Consider an alien infiltrating our
                  world--impossible to catch because
                   he might inhabit any person--even
                  you! You'd likely start screaming--

                          GET OUT OF MY BODY!

                           By Tom W. Harris

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
                             February 1958
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


"I have come to discuss a very grave problem," said the
talking-attendant.

"Then let's get down to details," said Chester Forge. "It's urgent you
said."

Interviews with Ravians always made Chester nervous. They wouldn't use
the psi-control voice sets, and there was something uncanny in talking
to a human, a talking-attendant, when you knew it wasn't the man
speaking at all, but the alien intelligence he was temporarily host to.

It was even more unsettling when the Ravian was a high official,
as at present. Their minds were even more coldly intellectual, dry
and logical than the usual Ravian tourist's. And they could make a
lot of trouble. Chester's job as tour-chief here at Knoxville--more
specifically, Port Knoxville, where the ships came in--was to keep the
tourists happy as possible. No, not happy. Happiness is an emotion.
Satisfied maybe.

"There are scant useful details I can give you," said Monnn, the
Ravian, through the lips of the talking-attendant. "There was a
stowaway on the sightseeing ship that came in this morning--one of our
people. He is a fugitive. He has left the ship and is here on earth
somewhere, perhaps in Knoxville. He must be captured."

Chester Forge was jolted, but he had found you got on better with
Ravians if you never showed feelings. He made his voice calm.

"A fugitive, hmmm? What was his crime?"

"The question is immaterial," said Monnn. "So typical of your people.
But I suppose you will function better if not bothered by curiosity.
Minnn, the stowaway, told a lie."

"A lie?"

"The worst of crimes. Minnn was a politician, campaigning for office,
and he lied in making a promise he could not execute."

By Joe, thought Chester, now I've heard them all. Well, the rule is you
never, never question the tastes of an alien. The Martians have a mad
passion for hop-toads, the Zarlos like to have things hurt them, the
Frin talk all the time and the Rorn don't talk at all, and--

"We'll get him for you," said Chester more firmly than he felt.

"We feel you may fail," said the Ravian. "We ask permission to send our
own searchers, no quota on numbers, open-area travel permission."

Chester went white. "I'm afraid we can't grant that. I promise we'll
get him for you."

"Why can you not grant that?"

"Well--population. There aren't enough volunteers to host any more than
the present quota, and of course you can't get around without hosts."

"How human," said Monnn through the attendant. "You are afraid of us.
Yet you know we have no desire at all for this planet, and that we know
you know this.

"Why do you lie? On our planet you would be treated as Minnn will
be--your personality dismembered, the useful parts assigned to another,
the imperfect disposed of."

"Be that as it may," said Chester, a chill in his spine. "We will find
this fugitive ourselves."

"Of course. And if you do not, within two of your days, we must come
to search ourselves. One more thing--Minnn may turn killer. And now I
shall retire--manipulating this organism is most fatiguing."

The talking-attendant stood blank-faced for a moment as the Ravian
withdrew to some nook of his mentality. Then he blinked and peered
around, discovered he was in Forge's office, and saluted.

"That's okay, John," said Chester. "Thanks. Take him back to his husk."

The attendant left and Chester picked up his visor, punching the button
for Security Chief....

       *       *       *       *       *

On Clinch Street, little Sally Odum was walking home from school. She
turned down an alley for a shortcut, and there she saw the toy. It
was a black, fringed globe, a little larger than a grapefruit. "Gee!"
exclaimed Sally, and reached out and grabbed it.

The globe changed from black to gray, from shiny to dull, and from firm
to flaccid. Sally felt a little tingle in her fingertips, a tiny tug
in her mind. Looking thoughtful, she slipped the limp toy under her
jacket. She trotted home, hid the thing at the bottom of her toy box,
and promptly forgot about ever finding it.

Minnn, exhausted from the psionic strain of rolling his body through
the thick earth air all the way from the port to the city, and then
directing the feeling and movement of Sally, made one little adjustment
in her memory, then turned off his awareness and rested. In the rich
rush of mental currents he would soon be replenished. In the meantime
he was safe....

