Without the windbreak of the police car in front of him, he was pushed violently backward until his own car's fender stopped him. Water struck his eyes, and the night blurred. He bent forward and rubbed his face until the ache of the salt was dulled to a steady throbbing, and then he staggered across the highway to the guard rail on the Atlantic side. The tops of the incoming waves washed over his shoes, just as the surf at noon had lapped at him, twelve feet below.

  The rain and the spray streamed over him. He cupped one hand over his nose, to breathe, and hung on the rail.

  There was nothing more to see. The pillar of light still shot up from the arc, and the bulk of the thing loomed, gross and black, down there in the water. It was feet below the surface now, cushioned from the smash of the waves, and it stirred with a regular motion like a whale shark in a tank.

  The radio, he thought. It had felt the radio in the police car. Nothing else had happened to bring it to life at that particular moment. It had waited a little - perhaps analysing what it had encountered, perhaps then noticing the flash of the car's roof beacon for the first time. And for the first time since the day, years ago, when it entered the sea it had found a reason for sending out a signal.

  To where? Not to him, or the policeman. The light was not pointed toward the highway. It went up, straight up, going out of sight through the clouds as his eyes tried to follow it before the lash of water forced his head down again.

  There was no one inside the thing, Dan Henry thought. There couldn't be. He had scraped on the side with regular, purposeful strokes, clearing an exactly square patch, and gained no response. And the thing had lain in the ocean a long time, sealed up, dragging its hide over the bottom as the currents pushed and pulled it, rolling, twisting, seamless, with only those two horns with which to feel the world about it.

  He could be wrong, of course. Something could be alive in there, still breathing in some fantastic way from a self-contained air supply, eating tiny amounts of stored food, getting rid of its wastes somehow. But he didn't see how. It didn't seem logical that anything would trap itself like that, not knowing if it was ever

  going to escape.

  He could be wrong about it all. It might not have been reacting to anything that happened on the highway. It might be ignoring everything outside itself, and following some purpose that had nothing to do with this world or its people. But whether it was that, or whether he was at least partly right, Dan Henry wondered what was sending things to drop down on the Earth and make

  signals to the stars.

  The water came higher. It came up the key too quickly to split and go around it, and spilled over the highway to plunge into the rocks on the Gulf side. It broke halfway up the side of his car. He remembered the policeman's vibrator. That would be far to the west of him now, skipping at a thrown stone's velocity over waves whose tops were being cut off by the wind. Dan Henry's mouth twisted in a numb grimace. Now he'd have to buy one. They probably wouldn't let him get away that cheaply. They could make that stick for a robbery charge. And destroying public property. While, on the other hand, if he was swept off this key they wouldn't even have to pay for his burial. He laughed

  drunkenly.

  A wave broke over him. He had made a sling for himself by knotting the legs of his dungarees around one of the guard-rail uprights, and when the wave was past he lolled naked with the bunched tops of the dungarees cutting into his chest under his arms. The wind worked at him now, with a kind of fury, and then the next wave came. It was warm, but the wind evaporating it as soon as he was exposed again made his skin crawl and his teeth chatter. He reached behind him with a wooden arm and felt the knot in the dungaree legs to make sure it was holding. The pressure had tightened it into a small hard lump.

  That was good, at any rate. That and the blessed practicality of the engineers who built the highway. When they laid the roadway where the hurricane-smashed railroad had been, they had cut the rusted rails up with torches, set the stumps deep in the concrete, and welded the guard-rails together out of T-shaped steel designed to hold a locomotive's weight.

  Dan Henry grinned to himself. The rail would hold. The dungarees would hold, or the trademark was a liar. Only about Dan Henry was there any doubt. Dan Henry - hard, sure Dan Henry, with his chest being cut in half, with his torn skin being torn again as the waves beat him against the highway, with his head going silly because he was being pounded into raw meat.

  Dear God, he thought, am I doing this for money! No, he thought, as a wave filled his nostrils, no, not any more. When that thing turned its light on and I didn't jump in the car with that cop, that's when we found out I wasn't doing it for the money. For what? God knows.

  He floundered half over on his side, arched his neck, and looked at the violet arrow through the clouds. Signal, you bastard! Go ahead and signal! Do anything. As long as I know you're still there. If you can stay put, so can 1.

