The Good Neighbors

: The Good Neighbors

You can't blame an alien for

a little inconvenience--as

long as he makes up for it!







The ship was sighted a few times, briefly and without a good fix. It was

spherical, the estimated diameter about twenty-seven miles, and was in

an orbit approximately 3400 miles from the surface of the Earth. No one

observed the escape from it.



The ship itself occa ioned some excitement, but back there at the

tattered end of the 20th century, what was one visiting spaceship more

or less? Others had appeared before, and gone away discouraged--or just

not bothering. 3-dimensional TV was coming out of the experimental

stage. Soon anyone could have Dora the Doll or the Grandson of Tarzan

smack in his own living-room. Besides, it was a hot summer.



The first knowledge of the escape came when the region of Seattle

suffered an eclipse of the sun, which was not an eclipse but a near

shadow, which was not a shadow but a thing. The darkness drifted out of

the northern Pacific. It generated thunder without lightning and without

rain. When it had moved eastward and the hot sun reappeared, wind

followed, a moderate gale. The coast was battered by sudden high waves,

then hushed in a bewilderment of fog.



Before that appearance, radar had gone crazy for an hour.



The atmosphere buzzed with aircraft. They went up in readiness to shoot,

but after the first sighting reports only a few miles offshore, that

order was vehemently canceled--someone in charge must have had a grain

of sense. The thing was not a plane, rocket or missile. It was an

animal.



If you shoot an animal that resembles an inflated gas-bag with wings,

and the wingspread happens to be something over four miles tip to tip,

and the carcass drops on a city--it's not nice for the city.



The Office of Continental Defense deplored the lack of precedent. But

actually none was needed. You just don't drop four miles of dead or

dying alien flesh on Seattle or any other part of a swarming homeland.

You wait till it flies out over the ocean, if it will--the most

commodious ocean in reach.





It, or rather she, didn't go back over the Pacific, perhaps because of

the prevailing westerlies. After the Seattle incident she climbed to a

great altitude above the Rockies, apparently using an updraft with very

little wing-motion. There was no means of calculating her weight, or

mass, or buoyancy. Dead or injured, drift might have carried her

anywhere within one or two hundred miles. Then she seemed to be

following the line of the Platte and the Missouri. By the end of the day

she was circling interminably over the huge complex of St. Louis,

hopelessly crying.






She had a head, drawn back most of the time into the bloated mass of the

body but thrusting forward now and then on a short neck not more than

three hundred feet in length. When she did that the blunt turtle-like

head could be observed, the gaping, toothless, suffering mouth from

which the thunder came, and the soft-shining purple eyes that searched

the ground but found nothing answering her need. The skin-color was

mud-brown with some dull iridescence and many peculiar marks resembling

weals or blisters. Along the belly some observers saw half a mile of

paired protuberances that looked like teats.



She was unquestionably the equivalent of a vertebrate. Two web-footed

legs were drawn up close against the cigar-shaped body. The vast, rather

narrow, inflated wings could not have been held or moved in flight

without a strong internal skeleton and musculature. Theorists later

argued that she must have come from a planet with a high proportion of

water surface, a planet possibly larger than Earth though of about the

same mass and with a similar atmosphere. She could rise in Earth's air.

And before each thunderous lament she was seen to breathe.



It was assumed that immense air sacs within her body were inflated or

partly inflated when she left the ship, possibly with some gas lighter

than nitrogen. Since it was inconceivable that a vertebrate organism

could have survived entry into atmosphere from an orbit 3400 miles up,

it was necessary to believe that the ship had briefly descended,

unobserved and by unknown means, probably on Earth's night-side. Later

on the ship did descend as far as atmosphere, for a moment ...



St. Louis was partly evacuated. There is no reliable estimate of the

loss of life and property from panic and accident on the jammed roads

and rail lines. 1500 dead, 7400 injured is the conservative figure.





After a night and a day she abandoned that area, flying heavily

eastward. The droning and swooping gnats of aircraft plainly distressed

her. At first she had only tried to avoid them, but now and then during

her eastward flight from St. Louis she made short desperate rushes

against them, without skill or much sign of intelligence, screaming from

a wide-open mouth that could have swallowed a four-engine bomber. Two

aircraft were lost over Cincinnati, by collision with each other in

trying to get out of her way. Pilots were then ordered to keep a

distance of not less than ten miles until such time as she reached the

Atlantic--if she did--when she could safely be shot down.



She studied Chicago for a day.



By that time Civil Defense was better prepared. About a million

residents had already fled to open country before she came, and the loss

of life was proportionately smaller. She moved on. We have no clue to

the reason why great cities should have attracted her, though

apparently they did. She was hungry perhaps, or seeking help, or merely

drawn in animal curiosity by the endless motion of the cities and the

strangeness. It has even been suggested that the life forms of her

homeland--her masters--resembled humanity. She moved eastward, and

religious organizations united to pray that she would come down on one

of the lakes where she could safely be destroyed. She didn't.



