Troublemakers by Harlan Ellison Read Free Book Online

deep ridges of matted hair, and his nose was a pair of breather-slits. His hands hung far below his indrawn waist, and they were eight-fingered. Each finger was a tentacle that writhed with a separate life of its own. He wore a loose-fitting and wrinkled, dirty sort of toga affair, patched and covered with stains.
        He stared at them unblinking. For he had no eyelids.
        “Gawd Almighty!” the pilot squawked, and fumbled blindly at his controls for an instant, unable to tear his eyes away from the being before them. Finally his hand met the controls, and the Sikorsky bucked backward, tipped, and rose rapidly above the saucer, spiraling away into the night as fast as the rotors would windmill. In a minute the copter was gone.
        The glassite pillar atop the dirty saucer remained raised for a few minutes, then slowly sank back into the ship.
        No mark was left where it had risen.

    Somehow, news of the person leaked out. And from then on, telescopes across the world were trained on the unbroken band of discs circling the Earth. They watched in shifts, not wanting to miss a thing, but there was nothing more to see. No further contact was made, in person or by radio.
        There was no sign of. life anywhere along the chain of discs. They could have been empty for all anyone knew. Going into the eighth week, no one knew any more about them than on the day they had arrived.
        No government would venture an exploratory party, for the slightest hint of a wrong move or word might turn the unleashed wrath of the saucers on the Earth.
        Stocks fell quickly and crazily. Shipping was slowed to a standstill, and production fell off terrifically in factories. No one wanted to work when they might be blown up at any moment. People began a disorganized exodus to the hills and swamps and lost places of the planet. If the saucers were going to wash the cities with fire and death, no one wanted to be there when it happened.
        They were not hostile, and that, was what kept the world moving in its cultural tracks; but they were alien, they were from the stars! And that made them objects of terror.
        Tempers were short; memos had long since been replaced by curses and demands. Allegations were thrown back and forth across the oceans. Dereliction of duty proceedings were begun on dozens of persons in high places.
        The situation was worsening every moment. In the tenth week the nasty remarks ceased, and there were rumors of a court-martial. And a firing squad.

    “Got to do something, Alberts. Got to do something!”
        The Adjutant watched the spectacle of his superior shattering with something akin to sorrow. There went the cushy job.
        “But what, General?” He kept his voice low and modulated. No sense sending the old boy into another tantrum.
        “I-I want to go up there...see what he looks like... see what I can d-do...”
        An hour later the Sikorsky carried the General to the Maginot Line of silent saucers.
        Twenty minutes later he was back, bathed in sweat, and white as a fish-belly. “Horrible. All hair and eyes. Horrible. Horrible.” He croaked a few more words, and sank into a chair.
        “Call Ordnance,” he breathed gaspingly. “Prepare a missile.
        “With an atomic warhead.
        “Now!”
      
    They attached the parasite missile beneath a night-fighter, checking and double-checking the release mechanism.
        Before they released the ship, they waited for the General’s okay. This wasn’t just a test flight, this was an atomic missile, and whatever the repercussions, they wanted them on the General’s head, not their own.
         In the base office, the Adjutant was replacing the phone in its cradle. “What did Washington say, General?” he asked the trembling officer.
        “They said the situation was in my hands. I was free to do as I saw fit. The President can’t be located. They think he and his cabinet have