  Well, what was he doing this for? Dan Henry fought with the sling that held him, trying to take some of the pressure off his chest. God knew, but it was up to Dan Henry to find out for himself.

  It wasn't money. All right - that was decided. What was left -vanity? Big Dan Henry - big, strong, Dan Henry . . . take more than a hurricane to stop big, strong, wonderful Dan Henry - was that the way his thoughts were running?

  He croaked a laugh. Big, strong Dan Henry was lying here limp as a calico doll, naked as a baby, praying his pants wouldn't rip. The storm had washed the pride out of him as surely as it had his first interest in the salvage money.

  All right, what, then! He growled and cursed at his own stupidity. Here he was, and he didn't even know why. Here he was, being bludgeoned to death, being drowned, being torn apart by the wind. He was stuck out here now, and nobody could save him.

  A wave roared over the highway and struck his car a blow that sent a hubcap careening off into the darkness. The car tilted on to the Gulf-side guard-rail. The rail bellied outward, and the car hung halfway over the rocks on the other side. Successive waves smashed into it, exploding in spray, and the guard-rail groaned in the lull after each strike. Dan Henry watched it dully in the violet light, with the water sluicing down over his head and shoulders for a moment before the wind found it and tore it away in horizontal strings of droplets.

  The car's door panels had already been pushed in, and the windows were cracked. Now the exposed floor-boards were being hammered. The muffler was wrenched out.

  With the next smash of solid water, the horizontal rail broke its weld at one end and the car heeled forward to the right, impaling its radiator on an upright. It hung there, gradually tearing the radiator out of its brackets, spilling rusty water for one instant before a wave washed it clean, scraping its front axle down the sharp edge of the roadway, breaking loose pieces of the concrete and raising its left rear wheel higher and higher. The radiator came free with a snap like a breaking tooth, and the car dropped suddenly, its front end caught by the edge of the left wheel, kept from falling only by the straining uprights still jammed against it farther back on the right side. The hood flew back suddenly and was gone with a twang in one gust of wind.

  Am I going to have to buy that cop a new gun, too? Dan Henry thought, and in that moment the wind began to die. The water hesitated. Three waves rolled across the road slowly, much higher than when the wind was flattening them, but almost gentle. The rain slackened. And then the eye of the storm had moved over him, and he had calm.

  He pushed himself to his feet at last, after he sagged out of the hold the dungarees had on his chest. He leaned against the guardrail and stared woodenly at the ocean and the thing.

  The beam went up out of sight, a clean, marvellously precise line. But down at the surface the sea was finally hiding the thing, and making a new noise that had none of a storm-sea's clean power. It filled his ears and unnerved him.

  With the wind and the pressure gone, the waves were leaping upward, clashing against each other, rebounding, colliding again, peaking sharply. Dan Henry could hear the highway over the water booming faintly as the waves slammed up against its underside. But he could actually see very little. It had grown darker, and what he saw were mostly the tops of the exploding waves, glimmering pale violet.

  The thing was buried deep, where it lay at the foot of the key, and the arc that had diffused most of the light was visible only as a fitful glow that shifted and danced. The violet beam seemed to spring into life of itself at the plunging surface, and it kept most of its light compressed within itself.

  Dan Henry swayed on the guard-rail. It was stifling hot. The mugginess filled his lungs and choked him. He lolled his head back. The clouds were patchy overhead, and the stars shone through in places.

  There was a high-pitched chime, and a circle of ice-blue flame came hurtling down the beam. It came out of the sky and shot into the water, and when it touched the glimmer of the arc there was another chime, this time from the thing, and this time the water quivered. The violet beam flickered once, and a red halo spat up with a crackle, travelling slowly. When it was a hundred feet over Dan Henry's head it split in two, leaving one thin ring moving at the old rate, and a larger one that suddenly doubled its speed until it split again, doubled its speed and split again, accelerated again, and so blazed upward along the violet beam's axis, leaving a spaced trail of slowly moving lesser rings behind it. They hung in the air, a ladder to the stars. Then they died out slowly, and before they had stopped glowing the violet beam was switched off.

