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THE FOURTH INVASION
by Henry Josephs
Dr. Clayton's face was impassive as a marble mask when he turned to young Corelli. For a moment, the little group stood there in embarrassed silence in the classroom, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, feigning interest in the paperweights upon Clayton's desk, or in the utterly uninspiring scenes on the sidewalk outside the window.
"You say, Corelli, that you saw three--er, Martian--ships. Can you describe them?"
"It struck me that this might not be the way they fly, naturally, but the way they might fly if the pilots were having trouble adjusting the controls to a heavier atmosphere than they were used to."
Clayton tapped the tabletop with his fingers. "What about you, Marty? Did you see three ships?"
"Interesting. All right, what about the rest of you? How many saw the ships?"
A chorus answered him. "I see," Clayton mused. "You all agree on the behavior. And you all think there were three--not four--not two. Three?"
It was agreed.
Clayton rustled the pile of newspapers. "The reports in here vary. I learn with amazement that you gentlemen seem to have missed completely the spurts of flame that issued from the alien ships--flame which is reported to have set a house on fire. And no one seems to have noticed that the invaders, in descending, glided on huge black wings."
Corelli blushed a fiery crimson. "Dr. Clayton," he protested, "we aren't making these things up for popular consumption. We're just telling you what we actually saw--that is--what--what--we--saw looked like to us."
Clayton nodded. "Of course. That is all people were doing back in 1938 when the Martians landed in New Jersey, at the time Orson Welles presented a radio version of H. G. Wells' 'War of the Worlds'. Or when the 'Flying Saucer' craze first started. Or when Fantafilm put on their big publicity stunt for the improved 3-D movie, 'The Outsiders', and people saw the aliens over Broadway and heard them address the populace in weird, booming tones.
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