They Walked Like Men

“Police were told that the skunks were dumped by an old eccentric with a beard, driving a pickup truck. But no sooner had the police begun their hunt for him than these other things began arriving. Whether there is some connection between the skunks and these other things, no one yet can say. There were just a few of them at first, but they have been pouring in steadily ever since they started, appearing in the intersection in steady streams, coming in from all directions. They look like bowling balls—black and about the size of bowling balls—and the intersection and the four streets leading to it now are jammed with them.

“The skunks, when they were dumped out of the truck, were exhausted and confused, and they reacted rather violently against anything which might be close to them. This served to clear the area rather rapidly. Everyone who was there got out as fast as they were able. Cars were piled up for blocks and there were running people everywhere you looked. And then the first of these bowling balls arrived. Eyewitnesses tell us they bounced and skipped and gamboled in the street and that they chased the skunks. The skunks, quite naturally, did some more reacting. By this time the atmosphere in the vicinity of the intersection was becoming somewhat thick. People occupying the cars in the forefront of the traffic jam abandoned their machines and beat a fast retreat. And still the bowling balls poured in.

“They aren’t gamboling or skipping any more; there isn’t room for that. There is just a great, shivering, seething mass of them piled up at the intersection and overflowing down the streets, piling up in front of the jam-packed cars.

“From our position here, on top of the McCandless Building, it is an awful and fear-inspiring sight. No one, I repeat, knows what these things are or where they might have come from or what they might be here for . . .”

“That was Old Windy,” said Higgins breathlessly. “He was the one who dumped those skunks. And, I guess, from the sound of it, he must have got away.”

Joy looked up at me. “That was what you wanted? The thing that’s happening now?”

I nodded. “Now they know,” I said. “Now everyone will know. Now they will listen to us.”

“But what is going on?” howled Higgins. “Won’t someone explain it all to me? It is another Orson Welles—”

“Get into the car,” Joy said to me. “We’ll F have to find a doctor for you.”

“Look, mister,” Higgins pleaded, “I didn’t know what I was getting into. She begged me to go with her. So I parked my hack and went. She said she had to find Old Windy fast. She said it was life or death.”

“Take it easy, Larry,” I told him. “It was a matter of life or death. You won’t get hurt on this one.”

“But she burned that house. .

“That was foolish of me,” Joy said. “Just a blind striking back, I guess. Thinking of it now, it doesn’t make much sense. But I had to hurt them somehow, and it was the only way I knew. When they phoned and said that you were dead—”

“We had them scared,” I said. “Otherwise they never would have phoned. Maybe they were afraid we were up to something they couldn’t even guess. That’s why they tried to kill me; that’s why they tried to scare you off.”

“The police,” shouted the man on the radio, “asks you, please, not to come downtown. There are tremendous traffic jams and you’ll only add to them. Stay home, stay calm . .

They had made a mistake, I thought. If they hadn’t phoned Joy, it probably would have been all right with them. I was still alive, of course, but it wouldn’t have taken them too long to have found out I was, and then they could have done me in in a proper style and, this time, without any slipup. But they had panicked and had made this one mistake, and it was all over now.

A ponderous shadow came loping down the road. A joyful, happy shadow that pranced excitedly even as it loped. It was big and shaggy, and out of the front end of it hung a lolling tongue.

It came up in front of us and plumped its bottom in the dust. It beat the ground with an enthusiastic tail.

“Pal, you did it,” said the Dog. “You got them out of hiding. You exposed them to the world. You made them show themselves. Now your people know—”

“But you!” I yelled at him. “You are in Washington!”

“There are many modes of traveling,” said the Dog, “that are faster than your planes and better ways of knowing where to find a being than your telephone.”

And that was right, I thought. For until this very morning he had been with us and then, at sunrise, he had been in Washington.

“Now it’s me that’s crazy,” said Higgins feebly. “There ain’t no such a thing as a talking dog.”

“Please stay calm,” screeched the man on the radio. “There is no need to panic. No one knows what these things are, of course, but there must be an explanation, perhaps a quite logical explanation. The police have the situation well in hand and there is no need to . . .”

“I thought I heard someone,” said the Dog, “mention a word like doctor. I do not know this doctor.”

“It’s someone,” Joy said, “who fixes other persons’ bodies. Parker has been hurt.”

