TASK OF KAYIN

The sensation of which he was most conscious was that of loneliness. He was no longer very much afraid, and sometimes he even thought that his enemies back home were no longer hunting for him. But in the midst of these strange creatures he learned that there was one thing worse than open hostility, and that was indifference. They had no more interest in him than they had in each other, and even though their indifference increased his own chances for safety, it was a chilling thing none the less.

He knew that though they were like him superficially, they were intensely different within. He stood at a street corner trying to fathom the difference, while the crowds surged about him, buffeting him from side to side. They seemed to have no idea of personal dignity. He still understood their language only imperfectly, and spoke it with difficulty, but he had learned, in a primitive way, to read their faces, and during this time of day, at least, their faces told of a strain and fear all their own, of an uncertainty even greater than his. They were going home from work, and they were afraid of countless trifles—that something unpleasant might happen, that they might not get seats on their conveyances, that bad news might greet them when they arrived.

He stared with fascination at a heap of newspapers spread out on the corner stand. He could guess the purpose of these layers of white sheets covered with black or red symbols, but he could not yet interpret them, and he had no idea whether any one had seen or reported his ship. It was almost certain that some one had observed a shooting star, but the chances were very much against any observation having been made of the star’s slow, dark drift to earth. At any rate, he had concealed his ship among the growth of tall native plants, and some day he would find time to repair the relatively minor damage he had sustained, and continue his journey.

Meanwhile, he had to make up his mind what to do here. His original store of food had been exhausted a week before as these creatures counted time, and despite the fact that his metabolic requirements were low, he had long needed to eat again. The food that was exhibited in many stores was of a kind strange to him, but from the very structure and behavior of individuals who ate it, he knew that it was of the right chemical composition. Examining it cautiously with a small analyzer held close to his eye, he noted that at least it contained none of the more dangerous poisons. It would do, if he could obtain it.

But he must obtain it in a manner that these creatures considered legal, not as he had obtained his clothes. He recalled how absurdly different his own clothes had been, constructed to fit a creature whose morphology was so much unlike theirs. He had taken over a suit from a man he had met driving on a dark country road, not too close to the ship. He had stopped the car and put the man to sleep without difficulty, but there must have been a great outcry after his victim had awakened to find himself cold and naked in the driver’s seat.

He hadn’t minded, for he had already left the place where the incident had occurred. But he wanted no hue and cry raised here. Although under other conditions he would have minded their hostility no more than their indifference, he knew that hostility now might very seriously limit his freedom to act.

He listed the things he had to do. He had to find food and shelter, learn their language and customs, and as quickly as possible, their alphabet. He had to acquire their manner of thought and feeling so well that he could blend with them not only superficially, but psychologically as well. He had to—

A rough shoulder caught him on the chest and spun him half around. A rough voice, more a snarl than anything else, said, “Whatsa matter, ya blind?”

The way the words were run together confused him, but he had listened keenly, and he knew the phrase that was required in such situations. He said politely, but almost unintelligently, “Excuse. I sorry.”

“Foreigner, huh? Why don’t ya go back where ya came from?”

This was the first person who had spoken to him in his new world. The encounter left him angry and contemptuous, but it was not to be long before he learned that the individual he had been privileged to meet was not wholly typical.

He moved along, alert to observe and to learn, but entirely without aim so far as an ultimate destination was concerned. He noted that the nature of the streets he traversed changed subtly with every intersection. The primitive, but well constructed buildings that had lined them soon gave way to even more primitive, dilapidated, and filthy structures. It was clear that they had rich and poor here, and that he was approaching the dwellings of the poor.

He heard a rhythmic sound in the street, as of a percussion instrument, and following it, found a female of the prevailing species, dressed somewhat differently from the other females, and pounding on a hollow cylinder of fairly large diameter. Other, more piercing instruments, added sounds of their own, and then voices were lifted in song. He lingered, fascinated, and wished only that he had a sound-recorder to take permanent note of the strange music.

He was not the only one who lingered. Half a dozen dilapidated males had gathered, attracted like him by the rhythmic noise, and after a female had ended a strange exhortation which he did not fully understand, they all followed the company of musicians into a ramshackle building. Inside, he listened to other exhortations, and then had food thrust upon him.

It was a bowl of soup, the first nutrient of this strange planet that he had eaten. The taste, as well as the quick ocular analysis he made, indicated that it was deficient in many of the chemicals that he needed for his own nutrition, but at least it had energy value, and he imbibed it slowly and thoughtfully. When he had finished, they asked him if he wanted more, but he said politely, “No, thank.”

