Illegal Alien

wherever they are, I go. This one, though, will be visible from here in northern France all the way to Turkey — prolly be seen by more people than any eclipse in human history.' A pause. 'Does your world have a moon, Kelkad?'

The alien captain’s head tuft moved backward in what was now recognized as the Tosok sign of negation. 'No. We were surprised to see how big yours is.'

'Sure ’nuff,' said Clete. '’Fact, Earth and its moon come purty near to bein’ a double planet.'

'It is remarkable,' agreed Kelkad. 'But even though we have no moon, I do know what an eclipse is — the partial or complete obscuring of one celestial body by another.'

'That’s true — but our eclipses are somethin’ special,' said Clete. 'See, our sun is four hundred times wider than our moon — but it’s also four hundred times farther away. That means when things line up jes’ right, the moon precisely covers the sun, completely blockin’ out the photosphere. When that happens you can see the corona — the sun’s atmosphere — and sometimes even see prominences shootin’ out into space.'

'Incredible,' said Kelkad.

Clete smiled. 'That it is.'

The eclipse occurred on a Wednesday at noon. The Tosoks and their entourage had just left Strasbourg, where they had toured the famous Gothic cathedral. To get an unobstructed view of the bowl of the sky, their specially modified tour bus had driven out into a vineyard in the French countryside.

The sun was fifty-five degrees above the horizon as the silhouette of the moon slowly bit into its blazing disk. The humans were wearing eclipse-viewing glasses with fluorescent green-and-pink cardboard frames and Mylar lenses; the Tosoks always wore pop-in sunglasses while out-doors during the day, but now were using extra-strength versions so that they, too, could stare up at the spectacle.

Slowly, ponderously, the black circular shadow of the moon covered more and more of the sun. As it did so the sky grew dim. A hush fell over the landscape; even the birds stopped singing to stare up in wonder. When the moon’s disk had almost completely blocked the sun, a row of Bailey’s beads was briefly visible at the disk’s edge — bright spots caused by sunlight passing through irregularities on the moon’s rim.

And then…

Totality.

The temperature dropped noticeably. The sky went dark. Those who were willing to take their eyes off the main attraction for a moment could clearly see bright Venus below and to the left of the sun, and dimmer Mercury above it and to the right, along with a smattering of stars; the sun was halfway between Leo and Cancer.

Around the black disk of the moon, a beautiful pink corona was visible, like wisps of hair, or a wild angel’s halo.

It was absolutely incredible, absolutely breathtaking. Frank was deeply moved, and he saw Clete wipe tears from the corners of his eyes. The head tufts on the Tosoks were waving wildly in excitement.

All too soon it was over, the moon continuing on its way, and the sky brightening.

Kelkad strode over to Clete. 'Thank you,' he said, his tuft still moving with emotion. 'Thank you for letting us see that.'

Clete smiled. 'Like you said, nice planet we’ve got here.'

Finally, the aliens returned to the United States, touring California. They visited Rogers Dry Lake to watch the Shuttle Discovery land (it had been up taking photographs and radar scans of the alien mothership to aid in the repair effort). Next, they came to Los Angeles — which happened to be Clete’s home now; he balanced his time between production of his TV series and teaching astronomy at UCLA. The aliens didn’t know what to make of Disneyland. They understood that Mickey, Goofy, and Donald were supposed to be a mouse, a dog, and a duck, respectively — they’d seen all three types of animals during their tour of Earth. But they were absolutely flummoxed by the idea of portraying them as erect, sentient, articulate beings. They were also amazed by most of the rides — the idea that one could enjoy being frightened struck them as a contradiction in terms. They did rather seem to like the Teacups, though.

In the evening, a reception was held at Mann’s Chinese Theatre, with a select guest list. Steven Spielberg was there, taking a possibly justifiable pride in having to some degree prepared the human race for the arrival of peaceful, friendly aliens. Captain Kelkad was invited to leave his footprints in cement. This was something that the aliens did understand: the idea of making one’s mark, of being remembered after one was gone.

Three of the prime contracts for building the replacement parts for the alien mothership went to TRW, Rockwell International, and Hughes. The president of the University of Southern California sensed a golden opportunity, since all three were located within fifteen miles of its main University Park campus. He immediately offered long-term accommodation to the Tosoks in Paul Valcour Hall, a brand new six-story-tall residence facility. The residence had been completed behind schedule — too late for the current academic year, so it wouldn’t be needed until next September.

It was an ideal location — a hundred meters from any other campus building, meaning access to it was easy to control. The Tosoks accepted the offer, and they, and their scientific and security entourage, moved into the facility. Even Clete, whose home was in L.A., moved in, unable to give up a moment of time with the aliens.

'Thank you for helping arrange all the repairs,' said Captain Kelkad one evening to Frank Nobilio, who had also taken up residence in Valcour Hall. 'It is much appreciated.'

'My pleasure,' said Frank. Hask and Torbat — one of the other Tosoks — were sitting with him and the alien captain in the sixth-floor lounge. 'Of course, you realize it will take a long time for the replacement parts to be built. They’re saying perhaps as long as two years—'

'Two years!' said Kelkad, his tuft waving in shock. 'Surely it can be done—'

Hask spoke a few words to Kelkad in the Tosok language.