“Oh,” said the Dog, “so that is it. We have the concept, too, but ours works differently, no doubt. It is amazing, truly, how many identical goals are accomplished by many different techniques.”

“The mass of them is growing larger,” yelled the radio. “They are piled up to the sixth-story windows and they reach deep into the streets. And they seem to be coming faster now. The pile grows by the minute . . .

“Now,” said the Dog, “with the mission finished, I must exclaim adieu. Not that I contributed greatly, but it’s been nice to visit here. You have a lovely planet. Hereafter you must the better hang tightly onto it.”

“But wait a moment,” I said. “There are a lot of things . .

I spoke to empty air, for the Dog was gone. Not gone anywhere, just gone.

“I be damned,” said Higgins. “Was he really here or did I imagine it?”

And it was all right, I knew. He had been here, but now he had gone home—to that farther planet, to that strange dimension, to wherever he belonged. And he’d not have gone back, I knew, if there’d been further need of him.

We were all right now. The people knew about the bowling balls and they would listen now—the Old Man and the senator and the President and all the rest of them. They’d take the needed action, whatever that might be. Perhaps to start with they’d declare a moratorium on all business deals until they could separate the purely human deals from the alien deals. For the alien deals were fraudulent on the face of them because of the kind of money they had used. But even if they had not been fraudulent, it would have made no difference, for now the human race knew, or soon would know, what was going on and would move to stop it: right or wrong, they’d do whatever might be necessary to put an end to it.

I reached out and opened the rear door of the car and made a signal for Joy to get in.

“Let’s get going,” I told Higgins. “I have work to do. There’s a story to be written.”

I could see the Old Man’s face when I walked into the office. I was already rehearsing in my mind exactly what I’d tell him. And he’d have to stand and listen, for I had the story. I was the only one who had that story and he would have to listen.

“Not the office,” Joy said. “We find a doctor first.”

“Doctor!” I said. “I don’t need a doctor.”

I stood amazed, not so much at having said it (for there had been a time when a doctor had been needed), but at my calm acceptance of it, my casual recognition of something that had happened without my knowing of it, and my becoming aware of it so gradually that it caused no wonderment.

For I didn’t need a doctor. There was nothing wrong with me. There was no pain in my chest and no soreness in my belly and no wobble in my knees. I moved my arms to be sure about the chest and I was absolutely right. If there had ever been anything broken there, it was mended now.

It is amazing, the Dog had said, in that corny way of his, how many identical goals are accomplished by many different techniques.

“Thanks, pal,” I said, looking upward at the sky, just as corny as the Dog. “Thanks, pal. Don’t forget to send the bill.”

Lightning threw the paper on my desk. It still was wet with ink. There were double lines of type across the top of it to bannerline my story.

I didn’t pick it up. I just sat and looked at it. Then without touching it, I got up and walked over to the window to look out. There, to the north, was the heaving mountain lighted by batteries of searchlights, well above the skyline now and growing all the time. Hours before all hope had been abandoned of rescuing the radio crew that had been trapped and buried atop the McCandless Building. All that anyone could do now was simply stand and watch.

Gavin came over to the window and stood beside me.

“Washington is talking,” he said, “of evacuating the city and dropping an H-bomb on them. It just came on the wires. Wait until the pile appears to stop its growing, then send a bomber over.”

“What’s the use of it?” I asked. “They’re no threat to us now. They were a threat only so long as we didn’t know about them.”

I walked away from the window, back toward my desk. I looked at my wrist to see what time it was, forgetting that the watch was broken.

I looked at the big wall clock. It was five minutes after two.

The Old Man had been standing beside the city desk, but now he walked over to me and stuck out his hand. I took it and he hung onto it, his massive mitt twice as big as mine. “Good work, Parker,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

“Thanks, boss,” I said remembering that I’d told him none of the things I had meant to tell him. And, curiously, not feeling sorry that I hadn’t.

“I’ve got a bottle in my office.”

I shook my head.

He slapped me on the back and let go of my hand.

I walked down the aisle and stopped at Joy’s desk.

“Come on beautiful,” I said. “We’ve got unfinished business.”

She got up and stood waiting.

“I intend,” I said, “before the night is over to make that pass at you.”

I thought she might get sore, but she didn’t.

She reached up her arms and put them around my neck, in front of everyone.

You can live to be a million and still never figure women.