“Despite the most careful scientific planning, you must still expect complications when alien minds meet.”
—Orientations
FLEEGL OF FLEEGL
James Godow woke up just in time to see it happen. His alarm clock had just gone off in the bedroom of the small house he had inherited from his aunt Martha. The four blue-and-green flowered wall-papered walls were all about him—and then suddenly they weren’t. That is to say, two of them still were, but the other two had been cut off by what appeared to be a wall of thick, misty glass extending through both floor and ceiling.
Jim did not react immediately. Instead, he lay cautiously still, gazing at the misty wall and turning over in his mind all the things that could cause him to experience such an hallucination. Nerves? Incipient insanity? Degeneration of the optic nerve? After several minutes had passed and the wall was still there, he stretched out a slow hand and touched it where it passed close to his bed. It was quite solid. Solid as steel.
After thinking this over, he got out of bed and looked out the one window that had been left to him. What he saw was a continuation of the white wall, reaching up into a dome to enclose the unfenced back yards of three other houses at his end of the block and portions of the houses themselves.
As he watched, a bedroom window of the amputated house-portion directly opposite was pushed up, and the oval-shaped face of a girl with somewhat rumpled blond hair emerged to stare right, left and center, finally focusing on something which in the general excitement had escaped Jim’s attention. It was a large, metallic-looking cube, some eight feet on a side, sitting in the center of the four yards. It gave no sign of life. From this, she looked around the enclosed area again, and spotted Jim, hanging out his window. Jim felt that it was time to enter into communication.
“What is it?” he yelled across at her.
“I don’t know!” she called back. “Don’t you?”
“No!”
“It must be something!”
There was a slight pause.
“Tell you what!” shouted Jim. “I’ll get dressed and meet you in the back yard in a few minutes. I’ll have to come out the window. I’m walled off in my bedroom here!”
“Me, too!” she answered. “It’s right across my bedroom door. I’ll get dressed, too, and—oh!” Apparently just realizing the implications of her last statement, her head popped back out of sight through her window. Jim pulled his own head in and went in search of clothes.
Half the dresser and all of his closet was available to him. He was equipped with everything but shirts, which he kept in the closet of the spare bedroom. He compromised on slacks and a clean t-shirt, and crawled out the window.
The girl was already out in the backyard by the metallic cube. She was dressed in slacks and a light summer blouse. With her was a neighbor boy of about twelve in a boy scout uniform; and a heavy man in his sixties, wearing pajamas and a purple-wool dressing gown, whom Jim recognized as Mr. Harvey Bolster of the segment of the large house the back of which was diagonally opposite his own.
“. . . get a pry-bar,” Bolster was saying excitedly, waving his arms in outrage. “Break it open. Smash the machine inside!”
“Maybe there isn’t any machine,” said the boy scout, happily. “Maybe the box just resonates a signal beamed in from somewhere else, and makes the force-field that way.”
“Resonates!” exploded Bolster, glaring at the boy. “Force-field!”
“Sure. Just like—”
“Be quiet, boy!”
“You’ll see,” said the boy scout. He went over to examine the surface of the cube closely.
“Uh-hello,” said Jim. The girl and Bolster looked over at him. “I’m Jim Godow. I just moved into Mrs. Lee’s house last month. She was my aunt . . . You’re Mr. Bolster, aren’t you?”
“How d’y’do. Harvey Bolster, yes.” The two men shook hands. “You know Jennie Coram, here? Miss Coram, Mr.—uh.”
“Jim Godow.”
“Hi,” she said. “The neighborhood’s been talking about you. You write Christmas cards, don’t you?”
“All sorts of greeting card verse,” said Jim.
“That must be fascinating.”
“The point is,” broke in Harvey, “what’re we going to do? Here we are, cut off, in my case without even a pair of slippers—”
“It’s opening,” said the boy scout.
They all went over to the cube, which was beginning to crack down on one side.
“Hi,” said Jim to the boy scout. “I’m Jim Godow. Who’re you?”
“Rodney Wasla,” said the boy scout. “We better stand back. The extra-terrestrial atmosphere from the interior of the ship may be poisonous to humans.”
“Oh, nonsense!” snapped Harvey. “What I think is—”
The cube opened up suddenly, revealing what appeared to be a small, square room crammed with instruments. A large, rabbitlike creature with long drooping ears and four arms came out, waving its hands at them.
“All right, all right now,” it said pettishly in a rather Vermontlike accent, “get back, don’t be in the way.”
They retreated slightly.
“Welcome to Earth,” said Rodney Wasla.
