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Title: Corpus earthling

Author: Louis Charbonneau

Release date: May 14, 2023 [eBook #70760]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Zenith Books, Inc, 1960

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CORPUS EARTHLING ***





                           CORPUS EARTHLING

                           Louis Charbonneau

                           A Zenith Original

                          Zenith Books, Inc.
                      Rockville Centre, New York

                 Copyright © 1960 by Louis Charbonneau
             Zenith Books edition published in March, 1960
                      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any
  evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]




    I stared appraisingly at the redhead curled up on my couch. Even
    she, Laurie Hendricks, might be one of them--one of the things
    from outer space.

    She noticed me watching her. She smiled knowingly, and stretched,
    catlike, her body straining against the smooth coverall.

    She walked over to where I stood and pressed against me. "Let's see
    what you can teach me, professor," she said softly.

    My last thought was: This girl is flesh and blood and human--she
    _must_ be human! And then everything was blotted out in the crimson
    sensation of that incredible kiss....




                                   1


It came again--the dream within a dream, the alien mind within the
ailing mind. Drowning in the treacherous whirlpool near the shores
of sleep, I fought to reach the firm reality of consciousness, of
awakening, but I was sucked back and slowly sank beneath the surface
into the horror of the dream....

       *       *       *       *       *

I stood on a lonely stretch of beach in a blue night, the sand
glistening white against the inky darkness of sky and water. Waves
rolled and tumbled toward me in noisy confusion. Beyond the apron
of sand were the small, black beetle-shapes of a cluster of house
trailers. But my eyes were focused on the figure which stood far up the
beach, and an unknown terror crawled like a furry, many-legged animal
down the nape of my neck.

"No!" The wind snatched the single cry of protest from my lips and tore
it into thin shreds of sound.

And the alien mind spoke in my ear, in my mind but not of it, a
whispered insinuation. "Drown!" it urged. "Drown!"

I didn't move. My legs seemed to have grown into the sand like the
trunks of trees. The voice spoke again in my mind, louder, more
compelling.

"Walk! Now! Into the water!"

I stood resisting the terrifying power of the voice. The figure up the
beach seemed closer, blurred by the cold wind that brought tears to my
eyes. I stood rooted and my body bent as if a gale tugged and pulled
at it. My legs began to tremble uncontrollably. The command hammered
at me with a relentless pressure, filling my mind, blotting out all
consciousness save for the drumming words, overwhelming in their brutal
strength.

And one foot moved. I took a step. Awkwardly, stiffly, like a rusty
robot lifting its leg. I struggled to force my body to obey the protest
of my own will. No! Stop! Don't move! But the cry of resistance was
obliterated by the command that swelled within my brain.

"Walk! Walk! Walk!"

Feet dragged resisting in the soft sand. Then there was the packed wet
surface, dark footprints, and the cold spray against my face, the water
swirling around my ankles, receding rapidly away from me down the wet
brown slope. I stumbled after it, impelled by the irresistible force,
each step a painful conflict that racked my body. I flung a wild glance
toward the figure on the beach. Closer now, much closer. Moving in for
the kill. And I felt anger, raging helpless anger mixed with the terror.

A breaker cracked like a whip ahead of me. The foaming tail of the
wave tumbled and crashed around me, washing above my knees. For a
single moment, I braked to a stop. I could feel the fabric of my suit
plastered wet against my legs.

I fought again and lost.

Walk. Drown. One step, then another. The water waist-high, dragging
against my thighs, a numbing cold. A breaker rising, trembling at its
crest, smashing down to drive me off my feet, tumbling me helplessly in
the churning violence.

"Up! On your feet! Walk!"

Eyelids heavy and wet, the salt taste on my tongue. The cold, bone
deep. Staggering, half falling, dragging myself forward against the
pull of the water. Another breaker, and I fell face forward into it.
My whole body was numb and wet and shivering, and the chill penetrated
my brain where the voice pounded at me with its relentless power,
shattering my will, dominating me as if I were a simple-minded child,
driving me onward step by step. Another wave broke over me, lifting me
off my feet and slamming me back, the water filling eyes and nose and
mouth as I went under. I swallowed water and came up choking with a
heavy pain in my chest.

"Drown! Drown!"

The voice spoke pitilessly and I staggered forward once more. And at
last I was beyond the line of the breakers, out where the water rose
with a slow heaviness, building high behind me. And there was a new
strength in the deep pull of the water flowing out to sea. Another
step, another, still one more. And I tried to ask why, but my brain
would not function. The water rose above my head and I went down, down,
sinking into the cold black waters.

The voice was triumphant, exulting, reaching through the tumultuous sea
to the numbness of my brain. "Now drown! Give yourself to the water!
Die!"

In the last moment panic came--the body retching, trying to disgorge
the deadly water, the mind recoiling from the black abyss that
beckoned, now so near, so tempting. And I tried to push up from the
bottom of the sea, but the water was a thick, impenetrable wall
toppling down upon me. I could see a layer of light near the surface
and I strained frantically to reach it, to grope beyond it toward the
life-giving air. The alien mind which had driven me under was now--

The mind was silent.

       *       *       *       *       *

I woke shivering in my bed. The sheets were damp with sweat. I lay
rigid, unable to move. The panic drained out slowly. I thought of
nothing, staring dully at the sleek surface of the plastic ceiling
overhead. When at last the terror had ebbed away, I felt empty and cold
and spent, as if all strength and sinew had rushed out through the
opening where the fear had gone.

A dream, I told myself. Only a dream. But the feeble reassurance
carried no conviction. The barrier against thought which I had erected
gave way, and the chill knowledge of what was happening to me spilled
through the breach to strike with sickening impact.

I was going mad.




                                   2


I rose slowly. The muscles of arms and legs and shoulders felt stiff
and sore, as if they had actually been tested and strained in the
ordeal of which I had dreamt. I glanced at the luminous clock face
built into the wall just to the left of the bedroom telescreen. It was
after three in the morning.

The floor of the trailer creaked gently as I plodded barefoot into
the tiny kitchenette. The creak always gave me the impression that
the trailer was moving, like a ship that groans protestingly even as
it rides with no apparent sway on smooth waters. I pressed the coffee
button and then, because I was too tired to move into the living area
when I would only have to come back in a minute, I stood beside the
sink, staring at the glowing red button as if hypnotized by it. I
couldn't shake off the depression brought by the recurrence of the
dream.

The red button blinked off, a green one flared, and a coffee cup
dropped into the slot beneath the spout from which coffee poured in a
hot black stream. I added a sugar pill and carried the cup into the
living room.

This was a small room about seven feet wide and ten feet long. All of
the furniture was built in--a sofa across the narrow wall under the
picture window, two flanking plastic chairs on pedestal bases, a coffee
table and a desk with its contour pedestal stool. Cramped quarters, but
they were comfortable enough for one. The kitchenette in the center of
the trailer had a small dining area. Beyond it were the bath, utility
closets, and the small bedroom. I had never completely got over my luck
in finding a place so close to the university.

Particularly one with a view.

I pressed the wall button and the draperies parted slowly and silently
across the picture window to frame a panoramic view of the west basin
of the San Fernando Valley. It was a clear moonlit night. The trailer
community I lived in was on a knoll above Mulholland Drive near the
crest of the Santa Monica mountains. Behind me, at the southern foot of
the hills, were the massive buildings of the University of California
at Los Angeles. My trailer faced northwest. In the distance I could see
the glow which was always visible over the spaceport of the Western
Space Command, though I could not now make out the bullet-shaped noses
of the shuttle rockets pointing skyward, dominant landmarks which could
easily be seen in the daytime projecting above an intervening ridge of
hills at the far western end of the valley. The ever-present glow came
from the atomic reactor factory where the power plants were produced
for the interplanetary space ships. These days the bullet-nosed rockets
were thundering skyward daily, carrying parts to the space station
where the interplanetary ships were being assembled.

Thinking of the coming moment less than a month away when man would
be leaving on his second flight to Mars, I felt some of my depression
lifting. The good hot coffee had quieted the quivering muscles in my
stomach. I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

At last I permitted my mind to return to the dream. It was the third
time I had experienced it, the same dream in every detail, with its
latent death wish, its peculiar delusion of extraordinary mental
powers, its mysterious unknown enemy, its strange water fear. The
terrifying reality of the dream, coupled with the unshakable conviction
that it was in some way a portent, only partly explained why it left me
so shaken.

For the dream was not the only symptom I had had. There were also
the voices--and the clear sense of someone plotting against me.
Sometimes the voices were extraordinarily vivid, whispering in my ear
with as much clarity as if I were wearing earphones and tuning in a
broadcast. I would stand at the window overlooking the valley, or even
in my cubicle of an office at the university, and I would hear the
meaningless fragments of thought--phrases, words and half-words jumping
into my mind with an eerie suddenness, bringing the peculiar sensation
that the thoughts in my own mind were being formed by someone else. For
over a year I had heard the elusive voices, but it was only recently
that I had begun to entertain the delusion that they were plotting
against me.

"Someone is listening."

That startling declaration had chilled my mind a little over a month
ago. There had been an immediate impression of total silence, of
waiting in a mental vacuum, and I had found myself holding my breath,
my mind blank in readiness. But there had been nothing else--only the
waiting silence.

In the weeks that followed, the references to the listener--to me, I
was sure--had been numerous. And I had sensed a deep animosity toward
me in the voices that spoke to me unknowingly. They were trying to
locate me. Who they were, I had no idea. But they were hunting me
coldly and methodically.

In the dream they caught me.

Psychology was not my field. I taught English literature at the
university and I was more familiar with Dostoyevsky's probing of the
human mind than Jung's or Freud's. But after I started hearing the
voices, I did some intensive reading on abnormal psychology. I even
quizzed friends in the psychology department, being careful not to
discuss my symptoms with them openly.

The research had been frightening. I had found nothing in the
literature of psychology that exactly duplicated my symptoms--but I
learned that minds, like fingerprints, always had their individual
twists. And there were many parallels to my particular pattern, cases
of multiple personality in which one identity had spoken to the other
as a clear voice in the mind--and had even tried to "murder" his
fellow. The conflict of personalities often expressed itself in dreams
in which the unconscious mind cleverly dramatized the conflict in
bizarre terms. The fact that the enemy on the beach was unrecognizable
was even a typical factor.

I knew that I should have treatment while there was still time--before
I did something dangerous. It was not beyond the area of possibility
that I would try to kill myself as the dream suggested. And yet--

I believed in the voices. Reason said they could not exist. Logic
argued that they were products of my own ailing mind. But my belief in
them was a barrier that prevented me from seeking treatment at once. I
kept searching for explanations of the voices. I kept thinking of them
as completely foreign to me. I built up a flimsy case for the actual
existence of beings who were telepathic, who communicated by direct
thought transference. They were engaged in some melodramatic plot.
Against whom? Me, of course. But only because I was a menace. I was
able to hear them. I was a threat to some kind of monstrous plot that
was far bigger than me, far more important than my life.

I found it easier to demolish these theories than to construct them;
nevertheless I clung to them with a desperate hope. For either there
were real voices, there were real enemies, or I was insane.

These brooding reflections were interrupted by a splash of light that
fell across the narrow strip of lawn outside my trailer. I crossed
quickly to the side window and peered through the vertical plastic
blinds. When I saw the source of the light I relaxed, smiling faintly.
For a moment I continued to stare at the curtained bedroom window of
the adjoining trailer. This time I could see nothing clearly, only a
blurred shadow of movement. It was enough to recreate a vivid picture.
A moment later, light glowed at the front of the trailer, but again the
blinds cut me off from my neighbor.

With a slight feeling of embarrassment I turned away, remembering the
guilt I had felt a few nights before when my new neighbor had forgotten
to draw her bedroom curtains closed. There is something especially
stimulating in seeing a beautiful woman when she isn't aware of being
observed. And in this case nothing had prepared me for the golden grace
of the girl's figure.

She had moved into the adjoining trailer only two weeks before. Trailer
life is of necessity fairly intimate and I had met her briefly a number
of times. She was not the kind of girl you particularly notice. I had
got the impression that she was painfully shy. The first time I met
her, the day after she moved in, I said hello casually. She blurted
a reply, stammered a name I didn't catch when I introduced myself,
whirled, and fled into her trailer. I failed to get a clear impression
of what she looked like. Young. Slender. Taller than average. Blonde.
Not a real yellow or a striking white-blonde, but fair. Large,
frightened eyes whose color I hadn't caught. And that's all. Nothing
that would enable me to recognize her on the street.

During the days that followed, she avoided close contact. My first
instinctive suspicion of any newcomer, a reaction to the knowledge that
I was being hunted by an unknown enemy, quickly evaporated. I exchanged
greetings with the girl a couple of times, but she didn't invite
conversation and passed on quickly. I concluded that she would probably
misinterpret any friendly overtures I made and I dismissed her as a
timid soul who wanted to be left alone. I wasn't interested.

Until that midnight glimpse through the bedroom window. Glancing out,
I had been startled by the extraordinary sight of the girl in the act
of pulling a nightgown over her head. Too surprised to move, I stopped
to gape at her. The gown was a pale iridescent green against the honey
tones of her skin. For several seconds she stood completely revealed,
her arms raised, small breasts pulled tautly erect, her body bathed in
soft light. Then she lowered her arms and took a step forward which
placed her out of my line of sight. I became rudely aware of what I
was doing. Chagrined, I told myself to stop acting like a peeping Tom,
but I couldn't erase that golden image from my memory. It gave me a
restless night.

Now, with a somewhat rueful smile, I turned out the lights in the front
of my trailer and went back to the small bedroom. I felt a return
attack of nerves at the prospect of going to sleep again. Perchance to
dream. Ay, there's the rub. For in that sleep of sleeps what dreams may
come....

I forced myself to turn out the light and lie on the narrow bed.
After a while my eyes began to ache from the effort of staring at
the ceiling. Don't think about it, I told myself. You've never had
the dream twice in one night. You can think about it tomorrow. In
the daylight. Think of the girl next door. You forgot all about your
troubles when you glanced out the window.

Maybe sex is your whole problem. How would a psychoanalyst interpret
your dream? The faceless enemy is obvious. That means it's someone very
close to you, someone you hate but shouldn't hate--or someone for whom
you feel a forbidden love. And what about the water symbol?

But there was no one very close to me, no one it could have been. My
mother was dead. Over two years. And I had never known my father, the
man from Los Alamitos who had been my mother's lover for a week in
Albuquerque and had left his seed in her.

And that was an answer, of course. The bastard son. What was the ratio
of insanity among bastards? Higher than normal? I would have to look it
up.

I shut the thought out of my mind. For a long while, I stared at the
dim whiteness of the plastic ceiling. And then the picture of a shy,
fair-haired girl with firm, uplifted breasts stole into my thoughts.
The tension slid away from me. The horror of the dream was forgotten.

It's funny, the tricks your mind can play on you.




                                   3


The following night I worked late, correcting a batch of the
interminable freshman themes. I didn't have any night classes, but the
offices were bright for the lecturers who did. I found it difficult
to concentrate on the semi-adolescent exercises in expository
composition even though the office was quiet and almost empty most
of the evening. Near the bottom of the pile of papers I came across
one theme that jolted me. It was called "How to Conduct a Seance." It
was a juvenile and jocular approach to the subject, and I had never
placed much credence myself in preternatural events and influences--or
in extra-sensory powers. But now I found myself feeling defensive,
resenting the spoofing tone of the student's theme. Wasn't anything
possible? How much did we really know? Wasn't the wisest philosopher
actually as ignorant as this nineteen-year-old?

I wondered if a man could have unusual perceptions, strange mental
powers, for twenty-seven years without knowing it. Wouldn't a talent
for thought transference or for hearing the mental communications of
others make itself known early? Or would it be necessary to have two
sensitive people involved, sender and receiver? Could you be a telepath
without knowing it simply because you had never encountered another?

And I remembered the incident, distant in time and dim in memory, which
I had refused to recall during the disturbing recent months. In itself,
the experience, though startling at the time, was not unique. At least
you hear about similar things happening to a great many ordinary
people. You hear about it--but you brush off the story as coincidence
or as the product of an over-active imagination.

I have mentioned my father. Until I was eighteen, I never knew who he
was or that he was alive. My mother had always talked about him as if
he had been killed the year I was born, during the brief Chino-American
war of 1963. After I had the extraordinary vision, she told me the
truth, her story muffled by tears long contained.

Ernest Cameron was a well-known physicist. He was married and had two
children. If my mother can be believed, his was an unhappy marriage,
but one which he did not feel justified in renouncing. During part
of 1962 he was in New Mexico working with the army on atomic field
weapons, the kind that did a hell of a lot of damage in a confined
area, what they used to call "clean" bombs in those days before all
atomic weapons were outlawed. My mother was at that time a woman in her
early twenties living in Albuquerque.

She met Ernest Cameron when he was on a weekend leave. They fell in
love, suddenly, catastrophically. Their passionate affair lasted for
nine days. Then, as the threat of war intensified in Asia, he was
abruptly transferred overseas. My mother never saw him again, but she
was already carrying the infinitesimal germ of life that grew into the
son he never knew. Me. Paul Cameron.

My mother always loved him. She moved to Los Angeles and took the name
of Mrs. Rose Cameron, wanting me to bear my father's name. For eighteen
years after I was born, she posed as a widow. The role was never
questioned.

It was the vision which forced her to tell me who I really was--and who
my father was. It happened on a clear sunny afternoon. I was in the
yard outside our small trailer. Having just graduated from high school,
I was taking a week's vacation before hunting for a job. I was sitting
on a canvas chair, idly enjoying the summer sun and thinking wistfully
about my hopes of going to college, when it happened.

I saw him. A sandy-haired, middle-aged man with bent, rounded shoulders
and a tired walk. Preoccupied, his eyes on the ground, he stepped off
a curb and started across a street I had never seen in my life. I sat
in the canvas chair, staring at the familiar setting of the crowded
trailer court, and the picture of the sandy-haired man was superimposed
on the reality before me, equally clear and vivid. When I saw the truck
hurtling toward him, the illusion was so graphic that I cried out in
alarm. The man looked up at the last moment of his life, soft gray eyes
widening in blank surprise, without fear, as if he had not had time to
bring his mind back from some distant point of reflection to this time
and place of life and death. He had stepped out from behind a parked
car. The truckdriver, seeing him too late, tried to swerve. There was
a terrifyingly slow sequence of brakes screeching, rubber scraping off
in black streaks on the pavement, big trailer lurching sideways--and
the final sickening violence of impact, of smashed bones and flesh and
blood.

I stood trembling beside the overturned canvas chair amid the familiar
cluster of trailers and covered patios and cement walks and hotly
glittering parked cars, and I knew that the echo of a final scream of
pain had broken from my own lips. My mother was standing in the doorway
of our trailer, her mouth open, one hand at her breast in fright,
staring at me.

She ran down the steps. "Paul! My God, Paul, what happened?"

Slowly, dazedly, I looked around me. A couple of children were watching
me in owlish wonder; a man had stopped some thirty yards away, staring
at me over his shoulder; the woman in the next-door trailer was frozen
at her window; even the birds were silent in the trees overhead. The
whole world around me seemed to be arrested, waiting for me to come
back to it.

My gaze shifted to my mother's face. I moved and the scene came alive
again, like a motion picture that has been momentarily stopped and then
resumes, the figures jumping into motion to complete the half-finished
gesture, the interrupted phrase.

"I don't know," I said slowly. "I don't know."

I lit a cigarette and opened a can of beer and took a long cool drink,
all the while trying to organize the confusion in my mind, trying to
understand what had happened to me. My mother kept pressing me to
explain what had made me cry out, and I had an impulse to assure her
that it had just been a dream. It was several minutes before I felt
capable of trying to put into words what I had seen. I still felt oddly
detached, as if I had been away on a long trip and had only just got
back so that I hadn't had time to unpack or re-orient myself to the old
familiar setting.

