STRANGER FROM SPACE-4
618 Words
SUDDENLY HE PUT HIS hands to her cheeks and bent close to her, his eyes peering into hers as though he were searching for something he had lost in them. She spoke her thought: “What are you doing? You seem to be reading my mind!”
Without removing hands, he nodded. “Reading—mind.” He stared long into her eyes. His dispassionate, too-perfect face began to frighten her. She slipped back from him, her hand clutching her throat.
He straightened up and spoke—haltingly at first, then with growing assurance. “Don’t be afraid. I mean you no harm.” She trembled. It was such a wonderful voice—it was as she had always dreamed it! But she had never really believed in the dream....
He was looking at the wrecked globe of metal. “So there are people on Venus!” he said slowly.
Koroby watched him, forgot her fear, and went eagerly to him, took his arm. “Who are you?” she asked. “Tell me your name!”
He turned his mask of a face to her. “My name? I have none,” he said.
“No name? But who are you? Where are you from? And what is that?” She pointed at the metal globe.
“The vehicle by which I came here from a land beyond the sky,” he said. She had no concept of stars or space, and he could not fully explain. “From a world known as Terra.”
She was silent a moment, stunned. So there was another world! Then she asked, “Is it far? Have you come to take me there?”
Here the similarity between her dream and actual experience ended. What was he thinking as he eyed her for a long moment? She had no way of guessing. He said, “No, I am not going to take you back there.” Her month gaped in surprise, and he continued, “As for the distance to Terra—it is incredibly far away.”
The glare was beginning to die, the green flames’ hissing fading to a whisper. They watched the melting globe sag on the sand. Then Koroby said, “But if it is so far away, how could you speak my language? There are some tribes beyond the jungle whose language is unlike ours—”
“I read your mind,” he explained indifferently. “I have a remarkable memory.”
“Remarkable indeed!” she mocked. “No one here could do that.”
“But my race is infinitely superior to yours,” he said blandly. “You little people—ah—” He gestured airily.
Her lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. “And I?”
His voice sounded almost surprised. “What about you?”
“You see nothing about me worthy of your respect? Are you infinitely superior to me—me?”
He looked her up and down. “Of course!”
Her eyes jerked wide open and she took a deep breath. “And just who do you think you are? A god?”
He shook his head. “No. Just better informed, for one thing. And—”
Koroby cut him short. “What’s your name?”
“I have none.”
“What do you mean, you have none?”
He seemed just a trifle bored. “We gave up names long ago on my world. We are concerned with more weighty things than our own selves. But I have a personal problem now,” he said, making a peculiar sound that was not quite a sigh. “Here I am stranded on Venus, my ship utterly wrecked, and I’m due at the Reisezek Convention in two weeks. You”—he gripped Koroby’s shoulder, and his strength made her wince—“tell me, where is the nearest city? I must communicate with my people at once.”
She pointed. “The Stone City’s that way.”
“Good,” he said. “Let’s go there.”
They took another glance at the metal globe and the green fire, which by now had died to a fitful glimmer. Then the stranger and the girl started toward the jungle, where the litter-bearers awaited them.
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- Writer
