Alien enemy

“ The alien is equipped in some manner to impose thoughts upon the human brain. You thought the telviz was used; actually the alien wasn't speaking Amer-English, he was simply forcing thoughts into your minds."
Markham Gray, watching and listening to this over his set, shook his head in dissatisfaction. As always, the military mind was dull and unreceptive. The ridiculousness of expecting Post to blast off into space in an attempt to fool the other craft in regard to his home planet was obvious. ”

“ Post had stood before the raised dais upon which were seated SupSpaceCom Michell and four other high-ranking officers and heard the charge read—failure to attack the alien craft, destroy it, and thus prevent the aliens—wherever they might be from—returning to their own world and reporting the presence of man in the galaxy. ”

“ Nobody had ever seen an Alien—they invariably exploded to dust before they could be captured—but the horror of their senseless brutality was revealed in the hideous human corpses they left behind them.
Norden had been drafted while there was still optimism. Men could build a hundred ships to the Aliens' one, equally radar-proof, free from danger of magnetic or electronic detection, and nearly invisible in space. ”

“ According to a group of New England college students, writing in the year 1920, an alien was the following: [Footnote: The New Republic: December 29, 1920, p. 142. ]
"A person hostile to this country."
"A person against the government."
"A person who is on the opposite side."
"A native of an unfriendly country."
"A foreigner at war."
"A foreigner who tries to do harm to the country he is in."
"An enemy from a foreign land."
"A person against a country." etc....
Yet the word alien is an unusually exact legal term, far more exact than words like sovereignty, independence, national honor, rights, defense, aggression, imperialism, capitalism, socialism, about which we so readily take sides "for" ”

“ But as for now, the characteristic of despair is the lowest common denominator among the combat patrols, and we therefore have mutinies, disobedience of orders, defections of every variety. That is a real situation, and it will persist until we can induce the men to accept tactical leadership that can cope with the enemy.
"Actually, it is not very remarkable that this situation developed. Strategy is still a rational computable quantity, but the actual tactics of fighting is something else entirely. The aliens have an intellectual response that is in full truth alien to us. ”

“ But the aliens mustn't know it, for anything that would startle them or make them suspicious might turn the tide of their indecision instantly, and bring sudden violent, purposeless death—
The arm could be used to keep himself alive—if he had to. The thought of the one alien crept through his mind: the cold, unyielding hate, and the fear. The others were merely curious, and curiosity could be his weapon, to help him establish the link that was so necessary. Somehow, contact must be established—without frightening them, or threatening them in any way. ”

“ The Aliens work by mental control. We've had everyone brought into this building, have double-checked them, and have sealed the doors with a time lock. It turned out that one of the men was missing—we'd only imagined he was among us when we assembled.
"We scoured the planet before we landed and saw no signs of the Aliens. We've seen no Alien ships land since we arrived. We have no idea where they are, except that there's one sizable area not far from here that we can't seem to penetrate. The only evidence we have that the Aliens arrived after we did is that they told us so. ”

“ I found that I had a problem—I couldn't figure which one of my three stumpy legs to start walking with. I extended all my eyes and examined myself. I looked like an Alien wearing a checked kilt.
Unhappily, I tried to lick my labial fringes with my tongue—and suddenly realized that I had no tongue! It was an unnerving realization, even to me. But then I knew why the Aliens were transmitting hatred of themselves; any Earthman who knew what an Alien looked like would attack me on sight. ”

“ At every moment I expected the great serpent-fleet to burst out upon us from behind some dead or dying sun, for I knew that their allowing us to advance through their universe thus unhindered meant only that they had prepared some ambush for us. Yet as we sped in toward the center of the dying universe, there appeared no single enemy craft about us or on our space-charts, a total absence of all serpent-ships that began to affect our nerves as we drove ever more tensely forward. ”

“ But I can show you more to disprove it than you can dig up to prove it! What happens when I assassinate an alien? His human vehicle croaks, while he himself swells up, turns a vivid horrid hue, and goes pop. ”