       *       *       *       *       *

The Ravian had given Chester Forge two days to find Minnn. A day had
passed and nothing had happened. He had kept things quiet, up to now.
There was no indication his quiet search would produce anything. It was
time for a different tactic....

       *       *       *       *       *

Sally Odum's father looked up from the news-sheets that had just come
off the clicker. "Mary, did you see these items about the Ravian loose
in the city?"

His wife was playing chack with Sally. The child had beaten her four
games running, and Mary was just beginning to wonder if she was mother
to a genius. A mother does not appreciate interruption of such
musings. "Ah--no," she answered absently. "What about um?"

"Seems this bird--Minnn's his tag--is thought to be hiding out in some
human around town. He forced."

Mary was more interested. "Isn't forcing against galactic convention?"

"Darn right. This guy's a fugitive, like I said."

"I knew they'd get in trouble, letting these foreigners come down."

"Look, honey. One thing, we need the trade. A Ravian pays four picks of
plainum for a day or two in a human. It's all here in the news-sheet.
A Ravian hasn't got emotions, and when they're in a host they can feel
everything the host feels. Real Kicks. The host gets to spend one pick
himself--a small fortune--he has a shivaree and the Ravian goes for the
ride. And for the host it's all voluntary."

"What about this Minnn?"

Sally listened with bright attention, slightly flushed.

"It says here he could be anywhere, any man, woman or child. Tells how
you can spot 'em and names a reward. Person with old Minnn inside is a
little flushed, feverish, doesn't sleep very well. They...."

"Say, honey, Sally didn't sleep well last night. Do you think she's all
right?"

"Any kid has a restless night sometimes, Mary. Lemme finish. The person
is apt to be kind of listless, and might have memory blanks. Oh--and
the Ravian enters a host by some kind of physical contact, and he can
get to another host only by a contact with the first one."

"Maybe we ought to take Sally to Dr. Price, hon. She just hasn't been
herself lately."

"Oh well," sighed Odum, and threw down the clicker-story. "Tell you
what. All you do is visor security, tell them you're pretty sure a
person has this Ravian, and the person gets a real good physical--free.
Let's just tell them Sal has the symptoms and get a deal."

Sally got up listlessly and the screen banged as she wandered out.

"What symptoms?" asked Mary.

"You mean you weren't listening?" And Mr. Odum told Mrs. Odum all the
signs the article had listed, while Mrs. Odum gradually paled.

"But--those are exactly the symptoms she does have," she said when he
finished. Their eyes met and he reached for the visor.

The security cops arrived. Chester was with them. As they boiled
from their 'copter they nearly knocked over an old gentleman who was
creaking his way delicately along the sidewalk, and one cop stepped on
a small dog, which bit him.

Two of them stayed with Sally, who stood in the yard with a scared
expression; two others entered the house with Chester. They all came
out of the house and Mary explained to Sally that she was not to be
frightened. Sally was given a nice raincoat with built-in mittens--it
was triple-ply mento-insulation plastic--and everybody bundled into the
'copter.

Sally liked the ride and the raincoat, but when it was all over she was
sad. Mr. Forge seemed disappointed somehow....

       *       *       *       *       *

Minnn lay quiet in his new host soaking in data. Perfesser Frye ...
old ... quiet, jogging complex of contentment, and dissatisfaction.
Cheated on price of eggs ... nice house over there, awful the way
they've changed things ... little girl, patted her on the head, might
have had a child like that. Enjoy what you can. Glow-thought connected
with something called beer.

Minnn was shocked to find that, almost the opposite of Sally,
Perfesser Frye was a complete liar. He was not a professor, and the
knowledge he impressed people with was mostly a collection of long,
mispronounced words and memorized facts of which the Perfesser did
not know the meaning. His landlady believed he was coming into an
immense inheritance based on platinum on Vega, and she allowed him
a familiarity which Minnn found amusing and which included rent
exemption. The man was a collection of lies. Even his rheumatism was
not genuine, but psychosomatic.

That evening the Perfesser had the unpleasant experience of seeing
his own face on the landlady's show-visor set, with the information
that there was a price on his head. This was the last he remembered
for some time, although to the landlady he appeared to retain full
consciousness. He leaped to his feet most unrheumatically, tied her
up, bashed in the visor, and pattered out into the streets, which were
deserted.

