talk in a low tone about other matters than extra-terrestrial Invaders and foam suits and interstellar travel. Janice found those other subjects surprisingly fitted to make her forget about being afraid.
Elsewhere, the people who stayed awake did talk about just the subjects Coburn was avoiding. The convoy carrying Coburn to tell what he knew had been attacked. By a plane which was definitely not made or manned by human beings. The news flashed through the air across continents. It went under the ocean over sea beds. It traveled in the tightest and most closely-guarded of diplomatic codes. The Greek government gave the other NATO nations a confidential account of the Bulgarian raid and what had happened to it. These details were past question. The facts brought out by Coburn were true, too.
So secret instructions followed the news. At first they went only to highly-trusted individuals. In thirty nations, top-ranking officials and military officers blindfolded each other in turn and gravely stuck pins in each other. The blindfolded person was expected to name the place where he had been stuck. This had an historical precedent. In olden days, pins were stuck in suspected witches. They had patches of skin in which there was no sensation, and discovery of such areas condemned them to death. Psychologists in later centuries found that patches of anaesthetic skin were typical of certain forms of hysteria, and therefore did not execute their patients. But the Invaders, by the fact that their seemingly human bodies were not flesh at all, could not pass such tests.
There were consequences. A Minister of Defense of a European nation amusedly watched the tests on his subordinates, blandly excused himself for a moment before his own turn came, and did not come back. A general of division vanished into thin air. Diplomatic code clerks painstakingly decoded the instructions for such tests, and were nowhere about when they themselves were to be tested. An eminent Hollywood director and an Olympic champion ceased to be.
In the free world nearly a hundred prominent individuals simply disappeared. Few were in position to influence high-level decisions. Many were in line to know rather significant details of world affairs. There was alarm.
It was plain, too, that not all disguised Invaders would have had to vanish. Many would not even be called on for test. They would stay where they were. And there were private persons….
There was consternation. But Janice, in the plane, was saying softly to Coburn: “The—creature who telephoned and said she was me. How did you know she wasn’t?”
“I went to the Breen Foundation first,” said Coburn. “I looked into your eyes—and they were right. So I didn’t need to stick a pin in you.”
The thought of Coburn not needing to stick a pin in her impressed Janice as beautiful trust. She sighed contentedly. “Of course you’d know,” she said. “So would I—now!” She laughed a little.
The convoy flew on. The lurid round disk of the moon descended toward the west.
“It’ll be sunrise soon. But I imagine we’ll land before dawn.”
They did. The flying group of planes flew lower. Coburn saw a single light on the ground. It was very tiny, and it vanished rearward with great speed. Later there was another light, and a dull-red glow in the sky. Still later, infinitesimal twinklings on the ground at the horizon. They increased in number but not in size, and the plane swung hugely to the left, and the lights on the ground formed a visible pattern. And moonlight—broken by the shadows of clouds—displayed the city and the Bay of Naples below.
The transport plane landed. The passengers descended. Coburn saw Hallen, the American colonel, the Greek general, and a Greek colonel. The other had been left behind to take charge of things in Salonika. Here the uniforms were American, and naval. There were some Italian police in view, but most of the men about were American seamen, ostensibly on shore leave. But Coburn doubted very much if they were as completely unarmed as men on shore leave usually are.
A man in a cap with much gold braid greeted the American colonel, the Greek general, and the Greek colonel. He came to Coburn, to whose arm Janice seemed to cling.
“We’re taking you out to the fleet. We’ve taken care of everything. Everybody’s had pins stuck in him!”
It was very humorous, of course. They moved away from the plane. Surrounded by white-clad sailors, the party from the plane moved into the hangar.
Then a voice snapped a startled question, in English. An instant later it rasped: “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
Then there was a bright flash of light. The interior of the hangar was made vivid by it. It went out. And as it disappeared there were the sounds of running footsteps. Only they did not run properly. They ran in great leaps. Impossible leaps. Monstrous leaps. A man might run like that on the moon, with a lesser gravity. A creature accustomed to much greater gravity might run like that on Earth. But it would not be human.
It got away.
There was a waiting car. They got into it. They pulled out from the airport with other cars close before and behind. The cavalcade raced for the city and the shoreline surrounded by a guard less noisy but no less effective than the Greek motorcycle troopers.
But the Greek general said something meditative in the dark interior of the car.
“What’s that?” demanded someone authoritatively.
The Greek general said it again, mildly. This latest attempt to seize them or harm them—if it was that—had been surprisingly inept. It was strange that creatures able to travel between the stars and put regiments and tanks out of action should fail so dismally to kill or kidnap Coburn, if they really wanted to. Could it be that they were not quite sincere in their efforts?
“That,” said the authoritative voice, “is an idea!”
They reached the waterfront. And here in the darkest part of the night and with the moon near to setting, the waters of the Bay of Naples rolled in small, smooth-surfaced, tranquil waves. There was a Navy barge waiting. Those who had come by plane boarded it. It cast off and headed out into the middle of the huge harbor.
In minutes there was a giant hull looming overhead. They stepped out onto a landing ladder and climbed interminably up the ship’s metal side. Then there was an open door.
“Now,” said the American colonel triumphantly, “now everything’s all right! Nothing can happen now, short of an atomic bomb!”
The Greek general glanced at him out of the corner of his eyes. He said something in that heavy accent of his. He asked mildly if creatures—Invaders—who could travel between the stars were unlikely to be able to make atom bombs if they wanted to.
There was no answer. But somebody led Coburn into an office where this carrier’s skipper was at his desk. He looked at Coburn with a sardonic, unfriendly eye.
“Mr. Coburn, I believe,” he said remotely. “You’ve been very well staged-managed by your friends, Mr. Coburn. They’ve made it look as if they were trying hard to kill you, eh? But we know better, don’t we? We know it’s all a build-up for you to make a deal for them, eh? Well, Mr. Coburn, you’ll find it’s going to be a let-down instead! You’re not officially under arrest, but I wouldn’t advise you to try to start anything, Mr. Coburn! We’re apt to be rather crude in dealing with emissaries of enemies of all the human race. And don’t forget it!”
And this was Coburn’s first inkling that he was regarded as a traitor of his planet who had sold out to the Invaders. All the plans made from his information would be based on the supposition that he intended to betray mankind by misleading it.
V
It was not yet forty-eight hours since Coburn had been interrupted in the act of starting his car up in Ardea. Greek newspapers had splashed lurid headlines of a rumored invasion by Bulgarians, and their rumored defeat. The story was not widely copied. It sounded too unlikely. In a few hours it would be time for a new set of newspapers to begin to appear. Not one of them would print a single word about the most important disclosure in human history: that extra-terrestrial Invaders moved blandly about among human beings without being suspected.
The newspapers didn’t know it. On inside pages and bottom corners, the London papers might refer briefly to the remarkable rumor that had swept over Greece about an invasion force said to have crossed its border. The London papers would say that the Greek government officially denied that such a happening had taken place. The New York papers would be full of a political scandal among municipal officials, the Washington papers would deal
