Annoyed fear crawl
Whats that? Wrixton exclaimed in shocked tones. See here, Quincannon! An accusation of blackmail is egregious enough, but to suggest that Miss Dupree is a murderess is—” In some ways, the nonfiction submissions are even more curious: we got Sullivans superb We Are Not Alone (McGraw-Hill, 1964), and Bonestell-Ley’s Beyond the Solar System (Viking, 1964), but not Arthur C. Clarke’s Man in Space (Life Library, 1964); we were sent Rosalind Heywood’s ESP: A Personal Memoir (Dutton, 1964)—one of the most sensible, as well as best-written, books on the subject I’ve ever seen— but not David Solomon’s fascinating anthology of articles, LSD, The Consciousness-Expanding Drug (Putnam, 1964).* * * * Bah! says Mr. Wilier again. With a snap of his fingers he produces some flash paper which, at the touch of flame from a palmed match, flares brightly for a moment. Its one tiny recalcitrant beacon of.stability and permanence in the whole of the madly whirling, wild and evolving universe. You wont have to. Of course, you have heard of resonant frequencies and related topics. Take two tuning forks that vibrate at the same rate. Set one in vibration, and the other across the room will vibrate. Soldiers marching across a bridge break step, lest they start the bridge in vibration and bring it down. The right note on a violin will shatter a glass. Who knows whether minute electrical currents in a particular area of the brain, associated with a certain characteristic mental activity, may not tend to induce a similar activity in the corresponding section of another brain? And, in that case, if it were possible to induce a sufficientlystrong current, it might actually overload that particular— Ill explain later. He flashed a quick glance at Earth, Moon and receding spacecraft, and made his decision without conscious thought The line whipped away as he snapped the quick release; now he was alone, two thousand miles above the Moon, a quarter of a million miles from Earth. He could do nothing but wait; it would be two and a half hours before he would know if he could live—and if his own muscles had performed the task that the rockets had failed to do. Panphilosophical clarifications. Our apartment was on the second floor. The neon sign from the candy store downstairs flashed on and off, a green guardian through the troubled nights of my childhood. That night I noticed the sign again after long years. I was glad to have it. I lay in bed thinking how shrewd were those Indian gods to avoid too much exposure, to put their faith in a kind of spiritual radio. How much worse is theimagined avenger, theshadow who knows. THE TERMINAL BEACH Wouldnt I? Accidentally affixed by an errant drop of metal glue to the bottom of the last aluminum sheet, was the envelope of Miss Fennerghasts letter to the Bureau. Scribbled in slack spidery characters below her return address was this note: I swallowed my comments, and followed her, like Samson in Gaza. "Up from London, are you? Well, as I said, youve come to the right place— and at the right time, too. My wife and I dont see many people this early in the season." Darling, he began. This is Cliff. Im afraid I won’t be coming home as I promised. There’s been a—a technical slip. I’m quite all right at the moment, but I’m in big trouble.” I was deeply involved in a thesis on Chaucers symbolic animals for exactly one month. The news from Asia got worse. I worried with Douglas MacArthur. Chanticleer, the old cock, laid eggs of anxiety. The reply began:Look, Kathy, look.See the poet.The poet is fat.The poet is fifty.The poet is dull.He is sitting at his desk writing a poem ... Very well. The response came after several seconds of silence and then after a heavy sigh. One person, yes. Possibly two.” You probably wont like it—right away. (And then you find it doesn’t goaway.) That question may be somewhat important to us. Someone, sooner or later, is going to meet an alien, a really alien alien, not just a member of Homo sapiens from a divergent breed and culture..
