“Gee, I dunno,” he said finally, “that’s a hard one.” Then the shadow passed from his face, and he stared at me as if he’d made a sudden discovery. “Have you got’em?”

  I shook my head solemnly. He looked panicky. The strangeness struggled again to possess his face. He seemed to be in pain.

  “Well, don’t ask me!” he cried out at last. “Do I look like I have’em?” He stuck his hand into one pocket, then rummaged around in the other. “Nothin’ there eeder!”

  “You weren’t sure?” I asked.

  He peeked inside his shirt. “Nope—fresh out!” He shook one leg and pumped backward across the floor, his head whipping back and forth. Then he stopped, put hands on his hips, and gave us his II Duce stare. “You guys just don’t wanna believe me, that’s all! But I’m honest. I never lie.” He made us wait for it. “Except once.”

  I laughed. Max chuckled and covered his face with his hand. Curly trumpeted his success, released a salvo of wub-wub-wubs and woo-woo-woos, then snapped the fingers of his right hand while striking his left fist, and ended by drumming on his cheeks to the sound of smug nyuk-nyuk-nyuks.

  It wasn’t all that funny, but I felt happy for him.

  “Now what about this?” Max demanded. “This picture was taken in Tokyo yesterday.” Max cleared his throat and held the print before Curly’s eyes.

  “I look good, huh?” Curly said admiringly.

  “So there are two of you!” Max shouted.

  Curly looked at me. I shrugged. The photo was as much of a surprise to me as it was to him.

  “Well?” Max continued.

  Curly was still looking at me. “Say, when do we blow this fleabag? The soivice is rotten. Can’t get nobody on the phone!”

  “Please answer my question,” Max said coldly.

  Curly looked up at him blithely. “Why, soitantly. How else could I be in two places at once, copper? Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.” He pawed his face as if trying to remove cobwebs. “All this is making me tired and hungry, fellas!”

  “It’ll be time for supper soon,” Max said.

  “What’re we havin’ ?”

  “You’ll see when it gets here.”

  “I love surprises!” He looked downcast suddenly. “But there ain’t no goils. What’s with you guys?”

  “What do you mean?” Max asked.

  “There’s gotta be food, babes, and moolah,” he said, dancing a bit to his own words. “Everybody knows you gotta have all three to be happy!”

  I could feel the rollercoaster pressure building. The interrogation was heading for the deep end again. The slowburn expression that had made Edgar Kennedy famous was creeping into Max’s face.

  “Yikes!” Curly cried, stepping back from him in fear.

  Max turned away in frustration and went into the bathroom.

  “Come on,” I said, trying to smile and sound as friendly as possible, “who do you think you’re kidding? Why bother? Tell us who you are. It’s a great act, but you can’t keep it up just for the two of us.”

  “Whaddya mean?” he asked innocently.

  “Who fixed you up to look like this?” I asked. “Who are you?”

  He looked left and right. “Everybody knows me! You’re just tryin’ to confuse me.” He looked as if he were about to burst into tears.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, leaning back into the sofa. “Go on as much as you want. I only thought you’d like to come out from behind your disguise and take some well earned bows.”

  He was completely mystified by my words.

  “Well, aren’t you ever going to come out?” I demanded, trying to break through that puzzled look of his. There seemed to be nothing behind those fiercely idiotic eyes.

  Max looked dedicated as he came out of the bathroom, and again I worried about Curly’s safety.

  Max brought in a biopsychologist named G. Bruno, who examined Curly for a day. or two, then withdrew to study his findings.

  “Well, who do you think he is?” he snapped at us on the fourth day. “Give out with an opinion.” His tone was derisive, but he seemed more exasperated with himself than with us. “I have none,” I opined.

  “He’s not just someone faked up with surgery—he’s perfect!” His voice broke with the admission.

  Curly was watching us happily, almost serenely, as he reclined on the sofa. Max and I sat in armchairs as Bruno paced.

  “He’s too perfect,” Bruno said, stopping to wipe his face with a tissue. “There’s two of him! We’re being visited by an alien.” The tissue fell apart in his hands and he let it drop to the floor.

