The Puppet Masters Read online

  Room 9-A had one occupant-who looked up as I came in and said, "Well! The wolf in person, how did you manage to pick me up again? I could swear I gave you a clean miss."

  I said, "Hello, Mary."

  "Hello," she answered, "and now, good-by. Miss Barkis still ain't willin' and I've got work to do."

  I got annoyed. "Listen, you conceited little twerp, odd as it may seem to you, I did not come here looking for your no-doubt beautiful white body. I occasionally do some work myself and that is why I'm here. If you will put up with my unwelcome presence until my spools arrive, I'll get the hell out and find another study room,fa stag one."

  Instead of flaring back, she immediately softened, thereby proving that she was more of a gentleman than I was. "I'm sorry, Sam. A woman hears the same thing so many thousand times that she gets to thinking that no other topic is possible. Sit down."

  "No," I answered, "thanks, but I'll take my spools to an unoccupied room. I really do want to work."

  "Stay here," she insisted. "Read that notice on the wall. If you remove spools from the room to which they are delivered, you will not only cause the sorter to blow a dozen tubes, but you'll give the chief reference librarian a nervous breakdown."

  "I'll bring them back when I'm through with them."

  She took my arm and warm tingles went up it. "Please, Sam. I'm sorry."

  I sat down and grinned at her. "Nothing could persuade me to leave. I did not expect to find you here, but now that I have, I don't intend to let you out of sight until I know your phone code, your home address, and the true color of your hair."

  "Wolf," she said softly, wrinkling her nose. "You'll never know any of them." She made a great business of fitting her head back into her study machine while ignoring me. But I could see that she was not displeased.

  The delivery tube went thunk! and my spools spilled into the basket. I gathered them up and stacked them on the table by the other machine. One of them rolled over against the ones Mary had stacked up and knocked them down. Mary looked up.

  I picked up what I thought was my spool and glanced at the end-the wrong end, as all it held was the serial number and that little pattern of dots which the selector reads. I turned it over, read the label, and placed it in my pile.

  "Hey!" said Mary. "That's mine."

  "In a pig's eye," I said politely.

  "But it is–I read the label when it was faced toward me. It's the one I want next."

  Sooner or later, I can see the obvious. Mary wouldn't be there to study the history of footgear through the Middle Ages. I picked up three or four more of hers and read the labels. "So that's why nothing I wanted was in," I said. "But you didn't do a thorough job; I found some that you missed." I handed her my selection.

  Mary looked them over, then pushed all the spools into a single pile. "Shall we split them fifty-fifty, or both of us see them all?"

  "Fifty-fifty to weed out the junk, then we'll both go over the remainder," I decided. "Let's get busy."

  Even after having seen the parasite on poor Barnes's back, even after being solemnly assured by the Old Man that a "flying saucer" had in fact landed, I was not prepared for the monumental pile of evidence to be found buried in a public library. A pest on Digby and his evaluating formula! Digby was a floccinaucinihilipilificator at heart-which is an eight-dollar word meaning a joker who does not believe in anything he can't bite.

  The evidence was unmistakable; Earth had been visited by ships from outer space not once but many times.

  The reports long antedated our own achievement of space travel; some of them ran back into the seventeenth century-earlier than that, but it was impossible to judge the quality of reports dating back to a time when "science" meant an appeal to Aristotle. The first systematic data came from the United States itself in the 1940's and '50's. The next flurry was in the 1980's, mostly from Russo-Siberia. These reports were difficult to judge as there was no direct evidence from our own intelligence agents and anything that came from behind the Curtain was usually phony, ipso facto.

  I noticed something and started taking down dates. Strange objects in the sky appeared to hit a cycle with crests at thirty-year intervals, about. I made a note about it; a statistical analyst might make something of it-or more likely, if I fed it to the Old Man, he would see something in that crystal ball he uses for a brain.