I told her the story without softening its raw edges, quietly and
dispassionately, trusting in a mother's willingness to believe that
her son was neither a liar nor a madman. When I had finished I looked
at her expectantly, even a little apprehensively. In the telling, the
story had begun to sound fantastic. For the first time, I thought that
maybe I had actually fallen asleep in the sun without realizing it
and been awakened by the nightmare. But my mother's reaction was so
startling that I forgot my doubts.

For several seconds, she stared at me in silence. Without warning her
eyes filmed over and a tear spilled through her lashes to trickle down
her cheek. In dumb fascination, I watched the slow progression of that
single tear down her weathered skin.

She spoke in a strained whisper. "Would you describe him again?"

At first I didn't know what she meant. Then, puzzled, I described the
man of the vision. I could see him very clearly. Sandy hair thinning
over a high forehead. Soft gray eyes mirroring a compassionate
intelligence. A thin, high-bridged nose. A wide, responsive mouth,
curving slightly in a pensive smile. Stooped shoulders that made him
look slighter and shorter than he was, though my impression was that he
was taller than average.

It was only when the portrait was complete that I realized that,
except for the bent shoulders and the thinning hair, I had been
describing myself.

My mother looked away, covering her face with her hands. I saw her
shoulders quiver. A suspicion nibbled at the fringe of my mind,
rejected instantly with a spasm of horror.

"Mom! What is it? Who was he?"

I was shocked by the agony of pain in her eyes.

"Oh, Paul!"

I put my hands quickly on her shoulders and shook her gently. "Tell
me," I said. "You've got to tell me."

"I can't!"

I was young but I felt very mature and protective and able to take
anything. "You don't have to hide anything from me," I said.

Haltingly, she told me about my father and about the brief days she
had known him, the short interval of love on which she had built a
lonely life. She pleaded with me to feel no bitterness toward the man
who was my father. He had given her all he could--love, tenderness,
understanding, even a child. She believed that he had really loved her
and she had never blamed him for staying away from her. It was the only
thing for him to do. She revealed that he had sent her letters in the
first months after he left her. She had written at last to tell him
that it was better if she dropped out of his life completely. She had
not told him about the child.

When she had finished, I felt only pity and love for this woman who had
suffered loneliness for the better part of a lifetime in exchange for
a love held only for an instant, who had shielded even her bastard son
from the truth that might hurt him, who had lived with her memories and
her illusion of a life that was, in its own small way, complete.

Anger and bitterness came later. Shame. A feeling that I had been
cheated, tricked into believing that I was normal, that I had had a
real father just like everyone else. Hatred of the man for the loyalty
he had given to another woman. And at last, when the hot flame of
anger had burnt itself out, a lasting sense that I was different, I was
an outsider.

That night, when my mother's tears had dried and she finally slept with
the exhaustion of someone relieved at last of a terrible burden of
secrecy, I lay in darkness with my new sense of isolation and my mind
returned to the inexplicable vision which had triggered my mother's
confession. I wondered what kind of dream could come when one sat with
his eyes open in broad daylight, fully conscious. Yet it must have
been a dream. The man of the vision was surely someone I had seen, or
a projected image of myself, a man whose appearance had made my mother
believe I was describing her lover of long ago. Was Ernest Cameron
still alive? What would he do or say if the son he didn't know existed
should suddenly appear one day to confront him?

I was never to find out. Less than a month later, investigators, easily
backtracking along my mother's trail from Albuquerque to Los Angeles,
traced her to our modest trailer court. She had been left half of
an estate valued at over thirty thousand dollars by one Dr. Ernest
Cameron, recently deceased, professor of physics at the University
of Illinois, a widower with two married children who had divided the
remaining half of his estate. In his will, re-written after his legal
wife's death, Dr. Cameron had revealed the love he had kept secret for
almost twenty years.

He had died of injuries suffered in a traffic accident on June 16,
1982. The day of my vision.

Now, nine years later, remembering that extraordinary circumstance
as I sat alone in the small bright office, I thought how easily my
mother and I had covered up the fearful evidence of the unknown. Almost
by deliberate scheme, it seemed, we had failed to investigate the
details of my father's death. There was no escaping the fact that I
did appear to have dreamed of his accident, but my mother, who was a
religious woman, found satisfaction in the belief that God had worked
in one of His strange and unquestionable ways. And I found refuge in
a recollection of the vision so blurred and hedged with qualifications
that I was finally able to believe in coincidence, in a casual dream
which had not really mirrored the reality of death occurring thousands
of miles away, but had simply reflected some buried fear of violence of
my own in a world in which accidental violence was commonplace. Ernest
Cameron's death became important only because it brought my mother and
me closer together and because it provided the means with which I was
able to go to college.

Was I able now fully to believe in my own clairvoyance? Was the earlier
vision a symptom of the extra-sensory powers which I was only now
discovering in other ways? I had to believe in it. At the same time I
was afraid to.

For in my recent dream of violence, I was the victim.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was ten o'clock that night when I left the massive Liberal Arts
Building and started slowly across the sprawling campus. The night
classes were over and many of the lights had already gone out. There
was a continuous cough and mutter of cars starting and roaring away.
Clusters of students drifted by in heated conversation. Couples
loitered in the deep shadows of trees or strolled hand in hand with
intimate whisper of word and gurgle of laughter. I felt exhausted.

I wandered toward the modern area of stores and restaurants and bars
which bordered the campus. I didn't feel like returning to my empty
trailer in the hills. At that moment, I keenly regretted the strange
compulsion which had kept me from forming close friendships with
my colleagues at the university. Perhaps subconsciously I had been
avoiding exposure to disillusion or disappointment, but in so doing I
had created for myself a lonely place apart.

My path took me past the Science Building. On the first floor there
was one panel of windows glowing with light. Most of the building was
dark. I stopped for a minute, thinking of Dr. Jonas Temple, the revered
geophysicist who was working behind those windows. They were too high
to permit me to see into his offices or his laboratories but I knew
he would be there. The old man's capacity for work was legendary.
And in the past eighteen months those lighted windows had seemed to
symbolize man's growing knowledge of life, not only on earth, but in
the limitless space in which we whirled. And specifically, of course,
on Mars, for Dr. Temple was the man who had directed the exhaustive
program of analysis and study of the dead relics of life brought
back from the red planet. Like everyone at the university I had been
privileged to enter those offices and to stare in wonder at the rows of
curious mineral and fossil formations behind the glass doors of their
special cabinets. From these, piece by piece, Dr. Temple and his staff
were slowly tracing the pattern of Martian evolution.

This night, however, he was probably more concerned with the
preparations for the new Martian flight scheduled to begin sometime
this month. What lists would he have drawn of things which should be
brought back--to reveal what new secrets of the universe?

Once again the world's magnificent adventure made my own private
problem seem petty and insignificant. What did it matter in the
fantastic wilderness of space and time, one man's personal quarrel with
a mind on the edge of anarchy?

I started across the campus again. While standing still I had allowed
the October night's chill to penetrate the thin fabric of my coverall.
Now my steps quickened. The Dugout, a popular off-campus coffee shop,
was nearby, and the thought of steaming hot coffee made me swing toward
it.

I was near the edge of the campus when the voice spoke--abrupt,
shockingly strong, so real to my ear that I looked around quickly to
see who had spoken.

"Is it safe to communicate?"

No one was near me. What I was hearing was in my own mind, a soundless
emanation of thought.

"Yes, but softly. We must not be detected now when the time is so
close."

I stood rigid at the rim of the dark campus, my whole body taut and
quivering, my mind a clean slate upon which the voices wrote. Two of
them. There was an individual quality to the thoughts, an inflection
and timber of the mind as unmistakable as the personal tone of a human
voice, yet oddly sexless and unemotional. The first one I had heard was
more tentative in his vibrations, less in control of his power, giving
the impression that he was younger; the second was older, heavier, more
authoritative in his strength.

"You are comfortable?" the second voice asked.

"Yes."

"The new body is healthy?"

"Completely."

I began to move, sensing in a way I couldn't comprehend the direction
from which the thoughts were coming. I stumbled along the side street
which led to the Dugout, tracking the bodiless pulsations as an animal
trails a scent.

The older one spoke again. "You had no difficulty with the parents?"

"They suspected nothing."

The voices were closer now, but I was alone on the street except for
a couple ambling along the shadowed sidewalk a block away. And why
would they have to communicate with their minds when they walked arm in
arm? I didn't question the actual existence of the voices in my mind.
At that moment I believed in them as naturally and unquestioningly
as I accepted vocal speech. They were there. I heard them. Even the
meaningless question about a "new body" did not make me wonder if the
voices were hallucinatory. To talk of bodies as if they could be shed
like garments and new ones tried for fit and comfort was nonsense, but
I had no thought of making sense of the words I had heard. I wanted
only to find their source.

And suddenly I was standing in front of the Dugout staring through the
steam-clouded windows. The place was almost empty.

"What is it that you wish me to do?" The young one, calm,
matter-of-fact in its subservience. It? He or she? I had no way of
telling.

"You have a job--an important one."

There was no doubting the fact that they were inside the Dugout. The
sense of mental presence was overpowering, as if one were in a corner
of a dark closet listening to two strangers who had huddled in the tiny
space and closed the door to whisper confidentially.

"Have you heard--"

I opened the door. Four students in a booth against the wall turned to
stare at me. There was a sudden, total silence.

Instinct made me walk casually to the counter, where I slipped onto a
stool so placed that I would be able to see the booths along the right
wall without deliberately or obviously turning my head. Lois, the
waitress who was on night duty at the Dugout, sauntered toward me along
the narrow aisle behind the counter.

"What'll you have, Mr. Cameron?"

"Coffee, Lois."

"Coming right up!"

It never occurred to me to consider Lois as a possible agent of
the thoughts I had heard. She was a student who had been working a
part-time evening shift in the Dugout for almost two full semesters.
She was more notable for the ripeness of breast and hip than for any
indication of unusual mental capacities. I was surprised that she was
still in school and not already married to one of the students who were
always flirting with her across the counter. Her blonde, buxom beauty
and open friendliness went better with children and home cooking than
books and short order food.

The place was unusually quiet. At first I saw no one but Lois and
the four students together in a front booth. Two of them I had
recognized--Mike Boyle, who had been an All-Coast tackle the previous
season and might make All-American this year, and Laurie Hendricks,
a disturbing redhead who sat in the front row of my eleven o'clock
sophomore English class. The other boy's blond crewcut and immature
good looks seemed faintly familiar, probably because they were typical
of so many students. The second girl, who sat next to Mike Boyle, was
small and pretty and brunette. I had never seen her before.

All four looked much too normal, as they returned to their animated
talk, to be part of the weird experience which had brought me there.
They had given me only a casual glance. They seemed to be genuinely
ignoring me as I sipped my coffee, trying to study the group without
seeming to.

The next thought came without warning from the back of the room. "Have
you heard anything else of the listener?"

I swallowed a deep hot draught of coffee, scalding my throat. Bending
low over the counter, I struggled to keep from choking and coughing.
The cup rattled in the saucer as I set it down.

I knew that I was the listener.

"Whispers. Nothing I could be sure of."

The question had come from the back, the answer was closer. I was
convinced that the reply came from one of the four students in the
booth not more than fifteen feet away from me.

Then I saw a hand move at the table of the last booth near the rear of
the restaurant. A man's hand stirring coffee absently. He sat with his
back toward me, concealed behind the high back of the booth. His was
the older, heavier mental voice.

"He must be found," the man's thought came.

"Could it be--a foreign intruder? Perhaps even one of us who--"

"No. Soon we will be many--when I come back. But now we are the only
ones. He must be human."

"But he speaks with the mind."

"That is not so strange. It is only strange that many do not do so, as
we do."

Listening, I felt a creeping contraction of horror as if I had touched
something cold and alien. My God, what did they mean? They believed
that I must be--human. And what were they?

"I would like to return with you--to assist in your expedition." The
bright young mind spoke.

"Your task is to find the human who speaks with his thoughts and
destroy him. If he is able to hear us he is dangerous. Once we are here
in force it will not matter. But now----"

The horror expanded in my mind, a revulsion exaggerated now by a
consciousness of danger, of menace that was suddenly close and real.
While they were hunting me, the listener, I had stumbled right into
their midst. Who they were or what I did not know, but they held power
in their minds beyond the scope of my imagination. And if they learned
that I was--

"When do you go?" the youthful one asked.

"Soon now. The launching will be in the final week of this month,
depending on suitable conditions."

"You will be able to effect the transfer?"

"There will be no difficulty in the actual change. I have already
picked out the human in the space colony. He is young and strong but
mentally very susceptible. Already he is under my control. I have only
to find the right moment alone with him. However, since this body I now
inhabit must be presumed dead when I leave it, and there will be no
visible remains, it will be necessary for me to devise an accident in
which the body would naturally be consumed or lost. Drowning may prove
most suitable."

Drowning! My recurrent nightmare came back to me in a rush. I felt the
blood drain from my face. My head felt light and faintly dizzy.

"I do not fully understand about the body," the young one thought.

"It is a superb instrument," the other replied, "but unfortunately
not as dense in its material structure as those we are accustomed to
inhabit. You will find that your energies will draw excessively on the
body's matter. You must take great care to maintain constant control
over the body shell to keep it from disintegrating too rapidly. At the
same time the vital organs must not be damaged. In time, perhaps, these
human bodies may adapt to our needs more satisfactorily. Until then
periodic changes will be needed. I have conserved my present form only
because it was vital to our plans."

"When will you make the exchange?"

"At the last possible moment--when close physical examination is no
longer likely and when it is too late for the launching to be delayed."

"You might require my services when you have to take over the ship--"

"No! It is vital that you remain behind. You must understand that I
might not return. Anything could happen in space. If I should fail
to come back, it is still possible that others of us will be brought
to earth on other ships. If the humans are more careful than before,
our brothers might never escape. It will be up to you to effect their
release."

"Yes, that is clear."

Suddenly I put my hands over my ears, pressing my palms hard against
my skull as if the barrier of bone and tissue might cut off the
bewildering voices that stole into my brain. This was not real, not
possible! This was madness. Not aliens from outer space, plotting to
take over the space ships and use them to bring back hordes of aliens.
Not beings who could possess and use human bodies. I couldn't believe
in these.

"Mr. Cameron?"

"What?" I looked up, startled and frightened, into the wondering blue
eyes of the blonde waitress.

"More coffee?"

"Oh. Yes. Yes, please."

My voice cracked. The hand that spooned sugar into the cup shook. My
body was seized by momentary spasms. Fear. Fear that demoralized body
and mind.

Then I realized that the strange voices were silent. But there was a
suspenseful quality to the silence, an indefinable tension of waiting.
Had I done something to betray myself? Had the lash of fear been
audible?

Slowly my gaze swung toward the booth in the back of the room. The
man had withdrawn further out of sight. Even his hand was no longer
visible. I forced myself to glance at the booth where the students
were still talking, low-voiced, the steady murmur split by wedges
of laughter. Laurie Hendricks' eyes met mine in a brief instant of
recognition. She was smiling and her green eyes were speculative. At
that moment, the blond youth spoke to her and she turned toward him,
red mouth opening in laughter.

I looked away. Several yards down the counter Lois was busily wiping
an imaginary spot on the gleaming surface. I lit a cigarette with a
painstaking effort at steadiness and sat staring at the curl of steam
rising from the coffee to blend with the denser cloud of cigarette
smoke.

And something probed at my brain. My reaction was instinctive, like a
turtle withdrawing under its shell with surprising speed. I froze my
mind, shutting off all thought. I was nothing. I was blankness. I was
neither thought nor emotion nor awareness. The eerie mental sensation
came again, like a child's stick prodding the turtle's shell to see
if it would move or to find a soft, vulnerable spot in the protective
casing. A thought probing at my brain, trying to force an entry, but
there was no opening.

The tentative pressure ceased. For a moment there was silence except
for the murmuring at the nearby booth and the clatter of dishes as Lois
piled them into a steel sink. Slowly I allowed awareness to return.

"All right." The older one was communicating again.

"What happened?"

"I was not certain. For a moment I thought----" The message broke off.
"I must leave."

"When shall we speak again?"

"We must avoid all contact unless absolutely necessary. There is too
much risk of detection. We should never be together again in the same
place until the listener is found."

"What shall I do when I find him?"

There was a brief pause. I found myself tense as I waited for the
reply, my hands clenching painfully.

"It must look like an accident."

Laughter erupted from the booth nearby, raucous and free, the young gay
laughter of a normal, healthy world. I had the sudden, bitter feeling
that I had left this world forever and its laughter was rude and
jarring on my nerves, a bizarre punctuation to the sentence of death I
had just heard pronounced on myself.

Then the students were pushing out of their booth, moving toward the
door, passing near me.

"Hi, Mr. Cameron!" Laurie Hendricks called.

I nodded. My throat was constricted, unable to open for speech. The
group spilled out onto the sidewalk and I felt a stab of alarm. One of
them was an alien--but what could I do? How could I find out which one?
Should I follow them or the man in the booth?

I shot a glance toward the rear booth. I caught a fleeting glimpse of
a dark gray suit as the man disappeared down the narrow corridor which
led to the restrooms.

And to a rear exit.

I stumbled to my feet, throwing a coin onto the counter. For a second I
was caught in the dilemma of divided choice. Then I strode decisively
through the restaurant toward the back hall. When I reached it it was
empty. I whirled and raced to the front door.

The four students were across the street strolling onto the campus
grounds. I trotted after them. They seemed oblivious of me. I could see
the small dark-haired girl clinging to Mike Boyle's arm. The blond boy
spoke confidentially in Laurie Hendrick's ear. I stopped on the far
side of the street, hesitating, watching them walk slowly across the
green lawn. I couldn't follow them closely without being seen. I would
have to keep at a distance.

I glanced back toward the Dugout. A man stood on the sidewalk to the
left of the restaurant in the shadow of a store front. Even though I
couldn't see his face I could feel the impact of his eyes. He had not
been there when I came out of the Dugout. My scalp prickled. I started
at the shadowy figure. For a moment neither of us moved.

What I did then was incredibly foolish, and yet it was not a
consciously deliberate act, not even a careless impulse. Rather I spoke
to myself, voicing the question that filled my mind but unconsciously
projecting it toward the unknown man who watched me across the street.

"Who are you?"

Afterwards I could not be sure what happened, but in that split second
as the thought was directed toward the dark figure I seemed to catch a
quick reaction of startled surprise. I was immediately shocked by my
own stupidity. I had betrayed myself. Now they knew who I was.

And at that moment I saw the headlights of a car speeding toward me
along the near side of the street, its lights bouncing as the car rode
over a bump. Something held me there on the sidewalk close to the curb
as the car approached swiftly. And suddenly it was very close, the eyes
of its headlights holding my gaze hypnotized, the hum of its engine
swelling in my ears.

"Now! Into the street!"

The command struck my mind with the force of a blow. I tottered
forward, tripping clumsily over the curb. I had an awareness of
struggling feebly, of trying to control rubbery limbs with a mind that
was weak and confused, of flailing my arms wildly at the air.

"In front of the car! Fall!"

And I flung myself forward into the blinding glare of the onrushing
headlights. There was a tearing screech of brakes, a scream that seemed
far away, and a massive blur of metal brushing by me as I fell.




                                   4


I seem to be swimming up through thick layers of black asphalt. There
were voices, angry and frightened, but they would never find me down
here under the surface.

"It wasn't my fault, dammit! He jumped right in front of me."

"You were going too fast."

"I tell you he was trying to kill himself! It wasn't my fault!"

"You're lucky he wasn't killed."