  “What?” I said. Weird music seemed to play in my head.

  Bruno nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes! We are! It’s not just another guy in Tokyo. It’s the same person. No surgery marks. Not a one! Exacto!”

  He sounded sure, and I knew he didn’t want to be sure.

  Max considered this revelation for a moment, then said, “You’d think they’d have sent someone nearer the common run of humanity, someone we could understand.”

  “Wait a minute!” Curly shouted. “Anyone can understand me. My mutter taught me to speak up.”

  “It makes a kind of sense,” Bruno said. “Comedic personalities often seem alien, even angelic. Harpo Marx, for example.”

  I had a sudden vision of go-betweens arriving from far stars, each alien weirder than the one before, leading us in steps toward a sympathy with the radically way-out species that was striving to communicate with us. Curly was step one.

  “They still might have sent someone we could talk to,” Max repeated disgustedly.

  “Like who?” I demanded.

  “I don’t know. Maybe Jack Benny.”

  “Maybe this was the only guy they could understand,” I offered. “Be glad they didn’t send some joker who could only play charades.”

  Bruno nodded. “Precisely. They wanted to send Curly. He made a special kind of sense to them.”

  “We can’t even be sure this is an alien visitation,” Max said tiredly.

  Bruno whirled around, then paced in a circle. Curly’s eyes followed him.

  “Just look at him!” Bruno cried. “It can’t be Curly. The man Curly Howard loved beautiful women, houses, and dogs. He was an introvert who became gregarious when he drank. He worried about shaving his head for screen roles because it robbed him of his male charms. He wore a hat to keep from feeling like a boy.”

  He was right. All we got from this Curly was the screen image, no matter flow many questions we put to him. The reel worlds of the Stooge films were gauntlets of pain and violence, but no one ever suffered or got hurt for long. Curly always shrugged off catastrophe and embraced the next predicament. It was this saintly screen Curly, not the man who had died, who now lolled before us on the sofa.

  “Give him a truth drug,” Max said. “He’d blab fast enough.”

  Curly jerked upright with fear. “Aw come on, fellas, don’t scare me that way!”

  “Nobody’s going to touch you,” I said firmly.

  Bruno pointed at him. “Then tell us who you are!”

  Tears flowed from Curly’s eyes. “I’m me—who else?” He looked at us soultully. “I still get the needle, huh?”

  I felt sick. It was all wrong. Curly had never died. Somehow he had not aged, and that was all there was to it. All this stuff about alien visitors was bunk.

  “Look, Doc,” I pleaded, “you could be wrong. The real guy was kind of strange . . .”

  “Get it through your thick head!” Bruno shouted. “It’s not a natural freak, and he hasn’t risen from the dead—and no one can do this kind of surgery without leaving some signs. He’s in two places at the same time, in black and white. We’ve been invaded!” His hands were shaking. I looked away, afraid that he would shoot Curly, just to see if he would die or not.

  We were silent for what seemed a long time. Curly sat wringing his hands and sniffling. I felt sorry for him.

  “Okay,” I said finally, “how did he get here?”

  Bruno shrugged. “A ship dropped him off, or he was transmitted in some way, which might explain why there’s two of him. The carrier beam hit in two places before shutting off. We’ve been talking to a few folks who know about this kind of thing. Carl Sagan thinks the beam might have originated in a relay device somewhere in our own solar system.”

  “I can tell!” Curly shouted suddenly. “You guys are gonna kill me! Well get it over, so I don’t suffer. Go on, do it!”

  “Christ,” I said. “We’re not going to hurt you.” I gave Bruno and Max a searching look.

  “Honest?” Curly asked, squinting at me.

  I nodded soberly. He looked so alone. That should have tipped me off. He’d come without the other Stooges, even though there were two of him. The duplication might have been an accident, but Curly’s solo presence was not.

  “He belongs to Carl Sagan and Robert Jastrow at the end of this week,” Max said. “They can have him.”

  “Hey fellas!” Curly shouted. “Fish is good brain food.”

  He stood up and gazed at me with expectation.

  I took pity on him and answered, “You should fish for a whale.”

  “Aw, a wise guy!” he replied, but without zest.

