When They Come from Space Read Online Free Page A

and settled down in his chair behind his desk at last. My neck muscles appreciated it.
    "Best if we start at the beginning,” he said. “We'll review the charts and analyses of all my departments on it. You're going to need to know every detail. Because, as the expert in extraterrestrial psychology, that's your job.
    "To interpret what it all means.
    "To find out who they are.
    "What they are.
    "What they're up to."
    I waited, for he had spaced each item with a long impressive pause, and wasn't finished.
    "And how we can drive them off before the people find out that Earth has been invaded!"
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CHAPTER THREE
    The announcement proved more impressive than the evidence.
    Dr. Kibbie's staff tried. He combined introduction of his various department heads with a full-dress presentation of their material; but since neither then nor later did I have more than the most casual relations with the men, their names remained only names.
    This half dozen or so assorted names brought in their charts and graphs, and charts and graphs explaining their charts and graphs. They produced maps and statistics and analyses, and analyses of maps and statistics and analyses. As the office walls, tables, desks, and even the floor became littered with these impressive evidences of loving labor, I began to get the feeling I was in a room of mirrors, where images of images were being repeated to infinity.
    One such chart I remember as being a prototype of most. It was the pride and joy of Dr. Er-Ah. Meticulously, beautifully drafted, it covered an entire worktable. He went to some pains to assure me that this was only the working copy, that the master remained locked in their vault except at times it was mandatory to make further entries upon it, after such entries had been charted and approved on the working copy.
    The purple vertical lines represented the hours. The red vertical lines represented the minutes. If I cared to verify the chart's accuracy, I would find there were always fifty-nine red lines in between the bolder purple lines. The still bolder black horizontal line represented the actual passage of time through the minutes and hours. The dotted pencil line, stretching out beyond the black horizontal, represented the prediction of time passage through the minutes and hours of the future.
    With almost uncanny accuracy, Dr. Er-Ah could predict that, when so many minutes in the future had passed, a given number of hours would also have passed! It was now eleven o'clock. When sixty more minutes had passed, his chart revealed that there was strong probability that it would be twelve o'clock!
    Now I began to get the idea how four hundred people could be kept busy, but I was not to woolgather about it, for he was not finished.
    His clerks would fill in the bold black line, as each minute passed, to check the accuracy of his prediction. When this had been properly checked and verified and authorized, the master copy could be taken out of the vault and brought up to date with the working copy. Of course I appreciated that, while he had the working copy tied up in here for review, his department was being greatly handicapped, and would probably have to work overtime to catch up the delay in their work.
    He reached his moment of triumph when I inquired what this had to do with extraterrestrial psychology.
    "When, and if, another life form is discovered,” Dr. Er-Ah instructed gravely, “the instant will be marked on this chart, and finally on the master chart in the vault, as a permanent record for all posterity.” As one of the most momentous events in all mankind's history, I could appreciate the necessity for absolute accuracy when I realized that historians of the future for thousands of years, tens and hundreds of thousands of years, must refer back to this historic chart for an absolute fix.
    The dedicated vision, which makes some few scientists great, shone from his visage.
    Nor was Dr. Kibbie far behind in