seeing
part of them all my life, and so has everybody. It’s that little suggestion of movement you never catch except just at the edge of your vision, just out of the corner of your eye. Something that’s
almost there—and when you look fully at it, there’s nothing. These photographs showed me the way. It’s not easy to learn, but it can be done. We’re conditioned to look directly at a thing—the particular thing we want to see clearly, whatever it is. Perhaps the Martians gave us that conditioning. When we see a movement at the edge of our range of vision, it’s almost irresistible not to look directly at it. So it vanishes.”
“Then they can be seen—by anybody?”
“I’ve learned a lot in a few days,” the brown man said. “Since I took those photographs. You have to train yourself. It’s like seeing a trick picture—one that’s really a composite, after you study it. Camouflage. You just have to learn how. Otherwise we can look at them all our lives and never see them.”
“The camera does, though.”
“Yes, the camera does. I’ve wondered why nobody ever caught them this way before. Once you see them on film, they’re unmistakable—that third eye.”
“Infrared film’s comparatively new, isn’t it? And then I’ll bet you have to catch them against that one particular background—you know—or they won’t show on the film. Like trees against clouds. It’s tricky. You must have had just the right lighting that day, and exactly the right focus, and the lens stopped down just right. A kind of minor miracle. It might never happen again exactly that way. But … don’t look now.”
They were silent. Furtively, they watched the mirror. Their eyes slid along toward the open door of the tavern.
And then there was a long, breathless silence.
“He looked back at us,” Lyman said very quietly. “He looked at us … that third eye!”
The brown man was motionless again. When he moved, it was to swallow the rest of his drink.
“I don’t think that they’re suspicious yet,” he said. “The trick will be to keep under cover until we can blow this thing wide open. There’s got to be some way to do it—some way that will convince people.”
“There’s proof. The photographs. A competent cameraman ought to be able to figure out just how you caught that Martian on film and duplicate the conditions. It’s evidence.”
“Evidence can cut both ways,” the brown man said. “What I’m hoping is that the Martians don’t really like to kill—unless they have to. I’m hoping they won’t kill without proof. But—” He tapped his wristwatch.
“There’s two of us now, though,” Lyman said. “We’ve got to stick together. Both of us have broken the big rule—don’t look now—”
The bartender was at the back, disconnecting the jukebox. The brown man said, “We’d better not be seen together unnecessarily. But if we both come to this bar tomorrow night at nine for a drink—that wouldn’t look suspicious, even to them.”
“Suppose—” Lyman hesitated. “May I have one of those photographs?”
“Why?”
“If one of us had—an accident—the other one would still have the proof. Enough, maybe, to convince the right people.”
The brown man hesitated, nodded shortly, and opened his watch-case again. He gave Lyman one of the pictures.
“Hide it,” he said. “It’s—evidence. I’ll see you here tomorrow. Meanwhile, be careful. Remember to play safe.”
They shook hands firmly, facing each other in an endless second of final, decisive silence. Then the brown man turned abruptly and walked out of the bar.
Lyman sat there. Between two wrinkles in his forehead there was a stir and a flicker of lashes unfurling. The third eye opened slowly and looked after the brown man.
This is the way the story ended:
James Kelvin concentrated very hard on the thought of the chemist with the red mustache who had promised him a million dollars. It was simply a matter of tuning in on the man’s brain, establishing a rapport. He had done it before. Now it was more important than ever that he do it this one last time. He pressed the button on the gadget the robot had given him, and thought hard.
Far off, across limitless distances, he found the rapport.
He clamped on the mental tight beam.
He rode it. …
The red-mustached man looked up, gaped, and grinned delightedly.
“So there you are!” he said. “I didn’t hear you come in. Good grief, I’ve been trying to find you for two weeks.”
“Tell me one thing quick,” Kelvin said. “What’s your name?”
“George Bailey. Incidentally, what’s yours?”
But Kelvin didn’t answer. He had suddenly remembered the other thing the robot had told him about that gadget which established rapport when he pressed the button. He pressed it now—and nothing happened. The gadget had gone dead. Its task was finished, which obviously meant he had at last achieved health, fame and fortune. The robot had warned him, of course. The thing was set to do one specialized job. Once he got what he wanted, it would work no more.
So Kelvin got the million dollars.
And he lived happily ever after. …
This is the middle of the story:
As he pushed aside the canvas curtain something—a carelessly hung rope—swung down at his face, knocking the horn-rimmed glasses askew. Simultaneously a vivid bluish light blazed into his unprotected eyes. He felt a curious, sharp sense of disorientation, a shifting motion that was almost instantly gone.
Things steadied before him. He let the curtain fall back into place, making legible again the painted inscription: horoscopes—learn your future—and he stood staring at the remarkable horomancer.
It was a—oh, impossible!
The robot said in a flat, precise voice, “You are James Kelvin. You are a reporter. You are thirty years old, unmarried, and you came to Los Angeles from Chicago today on the advice of your physician. Is that correct?”
In his astonishment Kelvin called on the Deity. Then he settled his glasses more firmly and tried to remember an exposé of charlatans he had once written. There was some obvious way they worked things
