What Rough Beast? Part 3

"Yes, I caught something." He got his tobacco pouch from his pocket and filled his pipe, trying to keep his hands from trembling.

"Gee, he's a _big_ one, teach'," the voice said.

Ward stood up. The boy, Jacky Hodge, leaning over the bank looking down at the fish. Behind him, Ward saw Bobby, Alec Cress, Danny and several others. _Now which of you is laughing?_ he wondered. But there was no way to tell. Jacky, a boy of twelve or thirteen, had his usual look of stupid good nature. Bobby, under the flambeau of red hair, dreamed at the fish. The others wore the open poker faces of children.

"That's a _funny_ fish," one of them said and then they were all laughing as they raced away.

With some difficulty, Ward got the fish out of the water and began to drag it up the hill toward his house.

"Outs.p.a.ce fish," Ward said as he dumped the thing on the work table where Ann had deposited the bag of groceries.

"Where did you get _that_?"

"I just caught it. Down in the stream."

"_That?_ In our stream?"

"Yeah."

He looked at it. The fish resembled a small marlin in shape, but it looked as if its sides had been painted by an abstract artist.

"They planted it on my hook," he told her. "Teleported it from somewhere and planted it on me. Like the tigers."

"Who?"

"I don't know--one of the kids. There were a bunch of them down by the river."

"Is it the proof you wanted?"

"Almost. I'd like to make them--whoever they are--admit it, though. But you can't pry anything out of them. They stick together like--like kids, I guess. Tell me, why is it that the smart ones don't discriminate?

They'd as soon play with morons like Hodge or Cress as with the brainy ones."

"Democratic, I guess," Ann said. She looked at the fish without enthusiasm and turned it over on its other side. "Weren't you the same way, when you were a boy?"

"Guess so. Leader of my group was almost an idiot. Head of the 3Rs now."

He started to put his fishing tackle away. "Got to get ready for Star Watch," he said. "I'm on the early trick tonight." He halted in the kitchen doorway, still holding the rod and creel. He looked back at the fish. "That kind of thing is likely to take all the fun out of fishing,"

he told her.

Usually, he found Star Watch a bore. There were often Saucer sightings, it was true. He had had many himself, some of them very close in, but all that had become routine. At first, the government had tried shooting them down, but the attempts had ended in total failure and the Saucers still came, aloof and unreasonable, as if they did not even know that they were being shot at. Later, communication had been tried--but with no better results.

Now, when the Saucers were sighted, the Watcher phoned in a report, some bored plotter in Saucer Control took bearings and speed, or replied that they had the thing on radar. The next day, the score of sightings would be Spellcast--it was less exciting than watching for grunnion.

Tonight, however, Ward was excited. As he left his house, he set out at a fast pace for the school. He found Bobby in front of the boys'

dormitory.

"What is it, John?" the boy called as he trotted over to the teacher.

"How'd you like to come on Star Watch with me?"

"All right." They went down the street together.

"I want to try something," Ward told the boy. "I think I know how we can get in touch with the Saucer people."

"But they _have_ tried."

"Yes, I know--with radio and blinker lights and all that. But maybe that's the wrong way. Bobby, you're a telepath, aren't you?"

"I'm not very good at it and anyway I don't think it'll work."

"Why not?"

"I tried once, but I couldn't seem to get anywhere. They seemed--I dunno--funny."

"In what way?" Ward asked the boy.

"Just sort of funny."

"Well, if we're lucky, maybe we can try again tonight."

"Yeah," Bobby said, "it's probably a good night for it. Full moon. Why do you suppose they seem to like the full moon, John?"

"I wish I knew."

It didn't look as if they were going to have any luck. They had waited for two hours and Bobby was asleep on a bench in the small "duck blind"

the Watchers used. Then John heard it.

It was a high shimmer of sound and it gave him gooseflesh, as it always did. He couldn't see anything yet. Then it appeared to the north, very low, like a coagulation of the moonlight itself, and he shook the boy.

Bobby was awake immediately and, together, they watched its approach. It was moving slowly, turned on an edge. It looked like a knife of light.

Then it rolled over, or shifted its form, and the familiar shape appeared. The humming stopped and the Saucer floated in the moonlight like a giant metallic lily-pad, perhaps a half mile away.

"Try now, Bobby," he said, attempting to keep calm.

The boy stood in the moonlight in front of the blind, very still, as if collecting the silence out of the night. Once he shook his head as though to clear it and started to say something. Then, for a long minute, he held his face toward the moon as if he were listening.

Suddenly, he giggled.

"What is it?" Ward snapped, unable to repress his impatience.

"I'm not sure. I thought it seemed something like a joke."

"Try to ask where they're from."

A moment later, the boy shook his head. "I guess I can't get anything,"

he said. "All I seem to get is that they're saying, '_We're here_.' As if they didn't understand me."

"All right. Try to get _anything_."