The Perfesser had good eyes for distance use, Minnn found. He swung
the Perfesser's hook-beaked head about searchingly. At the end of the
street men were coming, in mento-insulation. Minnn swung the lanky
frame about, almost capsizing it, and sprinted long-leggedly in the
opposite direction.

In a few blocks the heart was pounding and the face was hot and the
lungs could not suck enough oxygen. The Perfesser was not feeling
anything consciously, but his parasympathetic nervous system was giving
Minnn the horrors.

The cops could not be seen. Minnn withdrew to rest. The Perfesser came
to an abrupt halt, and gazed about him glassily. He remembered the
nightmarish moment watching the visor; now he found himself in the
street panting like a horse and raining sweat. He stood getting his
breath and trying to think, then moved off purposefully....

       *       *       *       *       *

Chester's eyes felt like they would drop out on his desk at any moment.
He had had no sleep. He was entertaining a plan to visit the Ravians,
in disguise, as a tourist, and make things miserable for _them_, when
two buzzers rang at once.

He answered his chief's buzzer first. Had Minnn been caught? No? Well,
the governor had called and the heat was on. The chief was forced to
give Forge a choice of producing Minnn in 24 hours or being sent as
supercargo to the Mars-deserts. That was all.

The second buzzer was Monnn, speaking through "a talking-attendant."

"Your two days are up this evening," said the Ravian. "Any progress?"

"We ought to have him any time now."

"Nonsense. Minnn had been in that young girl--I could tell, when she
was here."

Forge got little pleasure from his reply. "I know that. We're after the
man Minnn moved to."

Monnn was unperturbed. "Good. You have about an hour."

"One thing," said Chester. "You say Minnn might kill. Any special way
he'd go about it?"

"How should I know?" asked Monnn. "Minnn is an outlaw, under pursuit
and away from his planet. On our planet there are no killings." And he
hung up....

       *       *       *       *       *

The Perfesser, umbrella under his arm, black serge suit dusty, walked
down a long alley and into Steve's Beer Bar. Beer, he always figured,
was a real help when you were perplexed.

Minnn witnessed this logic with disgust. The Perfesser's memory-units
showed the beer just made him more perplexed. But Minnn was resting in
witness-state, very tired from making the Perfesser do all that running.

The Perfesser hooked his umbrella over the bar and was waited upon by
Steve himself. "You look kinda bushed," said Steve respectfully.

"A man my age must watch himself, Steve. Especially when he is
enervated by the hardihoods of lifetime scholarship."

"Rough," said Steve admiringly. He didn't know what the language meant
but it sounded gorgeous.

The Perfesser turned to a pushed-down man beside him at the bar. "You
would hardly believe, friend, what has just happened to me. One moment
I was watching a home-visor-view--and the next I was standing in the
street. I can scarcely credit this phenomenon."

"Funny things happen," said the pushed-down man. "I drive a laundry
truck, and one stop is out to the national asylum. They got people out
there what don't know where they even came from, too."

"You sure this really happened, Perfesser?" said Steve. "I mean--you
wouldn't make it up or nothing." The Perfesser had drunk only one "fish
bowl" of beer--it was a little early for his star-spangled lying.

"I can aver it happened," said the Perfesser stiffly. "A phenomena of
psychic rarity--similar things have occurred to intellectual persons at
various points in history."

Minnn was not enjoying himself. Humans were fun when they were having
fun, but other moods were unendurable. Coupled with illogic it was
worse. Minnn was considering shifting to the truck driver when the man
suddenly arose. "Well, night, Steve, Perfesser--I gotta get the sheets
a-rolling," said the man, and vanished out the back door.

It was seconds later that two policemen burst in the front door
and headed straight for the Perfesser. Minnn acted instantly. The
Perfesser's awareness was clamped out and the creaking frame was sent
speeding to the back door.

Down the alley the laundry truck was starting, and the Perfesser's
voice sailed after it, "Wait, fellow. Hold on!"

The truck slowed and the wizened face of the driver peered back just in
time to see the police burst into the alley and open fire. The face was
withdrawn instantly and the truck gained speed.

