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 . . . Read More