The Cosmic Looters

Wyatt knew his situation was desperate: he couldn't stop the alien invasion, and even if he warned Earth--nobody would believe him!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy February 1958 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Duncan Wyatt sprang up, grabbed his gun and started toward the door before he had his eyes properly open. His ears were ringing with the explosive roar that had awakened him and the pre-fab shack still quivered in the shock wave.

He thought the Third World War had started.

He crouched in the doorway and peered out onto the mesa. The unorthodox shape of the experimental ultra-tight-beam transmitter loomed over him, black against the star-blazing New Mexican sky, bearing a red star of its own to warn low-flying planes. He was all alone here. His partner, Bannister, had flown out to the Coast to oversee the making of new components for a projected improvement in design. Wyatt had never felt lonely before, even in the total solitude of the mesa top with nothing around it but the vast impersonals of sky and desert, sun and wind. Now he did feel lonely, and scared. He wondered where the bomb had dropped.

He couldn't see anything, so he went out and around the corner of the shack, keeping low and sticking tight to the wall.

Now he could see a larger area of the mesa, softly but almost adequately lighted by the billion stars above the crystal-clear air.

He saw what it was that had fallen out of the sky.

It wasn't a bomb. It was a--plane? Call it a plane. Call it a rotary-thrust flying wing. Call it anything you want to, it was there, round and glimmering faintly against the drab rock. The boom and shock that had shaken him out of his bunk must have been the result of the thing pulling out of a steep dive at super-sonic speed.

He should have been relieved that this was so. Somehow Wyatt was not. He had a feeling. It was such a crazy feeling that he could not believe it, but he couldn't get rid of it either.

He stood still in the shadow by the corner of the shack and waited to see what would happen next.

A light came on with blinding suddenness, shining from the center of the queer plane. It showed up every pebble and stunted bush, every grain of the rock, the sun-bitten pre-fab wall, himself in his sock feet and rumpled khakis, standing stiffly with the gun in his hand.

A portion of the black outer rim of the round plane dropped down, unfolding into a stair.

Wyatt shouted, "What is it? Who are you?" His voice was thin and small in that vastness of windy air. "I have a gun," he shouted. "Come out slowly, with your hands up!"

The words sounded ridiculous even while he was saying them. But he had to put up some kind of a front, simply because he was scared. If he didn't he would have had to turn and run away.

It was the damned round queer-looking plane. He was in a cold shaking sweat waiting to see what came out of it.

When he did see he didn't believe it.

She stood in the aperture at the top of the narrow metal stair. Her hands were raised just a little, so that he might be sure there was no weapon in them. He thought she was smiling slightly. She had black hair, black as the blackest shadow you could imagine, shorn close around her head. She was dressed in black--soft boots, close-fitting pants, wide belt with holster, severely plain shirt with a splotch of gold on the front of each shoulder. Somehow he sensed that the gold splotches were insignia, not decorations. He also sensed--from something about the way she stood, the way she looked at him, the hard, disciplined strength that underlay the splendid lines of her body--that this woman was not like any of the women he had ever known, and that probably the Third World War might have been easier to cope with.

She said, "There is no need to be afraid."

Her English sounded as though she had learned it by mathematical formula, and in a hurry.

Wyatt said untruthfully, "I'm not afraid. Just cautious." He walked out closer to the disc-shaped plane. The mesa rock was icy under his socks, the wind was icy down his back, and there was a chill inside him that was purely personal.

"Where do you come from?" he asked. "What do you want?"