The Alien by Tim Sullivan & Tim Sullivan & Jerome Bixby & Lester del Rey
Author:Tim Sullivan & Tim Sullivan & Jerome Bixby & Lester del Rey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, aliens, pulp, sci-fi, adventure
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2016-06-08T16:00:00+00:00
THE CARNIVORE, by Katherine MacLean
Originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1953, under the pseudonym G. A. Morris.
The beings stood around my bed in air suits like ski suits, with globes over their heads like upside-down fishbowls. It was all like a masquerade, with odd costumes and funny masks.
I know that the masks are their faces, but I argue with them and find I think as if I am arguing with humans behind the masks. They are people. I recognize people and whether I am going to like this person or that person by something in the way they move and how they get excited when they talk; and I know that I like these people in a motherly sort of way. You have to feel motherly toward them, I guess.
They all remind me of Ronny, a medical student I knew once. He was small and round and eager. You had to like him, but you couldnât take him very seriously. He was a pacifist; he wrote poetry and pulled it out to read aloud at ill-timed moments; and he stuttered when he talked too fast.
They are like that, all fright and gentleness.
I am not the only survivorâthey have explained thatâbut I am the first they found, and the least damaged, the one they have chosen to represent the human race to them. They stand around my bed and answer questions, and are nice to me when I argue with them.
All in a group they look half-way between a delegation of nations and an ark, one of each, big and small, thick and thin, four arms or wings, all shapes and colors in fur and skin and feathers.
I can picture them in their UN of the Universe, making speeches in their different languages, listening patiently without understanding each otherâs different problems, boring each other and being too polite to yawn.
They are polite, so polite I almost feel they are afraid of me, and I want to reassure them.
But I talk as if I were angry. I canât help it, because if things had only been a little different⦠âWhy couldnât you have come sooner? Why couldnât you have tried to stop it before it happened, or at least come sooner, afterwardâ¦?â
If they had come sooner to where the workers of the Nevada power pile starved slowly behind their protecting walls of leadâif they had looked sooner for survivors of the dust with which the nations of the world had slain each otherâGeorge Craig would be alive. He died before they came. He was my co-worker, and I loved him.
We had gone down together, passing door by door the automatic safeguards of the plant, which were supposed to protect the people on the outside from the radioactive danger from the insideâbut the danger of a failure of politics was far more real than the danger of failure in the science of the power pile, and that had not been calculated by the builders. We were far underground when the first radioactivity in the air outside had shut all the heavy, lead-shielded automatic doors between us and the outside.
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
Fantasy | Gaming |
Science Fiction | Writing |
Sita - Warrior of Mithila (Book 2 of the Ram Chandra Series) by Amish(51425)
The Crystal Crypt by Dick Philip K(35683)
Cat's cradle by Kurt Vonnegut(13868)
Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han(13638)
Ready Player One by Cline Ernest(12839)
The Last by Hanna Jameson(9221)
Year One by Nora Roberts(8475)
Persepolis Rising by James S. A. Corey(8270)
The remains of the day by Kazuo Ishiguro(7551)
Dark Space: The Second Trilogy (Books 4-6) (Dark Space Trilogies Book 2) by Jasper T. Scott(7373)
Red Rising by Pierce Brown(7326)
Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro(7131)
The handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood(6855)
The Circle by Dave Eggers(6257)
Legacy by Ellery Kane(5946)
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood(5781)
Frank Herbert's Dune Saga Collection: Books 1 - 6 by Frank Herbert(5680)
Pandemic (The Extinction Files Book 1) by A.G. Riddle(5589)
Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty(5204)