  "Flying saucers" were tied in with "mysterious disappearances" not only through being in the same category as sea serpents, bloody rain, and such like wild data, but also because in at least three well-documented instances pilots had chased "saucers" and never come back, or down, anywhere, i.e., officially classed as crashed in wild country and not recovered– an "easy out" or "happy hurdle" type of explanation.

  I got another wild hunch and tried to see whether or not there was a thirty-year cycle in mysterious disappearances, and, if so, did it phase-match the objects in-the-sky cycle? There seemed to be but I could not be sure-too much data and not enough fluctuation; there are too many people disappearing every year for other reasons, from amnesia to mothers-in-law.

  But vital records have been kept for a long time and not all were lost in the bombings. I noted it down to farm out for professional analysis.

  The fact that groups of reports seemed to be geographically and even politically concentrated I did not try very hard to understand. I tabled it, after trying one hunch hypothesis on for size; put yourself in the invaders' place; if you were scouting a strange planet, would you study all of it equally, or would you pick out areas that looked interesting by whatever standards you had and then concentrate?

  It was just a guess and I was ready to chuck it before breakfast, if necessary.

  Mary and I did not exchange three words all night. Eventually we got up and stretched, then I lent Mary change to pay the machine for the spools of notes she had taken (why don't women carry change?) and got my wires out of hock, too. "Well, what's the verdict?" I asked.

  "I feel like a sparrow who has built a nice nest and discovers that it is in a rain spout."

  I recited the old jingle. "And we'll do the same thing-refuse to learn and build again in the spout."

  "Oh, no! Sam, we've got to do something, fast. The President has to be convinced. It makes a full pattern; this time they are moving in to stay."

  "Could be. In fact I think they are."

  "Well, what do we do?"

  "Honey chile, you are about to learn that in the Country of the Blind the one-eyed man is in for a hell of a rough ride."

  "Don't be cynical. There isn't time."

  "No. There isn't. Gather up your gear and let's get out of here."

  Dawn was on us as we left and the big library was almost deserted. I said, "Tell you what-let's find a barrel of beer, take it to my hotel room, bust in the head, and talk this thing over."

  She shook her head. "Not to your hotel room."

  "Damn it, this is business."

  "Let's go to my apartment. It's only a couple of hundred miles away; I'll fix you breakfast when we get there."

  I recalled my basic purpose in life in time to remember to leer. "That's the best offer I've had all night. But seriously-why not the hotel? We'd get breakfast there and save a half hour's travel."

  "You don't want to come to my apartment? I won't bite you."

  "I was hoping you would-so I could bite back. No, I was just wondering why the sudden switch?"

  "Well-perhaps I wanted to show you the bear traps I have arranged tastefully around my bed. Or perhaps I just wanted to prove to you I could cook." She dimpled for a moment.

  I flagged a taxi and we went to her apartment.

  When we got inside she left me standing, while she made a careful search of the place, then she came back and said, "Turn around. I want to feel your back."

  "Why do-"

  "Turn around!"

  I shut up and did so. She gave it a good knuckling, all over, then said, "Now you can feel mine."

  "With pleasure!" Nevertheless
I did a proper job, for I saw what she was driving at. There was nothing under her clothes but girl-girl and assorted items of lethal hardware.

  She turned around and let a deep sigh. "That's why I didn't want to go to your hotel room. Now we're safe. Now I know we are safe for the first time since I saw that thing on the station manager's back. This apartment is tight; I turn off the air and leave it sealed like a vault every time I leave it."

  "Say-how about the air conditioning? Could one get in through the ducts?"

  "Possibly-but I didn't turn on the conditioner system; I cracked one of the air-raid reserve bottles instead. Never mind; what would you like to eat?"

  I wanted to suggest Mary herself, served up on lettuce and toast, but I thought better of it. "Any chance of about two pounds of steak, just warmed through?"

  We split a five-pound steak between us and I swear I ate the short half. While we chomped, we watched the newscast. Still no news from Iowa.

