Abnormal Occurrences Read Online Free PDF Page B

Some form of illumination, presumably electric, could be seen behind the portholes. The engines now ceased to produce noise, and as the gigantic Frisbee settled slowly to the ground I heard nothing but the faint sound of the stubble being crushed. My farmer neighbor periodically gave this field a rest after cropping to ankle-level what had lately grown there: it was in such condition now. Beyond the meadow was a mile or two of vacant woods.
    My pet chose this moment to come home to the human being whom the canine god had assigned as his protector against bizarre menaces. Bub is valiant when it comes to other dogs and will stand up to a mastiff, but the unexpected features that are routine occurrences in the life of man, the sudden ringing of the telephone or doorbell, the stovetop grease fire, or any bent figure carrying a sack sends him to cower behind his master’s knees. At the moment, however, I was pleased to have him there, his firm warm hairy body bolstering the legs that might well otherwise have buckled. After decades of movies about space creatures, pro and con, I was far from being ready to confront a newly arrived delegation. But the car was gone, and I had no place reasonably to run to, my nearest neighbor being the aforementioned farmer, who I happened to know had, with his taciturn wife and insolent teenaged son, left on a rare trip to visit inlaws in the suburbs of the city.
    Therefore I stood there, propped up by and shielding Bub, and waited passively as an oblong of yellow light appeared between two of the portholes and an extensible gangplank emerged from it to touch the ground. It was ever so long before this was put into use—long enough, indeed, for me to wonder in terror whether the ship’s company was invisible and, if so, had landed and was all about me.
    But finally a figure appeared in the opening of the hatch and after what appeared to be a cautious survey of the nearby terrain, began to descend the inclined deboarding ramp.
    At least the creature had a head, a trunk, and four limbs of what would seem the human type, and its form of locomotion was that of a person, as were such of its gestures as I could see from fifty or sixty yards away. Somewhere along the ramp it paused for a moment with hands on hips. Then it shook its head and glanced back at the ship, after which it rubbed its chin, for all the world as my old Uncle Marty would undoubtedly have done had he found himself deboarding first from a vehicle that had just landed on an unfamiliar planet. I have not picked my example at random. As the spaceman reached the ground and began to approach the porch, I saw even more resemblances to my maternal uncle: an upper body that in form suggested an avocado, a head fuzzy at both temples but radiantly bald in between, a splayed sort of stride, with the feet at right angles to each other, and finally, the kind of two-piece suit that were it made of wool would have been baggy, but in polyester doubleknit looked, here and there, uncomfortably snug. He was not, so far as I could see, armed, but the possibility that he had available some more subtle kind of weapon, perhaps one that could be triggered by his thoughts, restrained me from assuming that because of the attire and penguin-footed stride, shared with Uncle Marty, he was as harmless.
    But Bub suddenly lost all fear and bounded out from the shelter of my back-of-leg, approaching the space creature with bare-fanged hostility and a deep-throated unpleasant sound that I had never before heard him emit.
    The figure from the saucer abruptly halted, then bent at the waist and began to speak to the dog in a very human-sounding way.
    “Hiyee, wuzzums! Is oo upset cuz fella on oor turf? Oo, but ize oor friend, oh what a sweet poochie-woochie boy oo is.”
    Bub hesitated for a moment, limbs and tail gone rigid, and then his growl became even more menacing and his advance even more ill-willed. It occurred to me that if the creature was not armed in any