V - The Original Miniseries by Kenneth Johnson

to take in the fact that he wore a Visitor uniform and cap before her horrified eyes focused on the weapon in his hand. It didn't look much like any gun she'd ever seen before-but she knew, from the way it swung to follow her, what it was.
All the breath seemed to have deserted her lungs. It was like one of those hideous childhood nightmares where you try to scream and can't. Ruth gasped, seeing his finger moveThere was a muffled pulse of high-pitched sound, and a blue light. For a moment Ruth thought he'd missed, for she felt no pain. Then she realized she was falling, falling, twisting in midair, uncontrollablyThere came a burst of red-tinged blackness, then nothing. She never felt the impact of her body on the floor.
     
    CALEB TAYLOR HISSED WITH PAIN AS HE CROSSED THE THRESHOLD of his apartment door and one of his bandaged hands brushed the jamb. "You okay, Pop? A little shaky?" Ben Taylor reached out to steady his father.
Caleb shrugged off his son's ministrations impatiently. "I'll be okay. You let me do it by myself."
    Ben Taylor grinned wryly as he watched his father walk carefully into his bedroom. He may be one terrific father, he thought, but he's sure as hell one lousy patient. From the rustling sounds in the bedroom, he realized Caleb was obeying orders and resting. Ben turned to straighten up the small apartment. Usually his father kept it neat as a pin-a holdover from his dead wife's training-but it was a mess at the moment. That meant Elias had been here. Ben made a face as he tugged a pair of dirty sweat socks from between the couch cushions.
A second later he heard a key in the lock, turned to see his brother bounce into the room, a wide grin on his face. "Say, man! What it is, Ben?"
     
Ben shook his head. "'What it is' is bad grammar, brother. Elias, when are you going to quit this poor man's Richard Pryor act?"
     
Elias stared for a second, his smile hardening into a fixed grin. "What you talkin', man? This here ain't no act. This here is pure-D Elias."
     
Ben was disgusted and showed it. "It's pure-D something, that's for sure. Pure-D shit, if you ask me." Elias did a mock shuffle, his hard, cocky grin never dimming. "Look here, man, can't all of us be Doctor Kildare, dig?" His voice hardened. "Or Uncle Tom."
     
"Oh, drop that sixties jive, Elias! You can be anything you want, but first you've got to dump that tap dance and two-bit crook routine, and grow up."
    Ben could tell he'd scored. Elias laughed, a short, forced explosion of sound that sounded anything but amused. "Well, once again we thank you, Mr. Sidney Poitier." He turned away angrily. "Hey, Pop!" He headed for the bedroom, his strut plainly put on now. "How you doing?"
    Ben watched him go, then resumed his cleaning. He was tired, tired of Elias, tired of work-tired of worrying. His eyes felt as though they were bulging out of his head from eyestrain-he'd had to work on the microscope nearly all day, except when he'd made his rounds. All of them were doing double duty on lab work ever since Ruth had disappeared.
    He felt a heaviness inside, remembering that it was now a full three days since anyone had seen her. Doctor Metz was inconsolable, shutting himself up in his office for hours and chain-smoking (he hadn't had a cigarette, Doctor Larraby had told them, since he'd quit in 1963), staring stonily off into space.
Where did she go? Ben wondered. The police conducted an investigation, but I've seen people search for lost dogs with more energy. There have been so many disappearances-what the hell is going on?
    Angrily he slammed half of the mountainous pile of dishes into the sink, ran hot water, rolling up his sleeves. Damn Elias, he thought. He remembered what Juliet Parrish had told him: that Ruth had been examining a Visitor skin sample the day she vanished.
    He glanced out the window as he scrubbed, saw a portion of the Mother Ship suspended overhead. Wherever you went, it was there, hanging over you. The Visitors had given an