The Man Who Fell to Earth

“Nobody’s eyes can see X-rays.” The man pursed his lips, obviously in irritation. “Nobody sees at those frequencies.” He nodded to the woman and, smiling uncomfortably, she took his glasses off. The light in the room made him blink.

“I do,” he said, squinting. “I see altogether differently from the way you do.” Then, “Let me show you the way my eyes are made. If you’ll release me I’ll remove my… my contact lenses.”

The FBI man did not release him. “Contact lenses?” the technician said. He leaned over closely, staring for a long moment into Newton’s eyes. Then he drew back. “You’re not wearing contact lenses.”

He was feeling a sensation he had not felt for a long time — panic. The brightness of the room had become oppressive; it seemed to pulsate around him with the regularity of his heartbeat. His speech felt thick, drunken. “They’re a… new kind of lens. A membrane, not plastic. If you’ll release me for a moment I’ll show you.”

The technician was still pursing his lips. “There’s no such thing,” he said. “I’ve had experience for twenty years with contact lenses and…”

Behind him the FBI man said something beautiful. “Let him try, Arthur,” he said, abruptly releasing his arms. “After all, he’s a taxpayer.”

Newton let out a sigh. Then he said, “I’ll need a mirror.” He began fumbling in his pockets and, suddenly, panicked again. He did not have the special little tweezers with him, the ones designed for removing the membranes…. “I’m sorry,” he said, talking to none of them in particular. “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to have an instrument. Maybe back in my room…”

The FBI man smiled patiently. “Now come on,” he said. “We don’t have all day. And I couldn’t get in that room if I wanted to.”

“All right,” Newton said. “Then do you have a pair of small tweezers? Maybe I can do it with them.”

The technician grimaced. “Just a minute.” He mumbled something else, then went to a drawer. In a minute he had assembled a formidable set of shining instruments — tweezers, quasi-tweezers, and tweezerlike tools of unknown function. He laid them out on the table beside the dentist’s chair.

One of the women had already handed Newton a circular mirror. He picked a blunt-ended small tweezer from the table. It was not very much like the one made for the job, but it might work. He clicked it experimentally a few times. Maybe a little too large, but it would have to do.

Then he found that he could not hold the mirror steady. He asked the woman who had given it to him to hold it. She stepped closer and took the mirror, holding it too near his face. He told her to back off a bit, then had to make her readjust its angle so that he could see properly. He was still squinting. The man in the yellow gown was beginning to tap his foot on the floor. The tapping seemed to keep time with the pulsation of the lights in the room.

When he brought his hand, carrying the tweezer, toward his eyes, the fingers began to tremble uncontrollably. He drew the hand back quickly. He tried again, but could not get the thing near his eye. His hand shook violently this time. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Just a minute more…” His hand drew back involuntarily from his eye, from fear of the instrument and of the damnably shaking, trembling, uncontrolled fingers. The tweezers fell from his hand, into his lap. He fumbled for them, then, sighing, looked at the FBI man, whose face was noncommittal. He cleared his throat, still squinting. Why did the lights have to be so bright? “Do you suppose,” he said, “that I could have a drink? Of gin?”

Abruptly the man laughed. But this time the laugh did not seem affable. It sounded sharp, cold, brutal. And it rang in the tiled room.

“Now come on,” the man said, smiling indulgently. “Now come on.”

Desperately now, he grasped the tweezers. If he could get only one of the membranes partly off, even if he damaged the eye, they could tell… Why didn’t Van Brugh come and tell them? It would be better for him to ruin one of his eyes than to submit them both to that machine, to those lenses that wanted to stare into his skull, to count, for some reason of idiots, the ridges on the back of his skull from the inside, counting them through his eyes, his sensitive eyes.

Abruptly, the FBI man’s hands had clamped over his wrists again and his arms — those arms with so little strength in them when pitted against the strength of a human being — were drawn once again behind his back and held. And then someone put a clamp around his head, tightening it at the temples. “No!” he said, softly, trembling. “No!” He could not move his head.

“I’m sorry,” the technician said. “I’m sorry, but we have to hold your head still for this.” He did not sound at all sorry. He pushed the machine directly up to Newton’s face. Then he turned a knob that brought the lenses and rubber cups up to Newton’s eyes, like binoculars.