“Thanks. Or anything, of course. But when they’re dressed up like humans—like that one who was sitting next to you awhile ago, when I told you not to look—”
“That one was invisible, I gather?”
“Most of the time they are, to everybody. But once in a while, for some reason, they—”
“Wait,” the brown man objected. “Make sense, will you? They dress up in human skins and then sit around invisible?”
“Only now and then. The human skins are perfectly good imitations. Nobody can tell the difference. It’s that third eye that gives them away. When they keep it closed, you’d never guess it was there. When they want to open it, they go invisible—like that. Fast. When I see somebody with a third eye, right in the middle of his forehead, I know he’s a Martian and invisible, and I pretend not to notice him.”
“Uh-huh,” the brown man said. “Then for all you know, I’m one of your visible Martians.”
“Oh, I hope not!” Lyman regarded him anxiously. “Drunk as I am, I don’t think so. I’ve been trailing you all day, making sure. It’s a risk I have to take, of course. They’ll go to any length—any length at all—to make a man give himself away. I realize that. I can’t really trust anybody. But I had to find someone to talk to, and I—” He paused. There was a brief silence. “I could be wrong,” Lyman said presently. “When the third eye’s closed, I can’t tell if it’s there. Would you mind opening your third eye for me?” He fixed a dim gaze on the brown man’s forehead.
“Sorry,” the reporter said. “Some other time. Besides, I don’t know you. So you want me to splash this across the front page, I gather? Why didn’t you go to see the managing editor? My stories have to get past the desk and rewrite.”
“I want to give my secret to the world,” Lyman said stubbornly. “The question is, how far will I get? You’d expect they’d have killed me the minute I opened my mouth to you—except that I didn’t say anything while they were here. I don’t believe they take us very seriously, you know. This must have been going on since the dawn of history, and by now they’ve had time to get careless. They let Fort go pretty far before they cracked down on him. But you notice they were careful never to let Fort get hold of genuine proof that would convince people.”
The brown man said something under his breath about a human interest story in a box. He asked, “What do the Martians do, besides hang around bars all dressed up?”