TABBY
By Winston Marks
Illustrated by Rudolph Palais
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of ScienceFiction March 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Dear Ben: It breaks my heart you didn't sign on for this trip. Yourreplacement, who calls himself an ichthyologist, has only one talentthat pertains to fish—he drinks like one. There are nine of us in theexpedition, and every one of us is fed up with this joker, Cleveland,already. We've only been on the island a week, and he's gone native,complete with beard, bare feet and bone laziness. He slops around thelagoon like a beachcomber and hasn't brought in a decent specimen yet.
The island is a bit of paradise, though. Wouldn't be hard to letyourself relax under the palms all day instead of collecting blistersand coral gashes out in the bright sun of the atoll. No complaints,however. We aren't killing ourselves, and our little camp is verycomfortable. The portable lab is working out fine, and the screenedsleeping tent-houses have solved the one big nuisance we've sufferedbefore: Insects. I think an entomologist would find more to keep himbusy here than we will.
Your ankle should be useable by the time our next supply plane fromHawaii takes off. If you apply again at the Foundation right now I'msure Sellers and the others will help me get rid of Cleveland, andthere'll be an open berth here.
Got to close now. Our amphib jets off in an hour for the return trip.Hope this note is properly seductive. Come to the isles, boy, andlive!—Cordially, Fred
Dear Ben: Now, aren't you sorry you didn't take my advice?!!!! I'massuming you read the papers, and also, that too tight a censorshiphasn't clamped down on this thing yet. Maybe I'm assuming too much onthe latter. Anyhow, here's a detailed version from an actual eyewitness.
That's right! I was right there on the beach when the "saucer" landed.Only it looked more like a king-size pokerchip. About six feet acrossand eight inches thick with a little hemispherical dome dead center ontop. It hit offshore about seventy-five yards with a splash that soundedlike a whale's tail. Jenner and I dropped our seine, waded to shore andstarted running along the beach to get opposite it. Cleveland came outof the shade and helped us launch a small boat.
We got within twenty feet of the thing when it started moving out,slowly, just fast enough to keep ahead of us. I was in the bow lookingright at it when the lid popped open with a sound like a cork coming outof a wine bottle. The little dome had split. Sellers quit rowing and weall hit the bottom of the boat. I peeked over the gunwale right away,and it's a good thing. All that came out of the dome was a little cloudof flies, maybe a hundred or so, and the breeze picked them up and blewthem over us inshore so fast that Cleveland and Sellers never did seethem.
I yelled at them to look, but by then the flies were in mingling withthe local variet