Atomic Julie's Galactic Bedtime Stories - THE WATCHERS by Roger D. Aycock (Roger Dee)

Even alien observers might reach a point where they give up.

 

original text:

 

THE WATCHERS By ROGER DEE

It had taken him ten years to find them—to even convince himself that they existed. Now Manson was ready to kill!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories September 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

He left his gyro on the dark lawn and circled the villa, carefully avoiding the wash of light from open windows. The blast gun lay snug and cold in his hand, and his thought ran bleakly: Here am I, Peter Manson, pacifist, idealist, reformer, preacher in print of tolerance and amity—about to kidnap a man whom I shall almost certainly kill before morning.

Tomorrow the telecast would list his madness with other insanities: sex murders, suicides, political drumbeatings for the coming holocaust of the inevitable Fourth War....

War.

"They're going too far," he said, half aloud. "Their routine meddlings were bad enough, but another war now might mean the end of everything."

He found the alien who called himself Leonard Havlik in a bright, book-lined study, packing a miscellany of papers into a brief case that bore his name in gold lettering. A secretary was helping, a slim girl with crisp, copper-colored hair and clear green eyes.

Manson waited, tense with unaccustomed strain. Somewhere a bird trilled sleepily, and the night-wind, fragrant with the smell of trampled clover, blew cool against his damp face.

Irrelevantly, the scene inside reminded him of his own quiet study where he had labored for ten years over the scant gleanings of his search. In that time he had written four books, fighting with a reformer's apostolic zeal to open the eyes of men to their own possibilities, and he had failed.

He had not awakened his kind, but he had found the Watchers. The failure was not his fault. It was Theirs....

The girl left the room. Manson straightened at his window, bringing up the blast gun.

"Come out, Havlik," he ordered. "Quickly, or I'll blow you to dust where you stand—Watcher!"

His quarry looked up, startled—a small, dark man with a thin, tired face and sparse gray hair, a perfect replica of the million ordinary businessmen his camouflage of humanity aped.

Manson snicked off the safety catch of his weapon, and Havlik came through the window quickly, without protest. Manson prodded him into the gyro and manacled his wrists together.

"We Earthmen have a time-tested proverb," Manson said, "to the effect that you can't fool all the people all the time. I've spent ten years searching for you, Havlik—and here I am."

He set the autopilot for his cabin on Green River, holding his blast gun warily, and sent the gyro slanting upward into the night. Havlik smiled faintly, dark eyes gleaming in the light of the instrument panel.

"Laugh while you can," Manson said grimly. "I've learned something of you Watchers already. I'll know more by morning."

"Force was unnecessary," Havlik said unexpectedly. "I would have given you information willingly, since our mission here is ended. The Kha Niish, who are our masters, have ordered us to leave Earth. Tonight."

Manson stared, the alien's assurance fanning his anger.

"You're lying—you Watchers have mingled with us for centuries, using our own ignorance to set us against each other. You've kept us in perpetual confusion, deafening us with our own bickering while you tightened your hold on us. Now you're fomenting a Fourth War that may wipe us out completely, to save yourselves the trouble of liquidating us directly. You'd never go now, with success almost in your hands."

"Perhaps you mistake our intention," Havlik said. "How do you know you're right?"

"Because men of themselves woul