The young woman who had offered it to him said, “Oh, you’re a refugee, I suppose. Driven out of your native country?”

He nodded.

“Don’t you have any friends here?”

He shook his head, and said, “No, thank.”

“That’s too bad. You look as if you hadn’t eaten for a long time. Your face is awfully thin.”

“Yes, thin.” He did not explain that for a member of his race he was not thin at all.

“What’s your name, please?”

“Name? What?”

“How do people call you?”

“Kayin. My name Kayin.”

“Kane. That’s rather a strange name for a foreigner. Well, don’t worry, Mr. Kane, we’ll take care of you.”

Her attitude helped erase the hostile encounter of an hour before. When they finally showed him a cot, one of a row on which many men were already stretched out, he tried to reconcile the contradictory kinds of behavior he had met, and decided that the psychology of this race would prove more complicated than he had at first believed.

The cot was extremely inconvenient, but somehow he managed to stretch out on it like the others. He slept little, and in the morning, when he awoke, it was with strained muscles and a sense of fatigue, but he was eager to see more of the world on which he found himself, and he left the next day, to continue his wanderings. During the hours that followed, he covered many miles of ground. With ears and mind open, he picked up more and more words, and by evening he was fairly confident in his ability to make himself understood in almost any situation.

He went hungry that day, but in the evening he slept much more comfortably at the foot of an old tree on a vacant lot. Far above he could see the star from which he had come. He stared at it impersonally for a short time, wondering whether he would see his own planet again. Then he fell into a half-sleep, one that rested him, though still leaving his senses partly alert.

He was becoming more accustomed to the rather short day-and-night rhythm of the planet, and he awoke at the first faint signs of daylight before anyone had noticed him.

That day he encountered groups of men congregated about dingy little buildings on a dingy street. He found that they were seeking employment, and knowing that the best way to learn about a strange race was to study the manner in which the people worked, he joined one of the groups. But there was not a single occupation with regard to which he could claim experience, and he was hired finally to do heavy, but unskilled labor, at eighty cents an hour.

The work was more difficult for him than for the others. He looked like them, but they had muscles which he simply did not possess. He was so clumsy at lifting rocks that another man, with whom he was working, said finally in exasperation, “Didn’t you ever lift anything before? Look, pal, do it like this. Bend at the knees, see? That’s it, like this—no, you’re doing it all wrong!”

It was a nuisance, it might even be dangerous, to be stared at so closely. The fact was that his knees simply would not bend as human knees did. They were jointed in quite another fashion, and no surface similarities could conceal the fact that in action there was all the difference of two worlds between them.

He said, “Sorry. I—injured.”

“Oh, can’t bend them, huh? This is no job for you, pal.”

“Am stranger. Know not—what else.”

“Yeah, it’s tough.”

He returned to his work again, this time warmed by the other’s sympathy, and less uneasy about being observed. And as he worked, he thought sardonically of what they would think on his home planet if they knew.

He was sure that his enemies would have roared with laughter. Here was Kayin, the one they had feared for his brilliant mind, for his knowledge of science, for his practical skill. They had outwitted him—with the odds on their side, it was true—driven him a hunted creature past strange stars, and forced him to come to ground again in the guise of one of the meanest of a mean and unintelligent race. And even in the humble position to which he had been reduced, he could not hold up his end of the work.

He clenched his jaws grimly at the thought, and the very motion made him realize that in no way was he like the others, that even so simple a matter as the number and shape of his teeth might give him away. Unintelligent as they were, once they took the trouble to look with some care, they would know a creature who was not one of them.

On the second day of work he did arouse suspicion, but at first not from the other workers. The creature that bared its teeth and barked at him was a dog. For a time Kayin found the animal’s attention embarrassing. He threw a stone at the beast, but it ran only a short distance, and stopped to bark again. He had an idea of what the trouble was. That day he had replaced his worn trousers by a new and baggy pair of overalls, not yet saturated with the scent of human beings, and the dog had noticed his own faint but strange odor. Now it was making a nuisance of itself, and drawing everyone’s attention to him.

“That mutt don’t like you, Mac,” said a foreman who passed by.

“Funny about dogs, the way they bark at some people,” someone laughed.

Kayin threw another stone, but the beast dodged and continued to bark. His audience was growing now, and Kayin’s skin began to twitch nervously, in a way that itself might have drawn an audience if they had been in a mood to notice such details of behavior. “I patted cat this morning,” he said apologetically. “Crazy dog smells cat.”

