Free Alien Contact by Marty Halpern

same principle for their in-atmosphere machines as they do for their spacecraft: some sort of antigravity that gives them both lift and drive capability.”
    The alien ship kept ignoring the SR-81, just as all the aliens had ignored every terrestrial signal beamed at them. The craft continued its slow descent, while the SR-81 pilot circled below, hoping he would not have to go down to the aerial tanker to refuel.
    “One question answered,” he called to the ground. “It’s a warplane.” No craft whose purpose was peaceful would have had those glaring eyes and that snarling, fang-filled mouth painted on its belly. Some USAF ground-attack aircraft carried similar markings.
    At last the alien reached the level at which the SR-81 was loitering. The pilot called the ground again. “Permission to pass in front of the aircraft?” he asked. “Maybe everybody’s asleep in there and I can wake ’em up.”
    After a long silence, ground control gave grudging ascent. “No hostile gestures,” the controller warned.
    “What do you think I’m going to do, flip him the finger?” the pilot muttered, but his radio was off. Acceleration pushed him back in his seat as he guided the SR-81 into a long, slow turn that would carry it about half a kilometer in front of the vessel from the spacefleet.
    His airplane’s camera gave him a brief glimpse of the alien pilot, who was sitting behind a small, dirty windscreen.
    The being from the stars saw him, too. Of that there was no doubt. The alien jinked like a startled fawn, performing maneuvers that would have smeared the SR-81 pilot against the walls of his pressure cabin—if his aircraft could have matched them in the first place.
    “I’m giving pursuit!” he shouted. Ground control screamed at him, but he was the man on the spot. The surge from his afterburner made the pressure he had felt before a love pat by comparison.
    Better streamlining made his plane faster than the craft from the starships, but that did not do him much good. Every time its pilot caught sight of him, the alien ship danced away with effortless ease. The SR-81 pilot felt like a man trying to kill a butterfly with a hatchet.
    To add to his frustration, his fuel warning light came on. In any case, his aircraft was designed for the thin atmosphere at the edge of space, not the increasingly denser air through which the alien flew. He swore, but he had to pull away.
    As his SR-81 gulped kerosene from the tanker, he could not help wondering what would have happened if he’d turned a missile loose. There were a couple of times he’d had a perfect shot. That was one thought he kept firmly to himself. What his superiors would do if they knew about it was too gruesome to contemplate.

    The troopers crowded round Togram as he came back from the officers’ conclave. “What’s the word, Captain?” “Did the luof live?” “What’s it like down there?”
    “The luof lived, boys!” Togram said with a broad smile.
    His company raised a cheer that echoed deafeningly in the barracks room. “We’re going down!” they whooped. Ears stood high in excitement. Some soldiers waved plumed hats in the fetid air. Others, of a bent more like their captain’s, went over to their pallets and began seeing to their weapons.
    “How tough are they going to be, sir?” a gray-furred veteran named Ilingua asked as Togram went by. “I hear the flier pilot saw some funny things.”
    Togram’s smile got wider. “By the heavens and hells, Ilingua, haven’t you done this often enough to know better than pay heed to rumors you hear before planetfall?”
    “I hope so, sir,” Ilingua said, “but these are so strange I thought there might be something to them.” When Togram did not answer, the trooper shook his head at his own foolishness and shook up a lantern so he could examine his dagger’s edge.
    As inconspicuously as he could, the captain let out a sigh. He did not know what to believe himself, and he had listened to the