“What’s that?” said the creature, focusing on Rodney. “Oh, Welcome. Thank you.” It patted Rodney on the head. “That’s a good boy.” It produced something like a large turnip from what appeared to be a natural pouch in the front of its body, and rammed the vegetable into the turf of a backyard—Jim’s, as luck would have it.
“I declare this planet planted in the name of Fleegl,” the creature said. “I, Nugwik, being a duly accredited planter of Fleegl on Fleegl. Good sproutings!” It went back into the ship.
“Well, of all the blasted nerve!” exploded Harvey. “Hey, you—Nugwik, or whatever your name is—come out here.”
“Now, now,” said Nugwik, emerging from the cube’s interior with his four arms full of miscellaneous gadgets of a metallic nature. “No time to gab. Particularly with criminal psychopaths. Stand back there while I get my space tube started.”
“Gab!” roared Harvey. “Psychopaths! What’re you talking about?”
“Come, come,” said Nugwik, beginning to put his gadgets together. “Nothing to be ashamed of. You’re all paranoiacs here on Earth. But we’ll cure you, just as soon as I can get the necessary equipment here from Fleegl on Fleegl. Insanity’s completely unknown at Fleegl on Fleegl.”
“What—” Harvey was beginning to pop and froth again. Jim took him by the arm and led him away, beckoning to Jennie Coram to follow. When they were out of earshot of Rodney and Nugwik, Jim spoke again.
“Let’s not go off half-cocked,” he said. “This thing looks like it’s too big to be fiddled with. Let’s see if we can’t get together and decide what’s best to do.”
“Oh, yes,” said Jennie.
“Well,” said Harvey, calming down with an effort, “you may be right. It’s just the infernal nerve of that—What do you suggest?”
“Is there someplace we can talk?” asked Jim.
“Not in my bedroom,” said Harvey. “There’s less than a bed and an armchair left.”
“I’m in about the same condition,” said Jim. “Er—Jennie?”
“Oh, no!” she said quickly. “I haven’t much more than the rest of you and it’s all in a mess. But Rodney’s got all his bedroom, and a bathroom, too, he says. Why don’t we . . . ?”
They adjourned to the segment of the Wasla house and compared notes.
There was little they could tell each other—they’d all been asleep when the wall came.
“We need help,” said Jim.
“Yes, but how do we get it?” demanded Harvey. “No blasted telephone. You can’t see through that wall, let alone hear through it. I tell you something’s got to be done! What’s wrong with the police—and the fire department? They should have been here an hour ago, cutting their way in.”
“They can’t,” said Rodney, appearing at the window. He proceeded to climb into the room. “No power on Earth can break that barrier.”
“Who says so?” demanded Harvey. “That rabbit?”
“The Fleeglian,” explained Rodney.
“I don’t care whether he fleegls or floozies!” snapped Harvey. “He can’t do this to us. Who does he think he is, anyway?”
“He’s a survey Fleegl,” said Rodney. “He happened to be passing by this solar system, and, luckily for us—”
“You’ve been talking to him,” said Jim.
“I just asked him where he came from.”
“Where?” asked Jim.
“Oh, he can’t make us understand, we’re too dumb,” said Rodney. “Besides, we’re all psychofats.”
“Psychopaths, Roddy,” corrected Jennie.
“Yes, and this place he comes from, it’s an island called Fleegl. It’s the only land on the planet Fleegl. He just happened to be passing by after many years on space duty and he saw at a glance that we were dangerous.”
“Why?” asked Jim.
“On account of we’re going to conquer Fleegl if he doesn’t cure us. We hate Fleegl and all it stands for.”
“Never heard such nonsense in my life!” barked Harvey. “Is that all it is?” He got to his feet. “Let’s go straighten him out.”
“Well, maybe . . .” said Jim, doubtfully. They all followed Harvey back out the window. He strode up to Nugwik. The Fleeglian had got his bits and pieces of equipment put together. From somewhere inside them a shimmering cylinder rose up as they watched and passed through the top of the dome. Every so often Nugwik would do something to a control panel and the cylinder would appear to flow upward at an incredible rate. Then it would stop, and Nugwik would make another adjustment on his panel.
“Hey!” said Harvey, tapping Nugwik between the shoulder blades. “Hey, you! None of us here’re mad at Fleegl. Nobody ever heard of the place.”
“Yes, yes,” murmured Nugwik absently, his gaze on the panel. “Run along, now.”
“Run along! Why, blast you—you run along!” Harvey purpled. “Pack up and get out. You’ve made a mistake.”
* * *
END OF SAMPLE
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