When They Come from Space Read Online Free PDF

carry out my assignment—how to say who they were, what they were, what they were up to.
    And how we could drive them away without anybody learning about it.
    We had lunches sent in because, in Dr. Kibbie's opinion, this was all too vital and urgent for us to take the usual and customary two hours or more. I didn't mind. Coming out of Industry, it would take me a while to accustom myself to the highly perfected procedures of government for eating up the tax dollars without accomplishing anything to show for it.
    By the middle of the afternoon the various Dr. Er-Ah's carted away their treasured evidence and I was left once more with Dr. Kibbie, for whose ears alone my valuable judgment was reserved.
    He leaned forward over his desk and looked at me alertly, brightly, hopefully, expectantly. I didn't have the heart to disappoint him.
    "Interesting,” I breathed. “Ve-e-ery interesting! But without further corroborative studies, sampling statistics, and analyses of your analyses...” I trailed off vaguely in the approved scientific manner. He beamed in satisfaction. “I'll need an office,” I said.
    "Already set aside for you.” he answered. “I'll show it to you before you leave for the hotel where we've reserved a suite for you. That way you can come right to work in the morning without the delay of coming to me, first. I'm really quite busy, and time, time is precious."
    "I'll need a staff."
    "Already requisitioned from the government employee pool,” he said promptly, and anticipated my approval of his efficiency in providing for all my needs. I nodded appreciatively. “Your staff is limited to three people as a start,” he added apologetically. “That's standard procedure."
    "Enough to start with,” I conceded; and then decided that so long as I seemed to have no choice about becoming a government official, I might as well be an important one—by their standards. And the more important I became, the more important he would become, since he was my boss. “But only as a start,” I continued. “The work I foresee may well require two or three hundred. Maybe more."
    He jumped up from behind his desk and clapped his hands delightedly.
    "That's the ticket!” he exclaimed. “Think big! Oh, I can see we have the right man. I'll confess I've been a little disappointed in some of my Division Heads. Good scientists all. The Best. But perhaps, administratively, their vision has been limited."
    I decided to see just where that limit might be.
    "Before I'm through,” I warned, “my needs may run into thousands of people."
    His feet hardly seemed to touch the floor.
    Well, all right! So that's the way the cookie crumbles. I thought of Old Stone Face. Computer Research already seemed far away, a tiny speck down there somewhere from these Olympian Heights. Of course I'd have to call him, let him know I'd turned out to be the right man after all. I might even throw him a little business to clear him with his Board of Directors and Stockholders—grubby little businessmen, but the source of tax moneys.
    "And equipment,” I continued. “I may need some specially designed computers—in fact I may even need a Brain."
    He looked thoughtful, cautious.
    "There's only two billion available, at present,” he warned me. “And Congress is not in session just now."
    "I know a company which might be able to stay somewhere within that figure,” I said.
    He whirled around from where he had been following the yellow dots on the other side of the room, and held up his hand in the manner of a traffic cop.
    "Don't tell me the name,” he said hurriedly. “Must remember you're an important governmental official now (or will be important when you've hired all those people and spent all that money). You have a responsibility to the taxpayers not to use anything you have learned outside of government service. Where to get the proper computer would be that kind of misuse of special knowledge."
    He ran across the room to his desk and