  Chapter 5

  I did not get to see the bear traps; she locked her bedroom door. I know; I tried it. Three hours later she woke me and we had a second breakfast. Presently we struck cigarettes and I reached over and switched off the newscast. It was devoted principally to a display of the states' entries for "Miss America." Ordinarily I would have watched with interest but since none of the babes was round-shouldered and their contest costumes could not possibly have concealed humps bigger than mosquito bites, it seemed to lack importance that day.

  I said, "Well?"

  Mary said, "We've got to arrange the facts we have dug up and rub the President's nose in them. Action has to be on a national scale-global, really."

  "How?"

  "We've got to see him again."

  I repeated, "How?"

  She had no answer for that one.

  I said, "We've got only one route-via official channels. Through the Old Man."

  I put in the call, using both our codes so that Mary could hear, too. Presently I heard, "Chief Deputy Oldfield, speaking for the Old Man. He's not available. Shoot."

  "It's got to be the Old Man."

  There was a pause, then, "I don't have either one of you down as on assignment. Is this official or unofficial?"

  "Uh, I guess you'd call it unofficial."

  "Well, I won't put you through to the Old Man for anything unofficial. And anything official I am handling. Make up your mind."

  I thanked him and switched off before I used any bad language. Then I coded again. The Old Man has a special code, in addition to regular channels, which is guaranteed to cause him to rise up out of his coffin-but God help the agent who uses it unnecessarily. I hadn't used it in five years.

  He answered with a burst of profanity.

  "Boss," I said, "on the Iowa matter-"

  He broke off short. "Yes?"

  "Mary and I spent all night digging former data out of the files. We want to talk it over with you."

  The profanity resumed. Presently he told me to brief it and turn it in for analysis and added that he intended to have my ears fried for a sandwich.

  "Boss!" I said sharply.

  "Eh?"

  "If you can run out on the job, so can we. Both Mary and I are resigning from the Section right now-and that's official!"

  Mary's eyebrows went up but she said nothing. There was a silence so long that I thought he had cut me off, then he said, in a tired, whipped voice, "Palmglade Hotel, North Miami Beach. I'll be the third sunburn from the end."

  "Right away." I sent for a taxi and we went up on the roof. I had the hackie swing out over the ocean to avoid the Carolina speed trap; we made good time.

  The Old Man was sunburned all right. He lay there, looking sullen and letting sand dribble through his fingers, while we reported. I had brought along a little buzz box so that he could get it directly off the wire.

  He looked up sharply when we came to the point about thirty-year cycles, but he allowed it to ride until he came to my later query about possible similar cycles in disappearances, whereupon he stopped me and called the Section. "Get me Analysis. Hello, Peter? This is the boss. I want a curve on unexplained disappearances, quantitative, starting with 1800. Huh? People, of course–did you think I meant latch keys? Smooth out known factors and discount steady load-what I want to see is humps and valleys. When? I want it two hours ago; what are you waiting for?"

  After he switched off he struggled to his feet, let me hand him his cane and said, "Well, back to the jute mill. We've no facilities here."

  "To the White House?" Mary asked eagerly.

  "Eh? Be your age. You two have picked up nothing that would change the President's mind."

  "Oh. Then what?"

  "I don't know. Keep quiet, unless you have a bright idea."

  The Old Man had a car at hand, of course, and I drove us back. After I turned it over to block control I said, "Boss, I've got a caper that might convince the President, if you can get him to hold still."

  He grunted. "Like this," I went on, "send two agents in, me and one other. The other agent carries a portable scanning rig and keeps it trained on me the whole time. You get the President to watch what happens."

  "Suppose nothing happens?"

  "I plan to make it happen. First, I am going where the space ship landed, bull my way on through. We'll get close-up pix of the real ship, piped right into the White House. After that I plan to go back to Barnes's office and investigate those round shoulders. I'll tear shirts off right in front of the camera. There won't be any finesse to the job; I'll just bust things wide open with a sledge hammer."

  "You realize you would have the same chance as a mouse at a cat convention."

  "I'm not so sure. As I see it, these things haven't any superhuman powers. I'll bet they are strictly limited to whatever the human being they are riding can do-maybe less. I don't plan on being a martyr. In any case I'll get you pix, good ones."

