Planet of the Losers

myra, you may find this hard to accept, but there's an alien in our own back yard

We had sometime since reached the stage at which anything could provoke a quarrel. In this case, it was whether the cheese had ripened beyond the point of no return, and Myra finally threw her glass not at me but across the kitchen, apparently without special target—it struck the refrigerator—and hardly had the spray of wine and powdered glass reached the vinyl floor than she was out of the house and in the car, and by the time I reached the porch, her back wheels were churning up a wake of dust and gravel.

It was her car, my weekend country cottage. It was Sunday evening. If she did not return by morning; I would have to find another way back to the city from this pastoral area that was serviced by no train and no nearby bus route.

I slunk back inside and refilled my own glass with the Rhone red I had extracted from a wooden tub half full of assorted bottles at my favorite discount liquor store, an establishment that provided more than a few pretexts for our spats, for Myra fancied herself an oenophile but was, in reality, that familiar sort of wine snob who despises any label that he/she has never seen before you present the bottle for inspection.

But before drinking my wine now, I cleaned up that which had run down the refrigerator's face to mix with the broken glass on the floor. That was a job that could not be long delayed, for my golden retriever, who was occupied outdoors at the moment, might return at any time, and he had the appetite of a goat without the impervious stomach that should be prerequisite. Which is to say, this dog would have been quite capable of lapping up both wine and glass. His name was Bub.

I had just emptied the dustpan into the pedal can that dwells beneath the sink when I heard the sound of an engine. Myra was returning much sooner than she usually did after a tantrum, and from the awful noise being produced by the car, I could tell why. It was obvious that her old Beetle had finally revolted against a criminal lack of care.

I hastened outside, I confess, to jeer. But when I crossed the threshold and stepped onto the porch, which Myra insisted was practically unusable without screening, I left my familiar world for that of hallucination.

A flying saucer was landing in the adjacent meadow. It looked exactly as they always do in low-budget s-f movies and the eyeball-witness accounts published in the trashy papers sold at supermarket checkouts. Which is to say, it was a great big disk with portholes around the rim. Have I said that the time of day was twilight? Some form of illumination, presumably electric, could be seen behind the portholes. The engines now ceased to produce noise, and as the gigantic Frisbee settled slowly to the ground, I heard nothing but the faint sound of the stubble being crushed. My farmer neighbor periodically gave this field a rest after cropping to ankle level what had lately grown there: It was in such condition now. Beyond the meadow was a mile or two of vacant woods.

My pet chose this moment to come home to the human being whom the canine god had assigned as his protector against bizarre menaces. Bub is valiant when it comes to other dogs and will stand up to a mastiff, but the unexpected features that are routine occurrences in the life of man—the ringing of the telephone or doorbell, the stove-top grease fire or any bent figure carrying a sack—send him to cower behind his master's knees. At the moment, however, I was pleased to have him there, his firm, warm, hairy body bolstering the legs that might well otherwise have buckled. After decades of movies about space creatures, pro and con, I was far from ready to confront a newly arrived delegation. But the car was gone, and I had no place reasonable to run to, my nearest neighbor being the aforementioned farmer, who, I happened to know, had, with his taciturn wife and insolent teenaged son, left on a rare trip to visit in-laws in the suburbs of the city.

Therefore, I stood there, propped up by the shielding Bub (or anyway his chest; his panting face and rear end were exposed), and waited passively as an oblong of yellow light appeared between two of the portholes and an extensible gangplank emerged from it to touch the ground. It was ever so long before this was put into use—long enough, indeed, for me to wonder in terror whether the ship's company was invisible and, if so, had landed and was all about me.

But, finally, a figure appeared in the opening of the hatch and after what appeared to be a cautious survey of the nearby terrain, began to descend the inclined ramp.

