The Insidious Invaders
by Robert Silverberg
After the incident of the disposal unit, there was no longer any room for reasonable doubt: something peculiar had happened to Ted Kennedy while he was away at space. Marge and Dave Spalding, Kennedy’s sister and brother-in-law, had been watching him all evening, growing more and more puzzled by certain strangenesses in Kennedy’s behavior. But this was the strangest of all.
He had been wandering around the room, examining the new gadgets that now were standard household fare. They were strange to him, after all the years he had been away. He had been standing by the wall disposal unit, which efficiently and instantly converted matter to energy, and he had suddenly, curiously, stuck his hand near the open entryway to the unit, saying, “This house is so full of new gadgets that I hardly know what anything does. This thing over here—”
“Watch out, Ted!” Marge Spalding screamed in alarm. “Don’t—”
She was too late. There was the brief crackling noise of the disposal unit functioning. And Kennedy had thrust his arm in up to the elbow!
“Ted!” Marge wailed. “Your arm—!” She closed her eyes and felt hysterics starting.
But Kennedy said in the same calm, strange voice he had been using all evening, “My arm’s all right, Marge. What’s all the excitement about?”
“But—but that was the wall disposal unit,” Marge muttered bewilderedly. “Anything you put in there gets converted to energy.”
Kennedy held up an obviously intact arm and smiled, the way one might smile when talking to a child who misunderstands. “Look, Marge. I pulled my arm back in time. See?”
Dave Spalding, who had been watching the scene with growing confusion, said, “But we heard the sound, Ted. When you activate the unit, it crackles like that.”
“And I saw you stick your hand in there all the way up to the elbow, Ted!” Marge insisted.
Kennedy chuckled. “You’re both imagining things. All I did was toss a piece of candy in to see what would happen. My hand didn’t go anywhere near the field.”
“But I saw your hand go in, Ted,” Marge repeated, getting more stubborn now that the evidence of her own eyes was being contradicted. “And yet—your hand’s all right. I don’t understand.”
“I tell you my hand didn’t come anywhere near it, Marge,” her brother said forcefully. “Let’s not discuss it any more, shall we?”
That was the strangest part of the evening so far, Marge thought. But Ted had been behaving peculiarly ever since he came in.
He had been late, first of all. That was unlike the old Ted. He had been expected about nine, but he was long overdue. Dave Spalding had been pacing the apartment with increasing irritation.
“It’s past ten, Marge. When’s this spaceman brother of yours getting here? Three in the morning?”
“Oh, Dave, don’t start getting upset about it,” Marge had said soothingly. “So he’s a little late! Don’t forget it’s five years since he was last on Earth.”
“Five years or no five years. His ship landed at half past seven. It doesn’t take three hours to get here from the spaceport. I thought you said he was so punctual, Marge.”
“He used to be. Oh, I don’t know—maybe there was some routine he had to go through, before they would let him leave the spaceport. I understand there’s a comprehensive medical examination for all returning spacemen—”
“That’s all we need,” Spalding snorted. “Some weird disease he picked up on Alpha Centauri Five, or—”
“You know they wouldn’t let him near civilians if he had any such diseases.”
“Well, all I want to say is that if he doesn’t show his face here by eleven, I’m going to go upstairs and go to bed,” Spalding grumbled. “Spaceman or no spaceman. I need my sleep.”
The doorbell chimed.
Marge cried, “There he is now, Dave! I knew he’d get here any minute! Be nice to him, Dave. He is my brother, after all. And I haven’t seen him since ’89.”
“Okay,” Spalding said. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be polite.”
He walked to the door, hesitated before it a moment, and opened it. A tall young man in spaceman’s uniform stood in the hallway, smiling. There was something about the quality of that smile that made Dave Spalding instantly uncomfortable. As if—as if it were not the smile of a human being, but of some alien thing wearing the mask of humanity.
“Hello, there,” Spalding said with forced geniality. “Come right on in. My name’s Dave Spalding.”
“Thanks. I appreciate this, Dave.” Kennedy stepped in. His voice, when he had spoken, had a curious otherwordly undertone.
Spalding closed the door.
Marge ran toward her brother, throwing her arms around him. “Ted! Oh, Ted!”
“Hello, Sis!” Kennedy replied. He thrust her gently away from him. “Stand back—let me look at you.” He whistled appreciatively. “Sister’s a big girl, now, isn’t she?”
“I’m almost 24,” Marge said “I married Dave three years ago.”
“You haven’t changed much in the five years I’ve been away,” Kennedy said. “The same red hair—that dimple—the freckles on your nose—”
“Was there much red tape before you could leave the spaceport?” Spalding broke in brusquely.
“Just the medical exam,” Kennedy said. “They gave me a quick look to make sure I wasn’t carrying the plague. I was cleared through around quarter past eight.”
Spalding gave an unfunny chuckle. “You must have stopped off for a little nip or two before coming here, eh?”
“Nip? No. I came straight here from the spaceport.”
“But it only takes half an hour by rocket-tube,” Marge said, frowning.
Kennedy shook his head. “No one said anything to me about a rocket-tube. I took the subway.”
“The subway!” Spalding laughed. “Oh, really now—the subway, all the way out here! No wonder it took you so long!”
Marge said, “Dave, the rocket-tube line has only been in operation three and a half years. That’s why Ted didn’t use it. He didn’t know it existed!”
“The world changes more than you think in five years. The new-model autos that drive themselves—the three-D video—the robots—those things were still brand new and strange, when I was last on Earth. And now they’re commonplace. To everyone except me.”
Marge stared keenly at her brother. When he spoke like that, he seemed real. But there was something unconvincing about him, all the same.
What am I thinking? she wondered. Am I nuts? He’s my brother, that’s all. He looks and acts a little different because he’s been away so long.
Dave said, “Come on into the living room, Ted. You probably want to rest up. I’ll give you a drink—put a little music on—”
“And you can tell us all about your five years in space,” Marge said.
Ted smiled. “Good ideas, all of them.”
They adjourned to the living room, where Kennedy made himself comfortable in an armchair. Spalding turned the phonograph on. Chamber music welled out into the room. Kennedy nodded his head in time with the music.
“Mozart,” he said. “You miss him, out in space.”
“Can I dial you a drink?” Spalding asked.
“Scotch, thanks. I take it neat.”
“Same old Ted!” Marge said, reassuring herself. “Still likes the same music, still drinks then same kind of drink.”
“It’s only been five years, you know. I haven’t been away forever.”
Marge nodded. But, still, the nagging feeling persisted that there was something different about Ted that a mere absence of five years could not account for.
“Can you tell us where you’ve been?” Spalding asked. “Or is that classified?”