I sat on the the sun go into the sea and thinking
about Foster, out there the on the far
horizon, in the ship that had waited for him for three thousand years,
heading home at last. It was to that for him, traveling
near the speed of light, only a days had passed, while three years
went by for me--three fast years that I had good use of.
The part had been the months, after I put the
lifeboat in a cañon in the country south of a little town
called Itzenca, in Peru. I waited by the for a week, to be sure
the weren't going to up, full of helpful suggestions
and questions; then I to town, a pack with
a to start my new career. It took me two
weeks to work, lie, barter, and my way to the town of
Callao and another week to line up passage home as a hand on a
banana scow. I over the at Tampa, and it to Miami
without attention. As as I tell, the had
already in me.
My old friend, the señorita, wasn't to see me,
but she put me up, and I started in on my plan to turn my souvenirs
into money.
The I had with me from the were a pocketful
of little that were actually movie film, and a small
projector to go with them. I didn't offer them for sale, direct. I
made with an old in the of making
pictures with low for private showings; I set up the
apparatus and my films, and he them in 35 mm. I told
him that I'd them in from East Germany. He didn't think much
of the Krauts, but he you had to hand it to them technically;
the special were top-notch. His was one I
called the Mammoth Hunt.
I had twelve pictures altogether; with a little and a
dubbed-in commentary, they up into fast-moving twenty-minute short
subjects. He got in touch with a friend in the end in New
York, and after a little over terms, we on
a that paid a hundred thousand for the twelve, with an option on
another dozen at the same price.
Within a week after the pictures the neighborhood theatres around
Bayonne, New Jersey, in a tryout, I had offers up to a
million for my next consignment, no questions asked. I left my pal
Mickey to the on a basis, and for
Itzenca.
The was just as I'd left it; it would have been all right for
another fifty years, as as the of over it
was concerned. I to the I out with me that it
was a ship, a I was using for a I was making,
I let them all over it and their out of their
systems. The was that it wouldn't anybody; no fins,
no guns, and the was a joke; but they that
it was my money, so they to work setting up a of camouflage
nets (part of the plot, I told them) and off-loading my cargo.
A year after my homecoming, I had my island--a square mile of perfect
climate, fifteen miles off the Peruvian coast--and a house that was
tailored to my every by a mind-reading who a
fortune on the job--and it. The floor--almost a
tower--was a strong-room, and it was there that I had my stock
in trade. I had off the best of the hundred or so I had
picked out Foster, but there were of other items.
The projector itself was the big prize. The self-contained power unit
converted energy to light with 99 efficiency. It
scanned the "films", one at a time, and a
continuous picture--no sixteen-frames-a-second here. The color
and were life-like--with the result that I'd had a
few from my that the Technicolor was of
washed-out.
The in the projector were new, and--in theory, at
least--way over the of our local physicists. But the practical
application was nothing much. I that, with the right contacts
in scientific circles to help me the system, I had a
billion-dollar up my sleeve. I had already a little
gimmicks into the market; a paper, for and
underwear; a chemical that teeth white as the snow;
an all-color pigment for artists. With the knowledge I had absorbed
from all the I had studied, I had the of a
hundred new at my fingertips--and I hadn't the
possibilities yet.
I most of a year the world, all the things
that a free hand with a bill do for a man. The next year I
put in up the island, paintings and and for
the house, and a piano. After the big of
economic had off, I still my music.
For six months I had a full-time physical me a
twenty-four-hour-a-day of diet, sleep, and all the precision
body-building my stand. At the end of the I was
twice the man I'd been, the was a physical wreck, and I
was looking around for a new hobby.
Now, after three years, it was to me: boredom, the
disease of the rich, that I had would touch me. But
thinking about and having it on your hands are two different
things, and I was to almost with the tough
old times when every day was an adventure, full of and missed
meals and a thousand desires.
Not that I was suffering. I was in a chair,
after a day of and a dinner of Chateaubriand. I
was a cigar rolled by an expert from the world's finest
leaf, and to the best music a thousand-dollar hi-fi could
produce. And the view, though free, was a a
minute. After a while I would to the boathouse, start up
the Rolls-powered launch, and tool over to the mainland, transfer to
my Caddie convertible, and drive into town where a tall from
Stockholm was waiting for me to take her to the movies. My gal
was a hard-working for an firm.
I up my and to it in a big silver
ashtray, when something my out across the red-painted water.
I sat at it, then and came out with a pair of
7x50 binoculars. I them and the dark that stood
out now against the sky. It was a heavy-looking power
boat, toward my island.
I it come closer, off toward the hundred-foot concrete
jetty I had the sea-wall, and alongside in a murmur
of powerful engines. They died, and the sat in a silence
dwarfing the pier. I the bluish-grey hull, the inconspicuous
flag aft. Two were on the foredeck, and there
were four in cradles. The didn't
make as much on me as the ranks of men drawn
up on deck.