I opened my eyes. A ring of faces stared down at me. Eyes and mouths
round and big and open. For a moment I gazed at them numbly without
feeling or thought. The numbness began to fade and I felt the tickling
sensation of returning fear. All of the faces showed concern or
anxiety. One was the face of a stranger. The driver of the car, I
thought. And one of the faces was a mask behind which hid a thing
incomprehensible and terrible.

"Mr. Cameron! Are you all right?"

I looked into the large green eyes of Laurie Hendricks. They were
remarkably beautiful eyes, framed by thick dark lashes, their color
deep and vivid. Now they were very wide and troubled. The smooth plane
of her forehead was faintly creased with worry and her lips were parted
over even white teeth. She was someone I had never really seen before.
I had been abstractedly aware of red hair and a pair of slim calves
crossed and a figure that strained a sweater--but I had never clearly
seen the person.

Was she the one?

"You okay, professor?"

My eyes shifted to Mike Boyle and I had a quick impression of his
massive, powerful body towering over me.

"Yes, I--I think so."

I stared at each of them--Laurie, Boyle, the blond youth, the little
brunette with small, demure features, the red-faced stranger who
appeared to be more angry than concerned. The memory of the car's
fender brushing past me as I fell returned so vividly that a reaction
hit me. I had to fight down the impulse to get away, to run, to limp,
to hobble, even to crawl, just so that I could be away from the thing
that watched me, luring behind anxious human eyes.

"What the hell did you do that for?" It was the stranger speaking, the
driver of the car.

"I--I tripped."

"Jesus Christ, you could have got killed!"

"Yes. I'm sorry."

I sat up. Hands reached down to help me and I flinched at their touch.
I moved my legs and felt along my arms and ribs. Nothing seemed to be
broken. There were no sharp pains, only a mass of aches blending into
one. I had been very lucky. The next time they would make sure that I
wouldn't escape.

Mike Boyle put a meaty hand under my arm and lifted me to my feet with
the casual ease of an adult hoisting a child in the air. Could all that
muscle hide a super brain?

I steeled myself to peer across the street at the spot where the man
had stood watching me. The sidewalk was empty.

"You been drinking, Mr. Cameron?" the blond boy asked with a grin.

I smiled stiffly. "Coffee. I can't explain what happened. I just lost
my balance and fell. It was almost as if someone had pushed me."

I watched the boy's eyes closely but they betrayed no reaction.

"Well, I can't stand around here all night," the red-faced man said
belligerently, making the statement a challenge. "I guess you're not
hurt."

"No. I don't think so. The car just missed me."

"Maybe you better get his name, Mr. Cameron," the blond youth
suggested.

"Yeah, you might have internal injuries or something," Mike Boyle put
in.

"What the hell does he need my name for?"

I suddenly wondered if I should so quickly dismiss the stranger from
suspicion. Hadn't his car appeared rather fortuitously? And hadn't he
been racing too fast?

"Yes, I'd better have your name," I said.

"Now, wait a minute, if you think you're going to sue me--"

"I have no intention of sueing, but I'd better have your name. You do
have insurance, I suppose?"

"Yeah, but--"

"Do you want me to get a cop, Mr. Cameron," the blond boy asked
aggressively.

I looked at the red-faced stranger. "I don't think that will be
necessary."

The suggestion of bringing the police into the affair convinced the
man. He fished out his driver's license. Laurie Hendricks found
a pencil in her purse and wrote out the name and address. Albert
Harrison, Trailer G12, 444 San Rafael Road. I got the name of his
insurance company and told him that was all I needed. Then he insisted
on having my name and address. I hesitated, glancing at the four
listening students. Then I realized that it didn't matter. They
could easily find out where I lived through the school. I was even
conveniently listed in the telephone directory.

Harrison finally marched off in a bad temper, obviously afraid that
I would discover some non-existent injuries the following day. I was
reasonably convinced that he was innocent, but it was just as well to
know his name. And to know where to find him.

"Are you sure you're feeling all right, Mr. Cameron?"

Laurie Hendricks had moved close to me. As she spoke she rested a hand
lightly on my arm and raised those incredible green eyes to meet mine.
I felt the bold collision of our stares. Her fingers burned through
the sleeve of my jacket, and I caught the subtle drift of the flower
fragrance she wore.

"Yes," I said slowly. "Thanks for helping."

"We could drive you home," Mike Boyle offered without enthusiasm. "I've
got my car."

"That won't be necessary."

And suddenly I looked at the slender girl standing beside Boyle,
realizing that she was the only one of the group who had not said a
word. She was watching me with curious interest. Catching my gaze she
smiled.

"Yes, we'd be glad to drive you. Mike wouldn't mind."

She looked up at the big football player and slipped her hand under his
arm with a slight suggestion of possessiveness. Ordinarily the gesture
would have made me smile. Even now it caused my quick suspicion to
evaporate.

And I realized that I couldn't really believe that any of these four
normal young people could be anything but what they seemed. To think
otherwise was absurd--and yet I had heard one of them instructed to
kill me.

Or had I?

And all of the tormenting doubt and fear of the past months returned.
Could I have imagined everything--the voices, the attempt to kill me,
the mysterious beings from outer space? Was all that an elaborate
concoction of a diseased mind?

There was nothing imaginary about the fall in front of the speeding
car. But what if there were no enemies except those in my own mind? The
meaning of this possibility was harrowingly clear. For then I had tried
to kill myself.

I saw the blond boy's feet shifting in evident impatience. I surveyed
the group once more and my eyes lingered on Laurie Hendricks' upturned
face, on the soft shimmer of her bright red hair.

"You kids go on," I said. "I'm all right now."

I turned and walked away, not looking back.




                                   5


It was a bright morning. Through the high windows of the classroom
came soft sunlight filtered through the delicate fiberglass grillwork
that faced the entire west side of the building. I looked down at the
peaceful campus, the slowly moving streams of students, the expanse of
cool green grass, the solid impressiveness of nearby buildings. In the
distance I could see a section of the practice football field and I
thought of Mike Boyle, driving his huge shoulder into a tackling dummy,
sweating and grunting, thick thighs driving powerfully. A monstrous
youth, all right. But an unearthly monster? Hardly.

I heard the restless movement in the room behind me and I wrenched my
thoughts back to the lecture.

"Why is _Beowulf_ called an epic?" I asked rhetorically, turning.
"Because of its scope. Because of the greatness of its hero. Because
it expresses the whole struggle and aspiration and point of view of
its people. Its action is on a grand scale. Its emotions are deep
and powerful. This is not the twentieth century story of a housewife
who has a petty little affair with a mediocre man she meets in the
super market. This is big. This is important. It has to do with the
vital issues of life. It has greatness. Victory is a triumph over a
formidable enemy of the people. Defeat is death, and even in the manner
of dying there is majesty and heroism." I paused, letting my eyes rove
over the room, using the teacher's trick of focusing on the last row
and thus seeming to be looking at all of the students in between. Their
faces were all turned toward me in a semblance of respectful attention.
A boy in the third row was sleeping with his eyes half open. "And the
manner of the writing is in keeping with the heroic action," I went on,
letting my gaze move forward to the front row, to the shock of flaming
red hair and a pair of carelessly crossed legs sleekly clad in spun
plastisheen. "It is powerful, strongly rhythmic, eloquent."

I smiled. Laurie Hendricks seemed to sigh, and the slight movement
brought my attention to her breasts, softly outlined under a
lemon-colored sweater.

"Of course it loses much in translation," I added. There was a
respectful titter of amusement from the class. The old prof, I thought,
with his academic jokes. Even at twenty-seven, in my fourth year of
teaching, I had fallen into the habit of repeating the same jokes each
semester. Laurie Hendricks smiled warmly at me and I found myself
reacting to the moist red curve of her lips, liking the fact that she
had been amused.

During the long, relatively sleepless night, my faith in the validity
of my mind's impressions had wavered badly. I had ranged from an angry
conviction that everything I had heard was real and true, through
all the stages of argument and doubt, down to a dismal hopelessness,
an acknowledgment that alien minds and macabre plots were grotesque
splinters off my peculiar branch of insanity.

Looking now at Laurie Hendricks, I found myself reluctant to believe
that she was anything but an unusually beautiful girl who was giving
every indication of being more than ordinarily interested in me. The
accidental circumstance of the previous night's meeting had created a
new relationship between us without a word being spoken this morning.
She was no longer just another anonymous student. And I strongly
suspected that I was no longer to her just another stuffy instructor.

I turned abruptly toward the sleeping boy in the third row. "Mr.
Carbo," I said sharply. "Mr. Carbo!"

His head came up with a snap. His eyes were still dull with sleep.
"Huh?"

"Mr. Carbo, are you with us?"

The class laughed, warming to a situation in which someone else is made
to look a little ridiculous.

"Mr. Carbo, what do you think of Beowulf's technique in handling the
dragon?"

"I don't think I understand, sir," the boy said lamely.

"You have read the assignment I suppose."

"Yes, sir."

"Did anything strike you about the fight?"

"Well, I thought it was kind of bloodthirsty, sir."

"The Anglo-Saxons were a bloodthirsty people," I said. "They didn't
have television or movies or synthetic-participation sports to let them
drain off some of their violence. Even their literature was more like a
battle cry than a civilized catharsis of emotions."

"Yes, sir."

"I'm glad you agree, Mr. Carbo." I felt that I was being rather hard on
him, but you were expected to make a goat out of the guilty student who
slept or talked or failed to study. It was standard teaching procedure
and not without its value in keeping the class on its toes.

I let him off the hook, turning to address the class as a whole. "You
know how boxers will waste the first round feeling each other out,
testing the other's reactions? Did you notice anything similar in
Beowulf's approach to battle?"

"Yeah," a student called from the back of the room. "He lets the dragon
gobble up a couple of the other guys."

"Right!" I said with exaggerated enthusiasm. "Miss Hendricks, would you
read that passage for us?"

She looked startled. As she hunted for the place there was a general
thud and rustle of textbooks being hastily opened. Laurie Hendricks
coughed and began to read. Her voice was low, hesitant, pleasantly
husky. The passage she read told in gory detail how the ancient hero
had watched as the dragon entered the mead hall, had waited, feigning
sleep, studying the enemy's movements, even though this involved a
rather grim death for some of Beowulf's companions in arms. As I
listened, I thought of the younger alien the night before, standing
among the students on the campus and watching while the other flung
me into the street in front of the racing car. I heard the words of
the centuries-old epic and a detached portion of my mind told me
that, unlike the mighty Anglo-Saxon warrior, I couldn't wait out the
enemy. I already knew how he worked. If I waited there would be another
accident. I had to find the enemy before he or she had a chance to
attack.

Laurie Hendricks finished reading and glanced up questioningly from the
text. I nodded to indicate that that was enough. My gaze held hers.

"The point I'm making," I said, "is that the attitude toward life
was so different from ours. Unless you understand and accept that
difference you can't respond to the literature of the people at that
time. Their view of the universe was alien to anything we know. Human
life was cheap. To stay alive was a constant struggle. Life didn't last
very long--"

The bell rang to signal the end of the lecture. I held up my hand,
stilling the immediate mass movement out of the seats.

"I have to talk to you individually about your term papers," I
said quickly, ignoring the general groan. "I'll set up individual
appointments. If the students in the--first row--will stay a few
minutes I'll start with them."

I nodded and the class burst into a confusion of noise and movement.
The students in the first row lingered. I sat behind the desk in the
front of the room and waved the initial student forward. Carefully I
drew up a time schedule of office appointments. As I had hoped, Laurie
Hendricks waited until the last. We were alone in the classroom when
she uncurled from her seat and swayed toward the desk. The soft curve
of her mouth was provocative.

"You don't look any the worse for wear, Professor."

I smiled faintly. "I'm only an instructor, Miss Hendricks, not a
professor. And I feel fine, thanks to you and your friends."

"We just picked you up and dusted you off."

There was a brief, awkward silence. Our eyes met appraisingly. She
leaned a firmly rounded hip against the edge of the desk.

"I'd like to thank your friends personally," I said at last. "Would you
give me their names?"

"Sure--but you don't have to thank them."

"I'd like to. I know Mike Boyle, of course--but who was the girl with
him?"

"That's Helen Darrow. She's a physics major. She and Mike are going
steady now."

I looked surprised. The girl hadn't seemed like the kind who would
be majoring in physics. And that fact didn't go along with a co-ed's
worshipful admiration of a brawny football star.

"They're a funny couple," Laurie Hendricks said, patting her red hair
with graceful fingers. "But sometimes a man and a woman can clink
together when you'd least expect it."

I smiled. "And who was your boy friend?"

"My boy fr--oh, you mean Bob. That's Bob Jenkins. But we're just
friends, Professor."

I wished that she would ease off a little on the steam she was
generating. Her invitation was too open, too sudden. I felt a tickling
wariness inside as I looked into the green eyes.

"Did you have something in mind for me, Professor?" she asked, her
voice almost purring. "I mean, about the term paper."

"Yes. Suppose we set up a time...." I stared at the schedule I had
started to draw up. A half-formed plan jumped into focus in my mind
and I knew that subconsciously I had known all along what I hoped to
arrange. I spoke impulsively. "How about tonight, Miss Hendricks?"

"Tonight?" Her face showed surprise, but I saw the flicker of something
else momentarily in her eyes. Satisfaction.

"My time is pretty well taken up for the next two days during the
day--with classes and these other appointments. But I do have some free
time tonight."

"In your office?"

I hesitated. "You could come up to my trailer. I'm at the top of the
hills near Beverly Glen. The Valley View Trailer Court. It's quite easy
to reach."

"I know the place. Off Mulholland, isn't it?"

"Yes. I'm in number 14-P."

She was smiling broadly now. "That sounds fine to me--Mr. Cameron."

"About eight?"

"I'll be there."

She eased away from the desk and started across the room. I found
myself watching the rhythmic motion of her hips. At the door she turned
to give me a parting invitation over her shoulder.

I didn't move. Through the door I saw the young blond boy, Jenkins,
join her in the corridor. He grinned and took her hand in a casually
intimate way. I felt a tug of--

My God! I thought. Jealousy. Envy.

And I wondered what was my real motive for asking her to come to my
trailer that evening. Feeling out the enemy? Narrowing down my list of
suspects? But if there were any possibility that she could be possessed
by a powerful alien being it would be incredibly dangerous to be alone
with her.

I wouldn't have a chance.

The point was that I didn't want to believe that she was the enemy--and
I did want to be alone with her.




                                   6


Jack Hess, another of the younger instructors in the English
department, asked me if I'd like to go to a nearby drive-in for lunch.
I hesitated--and suddenly remembered Lois, the blonde waitress in the
Dugout. Once again I had been stupid!

"No--not today, Jack," I said quickly. "I've got something on."

He looked at me quizzically, shrugged and turned away. I knew most of
my colleagues thought me an odd one, reserved and even anti-social.
Jack had made more of an effort than the others to be friendly. I was
quite aware that my feeling of being an outsider was an unhealthy one
but I couldn't help it.

I left hurriedly and strode hastily across the campus. How could I have
overlooked such an obvious factor? Lois was sure to have seen the man
in the back booth the night before. At the least she would have brought
him his coffee. Even if he was a stranger to her, she would be able to
describe him to me. And perhaps he wasn't a stranger. Maybe he came in
often.

The little restaurant was jammed with students. I pushed my way to the
end of the counter. Lois wasn't in sight. I waited until Harry, the
sweating, somewhat greasy-faced owner of the Dugout, came near me.

"Can I talk to you a minute, Harry?"

He glanced at me, recognized me as a steady customer, and probably
shrewdly placed me for what I was, a not very important young teacher.

"Can't it wait? I'm busy as hell."

He hurried back up the aisle without waiting for an answer. Harry did
some of the cooking, but during the rush hours he helped out on tables
or behind the counter while the regular cook took care of the orders.

In a moment he was back, flopping open an order pad. "What'll it be?"

"Hamburger and coffee," I said. "Where's Lois?"

His eyes went flat and cold. "She doesn't come on until later. Why?"

"I wanted to talk to her. What time does she get here?"

"Look, Jack, the girl has enough trouble with the kids around here
without--"

"I only want to talk to her."

"Yeah." His manner was openly belligerent. "I'll turn in your order."

He spun away. It was several minutes before I could catch him again.
I was aware that some students nearby were staring at me, but I didn't
care.

When Harry did come within earshot, I spoke quickly. "Harry, I was in
an accident outside your place last night. Right in front. I think Lois
might have seen it and I want to ask her a few questions. Now how about
it? What time does she come on duty?"

He looked mollified though his manner was still brusque. "Six o'clock,"
he grunted. "She's on from six to midnight."

I frowned. Now that the possibility of her identifying the stranger in
the back booth had occurred to me, I was nervous and impatient to talk
to her. Six o'clock was a long way away. A lot of things could happen
before six.

When my order finally came I leaned forward and spoke urgently to
Harry. "I'd like to reach her as soon as possible," I said. "Do you
have her phone number?"

The aggressive coldness hardened his face instantly. His eyes were
small and their expression bleak.

"I don't set up dates with the help," he said. "Even for teachers.
That'll be two dollars and a quarter," he added pointedly, jerking his
head toward the thin sandwich and coffee.

Irritated, I threw the money onto the counter. I would get no more
information out of him. I realized that his suspicion was too quickly
aroused to be normal. The chances were that he wanted Lois himself,
probably didn't get anywhere with her in the face of the competition,
and the constant spectacle of men and boys flirting with her in his
restaurant kept him on the raw edge of frustrated anger.

Impatience gnawed at me, but there was nothing I could do but wait. I
stood hesitating outside the restaurant, wondering if I should go to
the registrar's office to try to find out where Lois lived. I might
run into trouble. I was already planning to break one of the academic
rules by arranging to have Laurie Hendricks visit my trailer that
evening, but at least I had a plausible reason--and in spite of the
rules, meetings with students in the home over class projects were
not unusual. For me to try to get the address or phone number of a
young and obviously endowed co-ed who was not in any of my classes was
something else again.

I spent the afternoon, except for one lecture at two o'clock, in the
safety of the library stacks. I compiled a bibliography of recent
publications in the library on the subject of life on other planets.
There was a special section of articles and research projects
concerning Mars, most of them written by Dr. Temple himself or members
of his staff. It would take much more than one afternoon to burrow
through all the material, and I might not have many afternoons.

I had to act on the premise that I was sane, that I had overheard
aliens conferring telepathically, that the conviction they were
determined to destroy me was not a delusion. They were real. They
menaced not only my safety but that of the world. And they planned to
bring others of their kind back to Earth. These were the facts I had to
begin with.

They pointed directly to Mars.

I was surprised at the unanimity of scientific opinion concerning the
possibility of life on other planets. In our solar system, there was
only one planet other than Earth which could possibly support life as
we understood it. On the other planets either heat or the lack of it,
the presence of poisonous gases or the absence of atmosphere, argued
that life could not exist. There might well be planets in other solar
systems with conditions conducive to the existence of an intelligent
life form, but in ours there was only Earth--and the planet man had
reached in his first great conquest of space: Mars.

There had long been heated scientific debate on the possibility of Mars
supporting life, especially after the discovery of the famous canals.
Even observations from the moon during the late 1970's and the 1980's
had not settled the issue or resolved the mystery of the canals. There
had always been a dedicated group who maintained that life on the red
planet was not only possible but probable.

Then came the successful mission in 1989-90. I didn't have to read the
innumerable articles to know the general facts about what humans had
found there--and what they had failed to find. There was life in the
form of vegetation and microscopic organisms. There was even animal
life--a tiny reptile which had been seen and photographed but had shown
such remarkable elusiveness that it had never been trapped alive.
Besides these, there were clear signs of a dead civilization that had
been created by intelligent beings. Crude by our standards, especially
in crafts and tools, but intelligent. These discoveries served only to
create the new Martian mystery. The planet abounded in fossil remains
of lower animals. Nothing else. Nothing that seemed capable of the
intelligence which had wrought the civilization of Mars and dug its
amazing network of canals. It was as if the intelligent beings which
had ruled the planets thousands of years ago had simply left it. They
had not died there. Or they had mysteriously dissolved, leaving no
trace of themselves except their handiwork, leaving behind a dying
planet.