At least the creature had a head, a trunk and four limbs of what would seem the human type, and its form of locomotion was that of a person, as were such of its gestures as I could see from 50 or 60 yards away. Somewhere along the ramp, it paused for a moment with hands on hips. Then it (continued on page 152)Planet of the Losers(continued from page 127) shook its head and glanced back at the ship, after which it rubbed its chin, for all the world as my old uncle Marty would undoubtedly have done had he found himself deboarding first from a vehicle that had just landed on an unfamiliar planet. I have not picked my example at random. As the spaceman reached the ground and began to approach the porch, I saw even more resemblances to my maternal uncle: an upper body that suggested an avocado, a head fuzzy at both temples but radiantly bald in between, a splayed sort of stride, with the feet at right angles to each other, and, finally, the kind of two-piece suit that, were it made of wool, would have been baggy but in polyester double knit looked, here and there, uncomfortably snug. He was not, as far as I could see, armed, but the possibility that he had available some more subtle kind of weapon, perhaps one that could be triggered by his thoughts, restrained me from assuming that because of his attire and penguin-footed stride, shared with Uncle Marty, he was as harmless.

But Bub suddenly lost all fear and bounded from the shelter of the back of my legs, approaching the space creature with bare-fanged hostility and a deep-throated, unpleasant sound that I had never before heard him emit.

The figure from the saucer abruptly halted, then bent at the waist and began to speak to the dog in a very human-sounding way.

"Hiyee, wuzzums! Is oo upset cuz fella on oor turf? Oo, but ize oor friend. Oh, what a sweet poochie-woochie boy oo is."

Bub hesitated for a moment, limbs and tail gone rigid, and then his growl became even more menacing and his advance even more ill-willed. It occurred to me that if the creature was not armed in any fashion, his comrades on the ship must certainly have weapons at their disposal, and with but one set of teeth, poor Bub could easily be outgunned. I silently cursed my pet, for without his display, we both might have slunk out the back of the house and concealed ourselves in the woods till the saucer had finished its business, whatever that might be, and had taken off. As it was, I now had to put myself in jeopardy. But you just can't abandon a pet like Bub, especially when your closest female friend is someone as volatile as Myra.

I called out to my dog, praying that my voice did not sound as feeble to the space person as it did to me. "Bub! You come back here! These nice folks don't mean any harm." The last was obviously putting the wish before the fact.

Bub proceeded to growl more furiously, which I might have anticipated, familiar as I was with his tendency to grandstand when he believed I would be impressed.

But the man from the saucer straightened up from the crouch in which he had been trying to placate the animal and said in a voice quite as fearful as mine, "Hello, sir! Please forgive us for the intrusion, but I'm afraid we had to make an emergency landing, and we thought an empty field was far better for it than to crash into a hospital or any place thickly inhabited. Of course, we'll make any compensation within our power if we have damaged your land. You have a lovely dog. I'd like to pet him, but I'm afraid he doesn't seem to like me."

Encouraged by the pacific speech, Bub was now ready to jump him. I went down the three steps into the yard and in a burst of inspiration uttered the only words that could have any effect on my dog. "Bub, want some steak?"

The animal quickly exchanged the display of hostility for his wheedling act, a sequence in which grovel, if not answered immediately, gives way to snivel, and which normally is ingratiating enough. But the spaceman had precedence at this moment.

I fended Bub off with the side of my sneaker, smiled and said, "Hello. My name is Tony Walsh. I come here on weekends. That's not really my field, but I'm sure you're welcome to it."

He came forward and put out a hand that looked, and felt, altogether human. "Hi there. My name is Wonk."

I had begun by now, without being at all conscious of it, to assume that he and his ship were actually American and only superficially exotic. But the simple sound of his name was enough to return me if not to fear, then at least to wonderment.

"Are you from, uh, someplace else?"

He was still shaking my hand in a rather flabby clutch. "We're from Wurtz." It was still sufficiently light to see that although he did not resemble Uncle Marty in any facial feature, he looked quite as human. He had a pug nose, crinkly eyes, a slightly recessive chin and what would seem a set of regular, if dingy, teeth. He waited as if for my reaction and when none came, said, "In the galaxy of Wile? You don't know it? It's just beyond——"

"Forgive me," I said, "I know almost nothing of astronomy, and, in fact, I've never even read much science fiction. I have never taken flying saucers seriously. I'm not sure I'm not dreaming at this moment, to be frank."

