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of himself from there on out.
So you and I are going to go out there with a couple of jacks and see if we
can't jack him back up into
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The sand was thick and heavy. The walk over to the other ship was tedious,
with the heavy jacks weighing them down. They reached the alien hull, paused a
moment to get their breath and then at-
tached the magnetic grapples to the skin of the ship at two points on opposite
sides of the hull and roughly a fourth of the way up from the rocket tubes.
It was hard to anchor the jacks in the soft sand.
They finally found it necessary to dig them in some three or four feet to a
layer of rock that underlay the sand. Then, when everything was ready, they
took their stations, each at a jack, and Pete called to Jeff on the helmet
set.
"All ready? Start your motor."
Jeff reached down and flicked a switch. The tiny, powerful jack motor began to
spin, and the jack base settled more solidly against its rocky bed. When he
was sure that it would not slip, he left it, and went around the rockets to
stand by his father.
His face was gray.
"Well," said Peter tensely, "up she goes."
The nose of the alien ship was rising slowly from the sand. It quivered softly
from some motion inside the ship.
78 Gordon R. Dickson
"Yes," said Jeff, "up she goes." His words were flat and dull. Pete turned to
look at him.
"Scared, son?" he asked. Jeff's !ips parted, closed and opened again.
"You know how we stand," he said, dully. "I've heard what you said from other
men, but never from an alien. Most of the ones we know hiE first, and talk
afterward. You know that once this ship is on its feet we're at his mercy.
Just his rocket blasts alone could kill us; and there won't be time to get
back to the
Girl"
The alien was now at an angle of forty-five degrees.
The little jacks stretched steadily, pushing their thin, stiff arms against
the strange hull. Sand dripped from the rising ship.
"Yes, Jeff," Pete said. "I know. But the important thing isn't what he does,
but what we do. The fact that we've helped him can't you see it that way, son
?''
Jeff shook his head in bewilderment.
"I don't know," he said helplessly. "I just don't know."
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The ship was now nearly upright. Suddenly, with an abruptness that startled
both men, it shook itself free of the jacks and teetered free for a second,
before coming to rest, its nose pointing straight up.
"Here it goes," said Pete, a tinge of excitement in his voice. They moved back
some yards to be out of the way of the takeoff blast. Suddenly the ground
trembled under their feet. Pete put his hand on the younger man's shoulder.
"Here it goes," he repeated, in a whisper.
Flame burst abruptly from the base of the ship. It was warming up its tubes.
Slowly the flame puffed out from its base and it began to rise.
Jeff shook suddenly with an uncontrollable shud-
der. His voice came to Pete through the earphones, starklv afraid.
THE STRANGER 79
"Now what?" he cried. "What'll he do now?"
Pete's grip tightened on his shoulder, "Steady boy."
The ship was rising. Up it went, and up, until it was the size of a man's
little finger, a liny sliver of silver against the black backdrop of the sky.
Then, inexplicably, it halted and began to reverse itself.
Slowly it turned, until the blunt nose pointed to-
ward them. Jeff's hoarse breathing was loud in his helmet. Now it comes, he
thought, and his muscles tensed.
A long minute flowed by and still the alien hung there. Then, abruptly it went
into a series of idiotic gyrations; it twisted and turned, and spun around,
swinging its fiery trail of rocket gases like a luminous tall in the darkness.
Then, just as abruptly, it re-
versed once more, so that its head was away from them: in the twinkling of a
moment it was gone.
Pete sighed, a deep, ragged sigh.
"Did you see it, boy?" he cried. "Did you see it?"
"I saw." Jeff's voice was filled with a new awe.
"Now I get it. He wasn't swe he didn't know we were really trying to help him
until we let him get all the way out there by himself. Then he knew he was
free. That's why he wouldn't answer before."
"Sure, Jeff, sure;" said the older man, a note of triumph in his voice. "But
that's not what I mean.
Did you notice all those contortions he was going through up there? What did
they remind you of?"
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There was a moment of silence, then the words came, at first slowly, then in a
rush from Jeff's lips.
"Like a puppy," he said, haltingly, stumbling over the wonder of it. "Like a
puppy wagging its tail."
And the light of a new understanding broke sud-
denly in his eyes.
"Dad!" said Jeff, turning to his father. "Dad! Do you know what I think? I
think we've made a friend."
Gordon R Oickson
80
And the two men stood there, side by side, looking into the blackness of space
where an odd-shaped spacecraft had vanished. It, they felt, was on its way
home.
And they were right. Moreover, It was hurrying.
For It had a story to tell.
The Friendly Man
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Mark Toren was very surprised to find someone waiting for him.
The awaiter was a young, pleasant-looking man wearing an open-throated sports
shirt with a pipe in his mouth. He took the pipe from his mouth to wave
cheerfully and pointed through a doorway into what seemed a rather pleasant
living room.
"Come in," he said. "Come in, and make yourself at home."
Wondering, Mark followed him in. This was not according to what he had
conceived as regulations.
Did they have a reception for all visitors from time?
He looked around the room wonderingly as he took a chair It looked like any
ordinary room, comfort-
ably furnished in the style of his own century.
"You look puzzled," said the young man. who had taken a seat across from him a
deep leather arm-
chair in which he lounged comfortably. Mark eyed him narrowly, noting the
style of his clothes, which was the same as that of Mark's own.
"I am," he said, dryly. "You don't expect to go fifty thousand years into the
future and find the present."
The young man chuckled. "You'd be surprised," he
81
82 Gordon R. Dickson said. "Civilization has a way of coming full circle . . .
oh, by the way, my name's Merki: and yours is ?"
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"Mark Toren," said Mark. "What do you mean by full circle?"
"Ups and downs," replied the young man, airily.
"Dark Ages a period of scientific advance another
Dark Ages another period of scientific advance and so on."
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