From: The Shaldron Race To: The Human Race Greetings: Your presence on this planet has been noted and the reason for your visit analyzed by our instruments. We have, therefore, taken the liberty of selecting one of your party for our first contact, one whom we feel is best suited to grasp the motivations of both our races and arrange for future group contacts. Peter Collard stared at the message with a cold feeling of foreboding. He felt pity for the poor devil. "Who is this selected contact?" "Ah, now," Dyson became suddenly interested in the papers on the table. "Well, I'm sorry and all that but, as a matter of fact, they want you."
Release date:
September 29, 2011
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
107
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LIPSCOMBE turned the car off the road and pulled up in the short drive leading to the garage.
“The place is in a bit of a mess I’m afraid. The wife’s away for a week, you know, staying with her mother.” He grinned faintly and slid open the car door. “It could be worse—her mother could have been staying with us. Come in for a drink anyway.”
“Thanks.” Collard followed him up the drive, looking interestedly at the low detached building. “You live well, don’t you?”
Lipscombe laughed. “I’ll be near to retirement before I’ve finished paying for it. Mind you, these fibroplastic jobs are cheaper than the section-construction units, but in this case I’m paying through the nose for a country avenue estate and, of course, the interior equipment.” He fumbled in his pocket for his keys. “I must say these automatic interior units are good. Just set the controls and the damn thing dusts and cleans itself; with the wife away it would be a horrible mess otherwise.”
He inserted his key in the lock and turned. “Funny!” He pushed slightly at the door and turned the key again.
“What’s up?” Collard had been studying the flower beds with a tinge of envy. He wished he had the time and money to devote to such exotics as Salamson-hybrids.
Lipscombe said, “The door won’t open.” He turned the key again, frowning. “Damn funny.” He made three more attempts, then walked quickly across the small lawn and peered through the window. “Strange, can’t see a thing; looks as if the pane has been blacked on the inside. Hold on, I’ll try the back.”
He returned some seconds later, scowling. “Back door won’t open either and I’ve tried the spare key. Blasted nuisance, I can’t force the door or windows or the automatic alarm will ring the nearest police station.” He lit a cigarette irritably. “Can’t think what to do.”
“Your best move would be to notify the police,” said Collard practically. “I should take a note of the type of lock and ask them to bring a locksmith with them.”
Lipscombe nodded. “You’re right, of course. Sorry about the drink.”
“That’s all right.”
“You can borrow the car if you like. I promised you a lift home anyway.”
“I’ll hang on for a while.” Collard smiled. “Candidly I’m rather intrigued.”
Lipscombe looked at him suspiciously. “I know what you’re thinking; you’re thinking I mis-set those automatic controls before I left this morning.”
Collard laughed. They were old friends and he knew the other would not take offence. “Well, I must admit the thought did occur to me. Your genius is confined to the department, you know.”
“Ridiculous! The device is childishly simple.”
“Nonetheless I’m intrigued. I can’t help wondering if the device has cleaned the pattern off all the carpets or cooked and served meals for sixteen people instead of one.” .
Lipscombe said, “Thanks for the kind thought,” sourly, then shrugged. “I suppose I’d better get over to the call box.”
A police car containing one constable and a sharp faced individual with a tool box arrived within ten minutes.
The constable first satisfied himself as to Lipscombe’s ownership of the property then permitted the locksmith to attack the door.
“Rather awkward for you, sir.”
“Very awkward.” Lipscombe managed to smile and turned his attention to the smith who was busily removing tools from his box and assuring everyone that the job would be done in a trice.
Twenty increasingly profane minutes later, however, the door was still shut. “I can’t understand it, sir. My firm not only installs but makes these locks. It should be easy to short-circuit the tumbler mechanism and—He stopped and looked shame-facedly at Lipscombe. “With your permission, sir, I shall have to force it. Naturally, my firm will make good any damage caused by—”
“Go ahead and force it then,” interrupted Lipscombe, savagely.
“Right, sir.” The locksmith produced a large hammer. “This may look a bit crude, sir, but a sharp blow—”
At the tenth sharp blow, the man stopped, red faced. “Damn funny.”
