Help From Literary Science Fiction Fans

[mhadley]

I am looking for help from literary Science Fiction fans. When I was in 8th grade English class we had to read 2 stories that I can't find the authors or titles too. Since I am going to give the plots by memory they may be off a little (or a lot).

Story 1:

About a race of lizard aliens that need special breathing aparatises, come to earth and find it destroyed (more or less) and the one member send out as a scout finds a woman frozen (hypersleep if you will) and marvels at earth art and sculpture. This member of the crew wants to take the women and some pictures with him but his boss will not let him and the scout kills the rest of his crew to protect the woman.

Story 2:

A mild mannered man goes to work every day and on the bus or subway at the same point every day he gets an upset stomach. I don't remember much more but it turns out that the point where he gets the stomach ache is when he passes through a barrier and all of the world is in a collection or something by aliens and the barrier is the seperateion between the real world (in the aliens collection) and the matrix like world he thinks he is living in.

Anyone know these stories? Like I said, I had to read them in school (my teacher was cool, we also were "forced" to read 1984, On The Beach, Brave New World, Martian Chroncles and Dr. Jeykel and Mr. Hyde..... not a bad reading list huh).