It vas approximately five minutes after eleven o’clock, Chicago time, on the evening of August 19 th, a Wednesday.
2.
On the afternoon of August 19, 1964, in Long Beach, California, at four o’clock in the afternoon (which would have been six o’clock in the afternoon in Chicago, just about the time Mr. Oberdorffer reached home full of pigs’ knuckles and sauerkraut, ready to start work on his anti-extraterrestrial et cetera), Margie Devereaux looked around the corner of the doorway into Dr. Snyder’s office and asked, “Busy, Doctor?”
“Not at all, Margie. Come in,” said Dr. Snyder, who was swamped with work. “Sit down.”
She sat down. “Doctor,” she said, a bit breathlessly. “I’ve an idea finally as to how we can find Luke.”
“I certainly hope it’s a good one, Margie. It’s been two weeks now.”
It had been a day longer than that. It had been fifteen days and four hours since Margie had gone up to their room to waken Luke from his nap and had found a note waiting for her instead of a husband.
She’d run with the note to Dr. Snyder and their first thought since Luke had had no cash except a few dollars that had been in Margie’s purse, had been the bank. But a call to the bank had brought them the information that he had drawn five hundred dollars from the joint account.
Only one further fact had come to light subsequently. Police, the following day, had learned that less than an hour after Luke’s call at the bank a man answering his description but giving a different name had bought a used car from a lot and paid one hundred dollars cash for it.
Dr. Snyder was not without influence at the police department and the entire Southwest had been circularized with descriptions of Luke and of the car, which was an old 1957 Mercury, painted yellow. Dr. Snyder himself had similarly circularized all mental institutions in the area.
“We agreed,” Margie was saying, “that the place he’d most likely go to would be that shack on the desert where he was the night the Martians came. You still think so?”
“Of course. He thinks he invented the Martians—says so in that note he left for you. So what’s more natural than that he’d go back to the same place, try to reconstruct the same circumstances, to undo what he thinks he did. But I thought you said you didn’t have the faintest idea where the shack is.”
“I still haven’t except that it’s within driving distance of L.A. But I just remembered something, Doctor. I remember Luke telling me, several years ago; that Carter Benson had bought a shack somewhere—near Indio, I think. That could be the one. I’ll bet it is.”
“But you called this Benson, didn’t you?”
“I called him, yes. But all I asked him was whether he’d seen or heard from Luke since Luke left here. And he said he hadn’t but promised to let me knew if he did hear anything. But I didn’t ask him if Luke had used his shack last March! And he wouldn’t have thought to volunteer the information, because I didn’t tell him the whole story or that we thought Luke might be going back to wherever he was last March. Because—well, it just never occurred to me.”
“Hmmm,” said Dr. Snyder, “Well, it’s a possibility. But would Luke use the shack without Benson’s permission?”
“He probably had permission last March. This time he’s hiding out, don’t forget. He wouldn’t want even Carter to know where he went. And he’d know Carter wouldn’t be using it himself—not in August.”
“Quite true. You want to phone Benson again, then? There’s the phone.”
“I’ll use the one in the outer office, Doctor. It might take a while to reach him, and you are busy, even if you say you aren’t.”
But it didn’t take long to reach Cater Benson after all. Margie was back within minutes, and her face vans shining.
“Doctor, it was Carter’s place Luke used last March. And I’ve got instructions how to get there!” She waved a slip of paper.
“Good girl! What do you think we should do? Phone the Indio police or—?”
“Police nothing. I’m going to him. As soon as I’m through with my shift.”
“Yon needn’t wait for that, my dear. But are you sure you should go alone? We don’t know how much his illness has changed and progressed, and you might find him—disturbed.”
“If he isn’t I’ll disturb him. Seriously, Doctor, don’t worry. I can handle him, no matter what.” She glanced at her wrist watch. “A quarter after four. If you really don’t mind my leaving now, I can be there by nine or ten o’clock.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to take one of the attendants with you?”
“Very sure.”
“All right, my dear. Drive carefully.”
3.
On the evening of the third day of the third moon of the season of kudus (at, as near as matters, the same moment Mr. Oberdorffer, in Chicago, was making inquiries in Bughouse Square about his missing friend) a witch doctor named Bugassi, of the Moparobi tribe in equatorial Africa, was called before the chief of his tribe. The chief’s name was M’Carthi, but he was no relative of a former United States senator of the same name.
“Make juju against Martians,” M’Carthi ordered Bugassi.
Of course he did not really call them Martians. He used the word gnajamkata, the derivation of which is: gna, meaning “Pygmy,” plus jam, meaning “green,” plus kat, meaning “sky.” The final vowel indicates a plural, and the whole translates as “green Pygmies from the sky.”
Bugassi bowed. “Make big juju,” he said.
It had damned well better be a big juju, Bugassi knew.
The position of a witch doctor among the Moparobi is a precarious one. Unless he is a very good witch doctor indeed, his life expectancy is short. It would be even shorter were it not quite rare for the chief to make an official demand upon one of his witch doctors, for tribal law decreed that one of them who failed must make a contribution of meat to the tribal larder. And the Moparobi are cannibals.
There had been six witch doctors among the Moparobi when the Martians came; now Bugassi was the last survivor. One moon apart (for taboo forbids the chief to order the making of a juju less than a full moon of twenty-eight days after the making of the last previous juju) the other five witch doctors had tried and failed and made their contributions.
Now it was the turn of Bugassi and from the hungry way M’Carthi and the rest of the tribe stared at him it appeared they would be almost as satisfied if he failed as if he succeeded. The Moparobi had not tasted meat for twenty-eight days and they were meat hungry.
All of Africa was meat hungry.
Some of the tribes, those who had lived exclusively or almost exclusively from hunting were actually starving. Other tribes had been forced to migrate vast distances to areas where vegetable foods, such as flits anal berries were available.
Hunting was simply no longer possible.
Almost all of the creatures man hunts for foods are fleeter of foot or of wing than he. They must be approached upwind and by stealth until he is within killing distance.
With Martians around there was no longer any possibility of stealth. They loved to help the natives hunt. Their method of helping was to run—or to kwim—well ahead of the hunter, awakening and alerting his quarry with gladsome cries.
Which made the quarry scamper like hell.
And which made the hunter return empty-handed from the hunt, ninety-nine times out of a hundred without having had the opportunity to shoot an arrow or throw a spear, let alone having hit something with either one.