He would have them all staring at him if this went on much longer, and he knew that he had to act quickly. Looking around him, he spied a compressed air hose lying on the ground. He picked it up, turned on the air, and directed the nozzle at the dog. The blast knocked the animal head over heels, and sent him howling on his way. Everyone laughed, and Kayin turned back to his work in relief. But from now on he knew that he must wear no new clothes.

As the work progressed, his attention turned from the immediate tasks at hand, and he began to wonder what its purpose was. There seemed to be hundreds of men, all engaged in menial tasks, all part of some greater overall plan. He began to wonder, too, if people who could make such plans could be so unintelligent as he had first assumed. Or was it simply that their intelligence had not developed, that they lacked the background of science to make the most of their minds, to use the resources their planet possessed?

A rough voice, almost the twin of that first rough voice of two days before, growled, “Hey, you, wake up and get movin’. Whaddya think you’re gettin’ paid for?”

He swung his pick without looking up. The foreman had no idea that the tall foreigner he knew as Kane was staring at him curiously with tiny camouflaged eyes that quite literally grew in the back of the strangely shaped head, trying to understand what made the human being tick.

By the end of a week Kayin was confident that he knew the language well enough to start reading it. He went to a public school which he found was open in the evenings, and there joined a class where someone explained the alphabet, and made clear to foreigners that English was a language full of traps and pitfalls. Kayin absorbed the information eagerly, but after the third lesson he found the pace much too slow, and did not return. He had never before encountered a language of so strange a structure, and the actual making of the sounds gave him trouble, but the basic principles of language study were as valid here as on his home planet, and he learned rapidly. By the end of a month he could read.

By the end of the same month he had learned, too, the nature of the project on which he was working. On several occasions, the engineer in charge had passed by him to exchange a few words with the foreman and once with the man who had ordered the building.

The words had been significant. There could be no mistake, for Kayin had come across them in his reading. “Laboratory” had a very definite meaning. And there were such expressions as “incubation tanks,” and “thermostat controls.” All in all, enough to let him know that they were engaged in constructing a plant for the manufacture of biochemical substances.

He knew that there were biochemical plants already in existence, scattered over the civilized part of the planet, and the thought of great danger did not occur to him. But he continued, as the men around him would have put it, to keep his ears open, and as time went on he became more and more disquieted.

Meanwhile, his relations with the people among whom he worked became almost human. They greeted him every day as one of themselves, asked casual questions about the place from which he had come and the way he had lived, and accepted the answers as if with a quiet confidence that he was telling the truth. Once, in an access of good feeling, one of them had gone so far as to slap him amicably on the shoulder, and Kayin had experienced agony such as he had never felt before. But he managed to conceal the pain, and even to laugh weakly. He made sure, however, that a similar incident would never happen again. Whenever someone approached him too closely, he opened his extra eyes very slightly, ready to step aside at the touch of a too friendly hand.

He had not realized how much his own attitude toward them had changed until the day an accident occurred. A large shelf of rock had unexpectedly turned up to block the excavation of a wide pit, and it had been necessary to shatter it with dynamite. But the explosive did not at first go off, and one of the men had gone back to see what was wrong. He had been just in time to be knocked down by the blast itself, and to be covered by the mass of dirt and broken rock that slid into the excavation.

It was Kayin who ran for him first, digging frantically away at the smothering mass, without regard for the fragments that continued to rain down upon him. And after he had reached the man, who was unconscious, but still breathing, it was Kayin who had wondered why on this Earth he had taken the risk for the sake of a creature who meant so little to him. There was another risk as well, he found, when they summoned a doctor to treat the injured man, and someone suggested that Kayin had been injured too. But Kayin quickly shrugged off the idea that he needed treatment, and went back at once to his work. He wanted no doctor discovering what unusual arms and legs and internal organs he had.

In the days that followed he continued to wonder at himself. Working together with these men, he had changed. But he must be careful, he knew, not to change too far. They had only, he was certain, to see him as he was, to realize his difference from them, and their friendliness would change to hate, causing them to turn from him with fear and loathing.

The building had reached the stage of scaffolding, and he was still at work. It was now that he learned the full truth about the project which was soon to come into operation.

He was on the outside of the building, and two of the men in charge were nearby. One of them, shrewd and elderly, had financed the building. The other, in his thirties, was the scientist who had invented the process. They were speaking in low tones, tones which no human being standing in Kayin’s position would have been able to understand.