He frowned. "Oh, I don't believe you are. In any case, I'm real enough." He had finally dropped my hand, but he now re-clasped it. "You can feel my flesh. I'm here. And so is the ship. You might come and visit it, though I'm afraid we can't afford you the hospitality we'd like, for we're out of provisions—which, in fact, is one of the reasons why we've had to land."

I flapped my arms. "Well, you're certainly more than welcome to share my food, though I don't know if it would be enough for your entire party. You see, I'm here only on the weekends, and at such times, I bring along just enough for myself and whatever guests are coming. I don't keep much on hand here, because the field mice will get into it if I do, and the ants and beetles, and so on...."

"Pardon me," said Wonk. "What was that?"

"The food," I said. "I'm afraid on a Sunday night like this, I don't have much. There's a cold lamb chop and, of course, some cheese, unless it's too ripe——"

"No," Wonk said. "Forgive me, but did you not name some beasts that might invade your larder?"

"Yes. Mice. Raccoons, even. They once tore a hole in the kitchen roof!"

"I'm thinking of something smaller," said Wonk. He held up a pair of pincered fingers.

"Insects? We get all kinds. Ants are the worst: the little red ones that march in armylike columns. The black kind come as individuals. I don't know which is worse."

Wonk was grinning. "What good fortune that by chance we landed in just the right spot on all this enormous planet!"

"I think we're fortunate, too," I said politely, "that you speak English."

"Aha! We know it as Wattle. But it certainly does seem very similar to your tongue.... Please don't think me rude, but I wonder whether I might see these ants of yours."

"You certainly may, but it's almost dark now. Won't you come into the house and have a glass of wine, and we'll see what we can work out with the food? How many people are on your ship? I've got a few cans on hand: pork 'n' beans, and so on. Sardines. Maybe even corned beef." I gestured toward the porch. "Trouble is, I don't have a car at the moment, or we could run over to the convenience store at Briceville."

He finally moved but seemed reluctant. I assumed he was shy or perhaps even suspicious that I might be luring him into an ambush. That was understandable. What must it be like to sail across the vastness of space, to land on an alien planet and confront such a (to him) exotic creature as I?

I led him through the dimly lighted front portions of the house to the kitchen, which was brightly lighted from the overhead fixture. I must say that seeing him clearly now simply confirmed my sense that, from the visible physical evidence, he and I could not have been distinguished each from each as to species.

"Won't you sit down?" I gestured at the table under the light, and then, when he made no move toward it, went there and drew out one of the chairs. He remained motionless.

"Is something wrong?"

Wonk showed embarrassment, coughing into a balled hand. "I'm sorry to say, I don't understand what you want me to do."

"To sit here, if you like. Or perhaps you'd prefer the other side."

He lowered his chin. "I'm afraid I don't know what 'to sit' means."

I wondered whether I should really buy this but anyway went ahead and demonstrated. "This is sitting," I said, feeling as foolish as I ever have my life long. "Do you have another word for it?"

"Aha! No, we do not speak of it, because we don't do it. Is it as easy as you make it look?"

"Here, let me help. Just bend these legs." I tapped him behind the knees. "Now, down, down—you're all right. I've got you." I was holding the chair with one hand and reassuringly touching his shoulder with the other. "There, you've landed. Now, isn't that comfortable?"

He looked up at me and made a smile of relief in which an element of fear could still, however, be seen. "I still can't believe it," he said. "This is an excellent compromise between standing and lying down. Now that I know about it, I find it hard to believe that we Wurtzels have never discovered what seems so obvious." He stood up. "Still another thing to thank you for! But now, may I just have a look at those ants? I don't mean to be rude, but I'm afraid we're famished."

