LITMIR.BIZ

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darkness.

      For a moment the cavity seemed perfectly black, particularly with the setting sun glaring in my eyes. Then I saw something stir within the shadows, swishing around in the liquid interior with a soft, almost billowy movement, wave after wave. Two luminous disk-like eyes abruptly popped out of the goop, staring at me. Something that looked like a squid’s tentacle, as thick as a baseball bat, rose out of the aperture and wriggled towards us—followed immediately by another, and then another.

      Oh, the horror! The horror!

      Becky shrieked. I, brave soul that I was, couldn’t even move, I was so scared. It was as if that thing, that creature, whatever the hell it was, had impaled me there on a needle, pinioned beneath its imperious gaze and waving arms.

      “Alex!” Becky yelled again.

      More tentacles were now creeping out of the cavity. I pushed Becky away from the thing, and slowly moved back, keeping myself between her and the horror rising up behind us. Everyone was screaming and running and clawing, trying to get away from that terrible place. The stench of the creature almost overpowered my senses. Even Dr. Johnson-Carson—well, all of them, really—were affected by the same gut-wrenching disgust and distaste and dislike, and were falling all over themselves trying to be the first ones to escape. I saw people trampled beneath the feet of men and women whom I would have called “friends” earlier that day. Terror gripped my soul and squeezed it into a little black stone. I had to force myself finally to move.

      A great gray bulk the size of a dolphin was prying itself slowly, even painfully out of the ship, dripping mossy red fluid from its hide. It looked like a piece of well-worn canvas as it bulged up on the edge and caught the last of the sunlight, glistening like wet leather. It slowly positioned itself above the gaping entrance to the spaceship.

      Two large, black-rimmed eyes regarded me dispassionately. That it saw me I have no doubt whatsoever, because it followed my movements as I retreated backwards, step by stumbling step. That it regarded me as an enemy I understood instinctively, as a mouse trembles before the cat.

      The head of the thing had sort of a hump on top. Its face, if you could call it that, occupied one side of the leathery gray body. Beneath the oversized eyes was scratched a broad mouth, its vee-shaped brim quivering and panting with its exertions. Ruby fluid of some kind drooled and dripped to the surface below. It had no obvious nose, but the whole creature was heaving convulsively with its breaths, obviously burdened by the immense gravity of Earth as compared with that of Mars. Two of its tentacles gripped the edge of the ship, securing its body, while a third swayed in the air.

      Those who’ve never experienced a living Martian in the flesh, so to speak, can’t really imagine the sudden impact of a first encounter on one’s senses. It wasn’t just the odor, similar to decaying flesh, that bothered me, but the peculiar vee-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges or chin beneath its wedge-like lower lip, the constant quivering of the opening, the Gorgon-like groups of the short feelers surrounding the orifice, the constant huffing and puffing of its lungs struggling to inhale our thick, humid atmosphere, the heavy and painfully slow movements of its body, and the dozen or more tentacles protruding from its base.

      More than anything else, I found disquieting the intense gaze of those large, inhuman eyes, monstrous and cold—oh, so frigid—as they watched and waited and weighed us, and found us wanting in the balance. The oily, brown-gray skin looked almost slimy in the bright light, and there was something very mean and nasty in the clumsy deliberation of the alien’s movements.

      I had no illusions at all about the thing: this was a monster! It was never going to be a friend to mankind. It was always going to be “Us vs. Them.” There was no compromise possible with those pitiless orbs.

      Of course, all this was just my first take on the creatures, and as with so many other things, eventually proved to be, well, inaccurate, to say the least.

      Suddenly the creature vanished, toppling into the pit below with a dull thud, like the thump of a huge whale stranded on a sandy beach. I heard a peculiar cry, something like “Hah-hoo!,” and then another alien appeared, hovering in the shadows of the exit portal, ready to step out into our world, ready to assume its crown of leadership.

      I was very, very frightened—I’m not a brave man. I grabbed Becky’s arm, turned, and ran like hell, making for a grove of trees a hundred yards away, stumbling and looking back as I pushed her forward in front of me.

      When we reached the oaks, we were panting heavily. I had to hold Becky to keep her from falling, she was so exhausted. We were surrounded by people staring in half-fascinated terror at the pile of dirt marking the hole.

      And then I saw the “jeans” girl bobbing up and down on the rim, like a little dark toy outlined against the setting sun. She managed to get her shoulder and knee up over the lip, then slipped back again until just her head showed. Suddenly I heard a faint shriek and she vanished for good. I wanted to go back and help her, but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t, and Becky wouldn’t have let me anyway.

      Our little drama was being obscured by the onset of darkness. Anyone driving along the road from Novato would have been stunned at the sight of a hundred folks scurrying around, trying to hide in ditches, crouching behind bushes and trees, hardly speaking to each other except in short, excited bursts, and staring, staring, staring at the heaps of sand piled around the pit. But there was nothing more to be seen.

      The wiser ones, the ones with any sense at all, fled for home. A few vehicles stood nearby, abandoned and derelict, outlined against the declining pastels of pink and orange that signaled the end of another day.

      It was the end of our day, all right.

      It was the end of man’s rule on Earth.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      STING-RAY

      Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

      —Muhammad Ali

      Alex Smith, 24 December, Mars Year i

      Novato, California, Planet Earth

      After my first tête-à-tête with the Martians, something made me stay close to the action. Becky was begging me to leave, but I had to see it through. I wanted to know what was happening. I kept staring at the mound that hid the aliens. I wavered between fear and curiosity—and curiosity “killed the cat,” as they say.

      Of course, I wasn’t foolish enough actually to venture any closer to the damned thing. I hid myself in the brush, and Becky finally stopped tugging at me.

      “What is it about men, anyway,” she muttered under her breath, “that makes them do such stupid things?”

      What indeed?

      But, the fact remains that I wanted to experience the outcome of our little adventure. This was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I’d become a spectator of our first encounter with a species from another world. However it came out, this meeting was the most important event in human history. We were no longer alone in the universe!

      I tried to find some better vantage point, dragging Becky along behind me. I almost climbed a tree. Suddenly I saw several black whips, like the arms of an octopus, flash against the darkening sky. Then a thin rod was pushed out of the pit, joint by joint; it had a circular disk at the top rotating in a wobbling motion. It reminded me of a juggler balancing a plate on a stick. What the hell were they doing over there?

      Most of the onlookers were wandering their way back to Novato. I recognized Frank Somebody-or-Other. I don’t recall his name now.

      “Goddam slimy critters!” he was saying to anyone who’d listen. “Gotta kill ’em all!” He repeated this refrain over and over again.

      “What do you see?” I asked, but he paid no attention to me, just moseyed on by. Although the crowd had largely dissipated, a few diehards gathered together in a group. I could hear their occasional murmurs in the background.

      After awhile sheer boredom brought some of the people back again, including new arrivals

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