  Bruno threw up his hands and leaned back against the door. Max sighed and scratched the back of his ear. We were simply not what Curly needed.

  A week later, Curly went on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.

  Well, not exactly; the taping was restricted and would never be aired. Sagan and Jastrow had made their case well, managing even to limit the role of intelligence agencies.

  A showbiz setting seemed the right way to get through to this kind of alien. If the copy had been of Einstein, he would have rated a modest apartment in Princeton with a comfortable couch in the small study. Sagan and Jastrow had concluded that the persona being presented to us demanded this kind of response, and both of them knew showbiz themselves to some degree. I felt that anything was preferable to tormenting Curly in some cheap hotel room.

  The L.A taping was by special invitation, mostly to scientists in various fields. For his trouble, Carson had insisted on broadcast rights, if the tape were ever cleared.

  Bruno, Max, and I got into the first row. Carson came out and told us why his good friends Sagan and Jastrow had arranged this taping. He was nervous, as if about to go to a commercial, but of course there weren’t going to be any. Doc Severinson and his band had been omitted, and Ed McMahon was out of town.

  “So let’s see,” Carson said dubiously as he sat down behind his desk, “just how advanced we are.”

  Just how advanced are we? I thought, regretting that McMahon wasn’t here to make something of the line. No one in the audience seemed to want to shout “Way-o!”

  Curly came out at 8:07. The crowd clapped, hooted, and whistled. Curly barked back, dropped to the floor and raced around on his side crying, “Wub-wub-wub-woo!” as he completed three circles Suddenly, it seemed brilliant to have brought him there. It would draw him out, if anything could; the place was full of secret fans.

  Curly struggled to his feet, wiggled his hands at us, then skipped over to the guest platform. Carson was locked into his Huck Finn grin as Curly’s bulk crashed down into the chair.

  A shock hit us like an invisible telephone pole between the eyes. Explosions erupted from the studio speakers. A whistle screeched through our ears as the other two Stooges invaded the set. Curly leaped and greeted them with open arms.

  “Moe, Larry!” he chirped, playing along.

  Sagan and Jastrow were too tall, but their makeup and costumes were perfect. Suddenly I believed. This was the way to talk to the alien—through a comedy-jam session. Curly had come alone so that we could complete the trio. Sagan and Jastrow knew what they were doing.

  “Where was you guys?” Curly demanded as the noise died away.

  “Where were you, numbskull?” Moe-Sagan countered, poking him in the belly. Curly bumped back with his gut, knocking him into Larry-Jastrow, who snorted and shuffled, then looked a bit like Ringo Starr as he shoved back.

  Carson crept offstage while all this was going on.

  “I brung you a hat,” Larry-Jastrow said, beaming as he presented Curly with a derby.

  “Thanks!” Curly replied and put on the hat with a show of finesse. I caught his eye just then, and he gave me a boyish grin.

  As they were all jostling each other for a seat, Carson-Shemp rolled out a cart of pies from stage left. His makeup was okay, but he was too thin for the part. He left the cart by the curtains and hurried back to his desk.

  Curly gave Shemp’s impersonator a hostile stare.

  No one had ever been able to replace Curly after his death. The Stooges had carried or with Shemp, with Curly-Joe, with Joe Besser, but it had never been the same.

  Curly adjusted his bowler and looked away. Shemp-Carson reverted to all-Carson and stared out at the audience with his well-known look of nausea. I tried to catch Curly’s attention, feeling more like a stage-mother with every moment.

  Then, just as Moe-Sagan was about to speak, Shemp-Carson asked, “Why did you pick Curly’s form in which to visit us?”

  Curly blinked three times, and for the second time in my experience the shadow of something genuinely other passed across his face. Carson had confused him by stepping out of character.

  I tensed.

  “He’s kinda cute,” Larry-Jastrow said in a mellow voice.

  “Certainly,” Moe-Sagan added with clipped precision.

  Curly clucked to himself and smiled, melting the grip of otherness from his face. The game was back on track, except that now Carson was looking longingly at the pie cart.

  Silence crashed across the fragile comments. Curly seemed to be sinking into a trance.

