They had no effect whatsoever on gravitational or magnetic fields. They were equally unaffected by every form of energy and every form of liquid, solid or gaseous matter we could try on them.
They neither absorbed nor reflected sound, but they could create sound. That perhaps was more puzzling to scientists than the fact that they reflected light rays. Sound is simpler than light, or at least is better understood. It is the vibration of a medium, usually air. And if the Martians weren’t there in the sense of being real and tangible, how could they cause the vibration of air which we hear as sound? But they did cause it, and not as a subjective effect in the mind of the hearer for the sound could be recorded and reproduced. Just as the light waves they reflected could be recorded and studied on a photographic plate.
Of course no scientist, by definition, believed there to be devils or demons. Put a great many scientists refused to believe that they came from Mars—or, for that matter, anywhere else in our universe. Obviously they were a different kind of matter—if matter at all, as we understand the nature of matter—and must come from some other universe where the laws of nature were completely different. Possibly from another dimension.
Or, still more likely, some thought, they themselves had fewer or more dimensions than we.
Could they not be two-dimensional beings whose appearance of having a third dimension was an illusory effect of their existence in a three-dimensional universe? Shadow figures on a movie screen appear to be three-dimensional until you try to grab one by the arm.
Or perhaps they were projections into a three-dimensional universe of four- or five-dimensional beings whose intangibility was due somehow to their having more dimensions than we could see and understand.
17.
Luke Devereaux awoke, stretched and yawned, feeling blissful and relaxed on this, the third morning of the week’s vacation he was taking after having finished Trail to Nowhere. The best-earned vacation he’d ever had, after finishing a book in five weeks flat. A book that would probably make him more money than any book he’d written to date.
No worries about his next book, either. He had the main points of the plot well in mind already and if it weren’t for Margie being so insistent that he take a vacation he’d probably be a chapter or so into it already. His fingers itched to get at the typewriter again.
Well, he’d made the bargain that he’d take a vacation only if Margie did too, and that made it a second honeymoon, practically, and just about perfect.
Just about perfect? he asked himself. And found his mind suddenly shying away from the question. If it wasn’t perfect, he didn’t want to know why it wasn’t.
But why didn’t he want to know? That was one step further removed from the question itself, but even so it was vaguely troubling.
I’m thinking, he thought. And he shouldn’t be thinking, because thinking might spoil everything somehow. Maybe that was why he’d worked so hard at writing, to keep from thinking?
But too keep from thinking what? His mind shied again.
And then he was cut of the half-sleep and was awake, and it came back to him.
The Martians.
Face the fact you’ve been trying to duck, the fact that everybody else still sees them and you don’t. That you’re insane—and you knew you aren’t—or that everybody else is.
Neither makes sense and yet one or the other must be true and ever since, you saw your last Martian over five weeks ago you’ve been ducking the issue and trying to avoid thinking about it—because thinking about such a horrible paradox might drive you nuts again like you were before and you’d start seeing—
Fearfully he opened his eyes and looked around the room. No Martians. Of course not; there weren’t any Martians. He didn’t know how he could be so utterly, completely certain of that fact, but he was utterly and completely certain.
Just as certain as he was that he was sane, now.
He turned to look at Margie. She still slept peacefully, her face as innocent as a child’s, her honey hair spread about on the pillow beautiful ever in disarray. The sheet had slipped down to expose the tender pink nipple of a softly rounded breast and Luke raised himself on one elbow and then leaned across to kiss it. But very gently so as not to waken her; the faint light coming in at the window told him it was still quite early, not much after dawn. And also so as not to wake himself, that way, because the last month had taught him that she’d have nothing to do with him that way by daylight, only at night and wearing those damned things in her ears so he couldn’t talk to her. The damn Martians. Well, that part of it wasn’t too bad; this was a second honeymoon, not a first, and he was thirty-seven and not too ambitious early in the morning.
He lay back and closed his eyes again, but already he knew he wasn’t going back to sleep.
And he didn’t. Maybe it was ten minutes later, maybe twenty, but he found himself getting wider awake every second, so he slid cautiously out of bed and into his clothes. It was still not quite half past six, but he could go out and take a walk around the grounds until it was late enough. And Margie might as well get as much sleep as she could.
He picked up his shoes and tiptoed out into the hall with them, closing the door quietly behind him and sitting down on the top step of the stairway to put on his shoes.
None of the outer doors of the sanitarium was ever locked; patients who were confined at all—fewer than half of them—were confined to private rooms except while under supervision. Luke let himself out the side door.
Outdoors was clear and bright, but almost too cool. Even in early August a dawn can be almost cold in Southern California; this one was, and Luke shivered a bit and wished he’d put on a pullover sweater under his sport jacket. But the sun was fairly well up and it wouldn’t stay that cool long. If he walked fairly briskly he’d be all right.
He walked fairly briskly over to the fence and then along parallel to it. The fence was redwood and six feet high. There was no wire atop it and any reasonably agile person, Luke included, could have climbed it; the fence was for privacy rather than for a barrier.
For a moment he was tempted to climb it and walls in freedom for had an hour or so, and then decided against it. If be vas seen, either going over or coming back, Dr. Snyder might worry about it and curtail his privileges. Dr. Snyder was very much of a worrier. Besides, the grounds were quite large; he could do plenty of walking right inside them.
He kept walling, along the inside of the fence. To the first corner, and turned.
And saw that he wasn’t alone; wasn’t the only early riser that morning. A small man with a large black spade beard was sitting on one of the green benches that were scattered around the grounds. He wore gold-rimmed glasses and was meticulously dressed down to highly polished black shoes topped by light gray spats. Luke looked curiously at the spats; he hadn’t know anyone wore them any more. The spade-bearded one was looking curiously up over Luke’s shoulder.
“Beautiful morning,” Luke said. Since he’d already stopped, it would leave been rude not to speak.
The bearded man didn’t answer. Luke turned and looked over his own shoulder, found himself looking up into a tree. But he saw nothing there that one does not usually see looking up into a tree, leaves and branches. Not a bird’s nest, riot even a bird.
Luke turned back and the bearded man still stared up into the tree, still hadn’t looked at Luke. Was the man deaf? Or—?
“I beg your pardon,” Luke said. An awful suspicion carne over him when there wasn’t any answer to that. He stepped forward and touched the man lightly on the shoulder. The shoulder twitched slightly. The bearded man reached up a hand and rubbed it casually, but without turning his gaze.