I need scarcely recount them all, each with its own abominable significance. It is THEM. Who are eternal and nameless, who send their scouts down to test earth-man. Don’t you realize that they have watched man creep out of primal slimes, take limbs and shamble, and finally walk? And that they are waiting, biding their time...” I shivered with a fear beyond name. I tried to laugh and could not. Then, bold with stark horror, I shouted quite loudly: “How do you know this? Are you one of THEM?” He shook his head violently. “No, no!” I made as to go, feeling an aching horror within me.
“Stay only a moment more, man. I will have pity on you and will not tell you all. I will not describe them. And I will not assay that which, when upon first seeing you here by the sea, I first intended...” I listened. Not daring to look at him; as in the grip of daemonaic dream. My fingers clutched at the edges of the bench so tightly that I have been unable to write with them until now. He concluded thus:
“So you see that I am everywhere a worldless alien. Sometimes this secret is too great for one mind to contain, and I must talk. I must feel the presence of someone human near me, else I shall attempt to commit suicide and again fail. It is without end—my horror. Have pity on me, man of earth, as I have had pity on you.”
It was then that I gripped him by the shoulders and looked with pleading desperation into his staring eyes. “Why have you told me? What—” My voice broke. My hands fell to my sides. I shuddered.
He understood. Shrieked one word: “PITY!” into my insensible ear, and was gone.
That was 3 nites ago and each nite since has been hell. I cannot remember how long it was after the STRANGER left that I found myself able to move, to rise, hobble home, suddenly ancient with knowledge. And I cannot—WILL NOT—reveal to you all that I heard.
I thot myself insane, but after an examination, a physician pronounced me that I had been strained mentally. I am competent. But I wonder if he is wrong.
I view the silken stars tonight with loathing. HE sought to master their inscrutable secret meaning, and succeeded. He imagined, he dreamed; and he fed his sleep with potions, so that he might learn where his mind might be during sleep, and himself probe into the mind that wandered from space into his resting body-shell. I am no scientist, no bio-chemist, so I learned little of his methods. Only that he did succeed in removing his mind from Earth, and soaring to some remote world over and beyond this universe—where THEY dwell. And THEY knew him to be a mind of Earth, he told me. He but hinted of the evil he beheld, so potent with dread that it shattered his mind. And THEY cured him, and sent him back to earth... “They are waiting!” he shrieked, in his grating skeleton of a voice. “They are contemptuous of man and his feeble colonies. But they fear that some day, like an overgrown idiot child, he may do them harm. But before this time—when Man has progressed into a ripeness—THEY will descend! Then they will come in hordes to exploit the world as THEY did before!”
Of his return, and his assuming the role of a man, the Alien spoke evasively. It was to be assurred that this talk of his was not some repulsive caprice; to know that all of it was true, that I gripped him and beheld him. To my everlasting horror, I must know. Little in itself, what I saw, but sufficient to cause me to sink down on the stone bench in a convulsive huddle of fear. Never again in life can I tear this clutching terror from my soul. Only this: That when I looked into his staring eyes in the dimness of murky twilight, and before he understood and quickly avaunted, I glimpsed with astoundment and repugnance that between the muffling of his coat and black scarf the INTRUDER wore a meticulously painted metal mask—to hide what I must not see...
An Ounce of Cure
by Alan Edward Nourse
The doctor’s office was shiny and modern. Behind the desk the doctor smiled down at James Wheatley through thick glasses. "Now, then! What seems to be the trouble?"
Wheatley had been palpitating for five days straight at the prospect of coming here. "I know it’s silly," he said. "But I’ve been having a pain in my toe."
"Indeed!" said the doctor. "Well, now! How long have you had this pain, my man?"
"About six months now, I’d say. Just now and then, you know. It’s never really been bad. Until last week. You see—"
"I see," said the doctor. "Getting worse all the time, you say."
Wheatley wiggled the painful toe reflectively. "Well—you might say that. You see, when I first—"
"How old did you say you were, Mr. Wheatley?"
"Fifty-five."
"Fifty-five!" The doctor leafed through the medical record on his desk. "But this is incredible. You haven’t had a checkup in almost ten years!"
"I guess I haven’t," said Wheatley, apologetically. "I’d been feeling pretty well until—"
"Feeling well!" The doctor stared in horror. "But my dear fellow, no checkup since January 1963! We aren’t in the Middle Ages, you know. This is 1972."
"Well, of course—"
"Of course you may be feeling well enough, but that doesn’t mean everything is just the way it should be. And now, you see, you’re having pains in your toes!"
"One toe," said Wheatley. "The little one on the right. It seemed to me—"
"One toe today, perhaps," said the doctor heavily. "But tomorrow—" He heaved a sigh. "How about your breathing lately? Been growing short of breath when you hurry upstairs?"
"Well—I have been bothered a little."
"I thought so! Heart pound when you run for the subway? Feel tired all day? Pains in your calves when you walk fast?"
"Uh—yes, occasionally, I—" Wheatley looked worried and rubbed his toe on the chair leg.
"You know that fifty-five is a dangerous age," said the doctor gravely. "Do you have a cough? Heartburn after dinner? Prop up on pillows at night? Just as I thought! And no checkup for ten years!" He sighed again.
"I suppose I should have seen to it," Wheatley admitted. "But you see, it’s just that my toe—"
"My dear fellow! Your toe is part of you. It doesn’t just exist down there all by itself. If your toe hurts, there must be a reason."
Wheatley looked more worried than ever. "There must? I thought—perhaps you could just give me a little something—"
"To stop the pain?" The doctor looked shocked. "Well, of course I could do that, but that’s not getting at the root of the trouble, is it? That’s just treating symptoms. Medieval quackery. Medicine has advanced a long way since your last checkup, my friend. And even treatment has its dangers. Did you know that more people died last year of aspirin poisoning than of cyanide poisoning?"
Wheatley wiped his forehead. "I—dear me! I never realized—"
"We have to think about those things," said the doctor. "Now, the problem here is to find out why you have the pain in your toe. It could be inflammatory. Maybe a tumor. Perhaps it could be, uh, functional...or maybe vascular!"
"Perhaps you could take my blood pressure, or something," Wheatley offered.
"Well,
