‘But, Dorothy,’ pleaded Crane. ‘I never …’
‘We used to be good friends,’ said Dorothy. ‘Before this happened we were. I just called you up to warn you. I can’t talk any longer, Joe. The boss is coming.’
The receiver clicked and the line hummed. Crane hung up and went back to the kitchen.
So there had been something squatting on his desk. It wasn’t an hallucination. There had been a shuddery thing he had thrown a pastepot at, and it had run into the cabinet.
Except that, even now, if he told what he knew, no one would believe him. Already, up at the office, they were rationalizing it away. It wasn’t a metallic rat at all. It was some kind of machine that a practical joker had spent his spare evenings building.
He took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. His fingers shook when he reached them out to the keys of the typewriter.
He typed unsteadily: ‘That thing I threw a pastepot at — that was one of Them?’
Yes.
‘They are from this Earth?’
No.