Mars was the only place from which the aliens could have come, I
thought--but no intelligent aliens had returned on the space ship. Even
the specimens of plant life had failed to survive the trip back to
earth. And yet--

I tried to remember exactly what I had overheard. The voices had talked
of a launching soon. And the fact was that a new flight to Mars was
scheduled to take place. They had talked of it as returning to their
own place of origin, to their fellows. But if they needed a space ship
in which to return, they must have come on our ship.

And nothing had come. I read, in the dusty silence of the library's
inner stacks, the accounts of what had happened when the one great
ship came home to Earth. All of the survivors had been exhaustively
investigated through complex physical and mental tests. No alien
presence could have escaped that examination. Weren't they afraid
even now of detection? Wasn't that why they wanted my own death to be
accidental? Even every fragment of rock and bone and dried-up fungus
had been painstakingly tested not once but over and over again. No
alien life had come. I was trying to believe the impossible.

With each page turned during that long afternoon my depression grew.
When at last, my eyes hot and raw with strain, I set aside the material
I had read, a pitifully small portion of the total on my list, I
had found not one single hopeful fact. But hope persisted. Perhaps
there was something I had overlooked, or something in the later
investigations I had not yet had time to read, that would offer a clue.
And there was Lois--

I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes after six. Hastily I sorted
the material I had read from the rest. The former I returned to the
librarian, leaving the unread papers and magazines on the small desk
which I had reserved in the stacks. I ran across the cool green of the
campus. When I reached the street near the Dugout, I hung back from the
sidewalk, waiting until there were no moving cars in sight. It would be
all too easy for them to use the same technique a second time.

At this hour of the evening, the Dugout was not crowded. There were
students in a few of the booths and at the counter. I recognized a
history professor and a zoologist talking quietly at one end of the
counter. Lois was not there. Another girl was working the tables, the
same girl who had been on duty earlier in the day, and Harry himself
was still behind the counter. He glared at me as I approached.

"Where is Lois?" I asked anxiously.

"How the hell should I know? Maybe you can tell me."

"She hasn't come in?"

"No, she hasn't come in." Harry obviously blamed me.

"Look, Harry, I told you I just wanted to ask her a couple of
questions. It's important. But that's all I want." I paused. "Didn't
she call or anything?"

"No," he grunted, less nastily. "Sometimes she's late. Sometimes she
doesn't come in at all."

I felt a hollowness in my stomach. She had to come. I had to talk to
her.

I sat at the counter and ordered coffee. I waited. The two teachers
farther down the counter nodded at me. Students left and a few more
trickled in. Every time the door opened I looked up eagerly. I ordered
more coffee and let it grow cold in front of me, untouched.

An hour passed. Harry paused in front of me. He spoke grudgingly,
apparently convinced at last that I was not lying. "You gonna eat? I
don't think she's coming tonight."

"No, I'm not hungry. Has she ever done this before--just stayed away
without telling you?"

"Yeah, sometimes." His face clouded. "These kids--"

I thought of my date with Laurie Hendricks. Lois might show up later.
She had probably gone out with some student. Apparently she could be
careless about her hours. Harry wasn't going to fire her no matter what
she did. Yes, she would probably be in later. I could come back after
Laurie left.

At seven-thirty I gave up. I just had time to get back to my trailer
court before eight. It took me five minutes to walk to the local
elevated station. There was another five minutes wait before a car slid
swiftly out of the gathering darkness. Moments later I alighted at
the Mulholland platform where the local connected with the Mulholland
elevated.

I walked back to the trailer.

It was dark when I let myself in. My neighbor, the strangely withdrawn
girl with the surprising figure, sat eating in her brightly lit room,
the blinds partly open at the front of her trailer. Another lonely one,
I thought. Another outsider.

But tonight I wouldn't be alone.




                                   7


By eight-thirty that evening, I was becoming uneasy. I had had an
evening full of impatient waiting and the strain was telling on my
nerves. I was beginning to feel like a man with a cold or some other
rare disease, shunned and avoided. I kept rising and going to the
windows to peer out, expecting each time to see Laurie Hendricks just
turning up the walk. Each time I was disappointed.

I don't know what I had actually expected to happen when she came.
I had told myself that the reason for asking her was clear: she was
suspect. Even if I didn't think she was guilty I had to make sure, and
the opportunity to meet her privately had been easy to create. But
there was another reason. My self-imposed isolation had had a number
of draw-backs. When I thought of the clean limbs I had seen so often
displayed in the front row of that eleven o'clock English class, when
I remembered the way her sweaters were pulled taut across her chest, I
felt a different shakiness that made my throat dry and my palms moist.

The wall clock kept changing numbers, approaching nine, and still she
didn't arrive. I began to question the eagerness with which she had
accepted the suggestion of meeting me at my trailer. Had it all been an
act to lull any suspicions I might have? Set him up for it. Make him
jumpy. Dull his mind with a little sex play. Then arrange a convenient
accident. Easy. He's ripe for it. He hadn't had a woman in over two
years. He won't be thinking of anything else. He'll never believe that
a young, beautiful girl could be a--

The rap on the door was so light that for a moment I wasn't sure I had
actually heard a sound. Then it came again, a gentle rapping, clearly
audible. I stared at the door and all of a sudden my palms were clammy
again, and I didn't know if the reaction was from desire or fear.

She was standing on the step just outside the door, looking up. When I
didn't say anything, she smiled apologetically, the curve of her lips
tentative and strongly appealing.

"I'm sorry I'm late, Mr. Cameron. I was--held up."

"Come in," I said stiffly. "It doesn't matter."

She stepped up into the small living room. The moment she entered
the room it seemed to shrink, filled with the physical fact of her
presence. I closed the door, feeling self-conscious about the action
as if it were overtly aggressive. I stared at her. She wore one of
the popular one-piece coveralls knitted of a chemical fiber in a
red-and-white diamond pattern. The clinging suit was not exactly the
usual costume for a student visiting her instructor.

She glanced curiously around the room. "This is nice," she said.

"It's not exactly spacious but I get by. And the view is good."

I indicated the glittering panorama visible through the window in the
end wall. She moved closer to it and looked out into the night. I
suddenly wondered if someone else was outside waiting for her signal.
The other alien. I made a conscious effort of concentration, listening
with my mind. I seemed to have a strange sensation of hearing the
world's slow murmur like the distant sounds of traffic on a road far,
far below you. But nothing else.

Something made me glance out the side window. I was just in time to see
the face of the girl next door, set and unsmiling, before her blinds
snapped shut. I closed my own draperies, feeling the tension easing in
me. So my neighbor wasn't above doing a little window watching of her
own, I thought, half-smiling.

"I meant to be here on time," Laurie said, still staring out the
window. "But Bob dropped in and--and sometimes he's difficult."

"Jenkins?"

"Yes. We were supposed to have a date tonight."

I looked at the line of the zipper that traced the curving column of
her spine, realizing how easily the clinging suit could be shed and
acutely aware that she wore nothing underneath it.

"I don't blame him," I said. "I'd be jealous, too."

She pivoted slowly, pleasure glowing in her striking green eyes. And I
realized how young she really was. Twenty at most, I thought. Her skin
was flawlessly smooth, clear and unlined. Her every movement had the
supple grace and vitality of youth. Yet she was a woman, already wise
in the way of women.

I caught myself. What did I really know of her? How could I know the
mind which controlled this youthful animal beauty? And I thought of a
cunning super-intelligence watching me from behind the cool green of
her eyes, amused, toying with me. Or did they have a sense of humor? I
had caught nothing humorous in the words I had overheard. I had sensed
something infinitely cold, completely emotionless.

"Daddy says I'm spoiled," Laurie Hendricks said abruptly.

"Daddy?" I repeated stupidly.

"Yes. I do have one, you know." She shrugged and the gesture caused a
wonderful interplay of movement under the tight coverall. "But he's the
one who spoiled me, so he shouldn't complain. He thinks I just amuse
myself with men and he doesn't like it."

"Do you?"

She laughed, the warm rippling sound making my skin tingle like an
electric current. "Of course," she said. "Why shouldn't I?"

"I suspect you're rich," I said. "It's funny, I hadn't thought of you
that way."

"Have you thought about me very much?" Her face sobered and her voice
became huskier. "I've thought about you. A lot. I guess that's pretty
standard procedure, isn't it? Schoolgirl gets crush on handsome
teacher."

I swallowed with difficulty. The conversation was getting out of hand.
I wasn't controlling it at all.

"We'd better get down to work," I said. "Have you thought about a
subject for your term paper?"

She appraised the couch under the long window, seemed satisfied, and
settled onto it with a relaxed ease and grace of movement. "Well, if
we must work--" she murmured. "No, I haven't thought about it. Did you
have any suggestions for me?"

"You might be interested in medieval romances," I offered, struggling
to keep my mind on what I was saying. "You could do something on the
tradition of courtly love."

She smiled suddenly. "I think I'd like that. Maybe you should tell me
about it, Professor."

"No. That'll be your project for research."

"I have a better idea," she said softly. "I bet you know a lot about
it. You could just show me."

I shifted uncomfortably on my feet. The floor of the trailer creaked
audibly. Betraying me, I thought. The clumsy male shuffling his feet in
embarrassment. "Laurie, I--"

"Professor, you didn't really want me to come up here to talk about a
term paper, did you?"

I started at her in confusion, thrown off balance by her directness.
Slowly everything came into focus. This was a strange creature, all
right. But nothing other-worldly. She might be dangerous but not in
the way I had feared. She was simply a sensuous, desirable woman. The
feelings she inspired could hardly have been more human.

"Well, if you won't come to me," she said, "I guess I'll have to come
to you."

She uncurled deliberately from the couch and swayed toward me, her body
as sleek and graceful as a cat's. Even the rippling movement of flesh
and muscle under the tight coverall reminded me of a cat's powerful
rhythm of motion. She stopped very close to me. There was laughter
in the green eyes, but as I stared into them, their shading changed,
deepened. Her fingers ran up my chest to my shoulders and paused there.

"How many times do I have to ask you?" she breathed.

Control snapped like a taut wire breaking. Our lips and our bodies met,
adjusting and fitting together with an instinctive familiarity. She
was not one of those women who are awkward to kiss, who seem made of
separate parts joined together, whose bodies never lose an indefinable
tension. Her body was a single, marvelously mobile unit and it seemed
made expressly for mine, at once fluid and firm, swelling and yielding,
excitingly strong and meltingly soft. I felt reason sliding swiftly
away from me into a crimson pool of sensation.

She pulled away from me with a violent twist. We eyed each other
warily, like enemies. I felt the heavy pounding of my heart and tasted
the long unfamiliar sweetness of lipstick.

"Well, Professor! I never would have thought it. Or maybe I did."

"Perhaps we should try that again," I said. "For verification."

Her eyes sparkled. "I love to be made love to in an erudite way," she
said. "Make love to me, Professor."

This time she didn't have to ask twice. I reached for her but she
slipped away, backing toward the couch. I caught her. For a moment she
struggled and I heard breathless laughter. Then she was in my arms
again, her red mouth warm and alive, and my fingers found the zipper on
her suit, pulled it down the long, supple line of her back--

A pounding penetrated the haze in my brain. At first I thought it was
the blood pumping furiously through my own veins but suddenly I wasn't
holding her any more and she was staring beyond me toward the door.

The loud, officious knock came again.

"My God, who would that be?" she whispered.

"I don't know."

"Oh, damn, damn damn!" She jerked angrily at the zipper. "Just when my
professor was warming to his subject."

I grinned and the laughter spread through me, silent, exhilarating.
Fear and danger seemed very remote.

"I'll tell the man to go away," I said.

I was still grinning broadly when I pulled open the door. Two uniformed
policemen confronted me, their faces hard and unsmiling.




                                   8


"I don't understand," I said.

"It's a simple question," Sgt. Bullock said, shifting his broad and
solid buttocks on the small pedestal chair in front of the desk. "Do
you know a girl named Lois Worthington?"

"I don't know. I know a girl named Lois, a waitress at a little
restaurant near the university. But--"

"That's the one." The sergeant glanced meaningfully at his partner, who
abruptly tore his gaze away from Laurie. She sat on the couch under the
window, her legs drawn up under her, her face extraordinarily cool and
composed under the flaming hair.

"I don't really know her," I said. "I mean, I've just met her in the
Dugout."

"You don't know her very well, huh?"

"No, I--" I remembered the attempts I had made to reach her that day.
The hard shrewd eyes of the policeman never left my face and I felt a
chill of foreboding. "Look, Sergeant, what's this all about?"

"I understand you were trying pretty hard to get hold of the girl
today. You made quite a scene about it." His eyes flicked toward
Laurie, and there was a faint sneer on his flat cold face. "She another
one of your students?"

"No. I was--in an accident last night. It happened right in front of
the Dugout. I know Lois was on duty and I thought she might have been a
witness. I wanted to ask her what she saw."

"You report this accident?"

I flushed. "No."

"Why not?"

"I--I didn't think I was hurt at the time. But today I had a painful
rib and I thought I'd better make sure--"

"You thought maybe you might be able to collect a little something, eh
Professor?"

I began to get angry. "Maybe I did--but that isn't what you came here
to ask me about, Sergeant. If you've got something on your mind let's
have it. Otherwise--"

"Don't get smart, Professor!" The sergeant rose abruptly. One jerky
stride brought him close to me. The heavy face looked mean and
dangerous as he thrust it in front of mine. "I'll ask the questions the
way I want to ask them. And you'll listen and you'll answer, just like
one of your students in the classroom, nice and polite!"

I held my tongue but I could feel the skin tighten across my
cheek-bones.

"Now!" he snarled. "You were in the Dugout asking for the girl between
six and seven tonight. That right?"

"I left about seven-thirty."

"Yeah. And you said you'd be back later. You acted like you had a date
with her."

"That's not true!"

"But you were going back."

I glanced at Laurie. There was a bright spark in her eyes as she waited
for me to answer.

"Yes. I was going back."

"But instead you went to see her, didn't you, Professor?"

I showed my surprise. "No. I came straight here."

"What time did you get here?"

"Just before eight. I had an appointment--with Miss Hendricks."

"Yeah?" He whirled toward Laurie. "And what time did you get here?"

"It was five minutes past eight, Sergeant," she lied calmly. "I know
because I was a few minutes late and I checked my watch."

The sergeant glared at her suspiciously, then swung back to me.
"You've been here since then? The two of you?"

"That's right," I said, wondering at the smoothness of Laurie's lie.
"Now maybe you'll tell me what this has to do with--Miss Worthington."

His small hard eyes snapped with something like pleasure. "She was
murdered, professor. That's all."

I felt the blood drain from my face. "Murdered?"

"Yeah. We figure between eight and eight-thirty, closer to eight.
That's nice timing for you, professor. Seems like the girl had a
helluva lot of boyfriends--but you were number one on our list!"

I stared at the hostile face and thought about what would have happened
if Laurie hadn't lied, if I'd had only my own word that I was alone in
the trailer between eight and nine. And then I thought about what would
happen if they learned that she had lied.

But when my mind turned to Lois and why I had wanted to see her, I
felt a fear that had nothing to do with the policeman's threatening
attitude, a quivering fear that started way down inside me, a queasy
weakness that made me feel sick.

"How--how was she killed?"

"Nice and quick, Professor. Her neck was broken."

I heard Laurie gasp and I looked at her quickly. Her face was pale now,
heightening the bright red slash of her lips. Her eyes were fixed on
me, wide and frightened.

The sergeant started toward the door. His partner went down the steps
ahead of him. The burly man turned in the doorway.

"This lets you out for now, professor. But we'll check out your story.
And maybe we'll have another little talk later on. Be around where I
can find you, huh?"

"Any time, Sergeant," I said, feeling that my voice sounded hollow and
unconvincing. "If there's any way I can help--"

"Yeah," he said, the flat lips stretching in what might have passed for
a smile. "Sure."

He took another long, steady look at Laurie and at me before he turned
his broad back on us and went out. I waited until the two men had gone
down the walk to the street before I closed the door.

Laurie hadn't moved. There was an expression in her eyes and around
her mouth that I didn't immediately fathom, a curious tension. But the
brutal announcement about Lois had been shocking. Small wonder that
Laurie would be upset.

"Thanks, Laurie," I said. "You got me out of a spot."

"Happy to oblige," she said coldly.

I regarded her in blank surprise. "What's the matter?"

She swung off the couch and moved toward me, her walk unconsciously
sensuous, "I really had you figured wrong, didn't I?" she said, her
voice strangely sharp.

"Laurie, you don't think I had anything to do with--"

"No. No, I don't think you killed her. But you fooled me once,
Professor, so I could be wrong again. I had you typed as the lonely
professor. I bet you really got a hoot out of that behind that smug
face of yours, didn't you?"

"You're wrong, Laurie."

"I'll say! What were you going to do, anyway? Have a little roll on the
couch with the eager student, send her on her way, and then trot along
to meet your little waitress? You must be quite a guy, Professor. I
should have known from the way you kissed me, shouldn't I? You didn't
learn that in a book."

She was clearly hurt, a stung pride firing the bitterness of her words,
and I knew she wasn't going to listen to me.

"Laurie, I had to talk to her, believe me--"

"Sure you did! About the accident, wasn't that it? You needed a
witness."

"I had to ask her a question--"

"Does she always say yes? You don't have to tell me the question,
Professor. I can guess. I've seen the girl!"

"I can't explain but you've got to understand that there was nothing
between me and Lois."

"Tell that to the cops, Mr. Cameron. But next time don't expect me to
provide your alibi!"

She stalked past me, jerked open the door, and bolted down the steps. I
started after her.

"Laurie!"

But she was gone down the walk, the pattern of red-and-white diamonds
twitching with the angry vehemence of her stride. And all at once
it seemed too vehement to me, her anger and refusal to listen too
unreasonable, a convenient way to get away quickly, just as she had
been too smooth and ready to lie for me.

She had not only provided my alibi. She had created one for herself.

I heard the rumble of a voice. Looking up I saw the chunky figure of
Sgt. Bullock coming down the steps of the trailer next door. Behind him
light outlined the blonde hair and slim figure of the shy girl who was
my neighbor. The momentary sense of safety shattered around me like a
glass shell breaking. Bullock had been checking on the alibi. It had
been that easy!

The sergeant was lumbering toward me. His partner stood on the walk,
not moving. I waited, unable to stir. I hadn't done it, I had had
nothing to do with Lois' death, but they wouldn't believe me now after
the lie. I should have told them the truth.

"What's the matter, Professor? Your girl friend decide to go home
early?"

"She was--upset," I said tightly.

He looked almost genial. He's enjoying this, I thought. He's going to
get a big kick out of letting me have it right between the eyes.

"We checked out your alibi, Cameron," the sergeant said. "Your neighbor
backs you up on the time you got here and she saw the girl arrive just
after eight, so I guess we had it wrong. No hard feelings?"

"No," I said woodenly, stunned. "No, of course not."

"We'll find out who did it," the sergeant said matter-of-factly. "But
now we're going to have to dig."

They left. I watched them until they had climbed into the
yellow-and-black helicopter parked on the strip across the street and
the ship rose slowly with a deep chugging rhythm of engine and whirring
blade into the night sky. At last I turned to stare at the trailer next
to mine. The door was closed. The blinds were tightly drawn. The girl
had shut herself inside.

