At 2:24 p.m. the President was on tv again. There was some commotion
at the door of the room from which he was broadcasting. He turned his
head and nearly one hundred million people who were jammed before
television sets across the nation saw his jaw drop and his eyes bulge
slightly with irrepressible awe. In about nine seconds a very curious
group walked into camera range. There were half a dozen secret service
men with drawn guns, and in their midst, the target of those watchful
weapons, was the first of the green horde.
He was--the measurements were determined later--six feet seven and
one-half inches tall. He was dressed in a green shirt and trousers,
caught around the waist by a heavy belt on which were stitched a
number of cabalistic designs; on the left breast were more of the same,
a circle and three slim triangles. In a holster slung at the right side
of his belt was a large revolver or pistol. It was what had been known
in the old West as a half-breed holster, enabling the wearer to swing
up the muzzle and fire the gun without jerking it free of the leather.
The alien had his hands folded carefully across his chest. Had he made
a single motion toward the gun, he would have been blown in two.
In proportions and frame he was very like a human being. His chest
was deep and his legs and arms well muscled. His skin was a delicate,
olive-green in hue, as those viewers with color tv could see. His
face was normal, perhaps a bit stern in expression, but with the
ordinary features of a man, except that he had only one eye. It was
located immediately above the bridge of his nose; it was about four
times the area of a human eye and almost round in shape, and its small
pupil roamed swiftly to and fro as the alien walked slowly toward the
President. The pupil of the eye was like a tiny animal in a cage,
dashing from side to side, up and down, uncanny, incredible, and
horrifying.
* * * * *
The cameras did not show his feet. These were somewhat like those of an
ostrich, each having two enormous toes, naked, horny, and padded with
thick layers of green fatty matter on the soles.
The tint of his skin could have been accepted as a mutation of the
strictly human animal. The single eye, even, might have suggested a
humanoid sport or far-future development. But the feet were utterly
inhuman and even the most callous or most unimaginative among the
citizens who saw him personally that first day agreed that the feet
were terrifying.
The cameras were turned off after about twenty seconds. An announcer
came on and spluttered some drivel about keeping cool and not losing
our heads, spoiling the effect of these admonitions at once by a
piercing, hysterical giggle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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