'You'll think I'm mad.'
'If I do, I shall keep it to myself.'
Robert hesitated. 'I thought I saw... a huge solid object, floating in the sky like a boat in the water.'
'A flying steamship?' I said.
'An aeroplane,' said Sir Arthur. 'Though I would have thought we'd hear of a pilot in the area.'
'More like a coracle,' Robert said. 'Round, and solid.'
'Did you hear its motor?' Holmes asked. 'A droning, perhaps, or a sound like the autocar?'
'Only the music,' said Robert.
'I've never known an apparition to make a sound like a motorcar,' Sir Arthur said.
'What happened then?' said Holmes. 'Where did it go, what did it do?'
'It rose, and I saw above it the stars, and Mars bright and red in the midst of them.' Robert hesitated, considered, continued. 'Then the lights brightened even more, and it vanished in a burst of flame. I felt the fire, smelled the brimstone-- At first I thought I was blinded!'
'And then?' Holmes said.
'My sight returned, and the fog closed around me.'
'What have you left out?' Holmes asked sternly. 'What happened afterward?'
Robert hesitated, reluctance and distress in every line of his expression.
'The truth, man,' Holmes said.
'Not afterward. Before. Before the coracle disappeared. I thought I saw... a flash of light, another flash.'
'From the coracle?'
'From the sky. Like a signal! White light, white, not red, from... from Mars!' He drew in a deep breath. 'Then the coracle replied, and vanished.'
I managed to repress my exclamation of surprise and wonder. Holmes arched one eyebrow thoughtfully. Sir Arthur stroked his mustache.
'Thank you for your help, Robert,' Sir Arthur said, as if Robert had said nothing out of the ordinary. 'And your good observation.'
'Sir Arthur,' Robert said, 'may I have your permission to salvage what I can from the field? The grain can't be threshed, but I could at least cut the stalks for hay.'
'By no means!' Sir Arthur roared in alarm.
Robert stepped back, surprised and frightened.
'No, no,' Sir Arthur said, calming himself with visible effort.
'Sir-- !'
I was astonished by the tone of protest in which Robert addressed the landowner.
'It's imperative that no one enter the field!' Sir Arthur said. 'The pattern mustn't be disturbed till we understand its meaning.'
'Very well, Sir Arthur,' Robert said reluctantly.
'And set little Robbie and his brothers to keeping the sightseers out of the patterns. They may walk around the edge, but under no circumstances may they proceed inside.'
'But, Sir Arthur, this field, every year, has paid your rent. This field keeps the roof over my family's head! Sir Arthur, the crop prices have been low going on two years-- '
I did not blame him for his distress, and he was fortunate that Sir Arthur is a humane and decent gentleman.
'You'll not worry about the rent,' Sir Arthur said. 'I relieve you of the obligation for this year.'
On Robert's open face, gratitude and obligation warred.
'I cannot accept that offer, Sir Arthur,' he said, 'generous though it is, and grateful though I am to you for making it. You and I, we have an agreement. I cannot take charity.'
Sir Arthur frowned, that his tenant would not accept such a simple solution to the difficulty.
'We'll discuss this another time,' Sir Arthur said. 'For the moment, keep the sightseers out of the field.' His tone brooked no disagreement.
Robert touched the bill of his ragged cap in acquiescence.
We returned to Sir Arthur's mansion, where his gracious wife Jean, Lady Conan Doyle, presided over a fine, if long-delayed, breakfast. After our excursion, I was famished, but Holmes merely picked at his food. This meant the mystery aroused him. As long as it kept his interest, he would hold himself free of the embrace of cocaine.
For the rest of the day, we accompanied Sir Arthur to other fields where theorems had mysteriously appeared over the past few weeks. They were all, according to Holmes, sadly trampled.
We spoke to tenants who had also seen lights in the sky, but the apparitions frightened the observers; each gave a different description, none as coherent as Robert's. I could not imagine what they had actually seen.
My mind kept returning to Robert's description. Cogent though it had been, something about it nagged at my memory. I put my unease down to the mystery of the phenomenon. And to my wonder. Holmes's skepticism notwithstanding, it would be quite marvelous if we were visited by beings from another world, whether physical or spiritual. Naturally one would prefer friendly beings like those Sir Arthur described, over the invading forces of Mr. Wells's scientific romances.
Holmes dutifully explored each damaged field, and listened to the descriptions of flashing lights in the sky. But as he was presented with nothing but old and damaged evidence, his inspections became more and more desultory as the afternoon wore on, his attention more and more distracted and impatient. He also grew more and more irritated at Sir Arthur's ruminations on spiritualism, and nothing I could do or say could divert the conversation. Like any true believer, Sir Arthur was relentless in his proselytizing.
Toward the end of the afternoon, as I began to hope for tea, we rested beneath an ancient oak near a patterned field.
'Look,' Sir Arthur said, 'at how the grain has been flattened without breaking. The stalks in the pattern are as green as the undisturbed growth. Don't you think it odd?'
'Quite odd,' I agreed.
'Not odd at all,' Holmes said.
He leapt from the carriage, snatched a handful of the crop from the edge of the field, and returned with a clump of unbroken stems still sprouting from their original earth. He held the roots in one hand and smashed the other against the stems, bending them at a right angle to their original position. Clods of dirt flew from his hand in reaction to the force of his blow.
But the stems did not break.
' Triticum aestivum at this stage of growth is exceedingly tough,' Holmes said. 'Exceedingly difficult to break.'
Holmes pulled out one stem by its roots and handed it to me, then another for Sir Arthur. I tried to break my stem, and indeed it took considerable force even to put a kink in the fibrous growth. Sir Arthur bent his stem, folding it repeatedly back and forth.
'The field theorems would be more impressive,' Holmes said, 'if the crops were broken.'
'But, Mr. Holmes,' said Sir Arthur, 'the forces we are dealing with are mighty. A stem I cannot break
would be like a fragile dry twig, to them. Do you not think it amazing that they can temper themselves to gentleness?'
Holmes stared at him in disbelief. 'Sir Arthur! First you are impressed with a feat that appears to be difficult, then, when the action proves simple, you claim yourself impressed because it is simple! Your logic eludes me.'
In Holmes's powerful hands, several stalks ripped apart.
We returned to Undershaw. We drank Earl Grey from delicate porcelain cups, surrounded by heavy, disagreeable silence. Lady Conan Doyle and I tried in vain to lighten the conversation. When Sir Arthur announced a seance to be held that very evening, Holmes's mood did not improve.
A loud knock on the door, followed by shouting, broke the tension. Sir Arthur rose to attend to the commotion.
'One of your tenants to see you, Sir Arthur,' the butler said.
Robert had followed the butler from the front door; to my astonishment he crossed the threshold of the sitting room. Then he remembered his place and snatched his battered cap from his head.
'There's been another field done!' he exclaimed. 'Little Robbie just discovered it, coming home to get his
