Chapter XVI

At three o'clock or thereabouts, there was a knock at the door. We all "stared at each other with a wild surmise," and then Colonel Bedford resolutely flung it open. I was sitting on a footstool beside Marion's chair, in such a position that I could not see the stranger; who said in an oily, semi-cultured tone, "Good day, sir! I'm making a survey--"

"Step in," said our old soldier. "Step right in, sir."

"Oh, no, I shan't bother you now, as I see you're having a bit of a gathering," said the unctuous voice. "I'll call round la--"

At this point the Colonel took him firmly by the lapels of his coat. Alec said afterwards that he never saw astonishment spread over a face so quickly. The man's mouth remained open in the middle of the word. The Colonel, a man of action who had been bottled up too long, now picked up our caller and genially hurled him halfway across the room. He slammed the door and turned the key, took it out of the lock and pocketed it with a sinister grin. Then he, as well as most of the other lads, gave me a brief inquiring glance. I nodded. It was one of the beast-folk.

"'Ere!" said that one, losing his pseudo-cultured accents. "Wot's the idear, sloshing a chap about!"

"Stow it," said the Colonel. "We can see you, you know. No use keeping up a pretense, old troll!"

Good for the Colonel!

"That's right," said I. "For the record, you're a lumpy-looking piece of dough, greenish-orange, with a tinge of maroon at the moment because you're mad. Madder'n usual, I mean. You blighters live in a constant state of ire, don't you?" Then I bellowed. "Stop him!" for the brute was edging toward the window. Alec picked up a small chair and tossed it at his legs, and as he tripped and went to his knees, John tapped him lightly but sternly on the head with a big glass ashtray. The alien sat cross-legged on the floor and glared wickedly at us, its true body quaking and shivering with wrath. "Well?" it said, through its robot's mouth. "Well?"

"First off," said I, strolling over to it and keeping a careless attitude tight-drawn about a wildly beating heart, "you'll answer us a few questions. Then ... we'll see."

"I _don't_ think," said the other.

It was brutal, but entirely excusable. I picked him off the floor--he was a slight, insignificant fellow--and hit him squarely on the nose. He catapulted backwards with a howl. Alec thoughtfully kicked him in the stomach.

"The idea, you see," I told him, "is to hurt you badly, but to keep you alive. For a while, anyway. And if you try that again," I roared, for the beast had given a kind of preliminary shrug of its real form in preparation for leaving this dimension, "if you make one more move like that, I'll murder you instanter--and you'll die, both you and that poor shell of yours. Won't you?"

It nodded sullenly. Its great amorphous being settled down into itself quietly, as the human massaged his stomach.

"Whereas," I went on, "if you're good, and answer a few queries, _maybe_ I'll let you go back into the silver land of your own free will, before I slay that husk you've appropriated."

* * * * *

It watched me for a while, speculating. Then it said hoarsely, "Which of you is Robert Hood of Manchester? You?" pointing at me.

"That's right, chum."

"How did you find him?" asked Geoff. "How'd you follow him?"

The brute turned its marionette's head toward our blind companion, sneered, and said nothing. I would not have this draff, this other-world swine, sneering at Geoff; I lashed out and knocked him galley-west. Sniveling, he crawled up onto a straight-backed chair and sat there, peering round at us until his eyes lit on Marion.

"'Ere, miss," he whined, "you won't see 'em beat a poor chap to death, will you? I've done you no harm...."

I was proud of my girl then. I had been afraid our battering of the beast would set her teeth on edge; but she leaned forward and spat invective into its face. "You foul, filthy spawn of a Gadarene hog! I'd see you sliced to fringes, and laugh for joy!"

It sank back and regarded the carpet bleakly.

"How'd you follow the Slasher?" asked Geoff again.

"We all had his description. It was known he was in or near London. Then he was seen in a restaurant nearby. Our comrade lost him in Baker Street. We've been searching ever since." The voice was now too expressionless even to be called cold. "The others will find you. It doesn't matter what you do to me."

"Aha," I snapped, "except to _you_! We can feel your fear, you know." It was true; he was loathsomely afraid. It gave me a good feeling, one of renewed confidence, to realize afresh that the usurpers were not omnipotent godlings, but beings who, like any others, could know fear. Again I thought I saw the thing pull himself up surreptitiously, like a man caught in the mire; and again I slapped his head sideways till his jaws grated. He stopped it.

"Next," said the Colonel, "what are you doing here? Your race, I mean. What d'you want with this earth? It isn't yours, damnit."

The beast looked at him. Then it laughed. Somehow it managed to get a shade of the horror of its own being into the vocal chords of the puppet, and the laugh was icy. It did not answer.

