The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fourth Invasion, by Henry Josephs

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Title: The Fourth Invasion

Author: Henry Josephs

Release Date: October 20, 2007 [EBook #23099]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_Psychopathology has offered possible answers to why, from
time to time, people in large quantities "see" strange
things in the sky which manage to evade trained scientific
observers, or conform to what is known about the behavior
of falling or flying bodies. And mass hysteria is by no
means a product of the present century. But--what if these
human foibles were deliberately being exploited?_

THE FOURTH INVASION

by Henry Josephs

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 not be the way they fly, naturally, but
the way they might fly if the pilots were having trouble adjusting the
controls to a heavier atmosphere than they were used to."

Clayton tapped the tabletop with his fingers. "What about you, Marty?
Did you see three ships?"

Big Gene Marty, football star, was the least nervous. "Can't be sure
about _ships_, Doc," he