Survivor #1

everything, even legal.” He held up the marriage license.

The green man took the paper from Milt’s fingers and looked it over carefully. His blobby nose twitched with some unnamed emotion. He nodded his head, and handed the paper back.

“Well, when do we go?” Milt demanded. The green man thumbed the side of his huge nose. “Well, you see —”

Milt’s joy turned to moth’s wings in his mouth. His face crumpled slowly, and his voice grew syrupy with dread.

“Hey, wait a minute! You promised. You said I could be survivor number one. All I had to do was get mated. So I got mated; look!” He waved the license beneath the green man’s prominent proboscis.

The visitor placated him. “Now take it easy, Mr. Klowitz. Something’s come up. When I went to make my report to the Council of Elders, I discovered that there had been a change in plans. You might call it a postponement.”

“You can’t do this to me!” Milt said. “You can’t just leave me here to die. You can’t you can’t you—”

“Mr. Klowitz, please! You’re not listening to me. You don’t have to die. No Earthling has to die. The Council has decided to extend the clean-up date another ten thousand Earth-years. It’s possible that future developments will cause us to decide not to eliminate your race at all. You will be—”

By this time Milt’s habit of interruption was ingrown. “You mean you aren’t going to destroy the Earth?”

“Precisely.”

Milt sank onto the sofa with a strangled gasp. It was as though the lid had been lifted from the pressure cooker in which he had been steaming for three days.

“Thank God,” he murmured, head in hands. The green man went to the door.

“I trust you not to mention this affair,” he said. “You’re not liable to encounter much belief. So for your own sake, I hope you will be discreet.”

Milt nodded at the floor.

“It’s been a pleasure knowing you,” the green man said. And he was gone.

It was only natural that the episode would effect a change in Milt’s nature. Naomi approved of his deepened maturity, and so did Naomi’s parents, who met her new husband a week later. Milt found them pleasant, agreeable people. Mrs. Winkler was a splendid cook, and Mr. Winkler shared his interest in the literature of science fiction.

The only thing that bothered Milt Klowitz was the vague notion that he had met Naomi’s father before. There was something familiar about the man. Something about the nose.