Mary waved her lashes and other things at him and he relented. She pointed out that neither she nor Uncle Charlie could drive, a double lie.
After we pulled away I asked her, "How about that one?"
"What about him?"
"Harem guard?"
"Oh, my, no! A most attractive man."
Her answer annoyed me.
The Old Man vetoed taking to the air and making a pass over the triangulated spot. He said it was useless. We headed for Des Moines. Instead of parking at the toll gates we paid to take the car into the city proper, and ended up at the main studios of Des Moines stereo. "Uncle Charlie" blustered his way into the office of the general manager, us in tow. He told several lies-or perhaps Charles M. Cavanaugh was actually a big wheel with the Federal Communications Authority. How was I to know?
Once inside and the door shut he continued the Big Brass act. "Now, sir, what is all this nonsense about a spaceship hoax? Speak plainly, sir; I warn you your license may depend on it."
The manager was a little round-shouldered man, but he did not seem cowed, merely annoyed. "We've made a full explanation over the channels," he said. "We were victimized by one of our own people. The man has been discharged."
"Hardly adequate, sir."
The little man-Barnes, his name was-shrugged. "What do you expect? Shall we string him up by his thumbs?"
Uncle Charlie pointed his cigar at him. "I warn you, sir, that I am not to be trifled with. I have been making an investigation of my own and I am not convinced that two farm louts and a junior announcer could have pulled off this preposterous business. There was money in it, sir. Yes, sir-money. And where would I expect to find money? Here at the top. Now tell me, sir, just what did you-"
Mary had seated herself close by Barnes's desk. She had done something to her costume, which exposed more skin, and her pose put me in mind of Goya's Disrobed Lady. She made a thumbs-down signal to the Old Man.
Barnes should not have caught it; his attention appeared to be turned to the Old Man. But he did. He turned toward Mary and his face went dead. He reached for his desk.
"Sam! Kill him!" the Old Man rapped.
I burned his legs off and his trunk fell to the floor. It was a poor shot; I had intended to burn his belly.
I stepped quickly to him and kicked his gun away from his still-groping fingers. I was about to give him the coup de grace-a man burned that way is dead, but it takes him a while to die-when the Old Man snapped, "Don't touch him! Mary, stand back!"
We did so. The Old Man sidled toward the body, like a cat cautiously investigating the unknown. Barnes gave a long bubbling sigh and was quiet-shock death; a gun burn doesn't bleed much, not
that much. The Old Man looked him over and poked him gently with his cane.
"Boss," I said, "about time to git, isn't it?"
Without looking around he answered, "We're as safe here as anywhere. Safer, probably. This building may be swarming with them."
"Swarming with what?"
"How would I know? Swarming with whatever he was." He pointed to Barnes's body. "That's what I've got to find out."
Mary gave a choked sob, the first honest feminine thing I had known her to do, and gasped, "He's still breathing. Look!"
The body lay facedown; the back of the jacket heaved as if the chest were rising. The Old Man looked at it and poked at it with his cane. "Sam. Come here."
I came. "Strip it," he went on. "Use your gloves. And be careful."
"Booby trap?"
"Shut up. Use care."
I don't know what he expected me to find, but he must have had a hunch that was close to truth. I think the bottom part of the Old Man's brain has a built-in integrator which arrives at a logical necessity from minimum facts the way a museum johnny reconstructs an extinct animal from a single bone.
I took him at his word. First pulling on gloves-agent's gloves; I could have stirred boiling acid with my gloved hand, yet I could feel a coin in the dark and call heads or tails-once gloved, I started to turn him over to undress him.
The back was still heaving; I did not like the look of it-unnatural. I placed a palm between the shoulder blades.
A man's back is bone and muscle. This was jelly soft and undulating. I snatched my hand away.
Without a word Mary handed me a fancy pair of scissors from Barnes's desk. I took them and cut the jacket away. Presently I folded it back and we all looked. Underneath the jacket the body was dressed in a light single, almost transparent. Between this shirt and the skin, from the neck halfway down the back, was something which was not flesh. A couple of inches thick, it gave the corpse a round-shouldered, or slightly humped, appearance.
It pulsed like a jellyfish.
As we watched, it slid slowly off the back, away from us. I reached out to peel up the singlet, to let us at it; my hand was knocked away by the Old Man's cane. "Make up your mind," I said and rubbed my knuckles.
He did not answer but tucked the end of his cane under the bottom of the shirt and worried it up the trunk. The thing was uncovered.