“ The battle lamp went crashing to the deck; the heat gun flew off to one side, struck a bulkhead, and spluttered twice as it shorted out. Flicker spun on the alien, catching him a crippling blow across the chest. Fear broke strong from the alien's mind as he toppled to the floor. Flicker was upon him in an instant, like an animal, ripping, tearing, crushing. The exhilaration roared through his mind like a narcotic, and he lifted the twitching body by the neck, half-dragging it over to the generators. ”

“ If you pass, you'll go across the chamber to the cleared rooms beyond.
"Any man resisting or proven non-human will be shot at once. The Alien last night looked human, but he didn't breathe oxygen, so his internal structure must be different. However, if anyone wants to declare that he's an Alien, he'll be treated as a prisoner of war instead of a spy."
Nobody made such a declaration, and Miles nodded to the guards who had filed in, while fear-ridden faces were still staring at their neighbors. Norden wondered how long a confessed Alien would last before the men tore him to bits. ”

“ But in a moment it was up, and running toward us with an agility that was incredible, springing over the red brush in great bounds, with a motion more like that of a monstrous hopping insect than of a human being. His white hair was flying in wild disorder, his shrunken limbs plainly flashing purple. And a terrible sound came from it as it bounded along—not a scream of rage or of pain, but a weird uncanny laugh, that rang strangely over the red plain, and somehow made us pause in our race, and tremble with alien terror. ”

“ From the under part of the globe ship licked a tongue of fire. With the force of a whiplash it coursed across the rock and in its passing embrace, the creatures below writhed and withered to charred heaps. They had no chance under that methodical blasting. The alien beside Raf signaled again for a drop. He patted the weapon that he held and motioned for Raf [81] to release the covering of the windshield. But the pilot shook his head firmly.
This might be war. The aliens could have a very good reason for their deadly attack on the creatures surprised below. ”

“ The carriers went in first, thundering directly into the massed alien warriors. Each carrier-man fired a single shot from his power weapon, and then went to work with his carrier, running down the terrified aliens, and swinging a sword with one hand while he guided with the other. The commander went in with that first charge, aiming his own carrier toward the center of the fray. He had some raw, untrained men with him, and he believed in teaching by example.
The aliens recoiled at the onslaught of what they took to be horrible living monsters that were unlike anything ever seen before. ”

“ It was simply that sooner or later some alien race would risk whatever unknown power the others feared. If the aliens won, the vast potential power of Earth would then be turned against all the humanoid races of the universe. Humanity could be driven from the galaxy. ”

“ Then suddenly the three aliens were leaving the cabin. Flicker sensed their indecision, felt them balancing the question in their minds. Soundlessly, he lifted one eyelid a trifle. The searing light burst in on his retina, blinding him for a moment; then he caught a distorted glimpse of them opening the hatch and withdrawing in their jerking, uneven gait. And still the alien thought came through with a parting jab to his tortured mind: "The only thing we can do is to kill it. The risk of tampering with it is too great. And we don't dare take it back home alive." ”

“ By sunset tomorrow the aliens would be dead or captive, and their ship would undoubtedly be in the hands of scientists for study.
Moreover, the United States would provide counter weapons for other nations. In no more than months every continent and nation on earth would [146] be equipped to defy any alien landing that might take place. The world would be able to defend itself. It would be equipped to do so. And this was the resolve of the United States because the world could not exist half free and half enslaved by creatures from a distant planet. ”

“ It was our first day of recruiting on the planet, and the alien life-forms had lined up for hundreds of feet back from my rented office. As I came down the block from the hotel, I could hear and see and smell them with ease.
My three staff men, Auchinleck, Stebbins and Ludlow, walked shieldwise in front of me. I peered between them to size the crop up. The aliens came in every shape and form, in all colors and textures—and all of them eager for a Corrigan contract. The Galaxy is full of bizarre beings, but there's barely a species anywhere that can resist the old exhibitionist urge. ”

