| Real Men Don't Bark at Fire Hydrants |
| 1 | REAL MEN DON'T BARK AT FIRE HYDRANTS Tom Easton 1. UFO Slime Devours Israel! Mickey Gorgonzola sighed into the phone. "It's just a bit of fungus, Larry. That's all it is." While the man on the other end of the line insisted he was wrong, Mickey rocked his head in his hand and thought, If only I were! He had wished that UFOs were real ever since he first heard the term at the age of eight. "What does Israel have to do with it, Larry?" Mickey asked emphatically even though he knew better. |
| 2 | "It's the Holy Land? Someone faxes Tits'n'Tats to say he saw a UFO land, and he went out in the desert and found a dent in the sand and a clot of mud with bits of twiggy stuff, and you believe him?" Mickey wished he could believe. Now it was Larry's turn to shout. When he obliged, Mickey winced and held the phone away from his ear. "What do you mean, I don't have to be insulting? So he sent that photo." And Larry had faxed it to Mickey. |
| 3 | "Have you forgotten what a scale bar means? Right. That twiggy bit is a tenth of a millimeter long, it can't be anything except a piece of soil fungus, and they used a scanning electron microscope to take that photo." He didn't have to wince this time, but it was still very clear that he wasn't getting through. "Yeah, it's first cousin to a toadstool." The closest he could hope Tittles and Tattles would come to the truth would be a headline screaming: "THE TOADSTOOL FROM BEYOND THE SKY!!!" He used a pencil to draw a Kilroy on the edge of the photo while Larry confirmed his cynicism. |
| 4 | When the other paused for breath, he said as gently as he could, "It isn't real, Larry. If it was... Remember when NASA was getting ready to put landers on the Moon? The Vikings on Mars? ... So I'll fill you in. They put a lot of effort into sterilizing everything. They didn't want to take a chance that something from Earth would get loose and multiply and become the slime that ate a world. So maybe..." And there was another headline: "UFO SLIME DEVOURS ISRAEL!!" Larry would love that, wouldn't he? |
| 5 | "Yeah," he said. "Glad I could help. I'll bill you." He hung up. He sighed again, more deeply and more loudly now that he needn't worry about offending... No. He shook his head. Larry Castle was a tabloid reporter. The only time he ever took offense was when a source clammed up on him. His calloused hide made a rhino's butt look like a maiden's cheek. Sometimes Mickey wished he could penetrate that hide a little more deeply. |
| 6 | Sometimes he wished he had never heard of UFOs. 2. Real Men Don't Bark at Fire Hydrants Mickey leaned over his laser printer to crank the filthy casement window open. The September air was all he needed to clear the mustiness from both the office and his head. Traffic noise engulfed him. Twenty feet below was the steady flow of the city's populace on foot and bicycle, in cars and trucks and city buses. |
| 7 | He was turning back toward the desk when something caught his eye. A businessman, an executive by the look of his silvery sideburns, his unwrinkled suit, and his glossy attache case, was striding purposefully toward the fire hydrant across the street. He was wearing a ferocious scowl. The executive stopped before the hydrant, opened his attache case on the sidewalk, took off his suitcoat, and laid it in the case. |
| 8 | Then he laid a yellow legal pad on the sidewalk, knelt on it, leaned forward, and caught his weight on his hands. He extended his neck toward the hydrant. Mickey thought he could hear... The phone rang. He swore, but he managed to pick it up before it could ring a second time. "Angela!" Angela Colby was his agent. He sat down once more. "Do you mind if I call you back later? There's a man on the street outside, growling at a fire hydrant... |
| 9 | No, not a bum. Quite well dressed. Might even be one of your colleagues..." His chuckle lasted only long enough for him to realize he was the only one laughing. While she talked, he tipped his chair and leaned toward the window. The executive was still on his knees, but now he was jerking back and forth, his mouth was abruptly opening and closing. The sound... "My God," he said. "He's barking! What? |
| 10 | At the fire hydrant. That man on the sidewalk. He's..." He sighed much as he had for Larry Castle. "Yes, Angela... It's coming," he said as soon as his agent paused for breath. "I know it's just a proposal. I know I've been working on it for two weeks already." He winced and tilted the phone away from his ear. "I want the advance as much as you do. But you know you can't rush these things, Angela... |
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