'Oh — two of your years,' said Kelkad. His tendrils came to rest. 'That is not so bad.'

Frank thought about telling the aliens that no human engineer’s time estimate was ever to be trusted, but decided they’d do better to cross that bridge later. For now, he thought, sitting here, chatting amiably with pale-blue Hask, dark-blue Kelkad, and gray Torbat, first contact between the human race and aliens seemed to be going spectacularly well.

Until the murder.

*6*

Colin Elliot was an LAPD cop with ten years on the force. He was one of several officers doing rotating duty at Valcour Hall on the USC campus.

It was three in the morning. Valcour Hall was L-shaped, with the two wings meeting in a widened-out lounge area on each floor. Even this late, two of the Tosoks were sitting in the lounge on the fourth floor; dozens of special Tosok chairs had been built in the university’s wood shop. Although the campus was pretty much deserted for Christmas break, most of the Tosoks, plus most of their entourage, had gone that evening to a public lecture being given by Stephen Jay Gould, held in the Davis Auditorium at the west end of the campus, just off McClintock Street. Still, they’d all gotten home several hours ago.

The two Tosoks raised their front hands in greeting at Elliot. He flashed a Vulcan salute back at them. The other Tosoks were presumably in their rooms. Since the residence was so large, each individual had taken quarters a goodly distance from everyone else’s. As Elliot made his way down the corridors he passed a couple of rooms that had their doors open. Through one, he saw a Tosok working at an alien computer brought down from the mothership. Through another, he saw a Tosok watching TV — an old episode of Barney Miller, one of Elliot’s own favorite shows. The Tosoks seemed to love sitcoms — maybe the laugh tracks helped point out for them what was funny to humans. He noted that the Tosok had the closed captioning turned on. They all could speak English with the aid of translating computers; perhaps the superimposed titles were helping this Tosok learn to read.

The long corridors were divided up into shorter sections by heavy glass doorways; they weren’t fire doors, but they did provide some sound insulation. The Tosoks apparently had sensitive hearing, but weren’t the least disturbed by background noise. On the three floors that housed Tosoks, these doors were generally kept open; only on the human floors were they usually closed at night.

Elliot came to the stairwell and made his way down to the third floor — one of the human floors. The humans, of course, were all asleep, and the main corridor lights were off. The only illumination came from lamps in a campus parking lot visible through floor-to-ceiling windows at the far end of the corridor, EXIT signs, and a few small safety lights. Elliot walked along, not expecting to see anything. He heard a sound as he passed one room, but, after pausing to listen for a moment, realized it was just snoring.

Elliot arrived at one of the closed glass doors that broke up the long corridors into sections. He opened it, passed through the doorway, and continued on along the hallway. At one point he heard a toilet flush. He wasn’t surprised. Some of these eggheads were pretty old; they probably got up a couple of times a night to pee.

The carpeting was industrial-strength, of course, and dark gray — designed to survive years of student use. Although Elliot weighed over two hundred pounds, it did a nice job of cushioning his footfalls, so there was little chance he’d wake—

Squish.

Eliot looked down. The carpet was wet. A spilled beverage, probably—

No.

No. The liquid was thick, sticky.

And dark.

Eliot had a flashlight clipped to his belt. He brought it up, thumbed on the beam, played it over the puddle.

Red.

It was blood, seeping out from under a closed door. There was light spilling out, too — the lights inside the room were on. Elliot took a handkerchief from his pocket, and using the pressure of just two fingers so as to minimize disturbance of any fingerprints, he opened the door.

He’d expected it not to open all the way, but it swung freely back on its hinges, revealing the body.

It’s one of those trivial facts that had stuck in Sergeant Elliot’s mind for years: a human being has one quart of blood for every thirty pounds of body weight.

The dead man was skinny, but well over six feet tall. He’d probably weighed around one-seventy, which meant that he’d had something on the order of six quarts of blood — a gallon and a half.

And it looked like damn near all of it was spread around the body, in a vast dark pool.

It was surprising, in a way, that the first thing Elliot had noticed had been the quantity of spilled blood. Oh, certainly in any other murder that would have been the salient factor. But the corpse here had suffered far more than just a simple bleeding out.

The right leg was severed from the body halfway down the thigh. Whatever had cut it off had done a remarkably clean job, slicing through the man’s jeans, leaving an edge on them as clean as if they’d been hemmed to that length. The leg had been severed just as neatly. Although the stump was now crusted over with a thick cap of dried blood, the cut looked as sharp as what a band saw would make through frozen meat. The actual leg, still wrapped in the tube of denim, its foot still socked and shod, was also present, bent gently at its knee, a short distance from the body.

But even that wasn’t the worst of it.

The head had been severed from the body and — God — the lower jaw had been sliced free from the head. He couldn’t see the jawbone anywhere, and — Christ — it looked like one of the eyeballs was missing, too.

The torso had been opened up, in one long line leading from the bottom of the neck down the center of the chest all the way to the groin. The decedent’s shirt had been ripped open — not cut, but ripped, apparently before the cutting had begun. The individual buttons had been mostly torn free, and the shirt opened, its sides like wings, now stiff and dark and fused into the great pool of