Footfall

What? A warning? There was nothing to hold on to. It hardly mattered. The tentacles held him tightly.

The air vibrated with a supersonic hum. What had been a wall became a floor. After a few moments the baby elephants seemed to have adjusted, and released their grip. They moved off down the corridor, surrounding him but letting him walk.

They were staring. How must it look to them? A continual toppling controlled fall?

They pushed him through a large door at the end of the corridor. One followed. The others waited outside.

A single Invader waited behind a table tilted like a draftsman’s table. It stared at him.

Dawson stared back.

How long does this go on? “I am Congressman Wesley Dawson, representing the United States of America .”

“I am Takpusseh.”

My God, they speak English! “Why have I been treated this way?”

“I do not comprehend.”

The creature’s voice was flat, full of sibilants, without emotions. A leaking balloon might have spoken that way.

“You attacked us without warning! You killed our women!” Here was a chance to protest, finally a target for his pain, and it was just too much. Wes leaned across the tilted table; his voice became a scream. “There was no need! We welcomed you, we came up to meet you. There was no need.”

“I do not always understand what you say. Speak slowly and carefully.”

It felt like a blow to the face. Wes stopped, then started over, fully in control, shaping each word separately. “We wanted to welcome you. We wanted to greet visitors from another star. We wanted to be friends.”

The alien stared at Wes. “You will learn to speak with us.”

“Yes. Certainly.” It will be all right now! it is a misunderstanding, it must be. When I learn to talk with them — “Our families will be concerned about us. Have you told Earth that we are alive?”

“I do not comprehend.”

“Do you talk to Earth? To our planet?”

“Ah. Our word for Earth is—” a peculiar sound, short and hissing. “We do not know how to tell your people that you live.”

“Why do you lock us up?” He didn’t get that. Maybe why is too abstract. “The door to our room. Leave it open.”

The alien stared at Wes, then looked toward a lens on the wall. Then it stared at Wes again. Finally it said, “We have cloth for you. Can you want that?”

Cloth? Wes became aware that he was naked. “Yes. We need clothing. Covering.”

“You will have that. You will have water.”

“Food,” Dawson said.

“Yes. Eat.” The alien gestured. One of the others brought in boxes from another compartment.

Clothes. Ca

Wes pointed to what he thought was edible. Then he took a Spam can and pantomimed opening it with his forefinger, tying to indicate that he needed a can opener.

One of the aliens drew a bayonet and opened the Smithfield ham by cutting the top off, four digits for the can, four for the bayonet, He passed the can to Wes.

Stronger than hell! Advanced metals, too … but you wouldn’t make a starship out of cast iron. Okay, now what?

“Do you eat that?” the alien behind the draftsman’s table asked. The interrogative was obvious.

“Yes.”

It was hard to interpret the alien’s response. It lifted the ears. The other, the one that brought the packages, responded the same way. Vegetarians? Are they disgusted?

The alien spoke gibberish, and another alien came in with a large sheet of what might have been waxed paper. It took the ham from the can, wrapped it (the stuff was flexible, more like thick Saran wrap), and gave it to Wes. It left carrying the can.

“You attack — you fight us. There is no need.”

“There is need. Your people is strong,” the alien said.

A flat screen on one wall lighted, to show another alien. A voice came into the room. It babbled, in the liquid sibilants Wes had heard them use before.

“You must go back now. We turn now,”

It didn’t make sense. “If we were weak, would you fight us?”

“Go.”

“But what do you want? Where do you come from? Why are you here? Why is it important that we are strung?”

The alien stared again. “Go.”

“I have to know! Why are you here?”

The alien spoke in sibilants.

Tentacles wrapped around his waist and encircled his throat. He was dragged from the room. As they went down the corridor, the ram’s-horn sound came again, and the aliens held him against the wall.

“You don’t have to hold me,” Wes said.

There was no response. The alien soldier carried a warm smell, something like being in a zoo. It wouldn’t have been unpleasant, but there was too much of it, this close.

How many of them speak English? He — it — said I should learn their language. They’ll try to teach me. He looked down at himself, naked, wrapped in tentacles. Think like them. They’re not crazy — assume they’re not crazy! — just different. Differences in shape, and evolution, and senses. What do I smell like to this … soldier, pulled right up against its nostrils like this? It held him like a nest of snakes, and its black-and-gray eyes were unreadable.

You knew the job was dangerous …

13. THE MORNING AFTER

Son of a bitch! Sergeant Ben Mailey shepherded his charges off the helicopter and watched them climb into the staff car. The President! Son of a bitch! He gri

Je

But there weren’t many lights, and many of the harbors showed dark splotches. Rail centers like Omaha had pinpoint dark spots as well.

Jack Clybourne followed them into the cavernous room. He looked puzzled, and Je

And I sure won’t.

Admiral Carrell stood to attention as the President entered. So did the mustached civilian who’d been seated with him. Admiral Carrell wore a dark civilian suit, but he looked very much an officer. “Glad to see you, sir.”

“Thank you.”

He sounds a million years old, and I feel older. I look like a witch — She felt giddy, and suppressed an insane desire to giggle. Suppose Admiral Carrell inspects my uniform, with wrinkles and unbuttoned buttons and — and I’m drunk on fatigue poisons. We all are. I wonder when the Admiral slept last?

“The cabinet will be coming later,” Coffey said. “That is, State and Interior will be. We’re dispersing some of the others so that — I don’t really know the aliens’ capabilities.”

Admiral Carrell nodded. “They may know the location of this place,” he said.

“Could they do anything if they did know?”

“Yes, sir. They hit Boulder Dam with something large and fast, no radioactive fallout. As my Threat Team keeps telling me, they’re throwing rocks at us. Meteorites. They have lasers that chew through ships. Mr. President, I don’t know what they could do to Cheye