The Man Who Fell to Earth

Newton’s voice seemed peculiar. Or was it only that he, Bryce, was drunk? “Does it make any difference?”

“I’m sure it does. Are you from this… solar system?”

“Yes. As far as I know, there aren’t any others.”

“No other solar systems?”

Newton took the glass of gin that Bryce offered him, and held it speculatively. “Only suns,” he said, “no planets. Or none that I know of.”

Bryce was stirring a martini. His hands were perfectly steady now; he had passed over some kind of hump. He felt as though nothing further could touch him, could shake him. “How long have you been here?” he said, stirring, listening to the ice clink against the side of the pitcher.

“Haven’t you mixed that drink long enough?” Newton said. “You’d better drink it.” He took a swallow from his own. “I’ve been on your Earth five years.”

Bryce stopped stirring the drink, poured it into a glass. Then, feeling expansive, he dropped in three olives. Some of the martini splashed out on to the white linen cover of the cart, making wet spots. “Do you intend to stay?” he said. It sounded as though he were in a Paris café, asking the question of another tourist. Newton should be wearing a camera around his neck.

“Yes, I intend to stay.”

Seated now, Bryce found his vision wandering around the room. It was a pleasant room, with pale green walls and innocuous pictures hung on them.

He refocused his gaze on Newton. Thomas Jerome Newton, from Mars. Mars or somewhere. “Are you human?” he said.

Newton’s drink was half empty. “A matter of definition,” he said. “I’m human enough, however.”

He started to ask, Human enough for what? but did not. He might as well get down to the second big question, since he had already asked the first. “What are you here for?” he said. “What are you up to?”

Newton stood up, poured some more gin in his glass, walked to an armchair, sat down. He looked at Bryce, holding the glass delicately in his slender hand. “I’m not certain that I know what I’m up to,” he said.

“Not certain that you know?” Bryce said.

Newton set his glass on the table by the bed and began taking off his shoes. “I thought I knew what I was here for, at first. But then, for the first two years I was busy, very busy. I’ve had more time to think, this past year. Possibly too much time.” He set his shoes neatly, side by side, under the bed. Then he stretched his long legs out on the bedspread and leaned against the pillow.

He certainly looked human enough, in that pose. “What is the ship being built for? It is a ship, isn’t it, and not just an exploratory device?”

“It’s a ship. Or, more precisely, a ferry boat.”

For some time, ever since the talk with Canutti, Bryce had felt stunned; everything had seemed unreal. But now he was beginning to regain his grasp of things, and the scientist in him was beginning to assert itself. He set his glass down, deciding not to drink any more just now. It was important to keep a clear head. But his hand, as it put down the glass, was shaking.

“Then you’re planning to bring more of your… people here? On the ferry?”

“Yes.”

“Are there any more of you here?”

“I’m the only one.”

“But why build your ship here? Certainly you must have them where you came from. You got here yourself.”

“Yes, I got here. But in a one-man craft. The problem, you see, is fuel. There was only enough to send one of us, and only on one crossing.”

“Atomic fuel? Uranium or something?”

“Yes. Of course. But we have almost none left. Nor do we have petroleum, or coal, or hydroelectric power.” He smiled. “There are probably hundreds of ships, much superior to the one we are building in Kentucky; but there was no way to get them here. None of them has been used for over five hundred of your years. The one I came on was not even intended as an interplanetary vessel. It was originally designed as an emergency craft — a lifeboat. I destroyed the engines and the controls after landing, and left the hull in a field. I’ve read in the newspapers that there’s a farmer who charges people fifty cents to see it. He has it in a tent, and sells soft drinks. I wish him well.

“Isn’t there some danger in that?”

“Of my being found out by the FBI or someone? I don’t think so. The worst to happen was some Sunday supplement nonsense about possible invaders from outer space. But there have been more surprising curiosities for Sunday paper readers than spaceship hulls found in Kentucky fields. I don’t think anyone of importance has taken it seriously.”

Bryce looked at him closely. “Is ‘invaders from outer space’ only nonsense?”

Newton unbuttoned his shirt collar. “I think so.”

“Then what are your people coming here for? As tourists?”

Newton laughed. “Not exactly. We might be able to help you.”

“How?” Somehow he did not like the way Newton had said it. “How help us?”