  “We thought you was dead, Babe,” Moe-Sagan said anxiously, using Curly’s sibling nickname.

  “Nah!” Curly retorted. “No future in bein’ dead!” His eyes became fierce, and he graced us with three nyuks.

  “You tell’m kid!” Larry-Jastrow shouted, beaming. He was growing into the part.

  Carson looked sour, obviously still irritated by Curly’s critical response to his lackluster Shemp.

  “What can you tell us?” Carson added, taking a stab at Shemp’s gravelly voice.

  Curly glanced at him blithely. “Not much!” he piped, clucking to himself like a determined hen.

  Moe-Sagan nudged him in the ribs. “Ask me a question.”

  “What comes after one?” Curly shot back.

  Moe-Sagan nodded glumly. I glanced at the pie cart. Maybe this whole encounter needed more confusion.

  “So what’s it like where you’re from?” Carson asked with a show of serious interest.

  Curly rolled his eyes. “Just home. It ain’t bad.”

  “Where is it, by the way?” Carson added.

  Curly stuck out his arm and brushed Moe-Sagan’s eye. “Just out thataway—”

  “Dear brother,” Moe-Sagan said as he rubbed his eye, “there are about two dozen billion questions I’d like to ask you . . .” He still couldn’t quite get the voice. To me it was more Kermit the Frog than Moe.

  But it didn’t seem to matter to Curly. He blushed a light grey. “Aw shucks, I don’t know much. You’re too kind!” He pawed his own face.

  Carson leaned over and slapped his face. “Spill the beans, you fraud!” He seemed truly angry. “Who do we have to get out here to make you talk—Asimov?”

  Curly stayed in character. He jumped to his feet with a woo-woo-woo of alarm, bent over, and rammed head-on into Carson’s desk. The flimsy prop fell apart, forcing Carson to retreat. Curly thrashed around, then freed himself from the debris and went back to his seat, looking smug. Larry Jastrow patted him on the back in approval.

  “Violent is the word for Curly,” Carson said to the camera. “We’ll be right back.” He smiled feebly. Sagan’s Moe was looking disheartened as a new desk was rushed in during the mock break. The II Duce expression was creeping into Curly’s face as he scanned the audience.

  “We’ll never run out of these,” Carson said, rapping his knuckles on the new desk as he sat down.

  “Sure you will,” said Curly. “You only got five fingers on each appendage.”

  Carson laughed hysterically, then went silent and stared at us. Finally, he ripped off his Shemp wig and tossed it over his shoulder in defeat.

  “Perhaps you might speak to us directly, Curly,” Sagan said. “We think we understand why you came to us, but now . . .”

  “Whaddya mean?” Curly demanded, looking pained.

  “Come on, fatso,” Carson said, “give us the story.”

  Curly looked even more confused.

  Sagan took a deep breath. “Help us find out where you’ve been. I’ll say things, and you tell me if they’re true.”

  “Shoot!” Curly shouted happily.

  Sagan nodded to the audience. “As I recall, a lot of Stooge material was released to television back in 1957, so you were probably on five wavelengths or more at the same time.”

  Curly stared at him maniacally.

  “An alien device picked up the signals,” Sagan continued, “somewhere within thirty light years of us, and the artificial intelligence that probably runs the station and analyzed the signals beamed you to us as a response of some kind. The details of how this was done are very complex, I’m sure, but do I have it right?”

  “Sure, but why in hell him?” Carson cut in. “Why not Jerry Lewis, or even Adolf Hitler?”

  “Oh, yeah?” Curly said. “Why not me?”

  “It’s their way of telling us they’re out there,” Sagan replied, motioning for Carson to keep his lip buttoned, “and different from us. Curly was picked out of a mass of information because he was strange, yet still like us. He struck a congenial note.”

  “There’s something dangerous about this,” Jastrow said, sitting back and folding his arms across his chest. “We might do well to prepare ourselves.” He adjusted his Larry wig.

  “What about it?” Sagan asked Curly.

  “Who, me?” He pointed at himself. “What’s it worth to you?”

  “Is any of this true?”

  “What?”

  “Is this what is happening?”