So the Colonel and Alec and I worked it over. We formed a triangle, like bullies persecuting a small boy, and threw it from one to the other, not really injuring it, but slapping its face and pummeling it until it shrieked hysterically. Then we let it sink to the floor, and we tried again.

"_What are you doing here?_"

* * * * *

I had been afraid that we would never find this out, or that, if one of them told us, we would not be able to understand; perhaps the concept, the point of view, would seem as wild and bizarre and incredible as _they_ themselves. But as it began to speak now, I found that its motives, those of all its uncanny race, were as plain and nearly human as could be.

"We found your land by accident," it said, nursing its head in its hands and speaking without inflection or accent. "I do not know how long ago it was by your standards. I think a long time. One of our people by a mischance of a kind I cannot describe in the words of your language was born into your dimension in conjunction with an infant of your race. When you are all dead, and we are the sole owners of both our dimensions and yours, and write history books here for our amusement even as you have done for your own, that chance birth will be hailed as joyfully and reverently as you hail the--discovery of America."

"Dashed if I hail _that_ reverently," murmured the Colonel. "Bloomin' colonials ... go on."

"I wonder if you can imagine with what delight our people greeted the discovery? How far can you see into our plane?"

* * * * *

I saw no harm in answering that. "Not far. Just a background of silver-blue lines at an angle."

"That is it. A silver land." Evidently they had the same color perception as we; a surprising but not wholly unthinkable fact. "Nowhere is there color or change of form or beauty, save in our own bodies. Your earth burst on our ken with such a wealth of beauty and such opportunities for pleasure as we had never dreamt of. At once we began to infiltrate, in the guise of normal humans; at first only by the route of births stemming from that original accident, then afterwards by births regulated and controlled from our plane, by methods you could not comprehend, which once discovered freed us from the necessity of waiting endlessly to be born into a body that had descended from that original fortuitous 'sport.' I believe that in terms of your space-time continuum, this discovery of ours has been quite recent."

I grew pale and cold at his words.

For--if true--this meant that the beast-folk could make a wholesale invasion of our dimension at any time! The brute saw me, and laughed again.

"Exactly. You are beaten. Indeed, you never had a chance, but now you have less than none. We are an advance guard, who have prepared the way for all the others of our race who will one day inhabit bodies on your plane. We have felt you out, tested your power to resist--which has been practically nil, my friend, with the exception of your own feeble and haphazard efforts--and spread out over this island until we are more numerous than you can imagine. But with the new method of coming in, there is no longer a need for infiltrating into high offices and key government positions, as we have so laboriously done before; for, my friend, D-Day is at hand."

* * * * *

He folded his arms and chuckled once more, icily, hideously. "Quite soon now, we will come into this dimension in one great wave that will obliterate your race as though the stars had never shone upon it at all! Every birth in the world shall be one of our robots--and then, no matter how you struggle and fume and plot, your people are doomed! Then, no matter how hard you fight, you will lose, for your species will ultimately die of old age!"

In the silence that followed this burst of ghoulish amusement, I heard someone who was going by in Baker Street whistling the Bronze Horse Overture, one of my favorites ... oddly, irrelevantly, I considered it a good omen, and was cheered. Then Geoff spoke.

"Just put my hands on his throat, somebody, will you?"

"Not yet, son. Go on, ogre. Why will you murder a whole race? Just for amusement? Just so you can see colors and pretty forms?"

"Yes. That simple a reason. And because we hate you, for that you have inherited a world of such perfections and do not appreciate it. To see colors, to revel in sounds and scents and tastes we had never imagined; to feel the vicarious ecstasy of these robots in acts you take for granted--acts of feeding, of drinking, of viewing and touching, of sex, which we do not have in our proper forms in any fashion whatever. We envy you, and hate you. We want your world, even if we must take its tactile delights vicariously--which is not so second-best as it sounds, for these robots are in a sense ourselves as much as our own bodies are. You who are born to this wondrousness--can you claim you properly appreciate it? Or will you admit that you have held it lightly and unthinkingly for as many generations as you can count?"

"Well, I'll be a devaluated pound," gasped Alec. "Will you listen to the conceited son-of-a-bitch!"

"Another question," I said to the beast. "How do--"

It was done almost before I could blink. He made a sudden break for the windows, one arm raised to smash the glass so that he could shout down to the street. Two feet short of his goal he ran into Alec's good right hand, swung round like the head of a short-hafted axe. He dropped with a crash.

"No use inspecting the body," I said. "His real shape blew up like a paper bag and went blam. I guess you broke his neck. He's dead."

Geoff stood up and said matter-of-factly, "Well, we'd best be going, what? If someone will just find my pipe for me, I'm ready."

"Wail till I toss a few things into my purse," said Marion. "Can't expect a gal to flee without a lipstick, can you?"

I stared at Alec, who nodded. It was time for us to be on the wing.