“Of course the effect could have been cumulative and it could have killed me anyway but on the other hand I might have built up immunity toward it. Didn’t seem to work either way—I’ve just been sick from it at a constant degree from the beginning. But it was plenty better than the one chance in a thousand they intended to give me, so tried it. And it worked.”
Vaguely you’re aware that Thorkelsen is saying something, but you can’t make out what it is and you don’t care because you’re practically asleep already, the wonderful sleep that you can have only when you’re breathing real air with enough oxygen and no poison. You’re going to sleep all the way back to Earth and never leave Earth again ever.
Man of Distinction
You would hardly pick Hanley to play hero—to say nothing of saving our Earth from alien invasion—yet Al Hanley, hero or no, did just that!
THERE WAS this Hanley, Al Hanley, and you wouldn’t have thought to look at him that he was ever going to amount to much. And if you’d known his life history, up to the time the Darians came you’d never have guessed how thankful you’re going to be—once you’ve read this story—for Al Hanley.
At the time it happened Hanley was drunk. Not that that was anything unusual—he’d been drunk a long time and it was his ambition to stay that way although it had reached the stage of being a tough job. He had run out of money, then out of friends to borrow from. He had worked his way down his list of acquaintances to the point where he considered himself lucky to average two bits a head on them.
He had reached the sad stage of having to walk miles to see someone he knew slightly so he could try to borrow a buck or a quarter. The long walk would wear off the effects of the last drink, well, not completely but somewhat—so he was in the predicament of Alice when she was with the Red Queen and had to do all the running she could possibly do just to stay in the same place.
And panhandling strangers was out because the cops had been clamping down on it and if Hanley tried that he’d end up spending a drinkless night in the hoosegow, which would be very bad indeed. He was at the stage now where twelve hours without a drink would give him the bull horrors, which are to—the D. T.’s as a cyclone is to a zephyr.
D. T.’s are merely hallucinations. If you’re smart you know they’re not there. Sometimes they’re even companionship if you care for that sort of thing. But the bull horrors are the bull horrors. It takes more drinking than most people can manage to get them and they can come only when a man who’s been drunk for longer than he can remember is suddenly and completely deprived of drink for an extended period, as when he is in jail, say.
The mere thought of them had Hanley shaking. Shaking specifically the hand of an old friend, a bosom companion whom he had seen only a few times in his life and then under not-too-favorable circumstances. The old friend’s name was Kid Eggleston and he was a big but battered ex-pug who had more recently been bouncer in ,a saloon, where Hanley had met him naturally.
But you needn’t concentrate on remembering either his name or his history because he isn’t going to last very long as far as this story is concerned. In fact, in exactly one and one-half minutes he is going to scream arid then faint and we shall hear no more of him.
But in passing let me mention that if Kid Eggleston hadn’t screamed and fainted you might not be here now, reading this. You might be strip-mining glanic ore under a green sun at the far edge of the galaxy. You wouldn’t like that at all so remember that it was Hanley who saved—and is still saving—you from it. Don’t be too hard on him. If Three and Nine had taken the Kid things would be very different.
Three and Nine were from the planet Dar, which is the second (and only habitable) planet of the aforementioned green star at the far edge of the galaxy. Three and Nine were not, of course, their full names. Darians’ names are numbers and Throe’s full name or number was 389,057,792,869,223. Or, at least, that would be its translation into the decimal system.
I’m sure you’ll forgive me for calling him Three as well as for calling his companion Nine and for having them so address each other. They themselves would not forgive me. One Darian always addresses another by his full number and any abbreviation is not only discourteous but insulting. However Darians live much longer than we. They can afford the time and I can’t.
AT the moment when Hanley was shaking the Kid’s hand. Three and Nine were still about a mile away in an upward direction. They weren’t in an airplane or even in a space-ship (and definitely not in a flying saucer. Sure I know what flying saucers are but ask me about them some other time. Right now I want to stick to the Darians). They were in a space-time cube.
I suppose I’ll have to explain that. The Darians had discovered—as we may someday discover—that Einstein was right. Matter cannot travel faster than the speed of light without turning into energy. And you wouldn’t want to turn into energy, would you? Neither did the Darians when they started their explorations throughout the galaxy.
So they worked it out that one can travel in effect-faster than the speed of light if one travels through time simultaneously. Through the time-space continuum, that is, rather than through space itself. Their trip from Dar covered a distance of 163,000 light years.
But since they simultaneously traveled back into the past 1,630 centuries the elapsed time to them had been zero for the journey. On their return they had traveled 1,630 centuries into the future and arrived at their starting point in the space-time continuum. You see what I mean, I hope.
Anyway there was this cube, invisible to terrestrials, a mile over Philadelphia (and don’t ask me why they picked Philadelphia—I don’t know why anyone would pick Philadelphia for anything). It had been poised there for four days while Three and Nine had picked up and studied radio broadcasts until they were able to speak and understand the prevailing language.
Not, of course, anything at all about our civilization, such as it is, and our customs, such as they are. Can you imagine trying to picture the life of inhabitants of Earth by listening to a mixture of giveaway contests, soap operas, Charlie McCarthy and the Lone Ranger?
Not that they really cared what our civilization was as long as it wasn’t highly’ enough developed to be any threat to them—and they were pretty sure of that by the end of four days. You can’t blame them for getting that impression and anyway it was right;
“Shall we descend?” Three asked Nine.
“Yes,” Nine said to Three. Three curled himself around the controls.
“… sure and I. saw you fight,” Hanley was saying. “And you were good, Kid. You must’ve had a bad manager or you’d have hit the top. You had the stuff. How about, having a drink with me around the corner?”
“On you or on me, Hanley?”
“Well, at the moment I am a little broke, Kid. But I need a drink. For old times’ sake.”
“You need a drink like I need a hole in my head. You’re drunk now and you’d better sober up before you get the D. T.’s.”
“Got ‘em now,” Hanley said. “Think nothing of ‘em. Look, there they are coming up behind you.”
Illogically, Kid Eggleston turned and looked. He screamed and fainted. Three and Nine “were approaching. Beyond them was the shadowy outline of a monstrous cube twenty feet to a side. The way it, was there and yet wasn’t was a bit frightening. That must have been what scared the Kid.