  The sky was empty, and the thing lay quiescent in the water once more. Dan Henry blinked at the flashes swimming across his eyes. It was pitch dark. He could barely see the white of swirling water as it dashed itself into the rocks at his feet.

  Far up the highway, coming towards him, were two headlights with a swinging red beacon just above them. The police car was plastered with wet leaves and broken palm fronds. The policeman slammed it to a halt beside him, and flung the door open. He stopped long enough to turn his head and say, 'Jesus Christ! He's still here! He ain't gone!' to someone in the front seat with him, and then he jumped out. 'What happened?' he asked Dan Henry. 'What was that business with the lights?' Dan Henry looked at him. 'You made it,' he mumbled. 'Yeah, I made it. Got to this Navy skywatch station. Phone was out, so I couldn't call in to headquarters. Found this Navy professor up there. Brought him down with me when the eye came over. He figures we got maybe twenty minutes more before the other side of the hurricane comes around.'

  The other man had slid out of the car. He was a thin, bony-faced man with rimless glasses. He was dressed in a badly fitted tropical suit that was pleated with dampness. He looked at Dan Henry's purpled chest, and asked, 'Are you all right ?'

  'Sure.'

  The man twitched an eyebrow. 'I'm assigned to the satellite-tracking station north of here. What is this thing?'

  Dan Henry nodded toward it. 'Down there. It got an answer to its signal, acknowledged and switched off. That's what I think,

  anyhow.'

  'You do, eh? Well, you could be right. In any case, we don't have much time. I'll notify the naval district commandant's office as soon as the telephones are working again, but I want a quick look at it now, in case we lose it.'

  'We're not going to lose it,' Dan Henry growled.

  The professor looked at him sharply. 'What makes you sure ?'

  'I wedged it,' Dan Henry said with a tight note in his voice. 'I almost ruined myself and I almost drowned, but I wedged it. I took a gun away from a cop to keep it from getting left here without anybody to watch it. And I stayed here and got almost drowned, and almost cut in half, and almost beat to death against this highway here, and we^re not going to lose it now.'

  M . . . see,' the professor said. He turned to the policeman. 'If you happen to have some sedatives ,in your first-aid kit, they might be useful now,' he murmured.

  'Might have something. I'll look,' the policeman said.

  'And put your spotlight on the thing, please,' the professor added, peering over the guard-rail. 'Though I don't suppose we'll see much.'

  The yellow beam of the spotlight slid over the top of the water. If it penetrated at all, it still did not reach any part of the thing. The policeman hunted for it, sweeping back and forth until Dan Henry made an impatient sound, went over to him, and pointed it straight. 'Now, leave it there. That's where it is.'

  'Yeah? I don't see anythin' but water.'

  'That's where it is,' Dan Henry said. 'Haven't been here all this time for nothin'.' He went back to the railing, but there was still nothing to see.

  'You're sure that's where it is ?' the professor asked.

  'Yes. It's about ten feet down.'

  'All right,' the professor sighed. 'Tell me as much as you can about its activities.'

  'I think it's a sounding rocket,' Dan Henry said. '1 think somebody from some place sent that thing down here a while ago to find out things. I don't know what those things are. I don't know who that somebody is. But I'm pretty sure he lost it somehow, and didn't know where it was until it signalled him just now. I don't know why it worked out that way. I don't know why the rocket couldn't get its signal through before this, or why it didn't go home.'

  'You think it's of extraterrestrial origin, then ?'

  Dan Henry looked at the professor. 'You don't think so ?'

  'If I did, I would be on my way to district headquarters at this moment, hurricane or no hurricane,' the professor said testily.

  'You don't believe it ?' Dan Henry persisted.

  The professor grew uneasy. 'No.'

  'Wouldn't you like to believe it?'

  The professor looked quickly out to sea.

  'Here,' the policeman said, handing Dan Henry a flat brown half-pint bottle. 'Sedative.' He winked.

  Dan Henry knocked the bottle out of the cop's hand. It broke on the pavement.

  'Look up!' the professor whispered.

  They turned their heads. Something huge, flat, and multi-winged was shadowed faintly on the stars.

  'Oh, Lord,' the officer said.

  There was a burst of chiming from the thing down in the water, and violet pulses of light came up through the water and burst on the underside of the thing up in the sky.