Everyone was giving me an alibi, I thought. Nobody wanted me in jail. I
wondered why. The bewildering sequence of events, the jolting pile-up
of shocks, had left me confused, unable to think clearly. But after a
while, still standing in the open doorway looking at the blind walls of
the trailer just a few yards away, I thought of a reason why.

Jails were safe.




                                   9


I had another night of fitful sleep that left me bone weary in the
morning. I fought against the deep sleep that might bring a recurrence
of the terrifying dream in which I was sucked down into cold black
waters, and as a result I dozed and woke in momentary panic and lay
sweating in bed and finally dozed again and woke again, on and on
through the night. Images of dreams and reality kept getting mixed
up in a disorganized montage. I would be holding Laurie in my arms,
feeling the firm and vital strength of her young body warm against
me, and suddenly the face which tilted up to meet mine, the lips that
parted, were not hers but those of a shy and timid girl with soft
blonde hair whose name I didn't know. Or I would dream fragmentarily of
being trapped in a corner with the meaty face of Sgt. Bullock shoving
aggressively at me and snarling, "Why did you kill her?" And, waking,
I would think of Lois and ask myself why she had died, knowing in my
heart that she had had to die, that I had marked her for death. Because
she knew. She had seen the alien. When I had tried to find her I had
become the unwitting instrument of her death. Guilt hung over me like
a heavy, airless blanket, smothering me, clogging my lungs like the
thick black waters of the dream. At last the gray dawn came abruptly to
the crest of the mountains and found me leaden-eyed and exhausted.

It was a Friday. I had two classes that morning, including the eleven
o'clock sophomore survey. Laurie Hendricks was absent. Somehow I
managed to stumble through the lectures, not sure afterwards what I had
said, surprised at times to find myself talking fluently with apparent
coherence and logic, asking questions and answering them, functioning
like a robot, well-trained to impersonate an English instructor.

And somehow it was afternoon and the last class of the day was over. I
was free to return to the library. Dully, I began to read the articles
and papers I had set aside the previous day. I read without hope,
almost without interest, convinced that I would find nothing to explain
the puzzle of the invading minds--yet believing more firmly now that
they were real, not a product of my own sickness, because a woman had
died who might have named them. And at length I shoved the pile of
magazines and papers aside with sudden impatience.

I would find no answers here. I had to go out to find them. I could
neither hide from the aliens nor attempt to outwit them, but I could
force them into the open. I could attack even if I had no chance to
win. One of the four students had already been tested--and I could not
bring myself to believe that Laurie was still suspect. Her conduct
the night before, in retrospect, seemed too clearly the actions of a
lovely, spoiled young girl used to having what she wanted--and at the
moment wanting me. But she was only one of four.

A sound broke the wandering circle of my thought. A footstep on a metal
staircase. The library stacks were a network of crowded aisles with
two levels packed into each story of the building and short connecting
flights of metal stairway linking the many levels. Yet why had this
footstep struck my ear? There had been movement all afternoon through
the stacks as the librarians came and went.

This step was furtive, I thought. I rose slowly from the little
desk under the window. The other sounds had had a normal sequence
unconsciously recorded by the mind. This step had been a single
isolated sound, one that was not supposed to be heard, made by a person
moving stealthily and silently.

I peered along the narrow aisle which ended at the window. I was
conscious of the afternoon light at my back, framing me against the
window. No one was in sight, but I knew someone was there, approaching
me, and I felt a now familiar flinching as fear tightened its grip.

He stepped out of a side aisle, confronting me so suddenly that it was
as if he had materialized before my eyes.

"What do you want?" I asked sharply.

"I want to talk to you, Mr. Cameron," Bob Jenkins said in a low, tight
voice.

"You're not supposed to be back here in the stacks."

"I told them I had to see you."

Of course, I thought. The librarians were reasonable people. How could
they know why Jenkins had to see me? Why should they be suspicious?
_If_ he had talked to them.

Jenkins stepped forward and I saw the hard crease of his mouth, the
snap of anger in narrow blue eyes. At that moment, we both heard the
rapid tattoo of a woman's steps on a ladder nearby. Jenkins spun
around. Bustling movement went along a nearby aisle, going away from
us. When Jenkins swung back, he seemed to have relaxed slightly, though
his face was still coldly unfriendly.

"Leave her alone!" he said harshly.

I gaped at him in pure astonishment.

"You know who I mean. Laurie! I know she went to your place last night."

"That--that was about a term paper assignment," I stammered.

"Don't try to kid me. I saw her when she came home last night. She was
so mad she wouldn't even talk to me--and she didn't smear her lipstick
all by herself."

I began to recover from the stunning surprise of his outburst. The
danger I had expected was so much more to be feared than the anger of
a jealous boy that I had an hysterical impulse to laugh. But his anger
seemed genuine. I think if the librarian hadn't been there in the
stacks nearby he would have started a fight.

"She's my girl," Jenkins snapped. "Keep away from her!"

"That's for her to decide, isn't it?" I asked quietly. "But I don't
think you have anything to worry about. I doubt that she'll want to see
me again."

"Don't try to brush me off!" the boy said fiercely. "If you don't
leave her alone, maybe the school would like to know about it. The
authorities wouldn't like it!"

I felt a trace of answering anger. "If you're thinking of creating
a scandal," I said coldly, "maybe you'd better think about Laurie's
reputation too. If you try to damage me, you'll be hurting her as well."

The words shook him. He glared at me, fists clenched, breathing hard
and quick as if he had been running, and I sensed the conflict in his
mind, the rage made impotent.

"Damn you!" he choked. "I'm warning you. Next time I'll make you pay
for it!"

He flung away down the aisle, vanishing from sight as he bolted along
a connecting corridor. I could hear the harsh fall of his steps fading
away from me. I took a deep breath and held it, let it out slowly,
feeling some of the tension subside in my arms and legs and chest.

Chalk up another threat, I thought wearily. First vicious, powerful
minds that toyed with me. Then suspicious police. Mysterious neighbors.
And now a kid's jealousy so strong and blind that it could make him do
something foolish. I could never get an insurance policy, I thought
with a feeble attempt at humor. The odds were against my being around
to pay next month's premium.

Jenkins' abrupt appearance and his jealous wrath had seemed honestly
motivated. If he were one of the aliens would he have acted that way?
What purpose would it serve? Then I remembered the librarian's timely
interruption. Had she halted more than a threatened fist fight? Had
Jenkins' plan for an accident been spoiled by the presence of someone
else, forcing him to improvise a clever and plausible reason for
stalking me?

No. It was probably true that he would have had to explain his purpose
in order to gain access to the stacks. The librarians guarded the
entrance as zealously as they undoubtedly guarded their bedroom doors.
If he had planned any serious harm to me, he wouldn't have advertised
his guilt. This was not the place he would have chosen.

My mind was tired of questions. Jenkins was still not removed from
suspicion. No one was. I was no closer to getting any answers than I
had ever been.




                                  10


I found Mike Boyle on the practice football field at the west end of
the campus. The first team was scrimmaging a group of substitutes who
were running through the plays of one of the schools on the weekend's
double-header. I saw Boyle roving wide to defend against an attempted
end run, saw him follow the play, not moving fast, until suddenly he
was charging forward, bouncing off the interference in such a way that
he kept his feet and sliced through to the halfback who was caught open
and hemmed in near the sidelines, a sitting duck for the tackle that
slammed him to the ground. And then Boyle was on his feet, amazingly
nimble and springy for such a big man, trotting away without glancing
back at the runner, who rose slowly and stiffly.

The deceptive ease of the play showed why Boyle was an All-American
candidate. It also revealed something I had heard about the big roving
tackle--whose position was one added to football's original eleven-man
team in order to give the defense some needed help in the increasingly
wide-open style of the game. Boyle showed an uncanny ability to divine
what the opponent was going to do. Somehow, wherever a play went,
he was there in front of it, anticipating it almost as if he knew
precisely where it was going. The fact was an innocent one, but now it
made me wonder as I watched him in action. Everything was suspect now,
I thought. Nothing was innocent.

The scrimmaging continued for twenty minutes while I watched. Then the
first team was called off the field for a rest and the second unit
went in against the same tired group of subs. Some of the first team
limbered up after the bruising workout by running up and down the
sidelines. Others flipped a football or just stood watching.

I walked toward Mike Boyle. As I neared him he gulped water from a
ladle dipped into a pail and spewed it out in a great gusher. Then he
drank, his throat working visibly, sweat pouring down his face to mix
with the water that spilled around his mouth and ran down his throat.
He seemed to do everything in a big, robust way. In the padded uniform,
he appeared immense, twice as broad as I and towering over me. He had
not seemed nearly as big in street clothes.

I stood waiting while he drank. I was sure that he had not noticed my
approach but he spoke as he dropped the ladle into the pail.

"Hi, Prof. Been running into any more cars?"

"I manage to keep out of the way of most of them."

He grinned. His mouth was full lipped and wide, matching the
proportions of a prominent nose that had once been broken and an unruly
mass of black hair. Only the eyes were too small for the face, but that
might have been due to the habitual squint against the sun of a young
man who spent a great deal of his time outdoors.

"You professors kill me," Boyle said. "What was on your mind, Prof? A
poem or something?"

"Something I heard."

"Yeah? It must have been good," he said offhandedly, "to make you walk
in front of the only damn car on the street."

"It was," I said.

The small brown eyes regarded me curiously and I wondered if their
glint held amusement or something deeper.

"Well, you better be careful," Boyle said. "Hearing things like that
won't do you any good if you're dead."

I read menace into the words, but it was belied by the faintly
contemptuous grin on his face. He had the habitual cockiness which
I had often seen in the professional campus athlete to whom public
adulation has come too soon, before the mind is mature enough to
discount it. The attitude was always irritating.

"That's a nice looking girlfriend of yours," I said, perhaps too
casually. "Isn't she a physics major?"

"Helen? Yeah, she's a brain," he agreed. "A cute kid, though," he
added, as if the combination of cuteness and intelligence was cause for
surprise. "We have a ball."

"Miss Hendricks said you were going steady."

"Yeah? You might say that, Prof. But I'm not the kind of guy that likes
to be tied down. You know?"

I was groping, trying to find a way to ask him where he had been the
night before without seeming to be probing. I found myself disliking
the youthful arrogance and it was an effort to keep the amiably stupid
smile on my lips. I stood for a moment in silence, watching the
scrimmage. The subs executed an intricate play that caught the defense
completely out of position for the pass. Boyle cursed vehemently.

"They should have smelled that one a mile off," he growled.

"Doesn't the coach object when you go out on dates during the week?" I
asked suddenly. "Or do you have a curfew?"

He spat vigorously. "Nuts," he said. "I'm his bread and butter. I go
out when I want to."

I hesitated. "I thought I saw you and Helen again last night," I said.
"Pretty late, too. I was on my way home from a movie."

He swung around slowly and the small brown eyes caught mine in a fixed
stare. The indefinable trace of contempt marked the expression of his
eyes and mouth.

"Prof," he said softly, "you didn't see me and Helen out last night.
You got something on your mind. Maybe you should tell me what it is."

"I guess I was mistaken," I said, glad at that moment that I had
had the sense to pick this time and place to sound him out, with a
hundred people in clear view and within shouting distance. I was not
sure what the hint of ugliness in his voice and manner signified.
The thickly-muscled chest and arms didn't frighten me. Rather it was
the thought of this brutal strength directed by a supremely powerful
intelligence.

"Yeah, you made a mistake, Prof. Helen was with me last night but you
didn't see us. I tell you what. You want to know if Helen was with me
last night, you just go ask her, huh? And don't bother me with your
nosy questions."

"I can assure you I wasn't being nosy," I said in my best and huffiest
imitation of professorial dignity. "I was merely making conversation."

"Sure you were. Well, you just go talk to yourself, Prof. Only watch
out for those cars. We'd miss you around here."

He turned his back on me and began to do a series of leg exercises,
squatting and jumping erect, thick thighs stretching the pants of his
uniform each time he dropped into the crouch.

I walked away slowly. The momentary irritation I felt over the open
contempt shown by a muscle-headed athlete was not important. But if
his statement about being with Helen Darrow could be believed, it was
highly significant. It meant that they could vouch for each other,
providing that they were together at the time Lois Worthington was
killed. Boyle was the one suspect I knew who could easily have broken
the girl's neck without even breathing hard. But I was convinced that
Lois' death was linked to the aliens and I knew there were not three
of them. There was the man who had been in the back booth and one
student. Not two. Helen Darrow could prove that both she and Mike
Boyle were innocent. In one stroke the possible number of suspects
would be cut in half.




                                  11


I felt a compulsion to keep moving. Even the negative results I had
garnered so far gave me a feeling of accomplishing something. In
addition I was avoiding being a fixed target. The fact that the aliens
had not already struck again surprised me. Almost two full days had
passed since the first hastily improvised attempt on my life. It was
not comforting to reflect that they would want to be absolutely sure of
me the second time--and it was probably not easy to arrange a foolproof
accident.

Besides--came the chilling thought--they had been busy the night before
with Lois Worthington.

I needed greater mobility. That meant a car. I rented a small closed
aluminum model from a lot near the university. While the cost was high,
I seemed to have acquired a new indifference to economics. Whether I
ate next week or paid next month's rent didn't seem to matter any more.
My entire perspective had gradually been changing. Even the conditioned
obedience to academic rules of propriety was disappearing. Twenty-four
hours before I had been reluctant to seek Lois' address from the
registrar's office, afraid that my motive might be questioned. That
had cost the girl her life. Now I had no hesitation about going to the
office for the two addresses I wanted. Ironically, the girl behind the
counter didn't even appear curious. I wouldn't have cared if she had.

Was this the schizophrenic's apathy, his progressive lack of
orientation? There were gaps in the days when I had done habitual
things like shaving and changing clothes. I couldn't remember doing
them. The car's mirror reflected an image that could have been someone
else, a young man whose face showed little evidence of strain and
fatigue. In fact, despite my lack of sleep, I didn't feel tired. I felt
as if I had been wound up tight and any minute I would be released and
would begin to spin madly.

Madly. The word stuck. It kept coming back, the awful fear. My
stumbling investigations had a double-edged motive: to find the
aliens--and to prove that I was not mad. And I was slowly, inexorably,
trapping myself in a narrowing circle. If I sat back, if I did nothing,
I wouldn't know for sure. I could believe in mysterious beings from
outer space, in sinister plots against me, in the hallucination of
bodiless voices. I wouldn't have to confront unpleasant implications
about morbid attempts at self-destruction or a disintegrating
personality.

Even during the twenty-seven years of my life, society had come a
long way in its attitude toward insanity. No longer was it viewed
with a sense of shame or revulsion, something to be ignored or swept
into a corner of society where you didn't have to look at it. But
it was still the nation's number one disease, it still inspired the
terror of the unknown. We had had many scientific breakthroughs--the
famous virus break in 1971 which meant the end of cancer, the virtual
elimination of the common cold; the successful "heart patch" of 1975
which changed heart disease from a leading killer to a rarely fatal
disease; the total elimination of polio and multiple sclerosis and many
other vicious enemies of the human organism. But the mind remained
impregnable.

There had been gigantic strides in treatment, but mental hospitals were
still jammed far beyond capacity. One American in five had some form
of mental illness. Some, the luckier ones, found quick cures in the
K7U drugs available under prescription, the laboratory narcotic that
had proved startlingly effective, enabling you to induce exaggerated
symptoms of psychoses under their influence, thus making possible an
accurate diagnosis that could lead to prompt treatment. But there had
been many cases of alarming toxic side effects from K7U. And in one
area of mental illness the miracle drug had quite a different result.
It accelerated the advanced stages of paranoid schizophrenia and its
rarer, more logically organized cousin, paranoia.

There was a small bottle of K7U pills in the top drawer of the built-in
chest in my trailer bedroom, a supply I had surreptitiously borrowed
from the psychology laboratory when I first became aware of what seemed
hallucinatory voices. I had been afraid to use them. If mine were a
minor illness, the pills would expose it to accurate treatment. There
was the risk of side effects but that did not deter me. My symptoms did.

The hallucination of voices where no one was present was a common
one. It was frequently allied to a fairly well organized delusional
system in which the person held the bizarre conviction that supra-human
beings were trying to possess or destroy him--and often was convinced
that he himself had some extraordinary powers that accounted for the
persecution. He might seem quite normal in other phases of his life,
well-oriented to his surroundings except for a tendency to withdraw
socially, avoiding close personal relationships, and an increasing
emotional apathy sometimes alternating with moments of exaggerated
feeling.

This symptomatic pattern was common in paranoid schizophrenia.

Grimly I thrust aside the conclusion to which my thoughts had led me,
ignoring the tight stomach cramp of fear, pretending that the reason
for panic did not exist.

I was heading south through the Culver basin, the west end of the
city's sprawling complex of trailer courts that ranged from the
utilitarian government projects for low income dwellings to luxurious
resort-like courts. I stayed off the automatic drive freeways,
preferring to control the car manually even though it meant a slower
trip. I needed contact with busy, noisy, normal humanity.

Moving on the ground level streets through the trailer basin gave
me a viewpoint I had not had in two years. I had lived in the basin
with my mother up to the time of her death. Afterwards I had obeyed
the inclination to cut myself off from everything and everyone I had
known. I had been fortunate in finding the vacancy in the court off
Mulholland Drive. In a city of sixteen million people forever bursting
out of their housing, that had been an even luckier chance than I had
realized. There was already a public clamor to re-zone Beverly Hills
for apartments and middle-income trailer courts. It was the city's last
remaining area of private homes and only the vast wealth and influence
of the rich and politically powerful who lived there had kept it from
being overwhelmed by the creeping mass of trailers and great apartment
cities.

Now, viewing the basin after a long absence, I could see the smothering
effects of overcrowding. The sidewalks were so jammed that people had
to move in funereal procession. At those rare cross streets where there
was not a pedestrian underpass there were three minute intervals while
cars waited for the surging wave of pedestrians to flow across the
street. Automobile traffic was heavy in spite of the great numbers who
no longer drove, preferring to take the speedy elevated trains which
thundered overhead at frequent intervals. And over the whole area there
was an unending murmur of sound, of feet and horns and voices and
loudspeakers of public telescreens and taped music, the whole orchestra
of sound like the unending drone that would exist in the center of a
giant beehive. And the city smelled. It smelled of sweat and oil and
seared meat and smoke and French perfumes. It smelled of humanity
penned into a seemingly airless enclosure. I had the feeling of being
imprisoned within solid walls of sound and smell and motion.

The world was fast becoming much too small. Over twenty-five years
of uninterrupted peace had combined with the achievements of science
against sickness and disease and accident to produce a vast population
explosion with all of its attendant overcrowding and unemployment and
food shortages. The world needed space. Already the crime rate was
climbing alarmingly. Traditional food resources were being exhausted.

We needed the universe to grow in. But what enemies lay waiting for us
on those distant planets circling through the void? Was it conceivable
that I, alone in all the world, had met the first of those enemies?
That I held the fate of mankind in my hands? Would anyone believe me if
I could warn those who might save us?

No. They wouldn't listen. An overcrowded world had produced a surplus
of fanatic prophets of doom. They would be sympathetic, the leaders who
might hear my cry of warning. If I got violent, they would forcibly
confine me for treatment. But if what I believed was not madness but
reality, and if I failed to stop the aliens, humanity would perish.

Absorbed in thought I missed the intersection I was searching for. In
no time, I was lost in the maze. The street pattern was so chaotic
that, even with a map, it took me an hour to find what I sought, the
Lucky Galaxy Trailer Court. By then it was dusk and I realized I would
probably be arriving just at dinner time.

I wondered what the Darrows would be like.

