“Nothing.” Gulp. “Nothing. It was just that—he looked at me. With—you know.”
“Let me get this straight. I take it the Martian is dressed in—is dressed like a human?”
“Naturally.”
“But he’s invisible to all eyes but yours?”
“Yes. He doesn’t want to be visible, just now. Besides—” Lyman paused cunningly. He gave the brown man a furtive glance and then looked quickly down at his drink. “Besides, you know, I rather think you can see him—a little, anyway.”
The brown man was perfectly silent for about thirty seconds. He sat quite motionless, not even the ice in the drink he held clinking. One might have thought he did not even breathe. Certainly he did not blink.
“What makes you think that?” he asked in a normal voice, after the thirty seconds had run out.
“I—did I say anything? I wasn’t listening.” Lyman put down his drink abruptly. “I think I’ll go now.”
“No, you won’t,” the brown man said, closing his fingers around Lyman’s wrist. “Not yet you won’t. Come back here. Sit down. Now. What was the idea? Where were you going?”