Part Two
By John Merkel
"Get back where?" asked the girl.
Norm and I told her about the cold air and the fogged-up windows.
The girl was awfully pale. I asked her if she was okay. "I'll be fine," she said. "It was just turning to the Sneaker again so soon."
We drove to their house. Toni could rest there while we figured out how we were going to get back to Earth.
"She seems better now," Kathy told us when we were pulling into the driveway of the Masters home.
"It's just as well. We can't stop here. It seems we've forgotten that on John's 'imaginary' Firma almost everyone has a counterpart." Norm was looking at a car identical to his parked in front of the Firman version of his house. He kept going out of the driveway onto a sidestreet.
Toni opened her eyes. "My house is on the other side of the place where you rescued me," she said.
"So you feel up to telling us about yourself?" asked Norm.
She did. She told us about her strange other self. How, unexpectedly, she would change from Toni to the Sneaker and back again.
"When I'm Toni, I can become the Sneaker for less than ten minutes and then it's only if I really concentrate on changing, but it makes me awfully tired and weak when I revert back to myself.
"When my normal self is the Sneaker, I can change into Toni for about half an hour every three hours or so. When I make a change from being Toni normally to being the Sneaker normally, I stay that way for anywhere from a week to a month.
"I never know which one I'm going to be when I wake up. It's frightening," she said.
Norm spoke up. "I keep getting a mental picture from John, Toni. He wants to know what super-powers the Sneaker has."
"Super-powers? Oh, you mean what the Sneaker can do that other people can't? When he's like jello he can ooze his body into little holes. When he makes himsef hard he can do almost anything but fly. He's strong enough to stop a small car just by standing in front of it. Anything else? There's my house."
The garage was empty and Toni said it would be all right to use it.
"I have a question, Toni," said Norm. "Why didn't you become the Sneaker when you were tied to the stake?"
"I can't turn the Sneaker on and off like a faucet, Norm," she said. "It takes me quite a while when I'm Toni. It would have taken too long if you hadn't shown up."
"Your folks aren't hurting for a home, Toni," I said. "This is quite a palace." She had a two-story house with about twelve rooms, on my guess.
"My parents were murdered shortly after I was born. The house belongs to my brothers," she said.
Sometimes I talk too much.
Norm and Kathy got the guest room and I got the couch. Toni's brothers weren't home much and were never expected until they came in the door, she'd said.
One, Paul, was a commmander in the Duristanian Navy. He wrote home twice or three times a year and never sent a return address.
The other brother, Mark, never wrote. Toni never knew where he was or what he was doing.
Not exactly a closely-knit family.
I didn't sleep very well. My personal worries didn't help much. Norm and Kathy had until the end of the summer before they had to be back. If I wasn't at my duty station in a little over a week, I'd be in real trouble. In a month I'd be declared a deserter and have the FBI out looking for me with a warrant.
The next day the three of us drove out to the spot where we'd come to Firma. We sat there for a couple of hours, then went back to Toni's house.
A man stood on the porch. Toni was looking at him as if she were a stone statue. She just stood there, listening to him.
Carl Cannon was behind a bush, and he was aiming a rifle at Toni.
"Monsters, it doesn't look like we got rid of Mr. Cannon after all, does it?" I asked Norm.
"He must have recovered after we left and before the police got there," said Norm. "Toni doesn't see him, so I guess we'd better do something."
He slammed on the brakes, then pulled Kathy down onto the seat.
I slid out the window and ran for the tree. A bullet hit it as I reached it.
The man on the porch heard the shot and turned. His face became troubled when he saw Carl. He pointed his finger at him.
Carl disappeared in a puff of smoke.
The man then turned to Toni. He stepped off the porch and she followed. He led her toward the woods and the side of the house.
I heard a car door slam, but there was no time to wait for Norm. I was more interested in keeping Toni and the weird man in view.
I caught up with them in a meadow behind the house, and came to a halt. If the running hadn't already taken my breath away, the real-life flying saucer sitting in the meadow did.
The man was standing by the saucer. Toni was three-quarters of the way from where I was to the ship.
Norm didn't stop. "Toni!" He yelled, and it broke the spell on me. We matched strides over the distance between Toni and us until we ran into something that felt like a brick wall.
The saucer was hovering in the air when I opened my eyes. It began to glow until it was brighter than the sun. I covered my eyes and tried to dig a hole to escape the heat.
"John, come on. We can follow it in the car," said Norm.
Kathy must have guessed something was wrong, for she had the car on M-15 when we came a-running. It was pointing in the direction the saucer was going.
It flew in a straight line down the highway. We were gaining on it a little. "We're going to catch it, Norm!" I cried.
"If we can fly."
That was when a blast of cold air blew in through the windows. Moments later we could barely see out of the suddenly fogged glass.
It was night. We were on M-15, somehwhere between my house and Norm's
A police car pulled up alongside us. "Everything all right, folks? I saw you pull off the road. Thought you might need some help."
"No, thank you, officer. We just wanted to check on something in the trunk," said Norm.
"Okay, folks. Good night."
We wished him a good night also, then the three of us went to the rear of the car and Norm opened the trunk.
The spare tire was flat.
END: PART TWO
[pp. 16 - 22, THE UNKNOWN #4, Summer 1966]
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