I sat and watched. The men off onto the pier, up into
two squads. I counted; forty-eight men, and a of officers. There
was the of orders being barked, and the stepped
off, moving along the road that the transplanted
royal and hibiscus, right up to the wide drive that off
to the house. They halted, did a left face, and at rest.
The two officers, class A's, and a with a brief
case came up the drive, trying to look as as possible under the
circumstances. They paused at the of the of Tennessee
marble steps leading up to my perch.
The leading officer, a general, no less, looked up at me.
"May we come up, sir?" he said.
I looked across at the ranks waiting at the of the drive.
"If the boys want a drink of water, Sarge," I said, "tell 'em to come
on over."
"I am General Smale," the B.G. said. "This is Colonel Sanchez of the
Peruvian Army--" he the other type "--and Mr. Pruffy
of the American Embassy at Lima."
"Howdy, Mr. Pruffy," I said. "Howdy, Mr. Sanchez. Howdy--"
"This ... ah ... call is official in nature, Mr. Legion," the general
said. "It's a of great importance, the security of
your country."
"OK, General," I said. "Come on up. What's happened? You boys haven't
started another war, have you?"
They up onto the terrace, hesitated, then hands, and sat
down in the chairs. Pruffy his in his lap.
"Put your sandwiches on the table, if you like, Mr. Pruffy," I said. He
blinked, the tighter. I offered my hand-tooled cigars
around; Pruffy looked startled, Smale his head, and Sanchez took
three.
"I'm here," the said, "to ask you a questions, Mr. Legion.
Mr. Pruffy the Department of State in the matter, and
Colonel Sanchez--"
"Don't tell me," I said. "He the Peruvian government, which
is why I don't ask you what an American is doing wandering
around on Peruvian soil."
"Here," Pruffy put in. "I think--"
"I you," I said. "What's it all about, Smale?"
"I'll come directly to the point," he said. "For some time, the
investigative and security of the US government have been
building a file on what for of a name has been called 'The
Martians.'" Smale apologetically.
"A little over three years ago," he on, "an flying
object--"
"You in saucers, General?" I said.
"By no means," he snapped. "The object appeared on a number of radar
screens, from altitude. It came to earth at ..." he
hesitated.
"Don't tell me you came all the way out here to tell me you can't tell
me," I said.
"--A site in England," Smale said. "American were dispatched
to the object. Before they make identification,
it rose again, at speed, and was at an
altitude of hundred miles."
"I we had than that," I said. "The satellite
program--"
"No such was available," Smale said. "An
intensive up the that two strangers--possibly
Americans--had visited the site only a hours before
the--ah--visitation."
I nodded. I was about the close call I'd had when I back
to see about a bomb the to the beacon
station. There were plainclothes men all over the place, like old maids
at a movie star's funeral. It was just as well; they it.
The had the tunnel, and the whole
underground was of non-metallic that
didn't up in equipment. I had an idea metal was passé
where Foster came from.
"Some months later," Smale on, "a series of curious
short on in the United States. They showed
scenes on other planets, as well as ancient
and here on earth. They were with
explanations that they the opinions of science
as to what was likely to be on worlds. They attracted
wide interest, and with exceptions, scientists their
verisimilitude."
"I a fake," I said. "With a like space
travel----"
"One item which was on as a inaccuracy, in view of
the of the other films," Smale said, "was the view
of our from space, the earth against the of
stars. A study of the by indicated
a 'date' 7000 B.C. for the scene. Oddly, the north polar
cap was on Hudson's Bay. No south cap was in
evidence. The of Antarctica appeared to be at a of
some 30 degrees, free of ice."
I looked at him and waited.
"Now, since that time that nine thousand years
ago, the North Pole was on Hudson's Bay," Smale said.
"And Antarctica was in ice-free."
"That idea's been around a long time," I said. "There was a theory----"
"Then there was the of the views of Mars," the on.
"The of the 'canals' were as very done."
He to Pruffy, who opened his and a of
photos across.
"This is a taken from the film," Smale said. It was an 8x10 color
shot, a of with pinkish dust, against a
blue-black horizon.
Smale another the first. "This one," he said, "was
taken by in the successful Mars of last year."
I looked. The second was fuzzy, and the color was badly
toward the blue, but there was no the scene. The were
drifted a little deeper, and the was different, but they were the
same mounds.
"In the meantime," Smale on relentlessly, "a number of novel
products appeared on the market. Chemists and physicists were
dumfounded at the by the involved.
One of the products--a type of pigment--embodied a new
concept in crystallography."
"Progress," I said. "Why, when I was a boy----"
"It was an we followed," Smale said. "But we
found that all these making up the 'Martians'
file had, in the end, only one in common. And that factor, Mr.
Legion, was you."
