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The trick is to jump the gun- with proof. Convincing evidence. Nobody's ever
been allowed to produce the evidence before. You are a reporter, aren't you?"
Holding his glass, the man in the brown suit nodded reluctantly.
"Then you ought to be taking it all down on a piece of folded paper. I want
everybody to know. The whole world. It's important. Terribly important. It
explains everything. My life won't be safe unless I can pass along the
information and make people believe it."
"Why won't your life be safe?"
"Because of the Martians, you fool. They own the world."
The brown man sighed. "Then they own my newspaper, too,*' he objected, "so I
can't print anything they don't like."
"I never thought of that," Lyman said, considering the bottom of his glass,
where two ice cubes had fused into a cold, immutable union. "They're not
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omnipotent, though. I'm sure they're vulnerable, or why have they always kept
under cover? They're afraid of being found out. If the world had convincing
evidence-look, people always believe what they read in the newspapers.
Couldn't you-"
"Ha," said the brown man with deep significance.
Lyman drummed sadly on the bar and murmured, "There must be some way. Perhaps
if I had another drink. . . ."
The brown-suited man tasted his collins, which seemed to stimulate him. "Just
what is all this about Martians?" he asked Lyman. "Suppose you start at the
beginning and tell me again. Or can't you remember?"
"Of course I can remember. I've got practically total recall. It's something
new. Very new. I
never could do it before. I can even remember my last conversation with the
Martians." Lyman favored the brown man with a glance of triumph.
"When was that?"
"This morning."
"I can even remember conversations I had last week," the brown man said
mildly. "So what?"
"You don't understand. They make us forget, you see. They tell us what to do
and we forget about the conversation-it's post-hypnotic suggestion, I
expect-but we follow their orders just the same.
There's the compulsion, though we think we're making our own decisions. Oh,
they own the world, all right, but nobody knows it except me."
"And how did you find Out?"
"Well, I got my brain scrambled, in a way. I've been fooling around with
supersonic detergents, trying to work out something marketable, you know. The
gadget went wrong-from some standpoints.
High-frequency waves, it was. They went through and through me. Should have
been inaudible, but I
could hear them, or rather-well, actually 1 could see them. That's what ( mean
about my brain being scrambled. And after that, I could see and hear the
Martians. They've geared themselves so they work efficiently on ordinary
brains, and mine isn't ordinary anymore. They can't hypnotize me, either. They
can command me, but I needn't obey-now. I hope they don't suspect. Maybe they
do.
Yes, I guess they do."
"How can you tell?"
"The way they look at me."
"How do they look at you?" asked the brown man, as he began to reach for a
pencil and then changed his mind. He took a drink instead. "Well? What are
they like?"
"I'm not sure. I can see them, all right, but only when they're dressed up."
"Okay, okay," the brown man said patiently. "How do they look, dressed up?"
"Just like anybody, almost. They dress up in-in human skins. Oh, not real
ones, imitations. Like the Katzenjammer Kids zipped into crocodile suits.
Undressed-I don't know. I've never seen one.
Maybe they're invisible even to me, then, or maybe they're just camouflaged.
Ants or owls or rats or bats or-"
"Or anything," the brown man said hastily.
"Thanks. Or anything, of course. But when they're-dressed up like humans-like
that one who was sitting next to you awhile ago, when I told you not to look-"
"That one was invisible, I gather?"
"Most of the time they are, to everybody. But once in a while, for some
reason, they-"
"Wait," the brown man objected. "Make sense, will you? They dress up in human
skins and then sit around invisible?"
"Only now and then. The human skins are perfectly good imitations. Nobody can
tell the difference.
It's that third eye that gives them away. When they keep it closed, you'd
never guess it was there. When they want to open it, they go invisible-like
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that. Fast. When I see somebody with a third eye, right in the middle of his
forehead, I know he's
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C.txt a Martian and invisible, and I pretend not to notice him."
"Uh-huh," the brown man said. "Then for all you know, I'm one of your visible
Martians." /'
"Oh, I hope not!" Lyman regarded him anxiously. "Drunk as I am, I don't think
so. I've been trailing you all day, making sure. It's a risk I have to take,
of course. They'll go to any length-
any length at all-to make a man give himself away. I realize that. I can't
really trust anybody.
But I had to find someone to talk to, and I-" He paused. There was a brief
silence. "I could be wrong," Lyman said presently. "When the third eye's
closed, I can't tell if it's there. Would you mind opening your third eye for
me?" He fixed a dim gaze on the brown man's forehead.
"Sorry," the reporter said. "Some other time. Besides, I don't know you. So
you want me to splash this across the front page, I gather? Why didn't you go
to see the managing editor? My stories have to get past the desk and rewrite." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]