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The opening · free to read
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy March 1955 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It wasn't my idea--I wasn't the first one to think of it. It started with John Kelley, who passed the idea on to me. And I'm going to do something about it. I think John wanted to but he never got the chance.
It began about two months ago when I was sitting at the lunch counter in Chicago's LaSalle Street station, drinking coffee. I was on my second cup when John walked in. He saw me about the same time I saw him and came over to the counter and we gave each other the I-haven't-seen-you-for-years-what-are-you-doing-now routine.
Which was a laugh, in a way, because while he wouldn't know what I had been doing, I couldn't help but know what he had been doing. And so would you if I told you his right name. You wouldn't have recognized him, of course. He was the inconspicuous type, the sort of man who blended in so well with his background you would have had to hunt to find him, even if he was standing right in front of you. He was thin, not particularly tall, with limp, straw colored hair that clung close to his scalp and a complexion that had never been exposed to the sun. He was dressed in an old blue suit, a shapeless hat that might have been new five years ago, and a lightweight gray topcoat that hadn't been cleaned and pressed since he had bought it.
See? You wouldn't have noticed him at all.
It's a somewhat deceptive description, of course. John could have afforded a Brooks Brothers suit and at least one Cadillac but the fact was that he preferred being inconspicuous and in his job it was a definite advantage. Both John and I were reporters but the difference was--as Oscar Levant would say--the difference between talent and genius.
He ordered coffee then gave me a once-over with a pair of tired blue eyes that took in everything from my brown shoes that needed a shine to the newest thing in string bow-ties.
"How's it going, Charley?"
I blew the loose sugar off a doughnut and dangled it just over the edge of the cup. "It goes all right. It could be better but I suppose it could be worse, too. What brings you to Chicago?"
"I'm on a story."
"Sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to pry."
He got a refill on his coffee and stirred in half a pound of sugar. "You're not prying. As a matter of fact, maybe you can help me."
"What's up?"
"I'm doing a story about an invasion. It's one that started just a few years ago, one that I'm afraid was highly successful, and one that I think is still going on."
I looked at him blankly. "Invasion? What invasion?"
"One from out in space," he said casually. "You know, one from another planet or another star. That type of invasion."
I sat there letting my coffee grow cold because all the time I was thinking that the one thing in the world John Kelley didn't possess was a sense of humor. As long as I had known him he had never told a joke and came damn close to never laughing at any.
"I don't recall any reports of anybody running around with six arms or green skin or tentacles instead of limbs," I protested mildly.
He shook his head, deadly serious. "You're not looking at it logically, Charley. The only beings who would be interested in the planet in the first place are beings who could live here. And if they could live here, then it's possible they could have the same sort of physical make-up." He paused. "Maybe the exact same sort of physical make-up. Even to the extent of the average man's desire to avoid trouble."
Kelley had something there. Every time you think of an invasion from outer space, you think of a hundred huge rocket ships settling down with ray guns going full blast and king-sized atomic bombs breaking up the landscape. Actually, of course, it doesn't have to be like that at all. Granted a physical resemblance in the first place, then maybe it wouldn't be an invasion. It might be more of an ... infiltration.
I jerked my thumb towards the people who crowded around the train gates and sprawled out on the benches. "You mean that some of those people aren't ... genuine?"
"That's right," John said slowly. "Some of them aren't the real McCoy."
I watched the people for a moment more, staring hard at the old man buying a paper at the newsstand and the old woman who was selling it to him.
"How can you tell which are which?"
"I can't. So far as I know, there isn't any way."
He had forgotten his coffee now. It sat at his elbow, an unappetizing mixture of lukewarm grounds, cigarette ash, and disintegrated doughnut.
"Any leads?"
"You've been reading them every day, Charley. A dozen times a year somebody sees flashes in the sky, a dozen times lights settle down in relatively uninhabited sections of the country. Sure, people see them and report them. And what happens?" He shrugged. "The papers treat them as part of the silly season, readers only glance at the reports. You know as well as I that nobody packs up a camera to go out and investigate."
I took another look around the station. The bored people, sitting on benches and reading their papers. The mother with her baby, sleeping now but one you knew would be squalling in a few minutes. The porter sweeping up just in front of the wash-room. The man in the information booth rifling through a stack of time-tables.
All very prosaic all very every dayish. I turned back to Kelley, my face showing disbelief.
"You don't believe me, do you?"
I turned up my hands. "It's a pretty big order, John."
"That's the one big drawback--convincing people." He sat there for a moment, fingering the check the waitress had given him, then made up his mind. "Meet me tonight by the library, Randolph street side. Nine o'clock. I'll have some photographs along."
I reached for my hat. "Exhibit A better be pretty convincing John." And oddly enough, I didn't have any doubts but what they would be. His reputation was that good.
It was a nice, warm summer night when I got to the library a couple of minutes after nine. Downtown was already filling up with teenagers and pick-ups who flutter around the bright-lights like moths around a candle. I stood on the library steps and waited watching people crowd out of the IC entrance.
I had smoked my way through half a pack of cigarettes before it occurred to me that maybe John wasn't going to show. My first thought was that he had pulled a gag on me. My next was that something had delayed him. I started to walk over to his hotel.
Between Michigan and Wabash, right next door to the library, there's a small street that's more of an alley than a street. Street cars used to turn down it before the Chicago Transit Authority got into office and a lot of trucks use it to make deliveries. It's not too well lighted and the only people who use it at night to cut through from Washington to Randolph are people in a hurry.
You're way ahead of me, I know. And you're right. But you're wrong if you think I found him after five minutes of playing Sherlock. The police found him at three in the morning after they had combed the loop half the night.
John Kelley was in one of the store fronts, his head bashed in.
John Kelley was the first martyr to the cause. In a lot of ways, he didn't make a very good one. The papers put it down to gangland enemies--the usual explanation for murders in Chicago--and for a while I thought I had convinced myself that they were right.
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