O give thanks unto the Lord ... who giveth food to all flesh: for his mercy endureth forever.

Psalm 736

Padre Manuel sighed with pleasure as he stepped into the heavy shade of the salt cedars. It was a welcome relief from the downpour that drenched the whole valley and seemed today to press down especially hard on the little adobe church and its cluster of smaller buildings. Padre Manuel sighed again with regret that they could manage so little greenery around the church, but it was above the irrigation canal, huddled against the foot of the bleak Estrellas.

But it was pleasant here in the shade at the foot of the alfalfa field and, across the pasture, was the old fig tree with the mourning dove nest that Padre Manuel had been watching.

Well! Padre Manuel let the leaves conceal the nest again. Two eggs now! And soon the little birds—little live things. How long did it take?

He sat down in the grass at the foot of the hill, grateful for this leisure time. He opened his breviary, his lips moving silently as the pages turned.

And so it was that Padre Manuel was in the south pasture when the thing came down. It sagged and rippled as if it were made of something soft instead of metal as you’d expect a spaceship to be. Because that’s what Padre Manuel, after his first blank amazement, figured it must be.

It didn’t act like a spaceship, though. At least not like the ones that were in the comics that Sor Concepcion brought, clucking disapprovingly, to him when she confiscated them from the big boys who found them.

SO much more interesting than the catechism class on drowsy summer afternoons. There was no burned grass, no big noise, none of the signs of radiation that made the comic pages so vivid that, most regrettably, Padre Manuel usually managed a quick read-through before restoring them at the day’s end. The thing just fluttered on the grass and scooted ahead of a gust of wind until it came up against a tree.

Padre Manuel waited to see what would happen. That was his way. If anything new came along, he’d sit for a while, figuring it all out—but slowly, carefully—and usually he came out right. This time, when he had finished thinking it over, he got a thrill up and down his back, knowing that God had seen fit to let him be the first man on Earth to see a spaceship land. At least the first to land in this quiet oasis of cottonwood and salt cedar held in a fold of the desert.

Well, after nothing happened for a long time, he decided he’d go over and get a closer look at the ship. Apparently, it wasn’t going to do anything more at the moment.

There weren’t any doors or windows or peepholes. The thing was bigger than you’d think, standing back from it. Padre Manuel figured it might be 30 feet through, and it looked rather like a wine-colored balloon except that it flattened where it touched the ground, like a low tire. He leaned a hand against it, and it had a give to it and a feeling that was like nothing he ever felt before. It even had a smell—a pretty good smell—and Padre Manuel was about to lick it to see if it tasted as good as it smelled, when it opened a hole. One minute, no hole. Next minute, a little tiny hole, opening bigger and bigger like a round mouth without lips. Nothing swung back or folded up. The ball just opened a hole, about a yard across.

Padre Manuel’s heart jumped, and he crossed himself swiftly, but when nothing else happened, he edged over to the hole, wondering if he dared stick his head in and take a look. But then he had a sort of vision of the hole shutting again with his head in there, and all at once, his Adam’s apple felt too tight, and he swallowed hard.

Then a head stuck out through the hole, and Padre Manuel got almost dizzy, thinking about being the first man on Earth to see something alive from another world. Then he blinked and squared his shoulders and took stock of what it was that he was seeing for the first time.

It was a head all right, about as big as his, only with the hair tight and fuzzy. It looked as if it had been shaved into patterns though it could have grown that way. And there were two eyes that looked like nice round gray eyes until they blinked, and then—¡Madre de Dios!—the lids slid over from the outside edges towards the nose and flipped back again like a sliding door. And the nose was a nose, only with stuff growing in the FOOD TO ALL FLESH 33 nostrils that was tight and fuzzy like the hair. It was hard to see how the thing could breathe through it.

Then the mouth. Padre Manuel felt creepy when he looked at the mouth. There was no particular reason why, though. It was just a mouth with the eyeteeth lapped sharply over the bottom lip. He’d seen people like that in his time, though maybe not quite so long in the tooth.

Padre Manuel smiled at the creature and almost dodged when it smiled back, because those teeth looked as if they jumped right out at him, white and shiny.

“Buenos días,” said Padre Manuel.

“Buenos días,” said the creature, like an echo.

“Hello,” said Padre Manuel, almost exhausting his English.

“Hello,” said the creature, like an echo.

Then the conversation lagged. After a while Padre Manuel said, “Won’t you get out and stay for a while?” He waved his hand and stepped back.

Well, the space man slid his eyelids a couple of times, then the hole got bigger downwards and he got out and got out and got out.

Padre Manuel backed away pretty fast when all that long longness crawled out of the hole, but he came back wide-eyed when the space creature began to push himself together, shorter and shorter and ended up about a head taller than Padre Manuel and about twice as big around. He was almost man-looking except that his hands were round pad things with a row of fingers clear around them that he could put out or pull in when he wanted to. His hide was stretchy-looking and beautifully striped, silver and black.