Brian Lumley - Necroscope - Invaders

And Trask actually smiled as he slowly lowered his gun and put it away. 'Yes, I can see that,' he nodded. With which Jake got the idea.

'What? Another bloody test?'

'To push you hard,' Trask told him, 'and see what answered. You… or something else.'

'Well, if I were you,' Jake said, 'I would have supposed it was something else!'

'But you're not me,' Trask told him. 'And you passed. That leaves just one more test to go.'

'Then let's get it over with.'

'Not now, no.'

'When, then?'

'Tomorrow morning. I'm having a man flown in from Carnarvon on the coast. An expatriate Brit, and the best in his field.'

'What, yet another great "talent?"' Jake was still angry.

'Not the way you mean,' Trask shook his head. 'But he has talent enough, yes. Oh, and by the way: that's some temper you have, Jake. You said you might have shaken me? Well, you shook me all right. I thought you might actually attack me!'

Jake relaxed a little, grinned. 'I scared you?'

'I was scared I might have to shoot you, yes.'

But before that could start Jake off again, a voice called from outside the tent. 'Mr Trask? Phillips here. We have a bit of a problem.' A male figure stood silhouetted behind the gauze fly screen. Trask let him in, said:

'Shouldn't you be on your way to Carnarvon?'

'Would be/ said the other, 'if not for this problem. Its name is Peter Miller, and it won't get its ugly arse out of my chopper!' The speaker was small and young, and looked very hot, sticky, and agitated in his flyer's gear.

'Miller's in your machine?' Trask raised an eyebrow, then nodded decisively. 'So he wants out of here. And once away, he intends to take his story to the authorities or, worse, to some newspaper or other. Well, it can't be allowed. Yes, I want rid of him. No, I don't want the trouble he'll bring. Only a handful of people in the very highest places know what we're doing, and if we're compromised it will make them look bad. As for the man in the street… well, it's simply out of the question. The world's insecure enough as it is.'

He turned to Jake. 'Go and find Lardis Lidesci, will you? Bring him to the chopper park in the clearing on the far side of the road.' And speaking again to Phillips, 'You and me… let's go and have a word with Mr Miller.'

'Just what is that fat jerk doing here, anyway?' Jake wanted to know.

'He was supposed to give us some legitimacy,' Trask answered. 'He's liaison, a go-between, that's all. But he took his job too seriously, discovered the location of our original base camp near Lake Disappointment, which is after all his province, and since then he's insisted on staying aboard. Well, with us is one thing, but against us is another. Now, after seeing far too much of what we're about, he's all too eager to leave. I can't very well stop him, but I really should warn him against doing anything stupid. Now go and get Lardis, will you?'

And Trask and Phillips went off through the night…

The Old Lidesci was in a foldaway chair, dozing by the guttering campfire. But as Jake approached he gave a start and looked up. 'Eh, what is it?'

'Trask wants you,' Jake told him. 'At the helicopter park. Some trouble with Mrs Miller.'

'Mrs? Eh?' Lardis frowned at first, then burst out laughing. 'Oh! Ha~ha~ha!Rut you know, the truth is I've been thinking much the same thing: how that poor excuse for a man reminds me of a chattering old woman? A week on Sunside would sort that one out, I fancy. But no, no… the poor bastard wouldn't last but a day.'

Jake assisted him to his feet and the Old Lidesci stamped his left foot a little. 'Cramp,' he said. 'I'm getting past it. We call it The Crippler, where I'm from. But it's rheum— er, rheuma— er…'

'Rheumatism?' Jake said.

'Damn, right!' said Lardis. 'It's rheumatism here. Ah, but it's a sod in any world.'

And with the old man leaning a little on Jake's arm, they made for the road and the helicopter park…

In the helicopter park, voices were raised in anger. One was a rasp: Ben Trask's. And the other was high-pitched, shrill, and threatening. In short, blustering; but the mind behind it held threatening knowledge, certainly.

'Try to see sense, man!' Trask was growling, as Jake and Lardis approached the well-lit area where a handful of Branch agents and chopper ground staff stood in a clearing and watched the show.

'Sense? Sense?' Miller was in one of the two helicopters, belted into a passenger seat near the section of aluminium frame that formed both cabin wall-panelling and steps. At present the steps were 'down' and Miller was seated opposite the open door, from where he looked down on Trask outside the aircraft. 'What? Are you telling me my attitude is nonsensical? But I know what I saw tonight, and it wasn't of this Earth. It was intelligent, and alien… oh, and it was ugly, yes. But I also saw the devastating force that your thugs used against it, which was even more inhuman! So who the hell are you, Mr Trask? Some kind of monster yourself? You and your people: you're not the military, not even Australian. It's obvious to me that you've duped somebody somewhere. As for those poor aliens: whoever they are and wherever they're from, they deserved a lot better welcome than you gave them. This is Earth Year — dedicated to the ecological survival of the planet — and you might well have condemned our world to interplanetary isolation. Worse, we may even find ourselves at war.''

The precog lan Goodly stepped out of the shadows and spoke to Jake and Lardis. 'This idiot obviously has some kind of bee in his bonnet. "The flying saucers have landed," and all that rot. He seems to think we've been murdering aliens — visitors from another world, that is — out of hand!'

'Haven't we?' Jake looked at him.

'No/ Goodly answered. 'We killed invaders. Visitors don't arrive uninvited, stay, and kill off or enslave the occupiers. But invaders frequently do… and the Wamphyri always do! Not knowing everything, Miller sees our action tonight as an unprovoked assault, a pre-emptive strike, against "beings" whose intentions hadn't been fully determined. We, on the other hand — knowing the entire story, having been here, or there, before — see it differently. We see tonight's action for what it really was: the only cure for a nightmarish plague that submits to no other antidote.' And meanwhile:

'Miller, come down out of there/ Trask was insistent. 'The airplane you're sitting in has been serviced and fuelled for an important mission. You're cutting into a tight schedule/

'That's Mr Miller to you!' the other snapped. 'And I'm delighted to be disrupting your vile schedule! What, am I preventing another massacre like the one you organized tonight? Good! My God! How many of these poor people have landed, then?'

'You see?' Goodly muttered. 'They're "poor people" now. I mean… is Miller unbalanced or what? He had a ringside seat for tonight's show, yet he's still not convinced!'

Lardis had seen and heard more than enough. Freeing himself from Jake's helping hand, he moved up alongside Trask and, in a lowered tone, said, 'Why don't you just drag his arse out of there?'

'I was trying to be diplomatic/ Trask answered under his breath.

'It didn't work/ said Lardis.

Trask nodded and said, 'That's why I sent for you.' Then, turning away, he said, 'Get him out of there. And bring him to the big Ops truck. Maybe his own authorities can convince him, for I certainly can't. Jake, help Lardis after he's got Miller down from there.'

'Why don't I just do it for him?' Jake was surprised. 'The old boy, well… he's old.'

Trask agreed. 'He's full of old ways, too. So don't worry, he'll manage okay, and probably scare Miller half to death into the bargain. Serve the bastard right!' And without another word he went on his way, and lan Goodly went with him.