  "Hmm-"

  "It might work," Mary put in. "I'll be the other agent, I can-"

  The Old Man and I said, "No," together-and then I flushed; it was not my prerogative to say so. Mary went on, "I was going to say that I am the logical one because of the, uh, talent I have for spotting a man with a parasite on him."

  "No," the Old Man repeated, "It won't be necessary. Where he's going they'll all have riders-assumed so until proved otherwise. Besides, I am saving you for something."

  She should have shut up, but for once did not. "For what? This is important."

  Instead of snapping at her the Old Man said quietly, "So is the other job. I'm planning to make you a presidential bodyguard, as soon as I can get it through his head that this is serious."

  "Oh." She thought about it and answered, "uh, boss-"

  "Eh?"

  "I'm not certain I could spot a woman who was possessed. I'm not, uh, equipped for it."

  "So we take his women secretaries away from him. Ask me a hard one. And Mary-you'll be watching him, too. He's a man, you know."

  She turned that over in her mind. "And suppose I find that one has gotten to him, in spite of everything?"

  "You take necessary action, the Vice President succeeds to the chair, and you get shot for treason. Simple. Now about this mission. We'll send Jarvis with the scanner and I think I'll include Davidson as an extra hatchet man. While Jarvis keeps the pick-up on you, Davidson can keep his eyes on Jarvis-and you can try to keep one eye on him. Ring-around the-rosy."

  "You think it will work, then?"

  "No-but any plan of action is better than no plan. Maybe it will stir up something."

  While we headed for Iowa-Jarvis, Davidson, and I-the Old Man went back to Washington. He took Mary along. She cornered me as we were about to leave, grabbed me by the ears, kissed me firmly and said, "Sam-try to come back."

  I got all tingly and felt like a fifteen-year-old. Second childhood, I guess.

  Davidson roaded the car beyond the place where I had found a bridge out. I was navigating, using a large-scale ordnance map on which ha
d been pinpointed the exact landing site of the real space ship. The bridge, which was still out, gave a close-by and precise reference point. We turned off the road two tenths of a mile due east of the site and jeeped through the scrub to the spot. Nobody tried to stop us.

  Almost to the spot, I should say. We ran into freshly burned-over ground and decided to walk. The site as shown by the space station photograph was included in the brush fire area-and there was no "flying saucer". It would have taken a better detective than I will ever be to show that one had ever landed there. The fire had destroyed the traces, if any.

  Jarvis scanned everything, anyhow, but I knew that the slugs had won another round. As we came out we ran into an elderly farmer; following doctrine we kept a wary distance, although he looked harmless.

  "Quite a fire," I remarked, sidling away.

  "Sure was," he said dolefully. "Killed two of my best milk cows, the poor dumb brutes. You fellows reporters?"

  "Yes," I agreed, "but we've been sent out on a wild-goose chase." I wished Mary were along. Probably this character was naturally round-shouldered. On the other hand, assuming that the Old Man was right about the space ship-and he had to be right-then this all-too-innocent bumpkin must know about it and was covering it up. Ergo, he was hag-ridden.

  I decided that I had to do it. The chances of capturing a live parasite and getting its picture on the channels back to the White House were better here than they would be in a crowd. I threw a glance at my teammates; they were both alert and Jarvis was scanning.

  As the farmer turned to go I tripped him. He went face down and I was on his back like a monkey, clawing at his shirt. Jarvis moved in and got a close up; Davidson moved over to cover point. I had his back bare before he got his wind.

  And it was bare. It was as clean as mine, no parasite, no sign of one. Nor any place on his body, which I made sure of before I let him up.

  I helped him up and brushed him off; his clothes were filthy with ashes and so were mine. "I'm terribly sorry," I said. "I've made a bad mistake."

  He was trembling with anger. "You young-" He couldn't seem to find a word bad enough for me. He looked at all of us and his mouth quivered. "I'll have the law on you. If I were twenty years younger I'd lick all three of you."