The trailer was quite old, slightly larger than my own, set on its
own small plot of ground with a tiny cement patio and several square
yards of grass and garden, carefully tended. In spite of its age, the
trailer had a look of well-scrubbed cleanliness and perfect repair, an
air of privacy and pride. I remembered my mother's attempts to keep our
trailer clean and comfortable and homelike, and how restless and ill at
ease she had felt in the newer trailer we had bought after my father's
legacy to her, a modern trailer made of materials that shone without
cleaning, full of gadgets that made cooking effortlessly impersonal and
housework obsolete.

The blinds were not drawn in the Darrow trailer. I could see a man of
middle age standing in the living room before a three-dimensional TV
screen. He had his arm cocked in the pose of a football player about to
throw a pass. In the kitchen a plump little woman moved back and forth
busily, her back toward me. I saw no sign of Helen Darrow as I went up
the short walk to the door.

The man answered my knock. He had a short, spare figure and defeated
eyes surrounded by wrinkles that suggested he had once laughed a great
deal. He carried his shoulders erect and square with a suggestion of
defiant pride. At the moment the corners of his mouth were pulled down
in an expression of irritation. "What is it?" he snapped.

"Is Helen in?" I asked.

Curiosity stirred in the dull eyes. "Nope. But she'll be back in a few
minutes. We're just about to eat," he added pointedly.

"Ask the young man in," a voice called from within the trailer.

"Well, I don't want to interrupt your dinner," I said. "I just wanted
to talk to your daughter for a few minutes."

"Nonsense," the woman said, appearing suddenly beside the man. "Come
right in."

I hesitated. The man turned his back on me and trotted back to the TV
screen. The woman beamed cheerfully at me. I stepped inside, feeling
uncomfortable about my mission.

"My name is Cameron," I said awkwardly. "I--I'm an instructor at the
university."

"Well, isn't that nice, George? He's one of Helen's teachers."

"No, I'm not," I said quickly. "But I know her and--"

"Won't you stay for dinner? Have you eaten?"

"I couldn't do that."

"Rubbish," Mrs. Darrow said brightly. "There's plenty, and it's always
nice to have a guest when you're a good cook. And I am," she added with
unaffected pleasure.

I smiled. The odors of fresh vegetables cooking filled the small room.
"I'll bet you are," I said. "But I can't stay. I have another call to
make."

"You have to stop to eat sometime," she said placidly, ignoring my
protests and getting another plate from the built-in rack.

There was an unexpected thump from the living area. I turned to see
George Darrow rising from the couch and going through the motions of
dusting himself off. His eyes glittered with pleasure. I heard the
announcer's voice from the TV set talking excitedly about someone just
getting a pass away before being dumped. The pass was complete for
a fifteen yard gain. With a faint smile, I realized that Darrow was
one of those millions of sports addicts who lived for the synthetic
participation games so popular now on television.

"You can eat while you're talking to Helen," Mrs. Darrow said behind
me. "Unless it's private, of course...."

"No," I said quickly. "I really shouldn't be bothering her but I
thought she might be able to help me."

"You just go into the living room with father. Helen'll be here any
minute. George, isn't that game over yet?"

"We're in the last quarter," George Darrow said excitedly. "Watch that
safety man!"

I was in time to see a pass skip off the outstretched fingers of a
defensive halfback. Darrow sighed with heart-felt relief.

"That was close," he muttered. "We're playing the New York Bruins," he
added. "I'm with the Toronto Titans tonight."

I took a seat at the side of the room so as not to get in the little
man's way. It was remarkable how his eyes had lost their lifelessness.
They were avid, greedy with interest. He bent forward eagerly, calling
imaginary signals under his breath. The ball was snapped and it
seemed to spiral directly toward us in the startling illusion of the
dimensional screen. George Darrow reached to gather it in and faded
back a couple of steps to pass, looking for a receiver. The announcer's
voice rose in an animated description of the action.

I thought of the billions of men and sports-crazy youngsters throughout
the world who would be duplicating his actions, just as he imitated
the movements of the passer on the screen now, taking the passer's
place through the trickery of the television cameras. The participation
sports events provided a year round diet of baseball and football,
hockey and jai alai, and various other games and contests in which the
viewer could have the vicarious thrill of taking part. I had never
enjoyed them. I could only contrast the closed, air-conditioned,
private sports arenas, where the professional athletes played before
the eyes of the cameras alone, with the noisy confusion of the stadiums
I remembered from my childhood, where teams battled before live
audiences, where you saw the action itself and not an illusion of it.

But George Darrow's sports enthusiasm might prove useful to me. He
would probably not be at all reluctant to talk about Mike Boyle. I
waited impatiently for the game to end. Except for the announcer's
voice with its false excitement and George Darrow's quick breathing
and occasional grunts, the trailer's peace was disturbed only by the
small, familiar kitchen sounds of a woman preparing a family meal,
happy in the surprise addition of a guest. The place was full of her
warmly sentimental touches--frilly draperies, hand-crafted artifacts,
an elaborately framed telephone screen in rare genuine maple. My own
trailer in comparison was bare and cold and impersonal. I began to feel
more keenly the absurdity of any suspicion that this warm and modest
home, so typically human, could house an unearthly creature.

George Darrow pressed a chair button to turn off the TV set. The game
was over. The room was abruptly silent. He sank into a chair, staring
at me. After a moment he coughed, seemed about to speak, thought better
of it.

"You must know Mike Boyle pretty well," I said casually.

The man's eyes brightened again. "Mike? Sure do. Best roving tackle in
the country, that boy."

I had struck the chord. "Yes. I saw Mike this afternoon scrimmaging. A
couple of tough games coming up this weekend."

"We'll take 'em," Darrow said. "Mike should make All-American in a
walk, the kind of season he's having. He's the difference in our team."
He paused, then looked up happily. "Mike and Helen are going steady,
you know."

"Yes, I knew. That reminds me, did Helen see him last night? I heard
the coach talked to him about being out late, again, breaking training."

Darrow laughed. "They may talk to Mike but he don't listen. He does
just what he wants, that boy. Yeah, he and Helen had a date last night.
Like most nights. But they weren't out late, were they, mother?"

Mrs. Darrow carried a steaming bowl over to the table at one end of
the kitchen. "I'd say about eleven," she said. "Mike's a good boy, Mr.
Cameron. I never worry when Helen is out with him."

"I'm glad to hear that," a voice broke in.

We all turned toward the door. The slender brunette I had seen with
Boyle stood in the doorway watching me, her face unsmiling.

I rose. "We were just talking about you."

"I heard."

She took a couple of steps into the room, her eyes still sharply
observant, and I wondered whether there was anything of wariness in
them--or just a girl's natural suspicion of a stranger who comes around
asking questions.

"Mr. Cameron stopped by to see you," her mother said cheerfully, "so I
asked him to stay for dinner. It's all ready."

"Maybe he doesn't have time," the girl suggested.

"He has to eat," the woman said, briskly appraising my tall, angular
frame. "And he looks like he could use a good, home-cooked meal."

I smelled the heaping bowl of vegetables and the thick slices of real
bread. Sharp teeth of hunger gnawed at me.

"I guess I am hungry at that."

Although it was obvious that she did not welcome my presence, Helen
Darrow did not object, nor did she press immediately to find out what
I wanted to see her about. The four of us sat around the small table
and ate. The girl and her father were silent. Mrs. Darrow talked with
unaffected garrulousness about Helen and her aspirations in physics,
her childhood successes in school, the happiness she had brought her
parents. Pride bloomed in the mother's voice. The girl would sometimes
smile slightly and make a mild protest which her mother brushed aside.
I began to realize that the girl was not actively unfriendly, simply
reserved and rather serious by disposition. Soon I was feeling quite
comfortable with the intimate family group. I liked them and even
envied them a little. Any suspicions I might have had evaporated. When
the girl's question came at last, near the end of the meal, voiced
casually as if it were not important, I felt guilty about persisting in
a pointless investigation. At the same time, I had to come up with a
plausible excuse for my visit.

"What was it you wanted to see me about, Mr. Cameron?"

I hesitated. "You remember that accident I had the other night?"

"Of course."

"You were in an accident?" Mrs. Darrow asked with quick concern.

"Nothing serious," I said. "But I wanted to get in touch with the man
who was driving the car and I seem to have lost his address. I wondered
if by any chance you remember it."

Helen Darrow frowned. "Harrison, I think his name was." She seemed to
accept my explanation without question. "Albert or Alfred or something
like that."

"Do you remember the address?"

"Noooo. No, I can't help you there, I'm afraid."

I smiled appreciatively. "Well, it was worth a try. Maybe one of the
others will remember it. I tried to phone you last night," I added
with a studied lack of emphasis. "Around eight. But you must have been
out."

"I was with Mike. We went out to dinner."

"That's funny," her mother said. "Father and I were in all evening."

There was an awkward silence.

"No, we weren't," George Darrow said abruptly. "We went over to the
Wallaces for a few minutes. Just about eight o'clock it was."

"That must have been when I called," I said with relief. I rose
from the table. "I hate to eat and run, and I do appreciate your
hospitality, Mrs. Darrow, but--"

"Won't you stay and have some coffee?"

"No, I have some other calls to make. I wish I could."

"Well, you must come again."

"I'll try to do that. It isn't often I get a chance to eat a meal like
this."

The girl followed me to the door. "I hope you can find the man," she
said, more openly friendly now than she had been in the beginning. More
at ease, I thought, liking her, liking the serious, intent face and the
quiet, intelligent eyes.

"I thought you were going to ask me about that girl who was killed,"
she said.

I felt an involuntary tension. "No. You heard about that?"

"It was all over school today."

I relaxed. Of course it would have been a sensational topic of
conversation on the campus. I could imagine the speculations, the
arguments, the macabre jokes.

"A terrible thing," I said automatically. I turned to leave. "Thanks
for your trouble. And thank your parents for me again."

I went out into the cool night. The girl stood watching me, a small
slim figure outlined against the warm light within the trailer.

Once again my search had been fruitless. And now I had talked to all
four of the students who were in the booth of the Dugout that fateful
night.

I couldn't believe that any one of them was capable of inhuman powers.
Or of murder.




                                  12


When I dialed Laurie Hendricks' number a male servant answered. The
number was a Beverly Hills exchange. The man informed me politely
that Miss Hendricks was not at home but that she might be reached at
the beach trailer. This was the first I knew of a place at the beach,
but its existence was in keeping with the expensive luxury of space I
could glimpse on the telephone screen as I talked to the servant. At
that moment, I made a mental connection I had failed to reach before,
coupling the name Hendricks with the economy two-passenger helicopter
that had brought flying within the reach of the average family's
budget. The Hendricks helicopter! The name was so familiar that I had
not thought to link it with Laurie Hendricks, but the wealth evident in
the existence of a private home in Beverly Hills plus a beach trailer
suggested that she might indeed be the daughter of Ben Hendricks, air
pioneer extraordinary.

The servant gave me the address and phone number of the beach trailer.
Laurie answered on the fourth ring.

"Hello?"

Her image leaped onto the screen. She was dripping wet, her red hair
clinging to her head in dark, heavy strands. I glimpsed behind her a
damp bathing suit tossed carelessly over the arm of a chair. She held
a huge beach towel in front of her chest with one hand pressed between
her breasts, the towel draping itself tantalizingly over the fullness
on either side of her hand.

"Laurie? This is Paul Cameron."

I flicked the two-way switch so that she could view me on her screen.
There was a moment's pause while her eyes stared steadily at me from
the lifelike image. I wondered if she was aware that the picture was
turned on at her end of the line, or if she was always so careless
about dress when she answered the phone.

"What do you want?" Her voice was cool, distant.

"We were interrupted the other night."

"Were we?"

"I've got to talk to you."

"I don't think we have anything to talk about."

"I'm coming out there. Will you be waiting?"

"You needn't bother. I have a date tonight--with Bob. I have to get
ready now so you must excuse me."

"You're going to listen to me whether you want to or not," I said,
suddenly angry. "There was nothing for you to worry about between me
and Lo--"

"Why should I worry?"

She broke the connection. In the instant before the image faded she
turned away. There was nothing to conceal the sculptured beauty of
her back. I stared at the screen long after it had turned blank,
wondering if this brief provocative display had been another moment of
absent-minded indifference or a deliberate taunt.

It had destroyed the effect of her cold rejection.

       *       *       *       *       *

I took the automatic freeway to the beach, setting the controls for the
fast inner lane. I sat back while the electronic fingers automatically
steered the car safely and smoothly into the lane and carried it
forward at the set speed of a hundred and fifty miles an hour.

Thinking of Laurie's image on the screen, remembering the feel of her
body and her soft lips pressing against mine, I felt a slow uncurling
of desire. When I had obtained her address that afternoon, I had
been methodically determined to follow up every possible avenue of
suspicion. She had been too quick to throw herself at me in my trailer
the night before, I had argued, too ready to provide me with an alibi
when the police came. Now I knew that I had simply been deceiving
myself. I had eliminated her from suspicion even before I tasted the
human passion of her lips. I was going to her now because I needed
her. I wanted to hold her and to lose myself in her, to forget fear
and threats and self-tormenting doubts of my own sanity in the intense
oblivion of love.

The westbound freeway reached the intersection of the automatic ocean
causeway. I made the necessary instrument adjustments and shot out over
the water onto the broad cement lanes that followed the coastline to
the north, a modern eight lane platform suspended on pilings a quarter
mile from the shore. There was a manual drive highway just inland from
the beach for slow and local traffic, but if you wanted to make speed
you took the causeway out over the--

It struck me like a blow below the belt. Water! The dream! A senseless,
terrorized animal, I found myself scrabbling at the door, trying to
force it open. The same automatic controls which guided the car along
the road also froze the doors while the car was in motion. I came out
of that first blind moment of panic and sat rigid in the seat, my eyes
fixed on the white ribbon of pavement directly in front of me, refusing
to look to either side at the black, pounding surf. Headlights rushed
at me on the inbound lanes and hurtled past. The engine whined and wind
buffeted the speeding car, but I imagined that I could hear above these
sounds the crash of waves below me.

Revulsion came, bitter self-recrimination, contemptuous denunciations
of my own animal fears. You're going to see Laurie, I told myself.
There's nothing to be afraid of. You won't have to go near the water.
You won't be alone. The nightmare of drowning is a phantom of the
night, symbolical only, a graphic representation of your subconscious
fear of sanity. Face it. Recognize it. Accept it.

But the voice, I thought. The voice of command. The alien mind. That is
real. I have heard it while I was awake and fully rational. That was no
dream symbol. That was real.

But was it? Hadn't I investigated every one of the suspects, the
four ordinary young people who were supposed to be possessed by some
incredible thing from Mars? Hadn't I convinced myself that each one
was innocent? Wasn't it about time that I began facing the irrefutable
facts, admitting that the weird plot against me was a fantastic
concoction of a sick imagination, revealing a not very unusual hidden
desire for self-destruction?

I grew calmer. In that moment the terror of insanity seemed less
horrifying than the spectre of a vicious alien force that could possess
and destroy me. At last I looked toward the shoreline at the familiar
sight of waves rising to a white crest and toppling over to wash upon
the beach. I had seen this a thousand times. It was nothing to be
afraid of. It couldn't touch me.

I was nearing the stretch of beach where Laurie's trailer should be.
Numbers flashed by at each of the ramps connecting the causeway with
the shoreline road. I pushed the lane change button that would shift
the car into the slower outer line of traffic. At the next ramp I
turned off. The automatic controls cut off as soon as the car sped onto
the ramp. My hands were sticky on the wheel and my arms quivered with
tension, but seconds later I was turning onto the beach highway. I
began to feel safer now that there was no longer any water under me.

The road rose and dipped with the curvature of the land. Crowding the
hills to the right, on the inland side of the road, were luxurious
beach apartments and nests of trailer courts, their lights creating a
rich pattern in the darkness. Most of the choice land along the beach
itself had been usurped by beach clubs and expensive resort hotels,
except for an occasional luxury group of trailers. It was in one of
these, the Beachcomber Trailer Lodge, that Laurie's trailer had a
uniquely desirable front row site.

I parked off the road on a bluff overlooking the trailer village and
the beach. Walking down, I could hear the rolling thunder of the surf,
and each reverberating crash caused my body to flinch in the way that,
watching a fight, you will seem to feel the thud of a telling blow. I
tried not to think about the limitless black plain of water stretching
beyond the narrow strip of beach.

Laurie's was a crisply modern mobile home with a large window facing
the shoreline. Most of the surrounding trailers were dark and there
was the stillness of the empty and unused about them. There were few
cars about and only a couple of helicopters on the landing strip near
the road. This was mostly a weekend resort, I concluded, for those
who could afford the extreme luxury of a home in town and a summer or
weekend hideout at the beach. At this season of the year, many of them
were undoubtedly deserted.

I knocked. There was no sound from within the trailer. I raised my hand
to knock again at the moment the door was pulled open.

Laurie stiffened. "You! I told you not to come."

"And I said I had to talk to you."

She started to close the door but I shoved through. The door slammed
behind me.

She held herself stiff with anger, her small fists clenched, but even
the rigidity of her body could not change the curving softness of
breast and hip and thigh to which the pale green tissue of her dress
clung. Confronting her in the small room, I felt the same quick surge
of desire, the same overpowering response to her beauty that had swept
over me the night before when her physical presence had seemed to
dominate the confined space of my own trailer. I had never reacted to a
woman so immediately and so forcefully.

How much of my reaction showed in the way I stared at her I don't know,
but it seemed to me that the bright spark of anger in her green eyes
subtly altered.

"I'm not sure what you're trying to prove," she said, less sharply than
I had expected, "but this isn't the way. You can leave right now."

"No. I'm here and you're going to listen to me."

Abruptly she turned away, scooping up a light coat from the back of a
chair. She started toward the door.

"If you want to talk, there's a restaurant not far up the road. Maybe
the waitress will listen."

I caught her arm. "I had to talk to Lois," I said, my fingers digging
into the soft flesh of her arm. "It was important and I can't explain
why. But I never saw her except in the Dugout, I never went out with
her, I never made a pass at her."

Laurie's face was still aloof, indifferent. "Is that supposed to mean
something to me?"

"Yes!"

"What do I do now--start to melt?"

"Are you trying to tell me that what happened last night meant nothing
to you? Just another lark?"

She wrenched free. "What did you expect? You didn't really believe that
bit about the student having a crush on teacher, did you? I was having
some fun, Professor. And tonight I'm having it with someone else!"

I almost hit her. Rage rocketed through me with an explosiveness that
was so shockingly violent I barely held the arm drawn back for the
blow. And in the next instant I had pinned her against the wall and
my arms were tightening around her, my mouth imprisoning hers in a
brutal, angry kiss that brought the taste of blood to my lips. I wasn't
even aware whether or not she was struggling. I knew only that she was
intensely, excitingly desirable and that the full warm length of her
was pressed against me.

I stepped back, breathing hard and quick. There was a frozen moment of
time suspended while I waited for her to explode.

Laurie laughed. "My God, Professor, you certainly do keep surprising
me!"

She tossed the coat she had been holding in the direction of the chair.
It missed and tumbled onto the floor. Ignoring it, she was already
moving back into my arms.

"Let's try that again," she murmured. "But this time don't bite."

The kiss was long and deeply disturbing. When it ended I felt shaky.
I wanted her--but for the first time I wondered if my emotional
attraction to her went beyond that need, if I wasn't already completely
in love with her. I stared at the puffed redness of her bruised lips,
at the delicate bone structure beneath the smooth skin of her cheeks,
at the vivid coloring of her eyes, and the painful knowledge came to me
that I was not free to love, not until I knew--

"I--I think I'm a little afraid of you, Paul Cameron," she said in a
voice that was younger, more subdued, less self-assured than I had ever
heard it. "I think you'd better leave now."

"But--"

"Please! It was true what I said about Bob--I do have a date with him.
He should have been here by now." Her eyes were pleading. "I was mad
at you. Besides--" she hesitated, her gaze searching my face as if she
wanted to remember every line. "I think I need a little while to mull
this over. This little girl isn't used to being swept off her feet. Not
like this."

