The humming changed to a droning and the rocket vibrated so furiously that Mary Anne grew dizzy just watching it. With the dizziness came a terrible fear that the rocket would explode. It was like being bound to a chair, helpless, and knowing you couldn’t possibly escape. She saw herself being blown up with the cottage, with Melvin screaming for her to save him.
But nothing like that happened. The cottage shook a little. She was hurled forward, then to her knees. But the blast of heat which fanned her face was no worse than the blast from a furnace door swinging quickly open and shut.
Straight down through the floor the rocket sank with its base glowing white hot. There were a sizzling and a hissing and she could see flames dancing through the steam which kept rising in clouds until water gushed up in torrents and put the fire out.
She shut her eyes then and clenched her hands tight.
She sat very still, waiting for Melvin to come to her. She felt a great and overwhelming need to lean on someone, to be consoled by a firm masculine voice speaking out bold and clear.
The bursting strangeness was gone from inside her head. She could move again. She refused to try but she knew that she could whenever she wanted to. Her thoughts were her own now—not Melvin’s or Tall-Thin’s.
She started to cry, very softly, and she was still crying when Melvin reached her side, helped her to her feet.
“Mary Anne, I could see them moving around inside the rocket. I could even make them do what I wanted them to do. It happened as soon as they turned that ray on me. I couldn’t move but I knew what they were thinking.”
“So did I, Melvin,” Mary Anne sobbed. “I knew what you were thinking too.”
“Yeah. We seemed to be talking together there for a minute. But not the way we’re talking now.”
Mary Anne nodded. “I knew what you were thinking and they knew what we. …” Mary Anne stopped. “Melvin! You fooled them! Inside the ship they didn’t hear us talking together. If they had heard us they would not have made a mistake and turned the wrong dial.”
“Yeah, I know. I tried to throw up a mental block when we talked about the auxiliary fuel-chamber and what would happen if the heat exchanger worked fast enough. I guess it worked. The mental block, I mean. …”
“You bet it worked, Melvin. You’re wonderful, Melvin.”
“You didn’t think so when you told Pop about the sandwiches.”
“I didn’t mean to be a nasty, Melvin.”
“All right—skip it. Funny thing—I could never read anybody’s thoughts before. It only lasted for a few minutes. I couldn’t do it now.”
“They must have done something to us, Melvin.”
“I’ll say they did. What’s Pop going to think when he comes down here tomorrow and sees the rocket gone?”
“I’m afraid he’s going to be awfully mad, Melvin.”
There is perhaps no more striking illustration of the prophetic faculty at work in the world than when it appears full-blown in the occasional understatements of children.
The next morning, Elwood didn’t merely hurl the magazine at his son. He pointed first to the article, tapping furiously with his forefinger at Melvin’s photograph while his breakfast grew cold at his elbow.
“Melvin, I warned you to keep your hands off that rocket. I warned you not to touch it or jar it in any way. But you had to putter around until you did something to the heat exchanger dial. It’s conduct like that which makes me realize how mistaken these journalist monkeys can be. A genius! You’re no more of a genius—”
“Pop, you’ve got to believe me!” Melvin protested. “The little men are—”
“Little men! My son is not only a genius”—Elwood stressed the word with a biting sarcasm which was not lost on Melvin—“but a first-class liar! Here, read this article again. It was published two months ago—but I guess you didn’t read it over often enough. It may shame you into going into a corner and giving yourself a thorough mental overhauling.”
Elwood tossed the magazine then—straight across the table at the disturbed Melvin.
“If he’s a liar so am I!” Mary Anne gasped in angry protest.
“For a dozen years now flying saucer rumors have been all over the place,” Elwood said, glaring at both of his children. “I suppose it’s only natural you should chatter occasionally about little men. All children do. But to use such imaginary companions as an excuse for an act of wanton destructiveness. …”
Melvin picked up the magazine almost automatically. Solely to bolster his sagging self-esteem—even the innocent and falsely accused can feel guilty at times—he stared at his own photograph and the somewhat baroque caption which surmounted it.
Young Scientific America
Can genius be inherited? The distinguished accomplishments in nuclear physics and spaceflight theory by the father of the boy who has won the most coveted annual award available to American youth for all-around scientific achievement strengthens the arguments of those who believe that the bright mysterious torch of genius can be passed on from father to son. But when interviewed the youthful winner of the Seabury Medal modestly disclaimed. …
“If I saw a little man do you know what I’d do?” came in bitter reproach from the original holder of Melvin’s inherited torch.
And then, in rhetorical response, “I’d make it my fight—a fight forced upon me against my will. I’d consult a good psychiatrist immediately.”
“I throw myself on your mercy!” a tiny voice said. “I am unarmed, I am alone—and I am the last of my kind remaining alive on your planet.”
Melvin stopped reading abruptly, flushing guiltily to the roots of his hair. He had been wishing that his father could see a little man and now he was being punished for his thoughts in the cruelest possible way.
The winner of the Seabury Medal knew that insanity was rare in childhood but to hear imaginary voices. …
“Hilili thought he had extinguished me,” the voice went