"If that's the case, then let me first fix you some soup. We'll have time enough to see ants." I waved a soup can at him and asked, "Are you an entomologist, by chance?"

He looked uncomfortable. "I'm afraid not, and I beg you not to think me the glutton I must seem. Forgive me; your sculpture is beautiful. After the meal, I'd like to see all your work." He made a sweeping gesture to indicate the expanse of the kitchen. "Your studio is lovely. I love the arts. I was myself one of the leading poets of Wurtz before the famine."

I inserted the can into the electric opener. "Of course," I said, "I don't have any influence on our Government, but I should think they'd want to give you people some assistance, hands across space, as it were. Golly, I'd say Washington will be so relieved to see that the first visitors from outer space are nice, they'll do anything for you." This was finally beginning to seem normal to me, realistic, believable, as I saw the hairs in his nose, a tiny fragment of lint on his lapel. "Uh, which sculpture are you referring to?"

"The object you are now polishing."

"This soup can?"

"Forgive me, Tony Walsh," he cried desperately and, springing to his feet, approached me rapidly. "I'm afraid that unless you take me immediately to the ants, I shall be forced to give you a good tongue lashing!"

I put the can down. "I suspect we're not in perfect communication, Mr. Wonk, but if you have such strong feelings, I'll be pleased to do as you ask. Would you mind telling me what your interest in ants might be?"

He threw up his hands. "To eat them, for heaven's sake! I assure you being hungry is no joke."

This was really too much. Nevertheless, I switched on the floodlight that illuminated the rear yard and led the man, if such he could be termed, out into the weeds that ruled there. The saucer still rested in the adjacent meadow, silent as ever, its crew remaining unseen. "All right," I said, pointing to a mounded, sandy place near the rotting stump of a bygone tree. "I believe you'll find an ant hole there."

"That's all very well," said he, looking down, "but how can I get to them?" He raised his head and stared reproachfully at me.

"Oh, come on. You wanted ants, and here they are. No doubt they're asleep at the moment, but surely you can rouse them by taking that stick and digging.... If, that is, you really do eat them and this is not some sort of hoax." I was annoyed.

Wonk raised his hands and backed away. "I'm no hunter. I told you I was a poet. Don't you have any farms, where the ants are domesticated?"

"Toy stores often sell so-called ant farms, glass boxes filled with dirt. The ants can be observed as they crawl through their tunnels and go about their business. Kids are given these by childless friends who have been invited for the weekend."

"I'm relieved to hear that at least your children eat ants," said Wonk. "From your reaction thus far, I assumed you didn't regard them as edible at all and you lived on the cans you spoke about and felt quite superior because you can digest tin. Well, so be it; we are obviously a younger race and haven't evolved as far as you. We need flesh for nourishment."

I picked up a stick with the intention of unearthing some ants for him, but then threw it down. "Mr. Wonk," I said, "from what I can see of you, we belong to races that, if not precisely the same, are pretty closely allied. Now, there's not going to be enough ants in this hole to feed a person your size, let alone your comrades in the ship."

"Tell me," he asked, "are we anywhere near a shop where food is sold? If so, would it not be simpler for all concerned if we simply went there and purchased enough ants to take us on our way? We're perfectly capable of paying, I assure you."

"Briceville's five miles, but I'm afraid my friend has taken the car. Besides, you wouldn't be able to buy ants there. People here don't ever eat that sort of thing. You really must try other kinds of food. We have all sorts: grains and eggs and fruits of many varieties. Don't you eat anything else on Wurtz?"

"Some grasses and leaves," said Wonk, "as filler, but, of course, they're not very nutritional—to leave taste out of the picture."

"Please come back to the kitchen and try the sardines. They were cold-blooded when alive."

Wonk put his hand out. "Darned nice of you to offer. But I think we'd better try elsewhere. I hope I wasn't too rude earlier. I apologize."

"You're not going to get what you want anywhere else in this country," I said. "But I've seen pictures of eight-foot anthills in Africa. Perhaps you could zoom over there in your saucer."