“You’re sure, Blayson, that there’s no danger?” the older man was saying.

The scientist smiled. “There’s always some danger, Mr. Lymer, especially when you try something new. But there’s nothing we shouldn’t be able to control.”

“I still don’t think that you know too much about what you’re doing.”

“I’ve admitted that myself. But we get results, don’t we? We’ll corner the world market, Mr. Lymer. Name your antibiotic and we’ll make it. And in addition to anything now being sold, we’ll have dozens that nobody has even imagined. I think I’ve given you enough evidence to convince you of that.”

“I suppose you have. But this use of cosmic rays makes me uneasy. You still don’t know enough about them.”

It was at this point that Kayin’s third and fourth eyes, usually so completely concealed, popped wide open in surprise and terror. It was fortunate that no one took the trouble to look at him at that moment.

The younger man was saying confidently, “We’ll control them. All we need to know is that they’re high energy, higher than anything we can produce here on Earth, and that we can concentrate them in a way no one else can. There’s nothing to fear, nothing that ordinary precautions shouldn’t enable us to handle.”

Nothing, Kayin thought, but the danger of depopulating most of a planet. His mind went back to what had happened on the second planet of his own sun, what had almost happened on the fourth planet. Within the space of a few hundred centads of time, the second planet, with its population of four billion, had lost every inhabitant, and become a sterile monument of a dead civilization. Only the warning of what had already taken place had enabled the second planet to survive.

And in this place too, disaster would strike quickly. Kayin had begun to read more and more, and he knew what was taking place here. Science had developed quickly, but sporadically. Vast regions had remained untouched by it, masses of people knew nothing of it but the name and the fact that it could perform miracles. True, they had learned that certain discoveries might lead to disaster as well as to the improvement of their lives, but they still failed to test their discoveries fully before using them, they still failed to exercise the necessary controls.

The young man, Blayson, had made his discovery ahead of its proper time. At the rate at which human science was progressing, thought Kayin, at least a hundred years would have to pass before such a discovery could be considered safe. At the present stage, it simply could not be controlled. The concentrated cosmic rays would, as Blayson evidently anticipated, cause tremendous mutations in living organisms, in the molds and mycetes of different kinds, it would lead to the manufacture of useful antibiotics. But they would also lead to the production of entirely new forms of sub-microscopic life, forms not susceptible to ordinary methods of sterilization, forms that would multiply with inexorable speed. These forms produced from bits of human tissue would inevitably be deadly to human beings and related species.

He himself, thought Kayin, possessed of a different body chemistry, might escape. But he would be the only intelligent creature to do so. And after the viruses had done their work, the planet, in its desolation and sterility, would resemble the second planet of his own star.

If he had learned of the imminence of disaster at the time he first arrived, he would hardly have been affected. He would have hated to see a race disappear. He had the scientist’s desire to keep any race, even the least useful, alive so that he might study it, and at the very worst, write an article about it. But now—and this he realized almost to his amazement—he felt practically human himself. It must be the way he was living and working, the way the others treated him on the job. He did not want to see them annihilated.

He was the only one to know the danger. He realized at once that he could tell no one. Blayson and Lymer had eyes only on the fortunes they intended to make, and they would have refused to believe anything that stood in the way of those fortunes. Nor could he go to anyone else. There would be questions—

He imagined himself trying to inform the Mayor of the city. Some underling would be sure to meet him. “You say there’s danger, Mr. Kayin? That how you pronounce it? Foreign-sounding name. Where’d you come from?”

He would have to invent answers in advance for every possible embarrassing question. And then would come the most embarrassing of all:

“How do you know there’s danger?”

There was no answer to that. Could he say that he had worked in the same field of research himself? Or could he give them the example of what had happened on another planet?

It was a problem that he would have to solve by himself. He racked his head, and found no simple solution. He had his optical analyzer, and one or two additional trifles like it, but there was no special apparatus he could use, no weapons. Outside of his scientific knowledge and his non-human brain, he had only the same weapons as the human beings themselves. And these were hardly enough to put an end for good to a project on which so many human beings had built their hopes.

The buildings approached completion, the laboratory equipment began to be installed. And then, finally, when delay was no longer possible, on the eve of the very day that was to see the plant put into operation, Kayin acted.

He knew that until work actually began there would be but a single night watchman, and it was this man at whom he struck first. A single carefully aimed blow with a padded club produced unconsciousness. Kayin did not strike hard, but he struck hard enough. As the watchman fell, Kayin seized the man, bound and gagged him.