Lipscombe found it anything but funny. The incident was attracting attention and a group of interested and faintly amused sightseers stood at the gate.
“Move along, there,” said the policeman without particular force. “Move along, there.”
The sightseers moved slightly to the left but failed to disperse.
“Clout it, man,” said Lipscombe, furiously. “Clout it.”
“Yes, sir, if you’ll stand to one side, please.” The man stood back and swung his arm.
There was a dull thud. The locksmith used an obscene word explosively, dropped the hammer and clutched at his wrist. “What the hell’s that door made of?” He glared accusingly at Lipscombe. “Something new and clever?”
“It’s the one that came with the lock as far as I know.”
“Doesn’t feel like it.” The locksmith rubbed a swollen wrist. “I’m not trying that again.”
“Looks as if you’ll have to break a window, sir,” said the policeman.
Lipscombe glowered at him. “Anti-splinter—what with?”
“This is strange.” Collard was bending down studying the door. “This resembles no plastic I know.”
“What!” Lipscombe was shaken; Collard was a specialist in plastics.
“There are traces of the original substance.” Collard’s face was absorbed. “But it’s permeated with something else. There’s only about five per cent of the old C4+10; God knows what the other ninety-five is composed of.”
“I’m going to call an engineer,” said Lipscombe, savagely. “I’m going to get into my own house if it’s the last thing I do.”
The engineer laid the cutting torch carefully on the step and made a helpless gesture. “Can’t touch it, can’t touch any part of the walls either; as for the windows—”
“I think,” said Collard in a soothing voice. “You’d better spend the night at my place, old chap. It’s nearly nine-thirty and getting chilly.”
At the end of the week an army of experts equipped with drills, torches, a power-ram and even a small bulldozer had retired defeated. But the house had aroused other interest: experts measuring the surface reported that the structure did not conform to the plans provided by the local surveyor. Further checks showed that, slowly but surely, the house was changing shape.
Curiously, close to the walls, a peculiar growth of what looked like blades of grass was appearing. The shoots were an odd metallic blue in color and grew several inches in the course of a single night.
In the neighborhood there was, if not panic, general disquiet. Mothers kept their children indoors and one or two families stayed with relatives or took their holidays early.
There was something about this subtly mishappen house, something about the blue metallic grass for which there was no word. The house suggested something and, although there was no word to describe it, it gave them the creeps. People crossed to the opposite side of the road when they passed it with the uncomfortable, although, no doubt, over-imaginative feeling that from behind those blind black windows something was watching.
The police cordoned off the house and the garden became filled with a variety of scientists who made constant but abortive tests of the walls or concerned themselves with soil samples.
One night, during their absence, and close to the front door, something grew. The scientists, after long conference, decided it was a plant but it didn’t look like a plant.
It was a triangular mirror balanced on a cable-like stem as thick as a man’s wrist. The “mirror” followed the sun and, at evening or on dull days, folded itself up geometrically into a neat square black box.
Two days later there was another growth. This was a small brass colored sphere about the size of a walnut perched on the top of a thin black rod about two feet in height.
An intrigued expert touched it with his hand and was flung untidily to the path. He was not dead but the local hospital had some difficulty bringing him round. A diagnostician pronounced near-lethal electric shock It was then a witness recalled that there had been a shower of blue sparks and that the scientist’s hand seemed badly burned.
Local authorities took action, the government was contacted and the army stepped in. There was no doubt now that something—no expert dare commit himself—had occupied Lipscombe’s house.
“Damn the house, it’s incidental.” Lipscombe strode up and down Collard’s living room, his face angry. “It’s the disturbance round it which worries me. The army wouldn’t let me get near enough to get a proper reading but some of the instruments went crazy; in two cases the needles ran clean off the dials. I’ve not spent half my life in electronics for nothing and, believe me, the kind of power piled up, or more aptly, stressed round that building is unbelievable.”
He sighed and pulled at the lobe of his ear. “How the hell can you stress power, stretch it and shape it like an elastic garment? The answer is, of course, you can’t. Nonetheless the readings show—” He shook his head and did not finish the sentence.
“Well, we can rule out the automatics running wild,” said Collard. “Beamed power has been completely cut. . .
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