She approached Pittsburgh, choked and screamed and flew high, and soared

in weary circles over Buffalo for a day and a night. Some pilots who had

followed the flight from the West Coast claimed that the vast

lamentation of her voice was growing fainter and hoarser while she was

drifting along the line of the Mohawk Valley. She turned south,

following the Hudson at no great height. Sometimes she appeared to be

choking, the labored inhalations harsh and prolonged, like a cloud in

agony.



When she was over Westchester, headquarters tripled the swarm of

interceptors and observation planes. Squadrons from Connecticut and

southern New Jersey deployed to form a monstrous funnel, the small end

before her, the large end pointing out to open sea. Heavy bombers closed

in above, laying a smoke screen at 10,000 feet to discourage her from

rising. The ground shook with the drone of jets, and with her crying.



Multitudes had abandoned the metropolitan area. Other multitudes trusted

to the subways, to the narrow street canyons and to the strength of

concrete and steel. Others climbed to a thousand high places and

watched, trusting the laws of chance.



She passed over Manhattan in the evening--between 8:14 and 8:27 P.M.,

July 16, 1976--at an altitude of about 2000 feet. She swerved away from

the aircraft that blanketed Long Island and the Sound, swerved again as

the southern group buzzed her instead of giving way. She made no attempt

to rise into the sun-crimsoned terror of drifting smoke.





The plan was intelligent. It should have worked, but for one fighter

pilot who jumped the gun.



He said later that he himself couldn't understand what happened. It was

court-martial testimony, but his reputation had been good. He was Bill

Green--William Hammond Green--of New London, Connecticut, flying a

one-man jet fighter, well aware of the strictest orders not to attack

until the target had moved at least ten miles east of Sandy Hook. He

said he certainly had no previous intention to violate orders. It was

something that just happened in his mind. A sort of mental sneeze.



His squadron was approaching Rockaway, the flying creature about three

miles ahead of him and half a mile down. He was aware of saying out loud

to nobody: "Well, she's too big." Then he was darting out of formation,

diving on her, giving her one rocket-burst and reeling off to the south

at 840 MPH.



He never did locate or rejoin his squadron, but he made it somehow back

to his home field. He climbed out of the cockpit, they say, and fell

flat on his face.



It seems likely that his shot missed the animal's head and tore through

some part of her left wing. She spun to the left, rose perhaps a

thousand feet, facing the city, sideslipped, recovered herself and

fought for altitude. She could not gain it. In the effort she collided

with two of the following planes. One of them smashed into her right

side behind the wing, the other flipped end over end across her back,

like a swatted dragonfly. It dropped clear and made a mess on Bedloe's

Island.



She too was falling, in a long slant, silent now but still living. After

the impact her body thrashed desolately on the wreckage between

Lexington and Seventh Avenues, her right wing churning, then only

trailing, in the East River, her left wing a crumpled slowly deflating

mass concealing Times Square, Herald Square and the garment district.



At the close of the struggle her neck extended, her turtle beak grasping

the top of Radio City. She was still trying to pull herself up, as the

buoyant gasses hissed and bubbled away through the gushing holes in her

side. Radio City collapsed with her.



For a long while after the roar of descending rubble and her own roaring

had ceased, there was no human noise except a melancholy thunder of the

planes.





The apology came early next morning.



The spaceship was observed to descend to the outer limits of atmosphere,

very briefly. A capsule was released, with a parachute timed to open at

40,000 feet and come down quite neatly in Scarsdale. Parachute, capsule

and timing device were of good workmanship.



The communication engraved on a plaque of metal (which still defies

analysis) was a hasty job, the English slightly odd, with some evidence

of an incomplete understanding of the situation. That the visitors were

themselves aware of these deficiencies is indicated by the text of the

message itself.



Most sadly regret inexcusable escape of livestock. While

petting same, one of our children monkied (sp?) with airlock.

Will not happen again. Regret also imperfect grasp of

language, learned through what you term Television etc.

Animal not dangerous, but observe some accidental damage

caused, therefore hasten to enclose reimbursement, having

taken liberty of studying your highly ingenious methods of

exchange. Hope same will be adequate, having estimated

deplorable inconvenience to best of ability. Regret

exceedingly impossibility of communicating further, as

pressure of time and prior obligations forbids. Please accept

heartfelt apologies and assurances of continuing esteem.



The reimbursement was in fact properly enclosed with the plaque, and may

be seen by the public in the rotunda of the restoration of Radio City.

Though technically counterfeit, it looks like perfectly good money,

except that Mr. Lincoln is missing one of his wrinkles and the words

"FIVE DOLLARS" are upside down.