Then he entered the building and began to destroy.

He started with the cosmic ray collector, working quietly and efficiently, and concentrating on the electronic and magnetic parts. These had been ordered long before the building itself had been begun. They would be hard to replace.

He passed on to the giant incubator vats, and finally turned his attention to the collection of formulas which reposed in the files. These were important, but he knew that they were not enough. The most important formulas of all lay in the mind of the man who had developed the process, and that was, for the moment at least, beyond him. What Kayin was doing now was playing for time.

He was setting a match to the papers of the last file when he heard a voice. More time had passed than he realized, and they had come early on this day that was to have seen the beginning of a great enterprise.

They must already have noted the absence of the watchman. Now he heard a gasp from Lymer, a groan that must have come from Blayson. Then there was cursing, slow, bitter and steady. Then footsteps, and Lymer was standing at the door of the office and shouting, “Here he is!”

Blayson was shouting to someone outside, and Kayin knew that in a moment the entire building would be swarming with people. He promptly tossed one of the files at Lymer, saw the man stumble and fall in an effort to avoid being hit, and was past the door before the enraged man could scramble to his feet again.

Then he was in the great incubation room, with its monstrous vats, heading for the opposite end. But before he could reach it, a door swung open. A policeman appeared, and shouted, “Hey, you—stop!”

He dashed out through a side door into a small control room. He locked the door behind him. He heard a club pound furiously upon it, and the pounding ceased as the policeman decided against a further waste of time here. Kayin ran to the other door. As he did so the knob turned. He threw all his weight against the door and turned the key. Men pounded on both doors, and he looked around for windows. There were none. He was locked in.

He heard Blayson’s voice, “Open up! You can’t get away!”

There was, it was true, no way out. But Kayin said calmly, “Stay away, or I’ll blow up the building.”

After the destruction he had already accomplished, they had no way of knowing that he was bluffing. The pounding stopped. Through the door he heard the whispered sounds of consultation. Then Blayson’s voice again, “Come out. We won’t hurt you.”

“I realize that.”

“You realize—”

“You think that I am afraid, do you not?”

There was surprise in the tones of Blayson’s reply. “You don’t sound crazy, but—”

“But what other reason could I have had for destroying so much valuable equipment?”

He heard Lymer say, “Over a hundred thousand dollars’ worth. That cosmic ray collector cost at least that.”

A policeman’s voice: “You saw him, Mr. Lymer. Recognize him?”

“No, never saw him before in my life.”

Blayson shouted again, this time with unconcealed anger, “Come on out.”

“With pleasure. But first I should like to talk to you.”

“You’ll talk later.”

“No.” He knew that later they would not listen to him, and he realized that if he could convince Blayson of the danger of the project, his battle would be won. “Do you want to know why I did so much damage, Mr. Blayson?”

“You’ve already answered that.”

“No, I am not insane. It is you who are failing to use your mind properly. Your method is extremely dangerous.”

“How do you know?”

“I have made similar studies.”

“That’s absurd. No one on Earth has done anything like this.”

“I didn’t mention Earth,” thought Kayin. Aloud, he said patiently, “You are mistaken. Your experiments are not new, and it is known—” he did not say where it was known—“it is known that they can lead to disaster. They can produce microorganisms of a virulence never before seen here.”

“You’re just imagining things!”

“I do not imagine. At this period, your discovery is of too treacherous a nature to be used.”

Blayson was silent, and Kayin hoped that he was thinking of something else than breaking down the door.

“You will not be the first, Mr. Blayson, to have suppressed a discovery of so great significance.”

“I don’t believe you. Open the door.”

“In a moment. But think of what I have said.”

“Open the door.”

“Half a moment now. You do not care to listen further?”

A policeman growled, “He’s stalling. We’ll break it open.”

“No need for that,” said Kayin. “I shall come out. Perhaps if I speak to you face to face you will believe me.”

He removed the jacket and shirt and tie to which he had become so accustomed these past few months. He stretched his muscles freely, and smiled a bitter smile to himself. He said, “The door opens outward. Please give room.”

He turned the key in the lock, and slammed the door open. Then he leaped forward.

He could hear the shouts of horror, he could see them standing there petrified. It was a reaction that he had counted on. A policeman fired his revolver, but so excitedly that every bullet missed, while he yelled, “It’s not human. It’s not human!”

