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don't, my beauty. No runnin' away. Dangeroush for li'l girlsh—'lone in the dark."
    She started to scream, but a hand quickly stifled the sound.
    I caught the upsurge of terror in her mind and at that moment I knew her.
    The girl whose machine I had mended — who had been grateful.
    In a flash I was among them. Three of the men started back in alarm, but not Tom. He was contemptuous of me because I had obeyed him. He lifted a heavy boot to send it crashing at my lens. Human movement is slow: before his leg had completed the back swing, I had caught it and whirled him away. The rest started futilely to close in on me.
    I picked the girl up in my forerods and raced away into the darkness out of their sight.
DISCOURAGEMENT
    At first she was bewildered and not a little frightened, though our first meeting must have shown that I intended no harm.
    Gently I placed her on top of my casework and, holding her there with my forerods, set off in the direction of her journey.
    She was hurt, blood was pouring down her right arm.
    We made the best speed my eight legs could take us. I was afraid lest from lack of blood her mind might go blank and fail to direct me. At length it did. Her mental vibrations had been growing fainter and fainter until they ceased altogether. But she had been thinking ahead of us, picturing the way we should go, and I had read her mind.
    At last, confronted by a closed door she had shown me, I pushed it down and held her out on my forerods to her father.
    "Joan...?" he said, and for the moment seemed unsurprised at me—the only third planet man who ever was. Not until he had dressed his daughter's wounds and roused her to consciousness did he even look at me again.
    There is little more. They have been kind, those two. They have tried to comprehend, though they cannot. He once removed a piece of my casing—I allowed him to do so, for he was intelligent—but he did not understand. I could feel him mentally trying to classify my structure among electrically operated devices—the highest form of power known to him, but still too primitive.
    This whole world is too primitive. It does not even know the metal of which I am made. I am a freak... a curiosity outside comprehension.
    These men long to know how I was built; I can read in their minds that they want to copy me. There is hope for them: some day, perhaps, they will have real machines of their own— But not through my help will they build them, nothing of me shall go to the making of them.
    ...I know what it is to be an intelligent machine in a world of madness...
    The doctor looked up as he turned the last page.
    "And so," he said, "it dissolved itself with my acids."
    He walked slowly over to the window and gazed up to Mars, swimming serenely among a myriad stars.
    "I wonder," he murmured, "I wonder."
    He handed the typewritten sheets back to his daughter.
    "Joan, my dear, I think it would be wisest to burn them. We have no desire to be certified."
    Joan nodded.
    "As you prefer, Father," she agreed.
    The papers curled, flared and blackened on the coals—but Joan kept a copy.
The Man From Beyond
    #2 From The Best Of John Wyndham
John Wyndham
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Man From Beyond
The Earthman's Story
Murders in Space
Stealing the Ship
The Mysterious Valley
THE MAN FROM BEYOND (1934)
    ONE of the greatest sights in Takon* these days was the exhibition of discoveries made in the Valley of Dur. In the building erected especially to house them Takonians and visitors from other cities crowded through the corridors, peering into the barred or glassfronted cages, observing the contents with awe, interest or amusement according to their natures.
    [* All Venusian terms are rendered in their closest English equivalents.]
    The crowd was formed for the most part of those persons who flock to any unusual sight, providing it is free or cheap. Their eyes dwelt upon the exhibits. Their minds were ready to marvel and be superficially impressed. But they had come to be