By Western standards the conference room bordered on the archaic. Deep, claret-colored brocade lined the walls, enlivened by ornate gilded mirrors, spotty with age. Doors, windows, and baseboards were white, the carpet gold and cream; the curtains matched the brocade. The two pictures were on o...
Forbin watched on the monitor in the aide’s office and was quite impressed. The President summoned up strength from some hidden reserve and gave a fine and apparently sincere performance. Forbin was at a loss to decide how genuine the President was, apart from the story itself, but those actually...
She got up tired, and her husband’s solicitous inquiries did nothing for her frayed nerves.“I’m all right, Charles!” Her anger blazed: “I’ve just had a bad night—that’s all!” His hurt expression made her immediately relent. “I’m sorry, darling. Don’t worry—we women get like this at times.”Forbin,...
No nightmare remembrances of Mars or the Martians in any form whatever; no vision of a nuclear missile plunging straight for him. Nothing.Something had happened. For one, two seconds, he was genuinely at a loss, and then he knew.Angela! He blushed as disjointed memories came back. There’d been ta...