The Perfesser ran after it, shouting until his breath gave out. There
was junk in the alley and it was crisscrossed by other alleys with
traffic on them and the driver dared not approach top speed. The cops
shot twice again at the Perfesser, who was running like an antelope.

Minnn felt a crash in the Perfesser's shoulder and the tall body
swayed. A bit of lead had entered the clavicle. Minnn strained and
the ends of the veins constricted, slowing the loss of blood. The
Perfesser's heart and lungs were behaving alarmingly but Minnn kept the
body running. He was gaining on the truck.

The truck gained speed and so did the Perfesser. Ancient arteries,
brittled with deposits, strained and began to give. The Perfesser's
arm raised as he drew alongside the truck. The umbrella-tip neared the
driver.

       *       *       *       *       *

A bullet grazed the Perfesser's side--Minnn suddenly realized they were
not shooting to kill: and also the shaky frame he had taken would not
be able to run much longer. With a surge of concentration he pushed the
body forward. The umbrella-tip touched the driver, Minnn drove himself
down the metal ferrule, somewhere an artery burst, and the body of the
Perfesser sagged, wobbled, and, still carried forward by momentum,
smashed into a wall and toppled over. It lay there on its back. Being
front-man for a Ravian had been Perfesser Frye's last falsehood.

The truck got out of the alley, going fast, and kept going fast until
it came to the asylum. The driver did not go to the back door--there
might be people waiting for him. He walked in the front door, up to the
receptionist, and touched her. Then he discovered himself standing
there, and walked embarrassedly out again.

The receptionist remained at her desk. A visitor was moving toward her;
as he passed, the receptionist touched his hand.

Down a hallway opening into the reception room came a little group of
men--three attendants from the hospital and the hospital director; a
talking-attendant and Chester Forge, and the truck driver. All were
gloved and clad in mento-insulation but the talking-attendant.

"I was standing right here," said the driver excitedly. "Right here in
front of this desk."

The talking-attendant rested his hand on the receptionist's forehead.
"Not there now," he declared.

"Have any of you seen anyone near this desk?" called the director to
the room at large. A woman pointed to the visitor the receptionist had
touched. "He was!"

The visitor began to run.

"We've got to get him before he gets into a patient!" yelled Chester.
"In an unbalanced mind even Monnn can't find him! Get him."

They went plunging after the visitor.

Minnn was pleased. He had a head start, and this human had good running
potential. He would have fun. An interne stepped out of a door, the
visitor touched his hand, the interne stepped back through the door,
rapidly. The searchers swirled down the hall and grabbed the visitor
and Monnn made his test. "Not here now," he reported.

The interne strolled into an elevator, went up a story, walked quietly
down another corridor. Excitement was percolating through the place
almost as though the inmates breathed it. There were many inmates on
this floor; he could force into one almost at leisure.

Another elevator jarred to a stop, doors opened, and the searchers
bolted out. Chester's face was like a purple plum, his eyes were red
and wild. The long chase was teasingly close to ending, and could be
frustrated forever.

The interne turned and thumbed his nose at Forge, who gave a bellow
of anger. As the men surged toward him, the attendant sprinted a few
yards, reached out and touched a patient. The halls were full of them;
attracted by the excitement. Unobtrusively the patient touched another,
who in turn touched another, who disappeared in the crowd.

"Go back to your rooms," shouted the director of the hospital. "You are
impeding a hunt for a fugitive."

But the patients didn't see any fugitive, and they stayed, and more
kept coming.

There was a disconcerting blur of thought-emotion in the patient Minnn
was using. The pursuers were the length of the hall away; he caused his
host to turn, shriek a bad word, and thumb her nose at them.

They came running, impeded by the crowd. The patient turned a corner,
touched another patient, who touched another.

It was quite an experience, Minnn decided. He had whirled through a
rich kaleidoscope of minds and emotions; in one woman there had been a
fountain of ecstacy he would have to go back and sample sometime. He
had come to the perfect place. Except as he chose to do it, to tease,
these inmates could not reveal him, and no Ravian could detect him. He
could stay here an indefinite length of time--wait them out--then go
back to the toy chest where his husk lay--or trace Sally Odum's memory
for it in case she had moved it--and repossess himself.