He shook his head. "I confess that Earth has consistently gone beyond our wildest expectations. We were prepared to find you had the wheel and the lever, things that even yet we haven't mastered. Our wheel is still awfully bumpy, though we have been making some progress from the square we started with: It's now hexagonal."

My suspicions about his authenticity had waxed and waned. This was too much. "Come, now," I said derisively, "you supposedly fly here from outer space in a vehicle that obviously has overcome the problems of gravity and friction and centrifugal force, etc., and burns a fuel that has no visible exhaust, and you haven't perfected the wheel?"

Wonk shrugged his round shoulders. "Oh, the ship. They left it behind. I don't think it needs fuel. It just runs when you move a switch and stops when you turn it off. To make it go up, you move a stick back, forward to make it go down, and so on. These things are all clearly labeled, else we wouldn't have the foggiest idea as to how to operate the machine."

"They? Who are they?"

"The superior people who occupied our planet for a while and dominated us, making us do menial tasks for them."

"But they left?"

"To conquer other worlds. They gave us up as completely hopeless, I'm afraid. Said we don't even do a good job as flunkies." Wonk smiled sweetly. "They had robots who did all the skilled work, and we were supposed to do the cleanup, sweep the floors, carry out rubbish, and so on, but we couldn't seem to meet their standards. Finally, they put us to digging ditches and filling them in, in a wasteland area, but hard as we tried, we'd end up with a series of holes with piles of sand between them. A shovel just doesn't seem to do what it's supposed to when one of us is wielding it."

His manner was so sincere that I could not withhold a belief that there was substance to the outlandish story.

"Come along," I said, leading him back to the kitchen. "Please try some of the tinned foods."

After a short refresher course in the technique of sitting, he took a chair at the kitchen table and satisfactorily lowered himself onto it but fell off when trying to pull it, with himself, forward. He was not hurt, however, either in body or in spirit. It would have been hard not to find him ingratiating; he was trying so hard to catch on to new ways.

As it turned out, he preferred the oil to the sardines, licking the former off the latter and then dropping the fish onto the plate as one discards the cob when the corn has been stripped away. He was innocent of the uses of knife and fork and wiped his greasy hands on the lapels of his suit. When I urged the paper napkin on him, he polished the plate with it. With the worry that any beverage containing alcohol might affect him deleteriously, I found a can of soda and poured a glass of it, over ice.

Suspecting that in the absence of instruction he might do anything with the liquid but take it into his mouth, I told him it was exclusively for drinking.

He laughed politely. "Good heavens, you must think us even more barbarous than we are. I should say that drinking was instinctive and pretty much the same throughout the universe." He plucked the ice cubes from the glass and tossed them onto the table, then poured some soda into his left palm and, lowering his head, lapped at it dog fashion.

I decided to let that go for a while and was about to introduce him to peanut butter applied to a graham cracker (one of my own favorites for which I would not have apologized to Brillat-Savarin) when I heard the slamming of the front screen door. Before remembering that such was Myra's preferred way of reminding me that the spring was too weak to do the job unassisted, I assumed that one or more of Wonk's associates had become impatient for his report as to the local availability of food, and although Wonk himself had proved innocuous, I was not yet free of apprehension: They were, after all, the hungry crew of an alien space vehicle.

But it was Myra who burst into the kitchen. She was at least as angry with me as when she had left, I'm sure, for it is a point of honor with her to hold a grudge interminably, but she was also, by reflex, a thoroughgoing optimist with respect to men she had just met. Irrespective of their age, appearance or type, she could always project some association of value—if not lover, then father or brother or just someone good with hammer and nails—and I found that an endearing trait, no doubt because I am much the same when it comes to women; perhaps we could be called pragmatists.

In any event, Myra lost her glower on seeing my guest. "Hi," said she, advancing with outthrust hand. "I'm Myra Clendenning."