“ Perhaps your scientists have wondered what caused the nova of stars, or even the explosions of whole regions of space. Now you have the answer. We would hate to destroy your race, but if you resist us, we have no choice."
A strange, intense smile came over Lan Sur's face. "Our history relates of one race that tried to avoid its destiny. These peoples scattered to the four winds in millions of ships in their attempt to hide from us." Fire lighted the alien's eyes. "It took more than a thousand of your years to track them all down, and we covered more than half the galaxy in doing so. ”

“ Now the attacking ships were leaping up toward us, flashing up lightning-like with ghostly beams of death whirling and stabbing about and toward us, and now, over the wild clamor of sudden battle in the hull beneath, I heard the great cry of Jhul Din, beside me.
"Space-ships in thousands, and they're attacking us! They've come from somewhere toward our galaxy—have come out of outer space itself to attack our universe!" ”

“ The strong man in his strength when confronted by this alien invasion [86] can battle with it, or when the contest is hopeless, he can retire before it. The world is open to him, and in other lands beyond the seas he may find that fair field for his energies which is denied him in the land of his birth. ”

“ These ships are apparently capable of immense speeds and are armed with a form of death-beam unfamiliar to us, but extremely deadly in operation. On discovering these ships we were attacked by them and all of my squadron except my own ship destroyed. Our own ship is now being chased inward toward the galaxy, heading in the general direction of the Cancer cluster, and though the swarm is gradually overhauling us we may be able to escape. From the size, number and deadly armament of these alien ships it is apparent that they contemplate a general attack upon our universe. ”

“ As they managed to battle their way in through the lock, they looked bewildered for a moment, and then all of them, released from the frenzy of hate, collapsed into unconsciousness.
We were a bloody mess, every one of us, but not one of us was seriously hurt. The Aliens had outsmarted themselves. While I had looked like one of them, those parts of me—like my eye stalks—that had seemed to be most vulnerable, so that the Earthmen had gone after them, had turned out to be things like ears and noses. ”

“ The first alien gripped his companion's sleeve. "Pretend you don't know it." They moved along, with no outward sign of their sudden terrible awareness. Their minds were racing, fearful, but they kept on. Flicker crouched along the bulkhead and followed.
The aliens came to the hatch. Flicker tensed, ready for them. He heard them undog the hatch, heard its squeak as it opened, and he tensed, his muscles quivering eagerly.
Three beams of light stabbed down the passageway at him, brilliant, staggering him back against the bulkhead. ”

“ There's no air beyond. Alien ship!"
He jumped through the seal. His hands swept up the tube that was to be a weapon, and his eyes darted to the screen. The pip was bigger now, and at maximum brightness. The Alien ship must be only tens of thousands of miles above, braking down to attack with deadly precision.
Less than a hundred feet away, the two humans waited, at the mercy of any energy that might spill from his weapon! He would have to score with a perfect piece of marksmanship, with all the radiation directed in a straight line. ”

“ Then they wormed their way up and over, and started to crawl toward where enemy scouts (six legs or eight?) were supposed to lie. He lost sight of them very quickly. He held his weapon ready, watching for the sight of the enemy.
Why did he hate the soldiers of the enemy so little? No more than a Martian hunting sand-dragons hates sand-dragons. His relationship with them was limited, almost abstract. How could he hate something so different from himself in form? He could only marvel that it too had intelligence. No, the enemy were merely dangerous targets. ”

“ So if we could send a messenger across the terrific void to the Andromeda universe, to tell its peoples of the serpent-creatures' attack upon us and their intention to invade the Andromeda universe once more, after conquering us, there is a chance that those peoples would come to our aid, with the powerful weapons with which they have already once repulsed the serpent-creatures, and would help us to crush these invaders before all their resistless hordes can pour down on our galaxy. ”