He could learn to live on this planet--perhaps he could even get
governmental sanctuary, though that was not essential. He would not be
lonely. Ravians do not get lonely. They do, however, have a sense of
power.

But the pursuers were coming down the hall, the Ravian in the
talking-attendant attempting to sort through the twisted minds, the
person from the tourist service almost out of his own mind. And though
Minnn was having sport, he was a little tired. He turned the eyes of
his host toward the group of hunters, and saw that they had stopped
coming and stood talking. He walked his host to a window-bench, sat it
down, turned its mind toward slumber, and relaxed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Chester had to have a plan, and, driven to unwonted efficiency by the
threat of bureaucratic disgrace and exile, his mind began to form one.
The plan was not without its dangers, especially to Chester, but it was
the only plan they had.

Power was shut off to all elevators, and at the flip of a switch all
the doors on the group's floor were locked. "We've got him penned on
this floor," said Chester. "I only hope he doesn't come across a mouse."

"He's probably on this floor," corrected Monnn through the
talking-attendant. "And he'll _probably_ stay. Ravians have a slight
psionic control, as you know, and it's barely possible Minnn could
force himself through a door-panel."

"How about a wall?"

"I doubt it."

"What if there was nobody on the other side for him to force into?"

"He would not last very long ... we would lose him. And that would go
hard for you, Mr. Forge, because we do not want Minnn done away with,
we want him captured."

"I don't need to be reminded," said Chester, mentally getting a
two-handed hold on the always-be-polite-to-a-tourist rule. "And now
let's smoke him out."

The director and a helper lingered unobtrusively near a firehose;
the rest of the group strolled on down the hall. Minnn had rested
and was alert again. Through his host-eyes he saw there were many
patients milling about--there were so many ready refuges. It occurred
to him that he had not particularly bedeviled his countryman, and he
caused his host to pick up a vase and hurl it at the head of Monnn's
talking-attendant.

Almost instantly a blast of chill water struck Minnn's host, knocking
her sprawling. Minnn found her emotions most unpleasant. He took her
mind fully, forcing her up from the floor, and a ram of water pounded
her down again. Somebody was rounding up the other patients, pushing
them out of his reach. People were yelling, running.

Somebody down the hall aimed a wide-nozzled gun at Minnn's host. There
was also the blat of an explosion and something hit his host in the
chest. "What poor weapons," thought Minnn, and then the thing exploded.
A thick gas swaddled the host-patient, Minnn felt the body sagging.
There was no time for him to weigh all factors for a really logical
decision, and he made a snap-judgment to leave this body before it lost
consciousness and sealed off his contact with his environment.

A form was stumbling past, and Minnn reached his host's hand up and
touched it. In a flash he had entered. Almost instantaneously he
realized that this time it was different. The nervous system was alive
with wild, determined resistance.

His host was Chester Forge.

Chester reeled back from the gas-shrouded, drowsing inmate. The gas
would stay near her, held by the biostatic charge in all its particles.
He had to keep away from it; he needed all his consciousness for his
battle.

He would never be able to quite describe many of the things he felt
during the struggle he waged within his own organism like a civil war.
Minnn had entered at his right wrist. Although Chester had mentally
braced, the alien had surged up his arm almost instantaneously, nearly
to the shoulder. Chester called on his mind to hold Minnn there. He
worked some part of his mind to hold Minnn there. He worked some part
of his mind like a new muscle--one cannot explain how it is he works a
muscle, he just does it. Simultaneously Chester reeled down the hall
toward where Monnn, in the talking-attendant, stood by an open door.
Monnn and the door were his two aces in the hole.

His flesh crawled; the alien was digging, seeping, sparking through
him, along his nerves, like a fluid, a worm, a gas, an insidious
writhing electricity. And the alien was winning. Inexorably he drove
along the stubborn channels to the seat of control, the watchroom in
the skull.

The talking-attendant stood with a rustling, limp black sac
out-held--Minnn's husk, taken from the toy chest of Sally Odum. If
Chester could force the writhing Minnn back down and out of his
fingertips and into the husk....

