Read Ebook: Second census by Peterson John Victor

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Ebook has 123 lines and 7534 words, and 3 pages

I had to find a way to delay this strange man.

The census taker pulled papers from his pocket, then reeled as though drunk. He staggered backward against and out of the door, the autoclose slamming it behind him.

I jerked open the door and jumped out on the stoop.

In those few seconds the man had vanished--

No! There he was fifty feet away ringing Mike Kozulak's bell. And he was erect, completely steady!

I turned back and picked up the papers he'd dropped. There was a little sheaf of them, printed on incredibly thin paper. The printing resembled the wave-forms I had seen upon the 'scope. It was like some twisted Arabic script. And this strange script was overprinted on a star-chart which I thought I recognized.

I was stunned. I staggered a bit as I went back out on the stoop and looked down the street. I welcomed the sight of Ed Fitzgerald hurrying up across the neighbors' forelawns, uprooting some of the burbanked tropical plants en route.

I dragged Fitzgerald inside and we went up the passenger shaft under optimum ascent.

My little Ponticopter's jets seared the roof garden as I blasted forward before the vanes had lifted us clear of the stage. I think I out-Browned Browne in going those five blocks and I know I laid the foundation for a Mrs. Browne vs. Mr. Rainford feud as I dropped my 'copter with dismaying results into the roof garden which was her idea of Eden. I had to, though; Brownie's is a one-copter stage and his ship was on it.

We beat the alien. We looked back down the hill before we entered Brownie's passenger shaft. The fellow was just staggering out of Jack Wohl's rancher at the lower end of this last block.

We found Browne working on a stripped-down stereo chassis which had been carelessly laid without protective padding in the middle of the highly polished dining table. I knew then that his wife couldn't possibly be home.

Browne looked up as if he were accustomed to unannounced people dropping into his reception chute.

"To what do I owe the honor of--" he started. Fitzgerald interrupted him with a stammered burst that brought a pleased grin to his broad features.

"Well, Fitz," Browne said. "Where's the old control?"

Fitzgerald fumed. I took over and explained swiftly.

His front door chimed and became one-way transparent. We saw the alien standing on the stoop, erect and calm.

"Now what will--" Fitzgerald started. "We thought maybe--the chair, Brownie!"

Browne grinned and pressed a button on the table console. He has them in every room--to control at his whim any of the dozens of electronic and mechanical equipments located throughout his enormous house.

The front door opened and the alien entered as Browne cried "Come in!"

The alien glanced back at the closed door with a trace of annoyance on his broad features; then regarded us imperturbably as we advanced.

"Mr. Fitzgerald and Mr. Rainford," he said flatly. "Well, this is a surprise!"

He didn't sound sincere.

The alien shook his head negatively.

Browne gave Fitzgerald and me a quick glance, inclining his head forward. We promptly accelerated our advance.

He lunged forward, grasping with his big hands, as we leaped at the alien from either flank.

Browne leaped to a console and punched the roof-lock button. A split second later we heard a riveting machine burst of what was obviously Centaurian profanity coming down the shaft as the alien found the exit closed. Browne's fingers darted on the console, locking all the upstairs windows.

"Browne," I said, "what good will that do? If we do manage to corner him, just how long do you think we can stand up against him? With his speed he could evade us until doomsday, to say nothing about beating our brains out while we tried to land one, solid punch!"

Fitzgerald said, "If we can keep him on the run, maybe he'll get tired."

"Yeah, maybe," I said. "What if that's his normal speed? And who's likely to get tired first? I'm dragging as of now."

"Well," Fitzgerald said, "we could get more people in and go at him in shifts--or, well, what about tear gas or an anesthetic gas or--"

"Whatever he's after, his approach certainly varies. He asked you a lot of questions, Fitz, but, Jim, practically all he did in your house was tell you your wife was pregnant with quintuplets. And whatever his approach has been, he never seems to finish whatever he comes to do. Something about you two--and from what you two have said, Kozulak and Wohl--seems to have a most peculiar effect on him; you say he's staggered out of every house he's entered only to recover again in a matter of seconds.

"Just try to equate that!"

He stopped, pondering, and we didn't interrupt.

"Look," he said, "you two go upstairs. Take opposite sides of the house and find him. Go slowly so that he won't be alarmed. Try to talk with him, to persuade him we mean him no harm. If you find you can't persuade him to come willingly, try to work him back to the passenger shaft. I'll watch through the console--I've kinescopes in every room--and I'll lock off one room at a time so that he can't reverse himself. I won't activate the kinescopes until you're upstairs; he might deactivate them if he weren't kept busy. Get him back to the passenger shaft and I'll take over from there."

"But what--" Fitzgerald started.

Browne scowled and we went. Fitzgerald should have known better; there are no buts when Browne gives orders.

We reached the second floor, floated off the up column into the foyer, and separated.

Browne's first floor rooms are spacious, but most of those on the second floor are not. I'd never been on the second floor before; I found it a honeycomb of interconnected rooms of varying sizes and shapes. I was apparently in Mrs. Browne's quarters; there were half a dozen hobby rooms alone: a sewing room, a painting room, a sculpture room, a writing room, others--And here was her spacious bedroom and on its far side the alien was vainly trying to force one of its windows.

He turned as I entered, his curious eyes darting around for an avenue of escape.

"Now, wait," I said as soothingly as I could. "We don't mean any harm. I think we're justified in being curious as to why you're here. Who are you anyway? What are you looking for and why?"

He shook his head as if bewildered and seemed suddenly to become unsteady.

"One question at a time, please," he said, temporizingly. "Your school system isn't exacting enough; you all think of too many things at once. It shocks a mind trained to single subject concentration, especially when one has been educated in telepathic reception."

He grinned at me as I mentally recalled his staggering moments of seeming drunkenness.

One question at a time, he'd said. Well, I'd ask him the one that was burning at the threshold of my mind. I said quickly:

"I realize that you probably read in my mind that my wife and I are expecting quintuplets, but how did you know the rest--about the division of sexes--or did you guess?"

"I'll have to explain," he said; then hesitated, seeming to debate mentally with himself as to whether he should go on. Suddenly he started to talk so fast that the words nearly blurred into unrecognizability, like a 45 rpm record at 78.

"I am Hirm Sulay of Alpha Centauri Five," he burst. "My people have warred with the race of Beta Centauri Three for fifty of your years. We secretly bring our children here to protect them from sporadic bombing, insuring their upbringing through placing them in orphanages or directly into homes."

A horrible suspicion flamed in my mind. I'd tried vainly to account for the multiple birth we were expecting. I cried at him: "Then my wife--" and he said,

"She will have twin girls, Doc Gardiner tells me. We had planned to have three newborn boys ready in the delivery room."

"Then Doc Gardiner--"

"He and his staff are all of my race," Hirm Sulay said. "I see how your mind leaped when I said 'newborn boys.' Your UFO sightings frequently describe a 'mother' ship. Considering the gravid women aboard I'd say the description is quite apt."

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