I reached for her but she backed away quickly. "No! Let's--let's see
how we feel tomorrow when we're both a day older and wiser and--calmer.
I'll be here--waiting for you."

At last I nodded. "You're right, Laurie. But if you let that blond
kid--"

She smiled. "I can handle Bob."

She didn't move as I went to the door. Before I opened it her
words came softly and with a surprising note of tenderness.
"Goodnight--darling."




                                  13


The trailer was in a slight hollow. From inside, you could see the
white froth along the shore, but when you stepped down to the sand
outside, a smooth ridge cut off the view of the water. I could hear the
smash of a breaker coming in, the receding rattle as it washed back
over a bed of stones. The sound didn't frighten me now. For the moment
the dream had been forgotten. Laurie's last words drifted on the cool
night air, bringing their own tingling warmth.

He struck out of darkness.

I had a split-second of warning, time enough to flinch against the
whiplash of command. It didn't come. The shadow that had moved around
the corner of the trailer closed in on me swiftly, but the blow was not
a sickening mental force. It was a clumsily swinging fist that skidded
painfully off my shoulder as I dodged. I heard a choking sob.

"Damn you!"

The white blob of a fist arched toward me and smashed against my jaw.
I was caught off balance. Falling, I had a strange floating sensation.
My cheek was numb. Even on the soft sand, the fall was jolting, and for
a second I couldn't move. The figure stood panting over me and I saw
blond hair caught in the slanting light from Laurie's window.

"Get up!" he raged. "Damn you, get up and fight!"

I laughed. Fear fell away from me and the reaction of relief was so
intense that there was no room for anger or pain or even surprise.
Jenkins! The jealous youth who had warned me to keep away from his girl.

The laughter enraged him even more. He dove on top of me. I rolled as
his lean hard body slammed against me. His fingers tore at my chest,
reaching for my throat. I fought back automatically, not really wanting
to fight, desiring merely to stop this foolishness, yet instinctively
defending myself. My flailing arm banged against the side of his
head. He grunted. For an instant the pressure of his hold weakened. I
wrenched free and tumbled away from him.

He came to his feet more quickly than I did. I was still in a crouch
when he stepped in and brought up his knee in a short, vicious piston
stroke. It exploded against my chin. My head snapped back and I toppled
backwards like a limber doll.

"I'll kill you!" he snarled.

Still I felt neither anger nor fright. There was a fleeting sense of
alarm, of recognition that here was a real threat, something that had
to be stopped, not just a laughable mistake. And there was pain. Blood
filled my mouth and my jaw was bruised and throbbing. But everything
was clear and rational and without emotion.

Somehow I got to my feet again. Absurdly the thought crossed my mind
that he wasn't playing the game according to the rules. You weren't
supposed to kick a man when he was down, you shouldn't use your knee at
all. Then there was no more time for reflection. He rushed at me, fists
pumping, and I managed to sidestep. He whirled and came at me again.
His fist grazed the top of my head. I punched back, hitting for the
vulnerable stomach, hoping only to slow him down. I wasn't breathing
very well and I was aware of blood streaming from my nose.

We fought standing up now, without speaking, the thud of a blow echoed
by a grunt or a gasp, our breathing loud and wheezing. My arms began to
feel leaden where they had caught the heavy impact of his fists.

"Don't be a damned fool!" I gasped.

"I warned you!"

I was wearing down, like a mechanical doll wound up and now nearing the
end of its dance, beginning to slow, each jerky movement more labored,
more artificial. He was younger, in better condition, harder, stronger,
more rested. I saw the end coming. His blows broke through my barriers
of elbow and shoulder more frequently. He must have sensed that I was
weakening and he pressed his attack more savagely.

I went down again, not so much from one blow as from an accumulation
of them. The thought came dimly to me that I had no hope of winning
because my heart wasn't in it. I didn't care. I had no sense of being a
warrior battling for my love against the evil knight. I was apathetic.
I fought only because I had to defend myself. It had nothing to do with
Laurie, nothing to do with courage or honor.

Without knowing how or why, I was on my feet again, aiming for the flat
hard stomach, oblivious of the knotted fist that slashed across my
cheek as I drove in, not knowing why I persisted in this futile form of
resistance.

A scream ripped across the darkness. Out of the corner of my eye I saw
Laurie standing in a pool of light at the front of the trailer. The cry
must have stopped Jenkins. I was already driving in, smashing my fist
into the only target I knew, the unguarded stomach. He gave a short,
emphatic grunt.

Laurie cried out again and rushed toward us. Jenkins sagged backwards
and sat down hard. I stood over him, swaying, and spat blood onto the
sand.

"My God! What are you doing, Paul? Why?"

"He started it," I mumbled childishly.

Jenkins said nothing. He sat where he had dropped, doubled over, his
fists pressed into his stomach. I heard a strangled sound as he tried
to suck air into his lungs.

Laurie began to cry. I stared at her stupidly. It seemed to be too much
trouble to speak again.

"You--you bully!" she choked through tears. "Why did you have to fight
him? You didn't have to!"

It would take too long to explain. She really ought to understand that
I hadn't wanted to fight. I couldn't explain it all to her now.

She sank to her knees beside Jenkins. "Oh, Bob," she said soothingly.
"You're hurt." She glared up at me. "Why do you always have to spoil
things? Just when everything was so perfect, why--oh, go away! I never
want to see you again!"

She held him gently, pressing his bent head against her bosom like a
mother cradling her child. I wanted to tell her that he wasn't really
hurt. I was the one who was hurt. Every bone in my body was broken.
He'd only had the breath knocked out of him.

But I knew she wouldn't listen, and the effort of trying to convince
her didn't seem worthwhile. Nothing mattered. I was dead tired and
aching and very old.

Turning, I staggered away across the sand.




                                  14


I sat in the little aluminum car for a long time. I don't know how
long. The numbness slowly left my chest and arms and face, clearing the
way for a thousand jabbing needles of pain. But the emotional numbness,
the dull apathy, remained.

A fight shouldn't wreck you like this, I thought. At twenty-seven you
aren't exactly an old man. Weren't you supposed to reach your physical
peak at that age?

Why had I felt no real anger? The unemotional, automatic resistance
during the fight was abnormal. My feeling now of being drained and
empty was disproportionate. A reaction to the weeks of strain, perhaps,
with the physical beating I had taken providing the finishing blows.

Or did it go deeper than that? My reaction to Laurie was not normal
either. The emotional pendulum was swinging far too wide at both ends
of its arc. I was not a kid any more, not an unstable adolescent.
Kissing a young and beautiful girl was not a unique, soul-shattering
experience. The moment's passion with Laurie had meant too much.
Granted she was no ordinary girl, and in my self-imposed isolation I
had not been leading what could be called a full and satisfying sex
life. Yet neither of these facts seemed to account fully for the highly
charged, volatile reaction I had had to her on the two occasions we had
been alone for a few minutes.

Could she be exercising some unnatural influence?

As I examined the thought a feeling of disgust welled up in me. It
won't work, I thought dully, the revulsion itself a gray, listless
emotion. Laurie is dangerous only if you're afraid of love, timid
in the face of a strong relationship. She is not a monster. Nor is
Jenkins. He had his opportunity right there on the beach in the
darkness. It would have been easy for him to use the brutal force of
a super-mind instead of awkward fists. He could have done it before
Laurie heard the sounds of fighting and came out. It could have been
done as it was in the dream. "Drown! Drown yourself!" And no one would
have known how or why it happened.

No. Not Jenkins, not Laurie, not Helen Darrow or Mike Boyle. It had
to be one of these and it was none of them. So I could no longer hide
behind my bizarre delusion. There were no aliens. There was no enemy
but the one who hid inside me. Myself.

And yet--there was one fact which was not imaginary. Lois Worthington
had died. She had seen the man in the back booth, I had tried to reach
her, and she had been brutally murdered. This fact was all too real.
And the vision I had had so long ago of my father's death, that could
not be dismissed or explained away now. That too had happened. At the
time I was able to believe in coincidence. No longer.

Moreover, if the aliens existed only as part of an elaborate delusion
of persecution, if whispered voices were hallucinations, there should
have been accompanying symptoms before this, evidence of a greater
deterioration of my thinking. But nothing else had changed. The world
looked the same to me. I didn't even have to look far for a plausible
explanation of my abrupt swings from apathy to extreme emotionalism.
This instability could logically be accounted for by the unnatural
pressures of fear and worry.

Dubiously I examined the evidence for and against the existence of the
aliens. The structure of argument on which I could support belief in my
sanity was weak, thin-walled, its foundations shallow. I closed my mind
to shelter it against the winds of fact and logic.

       *       *       *       *       *

I drove slowly away from the beach trailer community. There had been no
sign of Laurie or Jenkins while I sat in the car. Some of the pain in
my bruised body had subsided. Nothing after all had been broken except
the tip of one tooth whose nerve throbbed like a hot wire in my jaw.
My clothes were torn and bloody and the skin had been ripped off my
knuckles, but otherwise I had come out of the fight in fair shape. The
bruises would turn yellow and finally fade away, new skin would cover
the knuckles, the puffiness around one eye would disappear, a plastic
cap would disguise the broken tooth.

I glanced at the time dial on the instrument panel. It was not yet
eleven o'clock. Still early. The forty-eight hours which had passed
since the voices drew me across the campus toward the Dugout seemed
more like endless weeks. Time had lost its meaning.

At this hour the shoreline road along which I moved was relatively
deserted. Only an occasional car approached me along the outbound
lanes. My pace was slow and one or two cars accelerated to pass me.
The headlights of another slow-moving car bobbed in my rear view
telescreen. Out on the causeway over the water traffic was much
heavier, a glittering pattern of speeding lights.

A cat darted away from the side of the road. My foot jammed down in
a sudden reflex action. I swerved sharply. For a second, the cat
disappeared under the hood of the car and I felt a quick tension in
expectation of the thump of contact. Then the cat reappeared, somehow
having eluded the squealing tires, and I straightened the car. It had
slowed almost to a crawl.

Accelerating, I glanced automatically into the rear view screen. The
headlights of the car behind me were exactly the same distance away
they had been before. For a moment I stared dully at the screen, not
comprehending the significance of the other car's movement, yet aware
that something was wrong. Understanding came slowly and, with it,
the first bright streak of emotion to penetrate the gray cloud which
enveloped me, a quick pulsation of fear.

I drove faster, climbing swiftly up from thirty to fifty miles an hour.
The headlights remained steady on the screen, keeping pace. The car was
following me.

There was a frozen moment when reality slipped away from me. I was
aware of a creeping coldness, like the cutting chill of a damp wind,
penetrating until my flesh crawled and my teeth began to chatter
uncontrollably. Somehow I kept the car on the road in its lane,
maintaining the same speed. Then I saw the lights staring at me like
eyes from the screen and I came out of my horrified trance with a jolt.

I had lost precious seconds. My foot jammed down and the little car
leaped forward, the purr of its engine rising to a steady whine. The
hills on my left side were a blur, and the clustered trailers on the
ocean side of the road zipped past me with slapping wind sounds. I was
approaching a speed of a hundred miles an hour and I had to fight to
keep the light car on the road. It seemed to bounce and leap, hardly
touching the ground.

And there were the headlights, dancing and winking on the small screen.
The needle of the speedometer touched a hundred, edged past it--and at
that instant I knew that I had played right into the pursuer's hands.
This was what he wanted. This was to be the accident.

I slammed on the power brakes. They held, grinding loudly, while the
car dipped and veered sharply, sliding into a skid.

"Release the brake!"

The thought cracked across my mind like the blow of a club. Momentarily
stunned, I still kept my foot on the brake. The car was skidding
dangerously now and the wheel seemed to have a life of its own,
twisting and jumping in my hands. The scream of tires was like a cry of
terror. But the car's speed had dropped swiftly.

"Release it!"

Sweat started on my forehead and under my arms. For a long moment my
mind was locked in conflict with the force that tried to break it.
Then, as if it were a wooden appendage attached to me but out of my
control, my leg jerked. The car rolled free.

"Drive faster!"

I started to obey automatically as if the command had been my own,
the message swiftly telegraphed from brain to foot. Anger brought
resistance. I concentrated on steering the slowing car, trying to shut
my mind, to create a blank wall of stubborn resistance. The muscles in
my legs jerked with tension.

"Faster!" The word broke through like one of Jenkins' fists smashing
through my feeble guard.

And, while my hands clenched the wheel until they ached, my foot inched
inexorably toward the accelerator, nudged it, clamped down. The car
lurched forward with gathering speed. A crushing weight of defeat made
me slump on the seat. Tears of frustration blurred my vision of the
road ahead. The speedometer climbed rapidly. A car's horn blasted and
I swerved from the middle of the road back into my lane. I caught a
glimpse of a red, angry face flashing past. The familiar headlights
winked in the rear view screen like the eyes of the alien whose power
had smashed through my flimsy barrier of resistance. Despair twisted
like a fist in my stomach.

"Faster!" The voice that spoke in my mind was cold, unmoved, arrogant
in its knowledge of power.

And I obeyed, letting myself relax, trying to ease the aching muscles
of my arms and legs, not thinking about what I was going to do or what
was about to happen to me. The speedometer's needle began to waver
erratically above one hundred and ten miles an hour.

"Faster! Faster!"

The one word, repeated over and over, drumming in my brain until it
obliterated thought. I was an automaton, steering the lurching, whining
car along the blurred ribbon of road, a puppet controlled by tenuous
strings of mental force, a wooden puppet without will or thought of its
own, dumbly responding to the master's word.

And at last it came, the command, so dreaded in the deep recesses of my
consciousness that protest shrieked in my mind, breaking me out of the
stupor.

"Turn the wheel!"

And in that instant, when the immediate pull of obedience was almost
overwhelming, a final frenzied cry of defiance was heard. I saw ahead
the slanting curve of a ramp shooting out toward the ocean causeway.
For long agonizing seconds I held out against the pressure--and when
my hands moved on the wheel it was at that precise and last possible
second which sent the car careening onto the ramp and into a long
banked curve.

The maneuver caught my pursuer by surprise. There was a brief,
bewildered respite before the clear cold voice spoke again, stamping
out the elation that gripped me. The line of the causeway beckoned, so
near now, less than a quarter of a mile away--

"Turn! Turn now!"

And I had spent the last remaining reserve of strength to resist. My
hands obeyed. I spun the wheel.

The little car bounced off the low parapet at the edge of the ramp,
kicked back out of control and shot across the narrow cement strip, its
tail beginning a slow fishtailing motion, sliding into a spin. The low
barrier on the other side of the ramp loomed up swiftly and I cringed
against the impact--

And the car was caught by a sudden jerk that slammed me against the
door with bone-jarring force. I felt the invisible electronic fingers
of the automatic road controls grasping at the car, pulling it back,
fighting against the momentum that carried it forward. Hope leaped in
my chest. I had made it!

For a flashing second the car seemed to hang suspended, caught between
the conflicting forces, and I was aware of the speeding lanes of
traffic on the causeway now so near to me, of the whirling canopy of
the star-stabbed sky, of the gray cold water surging far below. But
the car's momentum had been too great. The plucking fingers of the
electronic ribbon imbedded in the road slipped and lost their hold. The
car's left front wheel and fender hit the parapet.

And the car was in mid-air, leaping the low wall and tumbling end over
end in a long, soaring arc of flight, plummeting down, down, to smash
at last into the wall of water. The wall broke and crashed around me
and I plunged through it into a vast, unending pool of darkness.




                                  15


Faces swam through the water, distorted and shimmering. There was a
distant roaring in my ears like the clamor of the sea trapped in a
seashell. The din faded away gradually and in the immensity of silence
I waited shivering for the unseen force that would grip my mind.

"It's a miracle!" someone said clearly.

My eyelids pushed open like dusty blinds. I saw the faces again,
blurred like a picture slightly out of focus but much sharper than
before. I remembered an earlier awakening when five pairs of eyes had
stared down at me in open curiosity and I had flinched in fear. Or had
it all been a dream from which I was only now awakening?

"Don't move," a man said.

I had no intention of moving. My head ached and there was a deep
throbbing in my arm, extending from a point near the shoulder down past
the elbow, a throbbing not really painful but curiously electric and
tingling.

I closed my eyes and re-opened them. There were two pairs of eyes, set
in two faces which were quite clear. A man and a woman, middle-aged or
older. Strangers. The man's hair was steel grey and very wet against
his skull. The woman looked like a bird. She bent toward me and I had
the momentary impression that she was going to peck at me with her
long, sharply-pointed nose.

"Can you hear us?" she asked in a thin, piping voice. "Do you know what
we're saying?"

"Yes."

I thought I spoke aloud but she continued to watch me expectantly.
Behind her the sky was black and the fact surprised me. I had somehow
expected hot sunlight and a hard blue sky.

"Henry pulled you out of the car," the woman said. "We saw it happen."

I heard a breaker topple over and the swish-swish of two cars passing
on the highway. Then I remembered.

"The voice!" I cried. "Turn the wheel!"

The man crouched over me threateningly. "What's that you said?"

I tried to twist away. Pain sliced through my head in a clean stroke
that seemed to take the top of my skull off.

"Please!" I groaned. "The voice--"

"What about the voice?"

"It told me--turn--turn the wheel."

"Henry! Did you hear what he said?"

"He's delirious, mother. It don't mean anything."

"But he heard voices. He must be one of them."

"He doesn't know what he's saying."

My eyes had shut against the pain in my head. Opening them I saw the
two people in sharply dimensional focus. The man was soaking wet.
He appeared worried. The woman's bird-like features were curiously
pinched, her eyes bright with excitement.

"Did you hear a voice?" she asked quickly. "Is that what you're trying
to say? Did a voice speak to you?"

"Told me to turn," I said weakly. "The alien voice--"

"In your mind?" she demanded. "Can you hear voices--even when there
aren't any people talking?"

I nodded faintly. "Tried to make me--kill myself."

"He needs a doctor," the man said suddenly.

"No!" The woman whirled on him. "The Exalted One would wish that he be
brought to him."

"We aren't sure--"

"But he must be one who can hear the voices. You heard what he
said--and you said yourself he should have been killed in that
accident. If he hadn't been a Chosen One--"

"He might be hurt worse than we can see."

"The Swami will know. We must take him there."

Bewildered, I listened to them argue, not understanding what they could
mean. They spoke in casual tones as if others had heard the voices.
But if that were true then I was not alone, it wasn't something I had
imagined--

"You've heard the voices?" I asked eagerly. "You've heard them?"

The brightness faded from her eyes, clouded over with sadness. She
shook her head. "We try, Henry and me, but we can't hear them. We are
weak. We have not learned the fullness of believing. But the Swami
says we are approaching the purity of full knowledge." Her voice rose
earnestly. "Our day will come--if not in this life, then in the next."

The man grunted, interrupting her. "Can you move your legs?" he asked
of me.

I hesitated, then tried. I could wriggle my toes and flex my knees. I
felt as if this were a great accomplishment.

The man shook his head. "You should have been killed," he said as if it
were a grudging admission. "I guess maybe mother is right." He stood,
turning toward the woman. "I'll bring the car down here. Don't let him
move." He glanced down at me. "We can't do anything about your car
right now. We'll report it and maybe they'll be able to fish it out.
But the water's pretty deep there."

The loss of the car meant nothing to me. At the moment it did not even
occur to me that the car was not mine and I would be responsible for
any damage to it. The man had trudged up the beach toward the road and
I stared at the bird woman.

"This person you're taking me to--has he heard them?"

"Oh, yes!" she said, evidently surprised. "He is exalted!"

