MASTER RACE

By Richard Ashby

The Invaders sent a scout to Earth to find out what kind of life inhabited it. But what sort of a conclusion could they draw from comic book heroes?

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

One moment he was piloting a fast plane over dangerous green jungles ... and the next Eddie was wide awake and peering through the gloom. Across the room Rags was whining softly and sniffing the damp night air that rolled in through the open window. The Scotty was excited, Eddie saw, and it must be something out of the ordinary for Rags' whimpering carried an undercurrent of perplexity and fear ... and the dog wasn't a coward.

The boy called softly to him, but Rags, after tossing back a swift glance of recognition, put his forefeet up on the sill and peered, muttering, out across the pastures.

Eddie slipped from his bed and padded over to the window. As he comfortingly ruffed the fur behind the Scottie's ears, he listened intently at the night. At first he heard only the ordinary country sounds—roosters crowing over at the next farm, the muffled thumping of stock shifting about in the barn and against the corral fence; the flittering and high chirping of birds in the cottonwoods and pepper trees. He took the dog in his arms and was about to go back to bed with him when he became aware of a sound that was very much out of the ordinary. A sound, Eddie decided, something like standing outside the Baptist church in Riverside when the organist was playing low, vibrant notes inside.

Eddie wondered how he could have first missed the sound, so firmly had it now become established. Where could it be coming from? It was, he guessed, about an hour till dawn, and no tractors or other farm machinery should be running. And it wasn't a radio.

A plane?

Leaning from the window he glanced upwards, then gasped in astonishment. Goose pimples of excitement tingled his skin, for there in the sky, above the oak tree on the ridge hung a pattern of sharp white lights. They were little lights, as if someone had strung together a fanciful arrangement of Christmas tree bulbs, then sent them dangling aloft beneath a kite.

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