  Answering darts of tawny gold came raining down. The thing in the water stirred, and they could see the rocks move. 'Tractor rays,' the professor said in a husky voice. 'Theoretically impossible.'

  'What's it going to do ?' the policeman asked.

  'Pick it up,' the professor answered. 'And take it back to wherever it comes from.'

  Dan Henry began to curse.

  The thing in the sky slipped down, and they could feel the air throb. After a moment, the sound came to them - a distant, rumbling purr, and a high metallic shrieking.

  The thing in the water heaved itself upward. It struggled against

  the rocks.

  'We'd better get back,' the professor said.

  The distant sound grew stronger and beat upon their ears. The professor and the policeman retreated to the car.

  But Dan Henry did not. He straightened his back and gathered his muscles. As the tawny fire came down, he leaped over the guard-rail into the water.

  He swam with grim fury, thrown and sucked by the water, sputtering for breath, his feet pounding. Even so, he would not have reached the thing. But the water humped in the grip of the force that clutched at the thing, and the waves collapsed. Dan Henry's arms bit through the water with desperate precision, and just before the thing broke free, he was upon it.

  'No, sir,' he grunted, closing his hand on one of the struts. 'Not without me. We've been through too much together.' He grinned coldly at the hovering ship as they rose to meet it.

  THE ADVENT ON CHANNEL TWELVE

  C. M. Kornbluth

  It came to pass in the third quarter of the fiscal year that the Federal Reserve Board did raise the rediscount rate and money was tight in the land. And certain bankers which sate in New York sent to Ben Graffis in Hollywood a writing which said, Money is tight in the land so let Poopy Panda up periscope and fire all bow tubes.

  Whereupon Ben Graffis made to them this moan:

  O ye bankers, Poopy Panda is like unto the child of my flesh and you have made of him a devouring dragon. Once was I content with my studio and my animators when we did make twelve Poopy Pandas a year; cursed be the day when I floated a New York loan. You have commanded me to make feature-length cartoon epics and I did obey, and they do open at the Paramount to sensational grosses, and we do re-release them to the nabes year on year, without end. You have commanded me to film live adventure shorts and I did obey, and in the cutting room we do devilishly splice and pull frames and flop negatives so that I and my cameras are become bearers of false witness and men look upon my live adventure shorts and say lo! these beasts and birds are like unto us in their laughter, wooing, pranks, and contention. You have commanded that I become a mountebank for that I did build Poopy Pandaland, whereinto men enter with their children, their silver, and their wits, and wherefrom they go out with their children only, sandbagged by a thousand catch-penny engines; even this did I obey. You have commanded that Poopy Panda shill every weekday night on television between five and six for the Poopy Panda Pals, and even this did I obey, though Poopy Panda is like unto the child of my flesh.

  But O ye bankers, this last command will I never obey.

  Whereupon the bankers which sate in New York sent to him another writing that said, Even so, let Poopy Panda up periscope and fire all bow tubes, and they said, Remember, boy, we hold thy paper.

  And Ben Graffis did obey.

  He called unto him his animators and directors and cameramen and writers, and his heart was sore but he dissembled and said:

  In jest you call one another brainwashers, forasmuch as you addle the heads of children five hours a week that they shall buy our sponsors' wares. You have fulfilled the prophecies, for is it not written in the Book of the Space Merchants that there shall be spherical trusts? And the Poopy Panda Pals plug the Poopy Panda Magazine, and the Poopy Panda Magazine plugs Poopy Pandaland, and Poopy Pandaland plugs the Poopy Panda Pals. You have asked of the Motivational Research boys how we shall hook the little bastards and they have told ye, and ye have done it. You identify the untalented kid viewers with the talented kid performers, you provide in Otto Clodd a bumbling father image to be derided, you furnish in Jackie Whipple an idealized big brother for the boys and a sex-fantasy for the more precocious girls. You flatter the cans off the viewers by ever saying to them that they shall rule the twenty-first century, nor mind that those who shall in good sooth come to power are doing their homework and not watching television programs. You have created a liturgy of opening hymn and closing benediction, and over all hovers the spirit of Poopy Panda urging and coaxing the viewers to buy our sponsors' wares.

 

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