The gravity was a little too great here for him to do any real flying, but at least his wings, unfolded at last, could take him high into the air in the great room, terrifying and confusing them. As he slowly floated down, he could see them racing around madly. He headed for the door to an outer room. A policeman who was standing in his path could not move his bulk out of the way in time. Kayin crashed into him and sent him sprawling. Then, from behind him, another policeman aimed a blow with the butt of his gun. With his extra eyes Kayin saw what was happening, and a blow of his great wings knocked the policeman down.

Then he was running down the corridor, using his wings to give him a little extra speed. The door through which he had just come swung open again, and a bullet sang past him, tearing into the non-fleshy part of his wing. He hardly felt it.

He was outside.

The noise of the shooting had spread the alarm. Another policeman came running, took one look at him, closed his eyes, and swayed there. Kayin seized the man’s own club and hit him over the head with it. He dragged the unconscious body into a deep, clean, concrete-lined pit that had been reserved for some of the dangerously radioactive byproduct that he was now sure they would never make. In the dark of the pit, he stripped the policeman of the uniform. The man was broad across the shoulders, and the uniform fitted nicely across Kayin’s wings.

Now he leaped out of the pit, adding his yells to those of the others. A car, the one in which Blayson and Lymer had arrived, was standing parked at the edge of the yard, and he slipped into it. He was out of the yard before they realized what was happening.

But a policeman’s uniform, he knew, was too conspicuous. A mile away, he stopped a puzzled truck driver, threatened the man with his revolver, and drove away a moment later with an extra, less conspicuous suit of clothes. He turned on the radio and learned, as he had suspected, that an alarm for him had already been broadcast.

He left the car on a deserted side road, and changed into his truck driver’s outfit. He knew enough now about human customs to feel momentarily safe. And he knew enough also to realize that they would institute a nationwide search for a strange creature with wings. He would not be safe for long. He had to get back to his ship, of which, fortunately, they knew nothing. They might suspect, but they could have no idea of where he had hidden it.

That night, still dressed as a truck driver, he broke into a factory that made electrical appliances. When he left, he had with him most of what he needed for repairs.

It was two days later that he reached his ship with a supply of food. He hoped that he had been unobserved, but he could not be sure. He set to work, using the Earth-made supplies to patch up, in makeshift fashion, the damage caused by the crash.

Another two days and the ship would operate. He was short on fuel, but if he looked for it, he knew he could find enough to send him on his way and leave this planet for good.

He realized now that he didn’t want to leave. In the days he had spent here, he had gradually lost some of his feeling of loneliness. Almost despite themselves, these human beings had made him feel like one of them. Their planet would never take the place of the one he had left, but in many ways it had become a second home to him.

He had made it uninhabitable for himself. If he had said nothing, done nothing, then no one would have suspected, and he would have been allowed to stay—until disaster struck them all.

At least he had delayed that. The radio that night brought him the news that Blayson, who had been slightly injured in the struggle, had been taken to a hospital, his mind temporarily gone under the shock of what had happened. He would be unable, for the time, to reconstruct what Kayin had destroyed. Lymer, disheartened by the loss, had announced that he had no plans for rebuilding the factory. Despite their stupidity, Kayin had won them a respite.

He had won nothing for himself. The following day he heard warning sounds, and saw groups of men closing in around the ship. He was pleased to see that, despite all difficulties, they had traced the path he had taken. They were not so stupid after all.

He went into his ship, and the door slid shut. Night was falling, and in the darkness the ship leaped upward at a sharp angle. Now there would be hundreds of people who saw the shooting star, but this time a star that shot upward.

He rose to a height of twenty miles, and remained at that level, cruising slowly. Far above, he could see through the viewplates the star—Vega, they called it here—which was his native sun. Already an exile from his homeland, he was now being exiled from his second home.

Suddenly he knew that being exiled once was enough. He was tired of fleeing through space, tired of making friends and then being forced to leave them. He had made a home here, and here he would stand and fight.

Below him, the surface of the planet was now rocky and deserted. The ship began to sink. It was still dark, and the vessel came to rest slowly and inconspicuously upon a craggy peak where there was little danger that any human being would stumble upon it. Far below he could see the outline of a town, picked out of the darkness by light reflected from clouds above. Looking through a distance viewer he could even distinguish the individual lights, and he was able to read a sign that flaunted its message boldly alongside a bridge: WELCOME TO HARDENDALE.

He smiled, and said softly, in the language that was no longer strange to him, “I accept the invitation.”

Stretching his wings, he parachuted down through the darkness to level ground, prepared to become once more a member by adoption of the human race. And this time, as he walked cautious and alone through the night, he no longer felt lonely.