Man. “They got away in time to make their signal, didn’t they?”

“Oh, certainly they did,” agreed Willie sarcastically, still with his back to us. He turned slowly and sighed.

“But I’m terribly, terribly afraid that it won’t do any good even if they have left in time.”

“For God’s sake, why?” I asked him.

Wilkes opened the book and started to thumb through the pages.

“I had a horrible thought back there,” he said in a flat voice.

“Zil said he was attacked by an animal on another continent. It’s a pity we don’t know exactly where. However, I also remembered three things that happened earlier. And now you say that he collapsed as he entered the craft?”

I nodded, puzzled. “ ‘Sright, Willie.”

Willie nodded slowly.

“Listen to this,” he said, and began to read from the book.

“The first symptom noticeable when the disease has been contracted by a human being is that of acute hydrophobia.  That’s fear of water,” he explained,  and then continued reading. “Aversion to bright lights and sudden loud noises soon follows, as may annoyance at fresh air against flesh. The victim will collapse soon afterwards and after a final spasm, which can be extremely violent and last up to fifteen minutes, death will result.”

He closed the book with a snap  and regarded us soberly.

“Zil exhibited at least four of those symptoms,” he said slowly. “And even if he didn’t mind the fresh air, those four are enough to convince me. And don’t say Zil wasn’t human,” he added quickly. “He was near enough like us for this,”  -  he waved the book – “to apply.”

“What the hell are you raving about?” asked the Brigadier angrily.

“I’m not raving,” said Willie, looking up at the sky, “but I should think that Zil is, right now, or soon will be.”

He looked at us again.

“Zil has contracted rabies, “ he finished quietly.

There was a silence that seemed to last an eternity.

“You must be wrong,” whispered the Old Man in a shocked voice.

Willie shook his head.

“I’m afraid not,” he said. “But that’s not the worst part, bad enough though it is. Zil told me earlier that he was due to send his signal back to Deimos when he was two earth hours out from here.”

He swallowed.

“He’ll be dead long before then,” he said in a ghastly whisper, “and if he kills the other creature in his final seizure, there won’t be any signal.”

“What about us?” asked Marshall, his eyes wide. “Will we catch it?”

“No, that’s very unlikely,” said Willie. “Not unless any of his saliva touched one of us, and I don’t think that happened. There is a vaccination for us if necessary…..”

We looked at one another.

There was nothing more to be said.

One by one we looked up at the sky.

So, you see, we know they’ll come back.

We don’t know when, or how many there will be.

But one thing we’re horribly, dreadfully sure of.  

They’ll come back.

                                                                          Epilogue.

                                                         The sphere sped silently through space.

Kyne turned from where he had been waiting for the computer lights to blink out. Zil was sitting at the control console, hunched over the dials and moaning softly. Kyne moved over to his friend and put a comforting arm round his shoulder. Zil whipped round and leapt out of the seat, sending the other alien flying back against the transparent wall of the craft. His face was contorted with agony; his mouth expelling a white foam. He retched on it horribly, his fleshy eyes wept with a pale mauve liquid and his gills vibrated rapidly. He lunged at Kyne, who was dazedly shaking his head where he had fallen on the floor. Zil caught his head in both hands and battered it against the wall with tremendous force. There was a crunch, the wall became spattered with a mauve stain and Kyne’s body went limp in his hands. Zil flopped back against the wall himself, his legs twisted grotesquely under him. The foam dripped onto his suit, showing vividly against the black material, and his gills exuded a clear, syrupy liquid. He swayed dazedly, making his queer, wailing cry, and then flopped forward onto his face.

                                                            And the sphere sped silently through space.

                                                                                The End.

                                                               The second book is called "Lex Talionis"

© Copyright David Barry 1969.  

Revised version © copyright David Barry April 1973.

©   No part of this story or its subsequent screenplay may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, by any means or in any form, including electronically, either wholly or in part, without written permission from the copyright holders.