Invasion of The Body Snatchers

factually, what had happened, what we'd found – or rather, hadn't found – in Jack's and Becky's basements, and what Mannie had told us, there on the road in front of Jack's house.

I expected what happened when I finished; Theodora simply shook her head, her lips compressed in quiet stubbornness. It just wasn't possible for her to believe that she hadn't seen what she was certain she had seen – and could still see in her mind's eye. Becky didn't comment, but I could see from the relief in her eyes that she'd accepted Mannie's explanation, and I knew she was thinking of her father. She looked cute, sitting there at the table beside me, very fresh and alive and good-looking, and it was exciting to see her wearing my shirt, open at the collar.

Jack got up, walked to the living-room, and came back with the cardboard folder he'd brought from his house. Smiling, he sat down, saying, 'I'm kind of a squirrel,' and began peering into each section of the accordion-folder. 'A collector of various things, without quite knowing why. And one of the things I save' – he reached into one section of his folder, and brought out a great handful of newspaper clippings – 'are certain newspaper items. I brought them along, after we talked to Mannie.' Pushing aside the plates before him, he put the clippings on the table, a mound of dozens of them, some yellowing a little with age, some new-looking, most of them short, a few of them long. Picking one from the pile at random, he glanced at the heading, then passed it over to me.

I held it so Becky could read, too. Frogs Fell on Alabama, the heading said. It was a little one-column story, a couple inches long, date-lined, Edgeville, Ala: 'Any fishermen in this town of four thousand,' it began, 'had plenty of bait this morning – if there were only a place in this area to use it. Last night a shower of tiny frogs, of undetermined origin… ' The little story – I skimmed through the rest of it – went on to say that a shower of small frogs had fallen on the town, pelting the roofs and windows like rain, for several minutes the previous night. The tone of the story was mildly humorous, and no explanation of the shower was given.

I looked up at Jack, and he smiled. 'Silly, isn't it?' he said. 'Especially since, as the story itself suggests, there was no place the frogs could have come from.' He picked up another clipping and handed it to me.

Man Burned to Death; Clothes Unharmed this was headed, and it said that a man had been found burned to a cinder, in an Idaho farmhouse. The clothes he wore, however, weren't burned or even singed, and there wasn't a sign of fire damage or even smoke smudges in the house. The local coroner was quoted as saying it would take heat of at least 2000 degrees to burn a man as this one had been found. That's all the story said.

I half smiled, half frowned at Jack, wondering what this was all about. Theodora was looking at him over the rim of her coffee cup with the wryly amused look of affectionate scorn wives have for their husbands' eccentricities, and Jack grinned at us. 'I've got a couple dozen like that, from all over – people burned to death inside their clothes. Ever read such nonsense in your life? Here's another kind.'

Written in pencil on the margin of this one was, New Yk. Post, and the printed heading said, And There Was His Ambulance. The date-line was Richmond, Cal., May 7 (AP). The clipping read: ' 'Hurry to San Pablo and MacDonald Ave.,' said the telephone voice. 'The Santa Fe streamliner just hit a truck and a man is hurt pretty badly.' Police dispatched a squad car and ambulance to the address. There was no accident. The train hadn't yet reached the scene. It did, though, just as the investigators were leaving, and just as a delivery truck driven by Randolph Bruce, 44, was on the crossing. Bruce is hurt pretty badly. He has a brain injury and a crushed chest.'

I laid down the clipping. 'What's your point, Jack?'

'Well' – he got slowly to his feet – 'there are a couple hundred queer little happenings that I've collected in just a few years; and you could find thousands more.' He began slowly pacing the kitchen floor. 'I think they prove at least this: that strange things happen, really do happen, every now and then, here and there throughout the world. Things that simply don't fit in with the great body of knowledge that the human race has gradually acquired over thousands of years. Things in direct contradiction to what we know to be true. Something falls up, instead of down.'