"Myra," I said, "this is Wonk. Wonk, my friend Myra. Now, Myra, you may find this hard to accept at first, but if you noticed on the way in, there's a spaceship parked in the field next door. Actually, it's a real flying saucer, from the planet Wurtz. I didn't believe in them, either, till this one showed up, but there it is, and Wonk here came with it. He and the rest of the crew are without evil intent. They landed because they're out of food. Now, as you know, we've got a few tins of this and that, and I'm introducing him to things he has never tasted."

Wonk had sprung up when she entered the room and bowed elaborately, as he had not done for me, and kissed her wrist.

I added repetitiously, "You may find this hard to believe."

"Why should I?" Myra asked, with a sparkling smile for the benign-looking alien, obviously reluctant to let go of his hand. "I've been expecting that one of these days, someone like this would come to reach out to us in our ignorance."

"Thank you, Myra Clendenning," said Wonk, "but I'm afraid we're the ignorant ones. I've only just been taught by your friend how to sit down and that there are other things to eat than ants, though I hope I'm not being rude in saying that there's still nothing tastier."

"What in the world has he given you to drink?" Myra asked, then glared at me and said, "Open the Talbot, for heaven's sake."

"I think we might wait for that," I told her. "Everything's so new."

"It's my property," she said irritably though continuing to beam at Wonk. She went to the undersink area that served as a wine cellar and brought out the only bottle that remained there. She had bought it on sale somewhere. I suspected it was an off year, though I can never find one of those little vintage cards when I want to.

Myra deftly extracted the cork with the two-pronged nonscrew gadget that I have never mastered. "I know," she said to Wonk, "that you undoubtedly have much to teach us, not only about technology but about the more important issues. Foremost among them would be how to live in peace with one another." She poured some wine for him.

"Myra," I said, "he doesn't drink from a glass. You'd better——"

"Teach us," Myra said. "Oh, teach us how to live together."

"Goodness gracious," said Wonk. "I'm afraid we're the last people who could do that. You see, we were able to come to power only because our old Bosses went elsewhere in the galaxy to find new people to conquer and treat like scum. But now we're in the lamentable situation of being on top, with nobody else underneath us, no inferior folks to despise and mistreat."

He gave me a sheepish look. "I must apologize for lying to you, Tony Walsh. We came here not only to look for food. We were searching for slaves. But it didn't take me any time at all to see that if you are representative of Earth's population, we would be savagely whipped if we tried anything here. You have every advantage: You can eat and drink anything, you tame and keep as pet an animal that would otherwise be ferocious and you have a friend that smells sweet and speaks melodiously. I suspect she's an example of your females."

Myra hated being spoken of as if she were absent, and she moved quickly to assert herself. "I admire your humility," said she. "We can certainly learn a lesson from that. But don't sell yourselves short. Let me suggest that you get more particular in your search: Look for inferior individuals, not peoples. I assure you, the former are in abundance. True, collecting them one by one can be tedious, but the effort will be well worth it."

"Myra," I cried, "what are you saying?" To Wonk, I hastened to say, "Myra is known for her sense of irony. Let me explain that term——"

"No need for that," said he. "It's certainly one thing we are familiar with: pretending that what everyone knows is true is really false, and vice versa. It was the only way we survived when under the thumb of the Bosses. We could use less of it now that they've gone, but, unfortunately, we just can't seem to shake off the habit, even though it really makes no sense nowadays."

"You just let me characterize my own mystique," Myra said nastily to me. She turned to Wonk. "I was not being ironic. If you want a collection of boneheads, just go to the company for which I work, or go to the nation's capital or to any state legislature."

I had not realized she was such an anarchist. I shrugged and added, "Well, for that matter, how about the factories where they make garments with buttons from which the thread has already mostly unraveled before you've worn them for the first time?"

"Oh," Myra scoffed, "that's frivolous. But what about all the thieves on Wall Street, and the people who, though not in need, think it's cute to shoplift?"

"Drunken airline pilots!" I shouted.