But he couldn't. The sweat rolled down his face as the fight went on
inside him. He had no way of knowing what would happen when Minnn, who
was nearing it, reached his brain. Insanity? Convulsions? Death? At
the very least, Minnn would control him, and also know his thoughts,
his plan, his two aces in the hole.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was a twist and a tingle at the base of his skull--the invader
was entering his brainstalk. It was time to play his first ace. With a
burst of determination to control his reeling motor functions, Chester
reached out his hand and touched the hand of the talking-attendant.
Monnn swished vengefully inside him.

When they had discussed this the others had been afraid. So had
Chester. Two alien forces, one hostile, both struggling, might rip
and rupture his psychic system like lightning bolts battling inside
a transistor. But Chester Forge was a stubborn man, with perhaps a
bureaucratic stubbornness, certainly a human stubbornness, and he was
committed to an end to be achieved.

For a few split seconds there was in Chester's nervous system what
might be described as a "hush." He took advantage of it to step through
the open door into a dimly-lighted room. The hospital director,
insulation-swathed, followed with the leather-rustling husk.

Then Minnn and Monnn locked forces, and Chester reeled with the shock
and swirl of the combat. The two forces mixed, fused, separated,
mingled, yet Chester somehow knew always which was which, got bursts
of the reasoning of each, knew in some indescribable way the alien,
indecipherable natures of each of them. For an instant he panicked.
Something mysterious and terrible as the dark energy of infinity was
pounding and flashing in his merely human synapses and cells, something
he understood yet could not understand at all.

He felt a draining, and knew Minnn was tapping him for energy. Chester
rallied to help Monnn. He pulled his energy, his thoughts, away from
Minnn, rolling up, balling, clenching his powers, keeping them out of
reach, probing for a chance to strike. Minnn filamented through half
his body; part of the alien was needling and darting into Chester's
mind, burrowing toward knowledge of his plan. Chester buried his plan
in the very center of the ball of thoughts, hiding his last ace.

He could not keep this up much longer, and he could feel that both
Minnn and Monnn knew this. It was time for the big assault. He sent
flash after flash of willpower crisping through his nerves, and Monnn
interwove himself in these assaults. Minnn was being forced back, and
back, intolerably pressured.

Minnn hurled his energies at them in a sudden rush, and Chester felt
something in him begin to tear like a piece of silk.

Concealed from Minnn like the kernel of a nut, Chester cupped the
knowledge, his last ace. He was at the verge of cracking, now was the
time to play it. He edged toward the wall of the room, where a patient
sat darkly on a bench. At the same time both he and Monnn drove forth
their last few ergs of pressure against Minnn.

Chester felt something raise his arm. His arm moved toward the patient;
his palm touched the man's cheek. There was a sudden cleanness in him,
and Minnn was gone.

He leaped backward through the door and it swung to and locked. A
peep-panel was opened in it and the black fringed husk hung up before
the opening. Chester touched the talking-attendant so Monnn could pass
over, then leaned weakly against the wall opposite the door.

"I give him half an hour," he said. "Who's got a drink of water?"

It turned out that they had waited only twenty-two minutes when the
fringed sac began to take a luster, to puff and to fill. When they were
quite sure Minnn was entirely within it, they wrapped it tightly in
the insulation and took it away.

"It was a good plan," said Monnn through the talking-attendant as
they drove back toward the town. "We could never have forced him to
leave you to enter his husk--his logic would have driven him to fight
even harder and to stay, with rather unfortunate results to you, Mr.
Forge, but under pressure he would leave to enter another host. And
it was lucky the walls of that room held him--as you said, that was a
gamble we had to take. But I wish you would again describe to me the
phenomenon in that room. It sounds quite strange."

"It's something that happens to humans," said Chester, "and I knew no
Ravian could put up with it. Illogic disturbs you, and you tour in
human beings only for the sake of one kind of emotion, the pleasant
kind. In that room there was no logic, and the emotions were of a
different kind, a kind you haven't heard of. The humans there were in
what is called a depressive ward. They are illogically unhappy, all the
time."

"I see," said Monnn through the lips of the attendant. "You have good
logic, Mr. Forge. I have a new respect for human logic. Yes."