The Complete Stories (Page 31)

Prentiss felt a certain gloomy satisfaction. "I think I know. I was under his control because I accepted the truth of his existence. He held you in check through me. When I left the room, increasing distance made it harder to use my mind as a psychic lens and you could begin moving. By the time I reached the front door, the elf thought it was time to switch from my mind to Jan, Junior’s. That was his mistake."

"In what way?" asked Blanche.

"He assumed that all children believe in fairies, but he was wrong. Here in America today children don’t believe in fairies. They never hear of them. They believe in Tom Corbett, in Hopalong Cassidy, in Dick Tracy, in Howdy Doody, in Superman and a dozen other things, but not in fairies.

"The elf just never realized the sudden cultural changes brought about by comic books and television, and when he tried to grab Jan, Junior’s mind, he couldn’t. Before he could recover his psychic balance, Jan, Junior, was on top of him in a swinging panic because he thought you were being hurt and it was all over.

"It’s like I’ve always said, Blanche. The ancient folk motifs of legend survive only in the modern fantasy magazine, and modem fantasy is purely adult fare. Do you finally see my point?"

Blanche said humbly, "Yes, dear."

Prentiss put his hands in his pockets and grinned slowly. "You know, Blanche, next time I see Walt Rae, I think I’ll just drop a hint that I write the stuff. Time the neighbors knew, I think."

Jan, Junior, holding an enormous slice of buttered bread, wandered into his father’s study in search of the dimming memory. Pop kept slapping him on the back and Mom kept putting bread and cake in his hands and he was forgetting why. There had been this big old thing on the desk that could talk . . .

It had all happened so quickly that it got mixed up in his mind.

He shrugged his shoulders and, in the late afternoon sunlight, looked at the partly typewritten sheet in his father’s typewriter, then at the small pile of paper resting on the desk.

He read a while, curled his lip and muttered, "Gee whiz. Fairies again. Always kid stuff!" and wandered off.

The Watery Place

We’re never going to have space travel. What’s more, no extraterrestrials will ever land on Earth-at least, any more.

I’m not just being a pessimist. As a matter of fact, space travel is possible; extraterrestrials have landed. I know that. Space ships are crisscrossing space among a million worlds, probably, but we’ll never join them. I know that, too. All on account of a ridiculous error.

I’ll explain.

It was actually Bart Cameron’s error and you’ll have to understand about Bart Cameron. He’s the sheriff at Twin Gulch, Idaho, and I’m his deputy. Bart Cameron is an impatient man and he gets most impatient when he has to work up his income tax. You see, besides being sheriff, he also owns and runs the general store, he’s got some shares in a sheep ranch, he does a bit of assay work, he’s got a kind of pension for being a disabled veteran (bad knee) and a few other things like that. Naturally, it makes his tax figures complicated.

It wouldn’t be so bad if he’d let a tax man work on the forms with him, but he insists on doing it himself and it makes him a bitter man. By April 14, he isn’t approachable.

So it’s too bad the flying saucer landed on April 14, 1956.

I saw it land. My chair was backed up against the wall in the sheriff’s office, and I was looking at the stars through the windows and feeling too lazy to go back to my magazine and wondering if I ought to knock off and hit the sack or keep on listening to Cameron curse real steady as he went over his columns of figures for the hundred twenty-seventh time.

It looked like a shooting star at first, but then the track of light broadened into two things that looked like rocket exhausts and the thing came down sweet, steady and without a sound. An old, dead leaf would have rustled more coming down and landed thumpier. Two men got out.

I couldn’t say anything or do anything. I couldn’t choke or point; I couldn’t even bug my eyes. I just sat there.

Cameron? He never looked up.

There was a knock on the door which wasn’t locked. It opened and the two men from the flying saucer stepped in. I would have thought they were city fellows if I hadn’t seen the flying saucer land in the scrub. They wore charcoal-gray suits, with white shirts and maroon four-in-hands. They had on black shoes and black homburgs. They had dark complexions, black wavy hair and brown eyes. They had very serious looks on their faces and were about five foot ten apiece. They looked very much alike.

God, I was scared.

But Cameron just looked up when the door opened and frowned. Ordinarily, I guess he’d have laughed the collar button off his shirt at seeing clothes like that in Twin Gulch, but he was so taken up by his income tax that he never cracked a smile.

He said, "What can I do for you, folks?" and he tapped his hand on the forms so it was obvious he hadn’t much time.

One of the two stepped forward. He said, "We have had your people under observation a long time." He pronounced each word carefully and all by itself.

Cameron said, "My people? All I got’s a wife. What’s she been doing?"

The fellow in the suit said, "We have chosen this locality for our first contact because it is isolated and peaceful. We know that you are the leader here."

"I’m the sheriff, if that’s what you mean, so spit it out. What’s you trouble?"

"We have been careful to adopt your mode of dress and even to assume your appearance."

"That’s my mode of dress?" He must have noticed it for the first time.

"The mode of dress of your dominant social class, that is. We have also learned your language."

You could see the light break in on Cameron. He said, "You guys foreigners?" Cameron didn’t go much for foreigners, never having met many outside the army, but generally he tried to be fair.