Reaching out to the toaster on the drainboard of the sink, Jack touched a finger tip to a crumb, and lifted it to his tongue. 'So this is my point, Miles. Should they always be explained away? Or laughed away? Or simply ignored? Because that's what always happens.' He resumed his slow pacing about the big old kitchen. 'I guess it's only natural. I suppose nothing can be given a place in our body of accepted knowledge, except what is universally experienced. Science claims to be objective, though.' He stopped, facing the table. 'To consider all phenomena impartially and without prejudice. But of course it does no such thing. This kind of occurrence' – he nodded at the little mound of paper on the table – 'it dismisses with automatic habitual contempt. From which the rest of us take our cue. What are these things, says the scientific attitude? Why, they're only optical illusions, or self-suggestion, or hysteria, or mass hypnosis, or when everything else fails – coincidence. Anything and everything, except that possibly they really happened. Oh, no' – Jack shook his head smiling – 'you must never admit for a moment that anything we don't understand may nevertheless have occurred.'

As most wives, even the wisest, do with any real conviction held by their husbands, Theodora accepted this and made it her own. 'Well, it's stupid,' she said, 'and how the human race ever learns anything new, I really don't know.'

'It takes a long time,' Jack agreed. 'Hundreds of years to accept the fact that the world is round. A century resisting the knowledge that the earth revolves around the sun. We hate facing new facts or evidence, because we might have to revise our conceptions of what's possible, and that's always uncomfortable.'

Jack grinned, and sat down at the table again. 'I should talk, though. Take any of these.' He picked up a clipping. 'This one from the New York Post, for example. Now, that isn't fiction. The New York Post is a real newspaper, and this little story was actually printed in the Post just a few years ago, and no doubt in a lot of other papers all over the country. Thousands read it, including me. But did we rise up insisting that our body of knowledge be revised to include this strange little occurrence? Did I? No; we wondered about it, were intrigued and interested momentarily, then dismissed it from mind. And now, like all the other odd little happenings that don't quite fit in with what we think we know, it's forgotten and ignored by the world, except for a few curiosa collectors like me.'

'Maybe it should be,' I said quietly. 'Take a look at this.' I'd been idly glancing through his clippings as Jack talked, and now I pushed one toward him. It was just a squib from the local paper, and it didn't say much. One L. Bernard Budlong, botany and biology professor at the local college, was quoted as denying a comment the paper had attributed to him the day before, about some 'mysterious objects' found on a farm west of town. They were described as large seed pods of some sort or other, and now Budlong was denying having said that they'd 'come from outer space.' The Tribune apologized: 'Sorry, Prof?' the story ended. It was dated May 9.

'What about that, Jack?' I said gently. 'The collapse of one of your little items: a one-inch retraction buried in the paper a day or so later. Makes you wonder' – I nodded at his mound of clippings – 'about all the rest, doesn't it?'

'Sure,' Jack said. 'That retraction belongs in the collection, too. And that's why it's there; I didn't exclude it.' He picked up a handful of clippings and let them flutter down onto the table again. 'Miles, these are lies, most of them, for all I know. Some are most certainly hoaxes. And maybe most of the rest are distortions, exaggerations, or simple errors of judgment or vision; I have sense enough to know that. But, damn it, Miles, not all of them, past, present, and fixture! You can't explain them all away, perpetually and forever!'

For a moment he sat glaring at me, then he smiled. 'So is Mannie right? Should what happened last night be explained away, too?' Jack shrugged. 'Maybe it should. Mannie makes good sense; he always does. And he's explained what happened almost satisfactorily; maybe ninety-nine per cent.' For a moment Jack stared at us, then lowered his voice, and said very softly, 'But there's a tiny one per cent of doubt still left in my mind.'

I was looking at Jack, and feeling an actual, unpleasant, sluggish prickling along my spine at the simple thought that had just occurred to me. 'The fingerprints,' I murmured, and Jack frowned momentarily. 'The blank fingerprints!' I shouted then. 'Mannie thinks it's just an ordinary body. Since when do ordinary men have no fingerprints at all!'

Theodora was pushing herself up from her chair, arms straining against the table top, and her voice came out