The Wailing Asteroid | Page 6

boomed the announcer's voice, "comes a
mystery! There is intelligent life in the void. It has communicated with
us. Today--"
Because of the necessity to give the later details of a cafe-society
divorce case, a torch murder and a graft scandal in a large city's
municipal budget, the signals from space could not be fully treated in
the five-minute hourly news program. But fifteen seconds were spared
for a sample of the cryptic sounds from emptiness. Burke listened to
them with a grim expression.
"I think," he said measuredly, "that I am sane. I have heard those noises
before tonight. I know them-- I'll take you home, Sandy."
He ushered her out of the office and into his car.
"It's funny," he said as he drove back toward the highway. "This is
probably the beginning of the most important event in human history.
We've received a message from an intelligent race that can apparently
travel through space. There's no way in the world to guess what it will
bring about. It could be that we're going to learn sciences to make old
Earth a paradise. Or it could mean that we'll be wiped out and a
superior race will take over. Funny, isn't it?"

Sandy said unsteadily, "No. Not funny."
"I mean," said Burke, "when something really significant happens,
which probably will determine Earth's whole future, all I worry about is
myself-- that I'm crazy, or a telepath, or something. But that's
convincingly human!"
"What do you think I worry about?" asked Sandy.
"Oh..." Burke hesitated, then said uncomfortably, "I was going to
propose to you, and I didn't."
"That's right," said Sandy. "You didn't."
Burke drove for long minutes, frowning.
"And I won't," he said flatly, after a time, "until I know it's all right to
do so. I've no explanation for what's kept me from proposing to you up
to now, but apparently it's not nonsense. I did anticipate the sounds that
came in tonight from space and-- I've always known those sounds
didn't belong on Earth."
Then, driving doggedly through a warm and moonlit night, he told her
exactly why the fluting sounds were familiar to him; how they'd
affected his life up to now. He'd mentally rehearsed the story, anyhow,
and it was reasonably well arranged. But told as fact, it was
preposterous.
She listened in complete silence. He finished the tale with his car
parked before the boardinghouse in which Sandy lived with her sister
Pam, they being all that was left of a family. If she hadn't known Burke
all her life, of course, Sandy would have dismissed him and his story
together. But she did know him. It did explain why he felt tongue-tied
when he wished to be romantic, and even why he recorded a weird
sequence of notes on a tape recorder. His actions were reasonable
reactions to an unreasonable, repeated experience. His doubts and
hesitations showed a sound mind trying to deal with the inexplicable.
And now that the signals from space had come, it was understandable

that he should react as if they were a personal matter for his attention.
She had a disheartening mental picture of a place where strange trees
waved long and ribbonlike leaves under an improbable sky. Still...
"Y-yes," she said slowly when he'd finished his uneasy account. "I
don't understand, but I can see how you feel. I-- I guess I'd feel the
same way if I were a man and what you've experienced happened to
me." She hesitated. "Maybe there will be an explanation now, since
those signals have come. They do match the ones you recorded from
your dream. They're the ones you know about."
"I can't believe it," said Burke miserably, "and I can't dismiss it. I can't
do anything until I find out why I know that somewhere there's a place
with two moons and queer trees..."
He did not mention the part of his experience Sandy was most
interested in-- the person for whom he felt such anguished fear and
such overwhelming joy when she was found. She didn't mention it
either.
"You go on home, Joe," she said quietly. "Get a good night's sleep.
Tomorrow we'll hear more about it and maybe it will all clear up.
Anyhow-- whatever turns out, I-- I'm glad you did intend to ask me to
marry you. I intended to say yes."

Chapter 2
BURKE WAS no less disturbed, but his disturbance was of a different
kind. After he left Sandy at the house where she and her sister boarded,
he headed back to the plant. He wanted to think things out.
The messages from space, of course, must presage events of
overwhelming importance. The coming of intelligent aliens to Earth
might be comparable to the coming of white men to the American