Read Online When They Come from Space by Mark Clifton - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mark Clifton
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admiration of such incredible bravery, shame that I was sometimes sardonic and cynical of man.
"Goddam,” I heard myself saying over and over. “Goddam, goddam, goddam.” That such courage should be so futile.
The blur of my grief for man streaked the lights. I dashed away the scintillating tears angrily. The clutches of wing missiles soared out ahead of the interceptors, the sonic booms shocked and roared and made puny the sounds of firing. Puny, too, the little V as it approached the apex of the gigantic one, but, goddam, how brave!
The points of the tiny and the great merged. Our small was lost in the huge, swallowed in flaming radiance.
But when the vast V wheeled away, majestically, the interceptors could be discerned once more; yes, there they were, zooming wildly, as if out of control, into space.
Yet not out of control, no. I felt my caught breath return, hurting, when I saw them re-forming into attack groups. Section by trained section they peeled off, in traditional patterns preserved out of a long-dead past, they hurled in sonic-booming speeds toward the giant V. Small groups of us, attacking theirs, Them. At the sides of their apex instead of its point, cutting loose at them with ear-numbing barrages, and using the very forces of recoil to pull the interceptors up and out of their screaming power dives.
And against all our unleashed might, not one single projectile wavered from the huge formation.
Crouched there on the balcony, my back against—all right, all right, cowering against—the solid window frame, the only seeming solid thing in a boiling fluid world of noise and motion and light, I watched the fight go on.
The fight?
There was no fight. There was Man, spewing all his power, all his might, all the fierce, aggressive product of his brain and hand against his enemy. How had we known it enemy?
But there was no fight.
For the discs were not striking back. No red ray coruscated down and down to melt our City into flowing stone.
My senses numbed.
There had been not even falling shrapnel, broken pieces of missiles fired from our own at them. It was as if some unknown vacuum cleaner, electromagnet, sucked up the debris of battle as it occurred—to keep our people safe and our streets clean.
I—don't—understand,” I said slowly, as if the formation of each word required the search of some unfamiliar glossary to translate my feelings into words.
Spent interceptors returned to Earth, new waves of others arose to take their place—no less brave, no less determined.
No more effective.
Ignored now by the discs, they spent themselves in turn. The great V no longer paid us the compliment of wheeling massively to meet our charge. Rather now it seemed bent on some purpose of its own, without regard.
Yes, the far ends of the angle lines were curving inward, bending, bending inward until at last they met. A cloudiness appeared in circle at the center, and at its center an incredibly bright spot of pure crimson light. The cloudy haze coalesced, solidified, striated.
A monstrous, pupil-pierced and piercing, bloodshot eye looked down upon the city.
I later learned it was the common experience of each human being in the city, but at that moment I was convinced the piercing gaze seemed directed upon me, into me, through me.
The eye, at first stretching almost from horizon to horizon, was smaller now. Now it filled but half the sky. And this before I had realized it was shrinking at all, so firm its hypnotic gaze. But now that I had realized it, the shrinking was accelerated; the eye was going away from us; faster and faster; out into space.
Yet even to the last, that piercing pupil penetrated me, impaled me upon its malevolent beam of light. And then it, too, winked out.
The flaming mists of the sky cleared. Here and there, the brighter stars began to shine through it. In the distance, over Rock Creek Park, I could see the last interceptors returning to Earth.
There seemed no triumph in their
"Goddam,” I heard myself saying over and over. “Goddam, goddam, goddam.” That such courage should be so futile.
The blur of my grief for man streaked the lights. I dashed away the scintillating tears angrily. The clutches of wing missiles soared out ahead of the interceptors, the sonic booms shocked and roared and made puny the sounds of firing. Puny, too, the little V as it approached the apex of the gigantic one, but, goddam, how brave!
The points of the tiny and the great merged. Our small was lost in the huge, swallowed in flaming radiance.
But when the vast V wheeled away, majestically, the interceptors could be discerned once more; yes, there they were, zooming wildly, as if out of control, into space.
Yet not out of control, no. I felt my caught breath return, hurting, when I saw them re-forming into attack groups. Section by trained section they peeled off, in traditional patterns preserved out of a long-dead past, they hurled in sonic-booming speeds toward the giant V. Small groups of us, attacking theirs, Them. At the sides of their apex instead of its point, cutting loose at them with ear-numbing barrages, and using the very forces of recoil to pull the interceptors up and out of their screaming power dives.
And against all our unleashed might, not one single projectile wavered from the huge formation.
Crouched there on the balcony, my back against—all right, all right, cowering against—the solid window frame, the only seeming solid thing in a boiling fluid world of noise and motion and light, I watched the fight go on.
The fight?
There was no fight. There was Man, spewing all his power, all his might, all the fierce, aggressive product of his brain and hand against his enemy. How had we known it enemy?
But there was no fight.
For the discs were not striking back. No red ray coruscated down and down to melt our City into flowing stone.
My senses numbed.
There had been not even falling shrapnel, broken pieces of missiles fired from our own at them. It was as if some unknown vacuum cleaner, electromagnet, sucked up the debris of battle as it occurred—to keep our people safe and our streets clean.
I—don't—understand,” I said slowly, as if the formation of each word required the search of some unfamiliar glossary to translate my feelings into words.
Spent interceptors returned to Earth, new waves of others arose to take their place—no less brave, no less determined.
No more effective.
Ignored now by the discs, they spent themselves in turn. The great V no longer paid us the compliment of wheeling massively to meet our charge. Rather now it seemed bent on some purpose of its own, without regard.
Yes, the far ends of the angle lines were curving inward, bending, bending inward until at last they met. A cloudiness appeared in circle at the center, and at its center an incredibly bright spot of pure crimson light. The cloudy haze coalesced, solidified, striated.
A monstrous, pupil-pierced and piercing, bloodshot eye looked down upon the city.
I later learned it was the common experience of each human being in the city, but at that moment I was convinced the piercing gaze seemed directed upon me, into me, through me.
The eye, at first stretching almost from horizon to horizon, was smaller now. Now it filled but half the sky. And this before I had realized it was shrinking at all, so firm its hypnotic gaze. But now that I had realized it, the shrinking was accelerated; the eye was going away from us; faster and faster; out into space.
Yet even to the last, that piercing pupil penetrated me, impaled me upon its malevolent beam of light. And then it, too, winked out.
The flaming mists of the sky cleared. Here and there, the brighter stars began to shine through it. In the distance, over Rock Creek Park, I could see the last interceptors returning to Earth.
There seemed no triumph in their
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