"The illiterates who misspell names printed at the bottom of TV screens."

"Waiters who are insolent and then mispronounce crepes."

"Excuse me," Wonk said in a tone of distress. He had not touched his wine. "I do believe you are bickering. That's one thing we cannot endure: a conflict of opinions. All of us are always in perfect accord at all times. Perhaps it's a racial trait. In any event, I thank you for your kindness, which I must say I'd have taken as a symptom of weakness had you not proved our superiors in so many other ways." He smiled. "I still can't quite understand why you haven't given me a good thrashing and then burned the space craft. I don't mind admitting that's the way we would have treated you had the situation been reversed. I think we might have the moral edge on you there. What's the purpose of being strong unless it's to exploit the weak?"

He had acquired a look of discomfort. After a moment, I realized that he was trying to rise from the chair but was in too close, his thighs under the table. I told him what to do.

"So many things to remember!" he complained when he was finally erect. "As if the learning isn't enough." He beamed at Myra. "Thank you. For a female, you're quite articulate."

He had already forgotten the location of the door by which he had entered, and I had to lead him out of the house. When we reached the yard, I remembered I had not seen Bub for a while, the reason for which was that he had stayed on guard against the saucer. Or so I believed until he turned to me with a snarl. Had the space creatures transformed him ...? He sullenly averted his head in a familiar movement. Of course! He was bitter about the false promise of steak with which I had earlier subdued him. "All right," I said, "I've got that coming. But just trust me a while longer." Alas, it would have to be quite a while, until the following evening, in fact, back in town, for the Briceville convenience store, though open 24 hours, sold cold cuts only.

"Goodbye, Tony Walsh," said Wonk.

"Goodbye to you, Wonk. I won't wish you well, for, in fact, I disapprove of your mission. Why don't you people go back home and buckle down and try to improve yourselves? Study and work hard and make a real effort not to be such jerk. You'd surely improve yourselves significantly. Look what you learned in the short time here: sitting, drinking sardine oil, and so on. And then, once you had acquired self-respect based on accomplishment, you wouldn't need anyone else to lord it over."

He stared searchingly into my eyes, and then, with the greatest good humor, uttered one stark obscenity, after which he plodded to the space vehicle and went up the gangplank. In a trice, the saucer rose noisily into the air and whirled away.

I returned to the kitchen, where Myra sat with the glass of wine Wonk had not touched.

"I hope you're not brooding," I said, "over that tasteless comment of his."

She showed a vulpine grin. "Hardly. What can you expect from some fat old freak like that?"

"I'm glad you came back before they left. I didn't have a camera."

"Don't think I intend to tell anyone about this," she said firmly.

"Are you serious?" I cried, and we proceeded to argue heatedly.

Finally, Myra made a crucial point. "All right, you tell and see how far you get! I have no intention of confirming your account."

"You mean you'll suppress the entire incident just because maybe there'll be some people who won't even believe the two of us? But it happened, did it not? I never thought you, of all people, could ever be accused of a lack of conviction."

She gulped what was in her glass and poured herself more Château Talbot. I had to pour my own. "As usual," she said, "you're barking up the wrong tree.... The reason I'll keep quiet is that the Wurtzels are contemptible trash. Why give them publicity?" She stared into the middle distance. "I say let's wait for more positive thinking space visitors. I know they're out there. Maybe those Bosses will show up, and we'll have a fight on our hands. But who needs more Wurtzels?"

I hope I haven't given the impression here that I don't admire Myra. We may wrangle, but underneath it all, we invariably end up seeing eye to eye. Except, perhaps, about wine. This one, with its excess of tannin, was, as yet, far too young to drink. But I kept my own counsel on the matter, fearing that were I to mention it to Myra, she might storm out again. And, frankly, I was scared to be alone, lest tougher guys appear now that the trail had been, so to speak, blazed.

" 'We're from Wurtz. In the galaxy of Wile?' 'Forgive me,' I said, 'I know almost nothing of astronomy.' "