The Fourth Invasion

The Fourth Invasion, by Henry
Josephs

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Title: The Fourth Invasion
Author: Henry Josephs
Release Date: October 20, 2007 [EBook #23099]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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FOURTH INVASION ***

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Psychopathology has offered possible answers to why, from time to
time, people in large quantities "see" strange things in the sky which
manage to evade trained scientific observers, or conform to what is
known about the behavior of falling or flying bodies. And mass hysteria

is by no means a product of the present century. But--what if these
human foibles were deliberately being exploited?
THE FOURTH INVASION
by Henry Josephs
Dr. Clayton's face was impassive as a marble mask when he turned to
young Corelli. For a moment, the little group stood there in
embarrassed silence in the classroom, shifting uneasily from one foot to
the other, feigning interest in the paperweights upon Clayton's desk, or
in the utterly uninspiring scenes on the sidewalk outside the window.
"You say, Corelli, that you saw three--er, Martian--ships. Can you
describe them?"
Corelli blinked as he felt the weight of his colleagues' eyes boring into
him. "I didn't say they were Martian, sir--only that they seemed to be
unearthly. And they were not the conventional saucer-shaped
things--they acted like saucers skimming across the water. That's what
made me think they were genuine. And they didn't seem to be going
fast enough so that I'd expect to hear a roar like a jet-plane.
"It struck me that this might not be the way they fly, naturally, but the
way they might fly if the pilots were having trouble adjusting the
controls to a heavier atmosphere than they were used to."
Clayton tapped the tabletop with his fingers. "What about you, Marty?
Did you see three ships?"
Big Gene Marty, football star, was the least nervous. "Can't be sure
about ships, Doc," he rumbled. "I did see something strange
disappearing over the horizon. It--I mean they--might have been what
Tony says; but whatever it was, there were three of them. But I saw
something else, because I was looking in another direction. What I saw
first was a couple of funny-looking shapes floating down near the
ground. Didn't look like parachutists, yet they seemed big enough to be
men--or at least, small men."

"Interesting. All right, what about the rest of you? How many saw the
ships?"
* * * * *
A chorus answered him. "I see," Clayton mused. "You all agree on the
behavior. And you all think there were three--not four--not two.
Three?"
It was agreed.
Clayton rustled the pile of newspapers. "The reports in here vary. I
learn with amazement that you gentlemen seem to have missed
completely the spurts of flame that issued from the alien ships--flame
which is reported to have set a house on fire. And no one seems to have
noticed that the invaders, in descending, glided on huge black wings."
Corelli blushed a fiery crimson. "Dr. Clayton," he protested, "we aren't
making these things up for popular consumption. We're just telling you
what we actually saw--that is--what--what--we--saw looked like to us."
Clayton nodded. "Of course. That is all people were doing back in 1938
when the Martians landed in New Jersey, at the time Orson Welles
presented a radio version of H. G. Wells' 'War of the Worlds'. Or when
the 'Flying Saucer' craze first started. Or when Fantafilm put on their
big publicity stunt for the improved 3-D movie, 'The Outsiders', and
people saw the aliens over Broadway and heard them address the
populace in weird, booming tones.
"Gentlemen, I am not pleased to find students of this University
engaging in such unwanted extra-curricular activity as inventing
interplanetary scares. I don't think Washington will be amused, either."
Corelli clicked his heels. "Sir," he stated in dignified tones, "I resent
these implications. I assume they have been directed at me. At no time
have I talked about this to reporters, or in any way engaged in what you
accuse me of. If you want my resignation from this school, you may
have it."

"Really? You think that an air of dignified innocence will undo the
damage done? I am well aware of your experiments with the y wave,
gentlemen--and it was on the y wave that the messages came. You may
be interested to know that the number of lives