Woman From Another Planet | Episode 1

Author: FRANK BELKNAP LONG

ONE

The alarm clock was ringing. There was another sound in the room as well—the more distant peal of door chimes. Oddly enough, it was the chime music which penetrated most sharply into David Loring's awakening mind.

Each fragment was a tinkling and the tinklings ran the gamut of the

musical scale. An ice-crystal music in caverns measureless to man. Rising,

falling, almost dirge-like at times.

The alarm clock, having exhausted itself, stopped ringing. But the chimes

continued. The ice crystals broke, shattered and re-formed again.

Another day, Loring thought, stirring drowsily and blinking sleep from his

eyes. He let his gaze roam over the room. The floor was thick with dust,

and the record player on its handsome walnut stand, the ornamental decoy

duck on the mantel and the uneven bricks on the built-in fireplace all

needed dusting badly. In fact, the whole damned apartment needed the

attention of a cleaning woman.

Well, it wouldn't be long now. The mere fact that he could afford a cleaning woman and no longer had to worry about the expense was reason enough for putting it off. The place could be made spic-and-span at a moment's notice and he profoundly disliked having his precious knick-knacks roughly handled by a stranger. It would be all right for Janice to take over.

Wonderful, in fact.

Just bide your time, boy, and before you know it your bachelor days will be over. In two or three weeks you'll have a wife. And you can support her

now. Two hundred dollars for just one ten-by-twelve picture, and the next one you paint will be better than any of the earlier ones, and you can go on from there with a wife to keep you out of the doldrums.

No reason to move either. Janice likes Greenwich Village and the

apartment is spacious enough for two, and cheap, since you high-pressured the landlord and got the rent whittled down to a song. He was mixing his metaphors, but it didn't seem important to him at the moment. Only the

future seemed important. It was brighter with promise than he could have imagined when he'd sat holding hands with her on a bench in Washington Square on the evening before he'd sold the painting.

He was a little startled when the chimes stopped abruptly, as if a hand had reached out and ripped the press-button mechanism from the door. The sudden, loud knocking startled him even more.