of what you call getting your brain scrambled with supersonics as it is of just knowing where to look. But I’ve been seeing part of them all my life, and so has everybody. It’s that little suggestion of movement you never catch except just at the edge of your vision, just out of the corner of your eye. Something that’s almost there—and when you look fully at it, there’s nothing. These photographs showed me the way. It’s not easy to learn, but it can be done. We’re conditioned to look directly at a thing—the particular thing we want to see clearly, whatever it is. Perhaps the Martians gave us that conditioning. When we see a movement at the edge of our range of vision, it’s almost irresistible not to look directly at it. So it vanishes.”

“Then they can be seen—by anybody?”

“I’ve learned a lot in a few days,” the brown man said. “Since I took those photographs. You have to train yourself. It’s like seeing a trick picture—one that’s really a composite, after you study it. Camouflage. You just have to learn how. Otherwise we can look at them all our lives and never see them.”

“The camera does, though.”

“Yes, the camera does. I’ve wondered why nobody ever caught them this way before. Once you see them on film, they’re unmistakable—that third eye.”

“Infra-red film’s comparatively new, isn’t it? And then I’ll bet you have to catch them against that one particular background—you know—or they won’t show on the film. Like trees against clouds. It’s tricky. You must have had just the right lighting that day, and exactly the right focus, and the lens stopped down just right. A kind of minor miracle. It might never happen again exactly that way. But ... don’t look now.”

They were silent. Furtively, they watched the mirror. Their eyes slid along toward the open door of the tavern.

And then there was a long, breathless silence.

“He looked back at us,” Lyman said very quietly. “He looked at us ... that third eye!”

The brown man was motionless again. When he moved, it was to swallow the rest of his drink.

“I don’t think that they’re suspicious yet,” he said. “The trick will be to keep under cover until we can blow this thing wide open. There’s got to be some way to do it—some way that will convince people.”

“There’s proof. The photographs. A competent cameraman ought to be able to 

 Prev. P 12/13 next