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.”