I didn't understand. Fatigue pressed down on me and I was conscious
of the pain in my head, of the deep throbbing in my arm. I tried
to concentrate on what the couple had said, feeling an impatient
excitement, but I couldn't seem to think clearly. I clung to the one
fact that emerged clearly. There was someone else who had heard the
voices, someone who could help me. I wouldn't be alone any more.

A car chugged through the soft sand and stopped nearby. A door opened.
I felt hands sliding under my arms, lifting me. There was a cry of
pain. A dizzying spiral of brightness whirled me around and around,
released me, and I went sailing off into dark, empty space once more.




                                  16


It was morning when I woke. I felt stiff and sore, and for a minute I
had the impression that I was encased from head to toe in thick white
bandage. As I came more fully awake I realized that only my head and
left arm were bandaged. I was dressed in a shapeless one-piece white
gown that was tangled around my legs and torso.

I didn't know where I was. I lay in a hard, narrow bed between crisp,
old-fashioned, white cotton sheets, the kind I had known as a child.
The room was small and high-ceilinged. There was but one window, long
and narrow and deeply inset with an elaborate metal grill. Though the
window was curtainless, the wall was so thick that the rays of the sun
were not direct but soft and filtered through the narrow aperture.

I pushed myself up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. I had
to brace myself as a dizzying wave of pain and nausea washed over me.
I had the weak-limbed sensation of someone who has been in bed a long
time. I wondered if I was in a hospital and how long I had been there.

There was a heavy carved wooden door at one end of the room with a
small panel of opaque glass set into it at eye level. I had a fleeting
impression that someone was watching me but I couldn't see through the
glass.

Memory returned to me slowly in sharp-edged, broken fragments. I
remembered being with Laurie, the fight with Jenkins outside her
trailer, the headlong flight along the coast road, the lights staring
at me from the rear view screen, the voice urging me to go faster and
faster, and at last, the moment of terror when the car struck the
parapet and tumbled through the air so fast that I was pinned against
the seat.

And the couple who had loaded me into their car. They were taking me to
see someone--

I heard a click. The door swung open and a small, sharp-featured woman
trotted briskly into the room, clad in a loose white toga.

"You're awake!" she exclaimed.

The statement didn't seem to require an answer. I frowned at her.

"Don't you remember? We brought you here--Henry and I. The Swami was
very pleased."

"Swami?"

"Yes! The Exalted One. He will see you this morning." She peered at me
anxiously. "Are you feeling all right? The Swami said there was nothing
broken. Your arm was badly cut and you had a concussion, that's all."

That was all. I felt as if I would never be able to move freely again.
Yet I realized that I had once again been incredibly lucky. The alien
had failed.

"Do you think you can eat?"

The thought of food brought back the acute sensation of nausea. I bent
over, pressing one hand against my stomach, swallowing hard. I shook my
head.

"You must have something," the woman said with a birdy peck of her
head. "Don't try to walk yet."

She swept out, her toga trailing on the floor. The dust on the skirt
marred the pristine white effect of the gown. I made no further attempt
to move. The room swayed unsteadily around me whenever I stirred. I sat
on the edge of the bed, unable to rouse myself to any real curiosity
about where I was and why I had been brought here. Minutes ticked by
and the woman did not return. The room was totally soundless. I could
hear neither movement within it nor the sounds of a living world
outside. Even the air conditioning was noiseless.

The place was like a crypt, I thought. The idea was peculiarly
disturbing. I stared at the thick walls and the narrow slot of
window and the heavy closed door, and they danced before my eyes as
if they were edging forward, slowly closing in on me. A smothering
claustrophobic fear clotted my throat and my breathing became labored
and irregular.

Panic drove me off the bed. My clothes were laid neatly on a carved
wooden chair against the wall. I staggered toward the chair. The floor
of the room tilted and I had the sensation of falling, but somehow
I reached the wall and leaned against it. After the room steadied,
it took me several minutes to change from the white gown into my own
coverall. I had to keep grabbing the chair for support. In spite of the
cool temperature I was sweating.

Then I discovered that my shoes were missing. I looked very carefully
around the room. There was no closet. The chair and the narrow bed
were the only pieces of furniture. The floor itself was bare. My shoes
weren't there.

I was still puzzling over this when the door opened and the bright-eyed
bird woman tripped into the room carrying a tray. She stopped abruptly
when she saw me.

"I told you not to get up," she said crossly.

I didn't answer her. She left the door open and I was staring at it.
Air seemed to rush in through the opening. The smothering, closed-in
feeling left me. How absurd, I thought. You're ill. You're imagining
all kinds of dangers.

"You'd better sit on the bed," the woman said. "Can you make it? I
guess you can, getting dressed and all."

I went obediently to the bed. It was easier this time. Even the
dizziness was subsiding. I could smell the fragrance of hot tea. On the
tray there were also some dry crackers and a bowl of some kind of dried
meal that looked like rice but was hard and crunchy like a seed. To my
own surprise the sight of the food made me hungry.

I ate. The meal was tasteless but not unpleasant. The crackers and the
tea were excellent. I seemed to feel strength pouring into me as I ate.
By the time I had finished I felt almost normal.

I glanced up at the woman, who sat perched on the edge of the chair
with a bright-eyed air of interest. She even cocked her head and peered
at me sideways like a bird. She wore a thin little smile.

"Where are my shoes?" I asked suddenly.

She was startled. "Oh, we never wear shoes here!"

And for the first time I saw that her feet were bare. No wonder she
moved so silently. I thought of hundreds of people padding throughout
the building on silent, naked feet. The idea was more comical than
frightening.

"And where is here?" I asked.

Her tone was lower, almost reverent. "You are in the Temple of the
Western Sun," she said. "You have been granted an audience with the
Exalted One. He has already seen you and laid his hand upon you."

I frowned. Phrases came back to me from the previous night, and from
somewhere came an image of a very brown man with luminous black eyes
staring at me, bending close. And I remembered why I had been brought
here. I looked sharply at the woman. Her husband had saved my life. And
they had said something about the alien voices.

"I owe you my life," I said. "Your husband pulled me out of the car."

She smiled. "We saw it happen. Henry swam out and got you. Then when
you said you had heard a voice, that an evil voice had forced you to
turn off the road--"

"There's someone else here who has heard the voices?" I asked eagerly.
"You said--"

"The Exalted One hears," she said calmly. "It's strange that you should
have heard them when so many of us have tried so hard and failed. But
the waters of God's purpose are deep and hard to fathom."

The last words dropped incongruously from the woman's lips, spoken
with a kind of mechanical precision that was very familiar to me: the
recitation by rote of an approved answer by a student who does not
understand. The curiosity growing in me was checked by some misgivings.
I was eager to meet the man she called the Exalted One. I had heard of
mystical religious cults, of course--their numbers had grown rapidly
in recent years--and it was probable that I had stumbled upon one of
these. But I grasped at the straw of fact that was offered to me: the
man had heard bodiless voices. However he might have interpreted them,
wasn't it possible that he might have heard the aliens?

"When can I see him? I'd like to talk to him now."

"He is in contemplation," the woman said. "But it won't be long now."
She nodded toward the window, through which one could perceive only a
sliver of blue sky. "When the sun is overhead he will call you."

Her expression became grave. "You will want to prepare yourself. I will
come for you then."

Before I could stop her, she bustled out, her naked feet making almost
inaudible slaps on the bare tile floor.

       *       *       *       *       *

She came for me at noon. I had dozed and woke refreshed. My arm was
painful when I moved it, but my head was clearer and my vision sharp.
The woman led me along a wide arched corridor with a great number of
doors similar to the one to my room. We came out onto a balcony. Stairs
led down into a high-ceilinged lobby. To my surprise, the huge room was
almost empty. One white-robed figure hurried out of sight. The place as
silent as my room had been. Here, however, sunlight streamed through a
huge triangle of stained glass, splashing a pool of many colors across
the tile floor and the bare white walls.

We walked across the lobby and through another door. Here I stopped
abruptly. The room was crowded, all of the people wearing white togas
like the woman wore. They were all sitting cross-legged on the floor
in various attitudes of concentration. Many did not even look up as I
entered. Those who did showed neither surprise nor particular interest.
They went back to their contemplations. No one spoke.

The woman had crossed the room. Now she beckoned me forward
impatiently. I walked slowly toward her. She opened the door at the end
of the room and stepped aside to let me pass. I heard the door shut
gently behind me.

At first I thought I was alone. The room was heavily curtained and very
dark. There was a strong smell of incense. The room seemed bare except
for a single cushion in the center. Then I realized that a thin, filmy
curtain hung like a veil across the room. Behind it a light began
to glow, starting at the bottom corners of the room and brightening
gradually like a sunrise. Behind the veil, thrown into relief by the
soft glow of blue light behind him, was an almost naked man. He wore a
thick white turban wrapped around his head. In the center of the crown
was set a fiery red stone. The man's features were touched only with
highlights--a straight line defining a strongly-bridged nose, other
strokes suggesting high cheek-bones, sensuously full lips, a firm
jawline--creating the overall impression of a face that was startlingly
handsome without being weak or pretty. The skin of his body looked
almost black. A slash of white cloth covered his loins.

"You are Paul Cameron," the man said, an impressively rich and resonant
voice lending importance to the statement.

"That's right." It was disconcerting to hear my own voice, thin and
colorless in contrast.

"The cushion has been provided for you," he said. "You are not
accustomed to our more austere habits."

The tone was faintly deprecating, suggested a softness and civilized
weakness in me for which I couldn't be blamed. I sat on the cushion
with a feeling of defiance. When I was seated on the floor I found that
I had to look up toward the man and I realized that he sat on a raised
platform. It occurred to me that the relative positions were carefully
calculated.

"I must thank you for treating me," I said, feeling vaguely
disappointed. I don't know what I had expected but it was not this
elaborately staged piece of theater. I was rapidly concluding that I
was simply in the temple of one of those popular and phony cults that
dupe the credulous.

The man bowed his head. "I am Swami Fallaninda. You are disappointed?"

His perception of my thought surprised me. "No, not at all. You know
how I came here."

"Your emanations are strong," he said, his voice booming at me
resonantly. "I feel the vibrations...."

In spite of myself I felt a tug of hope. "When I spoke of hearing
voices your--disciples became excited. Have you heard them?"

"Many hear. The astral body is visible to those who can tune in its
vibrations, who can see and hear with astral eyes and ears."

I broke in impatiently. "These aren't astral voices or whatever you
call them. These are aliens. They tried to kill me!"

The mystic showed neither surprise nor concern. "It is possible that
occult powers can be used for evil purposes. Yet it is not usual for
this to be so, nor is it usual for one to be consciously receptive to
the vibrations of higher frequency given by even a powerful adept,
learned in the control of the mind, unless the listener has been
trained in the development of astral vision. You have had no such
training."

"No--but I've heard voices!"

"Perhaps it would be better if you would explain what you have
experienced."

For a moment I studied the dark figure half-hidden behind the veil.
Inexplicably, my first doubts and suspicions had begun to slip away
from me. The man inspired confidence. I had forgotten the theatrical
trappings of the setting as the rich voice filled the room--gentle,
soothing, inviting belief and faith and trust. I found the hope growing
in me. He had not, after all, dismissed my claim to hear the voices in
my mind. He acted as if the fact was not at all unusual.

I told him the story. I saw little reason to conceal anything.
Beginning with my memory of the vision of my father's death, I went on
to recount the more recent vivid dream of drowning and the many times
I had heard the voices, particularly in recent weeks they had come to
me with increasing clarity and frequency. And finally, I spoke of the
two attempts on my life when an alien force had seemed to control my
mind. When I had finished, I waited anxiously, peering through the thin
fabric of the veil.

"I have known it," the swami said suddenly in his incredibly deep
baritone. "The evil vibrations have reached me, but I resisted the
truth which they would have led me to believe." He bowed his head.
"Thus have I failed to keep contact with the Universal Mind."

"The Universal Mind?" I repeated.

"The Cosmic Consciousness toward which we grope. The human mind is
frail and finite, but the Universal Mind is all."

"I don't understand."

I thought he sighed. "All human life is a groping upwards, an opening
of the individual mind to the One Universal Mind. Our consciousness is
limited. We catch only fragmentary glimpses of the truth, the great
body of super-consciousness which lies on another plane, through
which we must move closer to God, the One Universal Mind. But the
history of man is a story of this struggle upward toward the light,
the slow evolution of consciousness toward that state when at last the
subconscious and the super-conscious will be merged in the One, and the
One in all."

"What does that have to do with me?" I demanded.

"There have been men, advanced members of the human race, who have
attained to Cosmic Consciousness, the state of true wisdom. Even in
ancient times these have lived--the Yogi of India, the Magus of Persia,
the Atlantean Kushog--"

"So I've heard," I snapped irritably. "But I'm not interested in
ancient mystics--"

He held up his hand in a commanding gesture. His voice rose, vibrant
and dominating. "Listen! Do not close your mind to the truth of
the ancients! For they have lived, they live now, whom you do not
comprehend, who have discovered the wisdom of the East, who know that
there is no pain, no sickness, no evil beyond the power of the mind to
control. All men may approach this realm if they but wish it. It is
necessary to purify the self, to rise above the interfering vibrations
of material need and base emotions and ego-dominated thoughts, to
learn control of the body and the mind. Only then can we rise like the
phoenix from the ashes of a dead ego, into a new life in the higher
plane where the self does not exist."

The rich voice thundered through the room, swelling and resounding from
the walls, and suddenly sank to a bare whisper. I found myself leaning
forward, straining to hear.

"Telepathy is but a simple tool of the adept who has learned control
of the mind of man. Such a one can easily communicate directly with
the unconscious mind of another, can cause a weaker mind to do its
bidding--can even cause the strange delusions which you have described.
Such is the power of the Cosmic Consciousness! And such power, used
for evil, can only be defeated by a true inner faith, an attainment
of purity in which all base emotions are cleansed. Yours is a unique
gift, a reflection of the Cosmic Power you have known in a previous
incarnation. To use this power of the mind, you must learn that total
concentration in which there is no sensation, no awareness of self. You
must be an empty receptacle, ready to be filled with wine of truth and
love."

Incredulous, I stared at the shadowy figure under his white turban.
While he had spoken, the apparent majesty of his words and the magnetic
power of his voice had held me. For a moment, I had felt a thrill of
understanding and belief. Here was the answer to everything! Here was
the end of fear and wonder! But now, in the sudden silence, I heard the
echo of his vibrant phrases, glib and full of half-truths, promising
much and saying little. All he offered were vague speculations about
someone using occult powers against me, speculations mixed up with a
hodge-podge of Hindu and Oriental teachings blended into a palatable
opiate.

And all at once, I thought of the acoustics of this room and I
understood why my own voice, swallowed up by the sponge-like walls
surrounding my half of the room, had seemed so weak and helpless, while
his, obviously reinforced by a clever acoustical arrangement and
possibly even by microphones, boomed at me with stereophonic richness.

Angrily I jumped to my feet. "What are you suggesting? Do you want me
to join your little camp of followers? How about my life savings? I
won't need that, will I, if I'm going to purify myself of all earthly
desires?"

His voice was heavy and sad. "You have closed your mind. It was to be
expected. You are not ready to believe."

"I'm certainly not ready to swallow that stuff about someone using
cosmic powers against me. Who is it? Why should he try to kill me?
Maybe you could go into a trance and communicate with him for me. I'd
like a few more answers."

My anger was out of proportion, but I couldn't control it.
Disappointment was so keen that it severed any bonds of restraint. I
had placed too much hope on the help I might find here. To encounter a
dedicated fanatic--or what was worse, a clever charlatan--enraged me. I
stepped forward and tore at the veil which hung between us. The fabric
gave off a faint smell of dust disturbed and a weak spot ripped under
my hand.

The swami did not move.

"Answer me, dammit! Who's trying to kill me? Or am I as crazy as you
are?"

He remained absolutely still, head bent, legs folded under him, his
attitude one of total concentration--or prayer. Furious, I grabbed his
shoulders and jerked him up. His lack of weight astonished me. The
man was thin and bony, fragile and light under my hands. The large,
handsome head was an incongruity on the short, frail body. No wonder
he sat on a platform! No wonder he spoke out of darkness! I stared
into the black, liquid eyes. His lack of resistance finally penetrated
through the angry haze of frustration which had filmed my reason. I
released him.

I hadn't heard any sound behind me. I caught the blur of a white robe
swooping over me and heard too late the padding of many feet. Then
I was enveloped in a smothering white blanket that dropped over my
head. Hands caught and pinned my arms and dragged me down, hauling me
backwards--

"Wait!"

The swami's voice thundered its command and the room was stilled. I was
on the floor, held there by the weight of a heavy body and the pressure
of many grasping hands. There was an angry mutter of protest.

"Release him!"

Reluctantly, the hands drew away. Someone pulled the white cloth off
me. I blinked up at a huddle of white-robed figures looking down at me,
their eyes hostile. I recognized among the faces that of Henry, the man
who had saved my life.

"Evil has touched him," the swami said. The men standing over me drew
back as if in fear. "Let him go in peace."

Warily I pushed myself up. The others made no attempt to stop me now.
They were all watching the Exalted One. He was standing now, and even
on the raised platform he made a small, unimpressive figure when erect.
But there was nothing pale or thin about the cultivated voice.

"The days of the spirit are at hand," he intoned. "The hours of evil
are numbered. Go in peace. Cleanse your spirit! Prepare for the day
of Truth, of the All-in-One. You, who have stumbled blindly upon the
latent powers that lie within, know that when your mind is opened to
truth the powers of darkness can hold no influence over you. Know your
own strength, believe in it--fear not to die! For there is no death;
there is only the life of the spirit."

To my astonishment, those who had a moment before been violently
tearing at my body now sank slowly, one by one, to the floor, ignoring
my presence. Only the swami himself still watched me. The red glow of
the gem in his turban was like a fiery eye. Uneasily, I stumbled back
through the motionless heaps of white-shrouded figures kneeling or
sitting on the floor. The door was open. I turned and ran.

In the lobby I was abruptly confronted by the bird-faced woman. Her
features were pinched tight, her eyes bright with venom.

"We should have left you to die!" she screeched. "You put your hands on
the swami!"

"There is no death," I muttered.

I left her open-mouthed. A moment later, I burst out of the cool lobby
into the bright, hot sunlight. I was striding swiftly away from the
temple before I realized that I was still barefooted.

I turned to look back at the Temple of the Western Sun, an
architectural anachronism that, like the swami's faith, dated back to a
time lost in the reaches of history. The sunlight reflected glaringly
from the arched roof and from the intricate pattern of color in the big
stained glass window at the front.

I was intensely relieved to be out of the place into the open air. Here
I could breathe freely, free of the dusty heritage of an ancient wisdom
founded on love and the aspiration of man to be one with the source of
all things, the Creator of the universe, a wisdom now half-absorbed
and clouded by a ritual of words. And I felt ashamed of my relief.
The small satisfaction derived from my final taunt to the bird woman
crumbled before the knowledge that I had bolted from the temple in
foolish panic. I would have come to no harm at the swami's hands. In
the end he had acted far better than I. Perhaps he was not a charlatan.
One couldn't blame him for using a few dramatic effects to heighten the
impact of his message. What religion had not? And his last words had
had a ring of sincerity. He believed. It was I who, driven by blind
anger, had almost been guilty of violence, because the man had failed
me. And yet--

Standing there, staring at the silent temple, I had the obscure feeling
that he had said something that was very important to me, something I
could not quite grasp, a truth buried under the avalanche of his words.




                                  17


I arrived at my trailer in the middle of the afternoon. My feet were
tired and blistered, although I had managed to pick up a pair of
sandals along the way. The swami's temple had been a good mile from
the nearest elevated station. I wasn't used to that much walking,
particularly in my bare feet.

Just as I turned into the walk leading up to my trailer, the girl next
door appeared. She ran down the steps toward me and halted abruptly.
For a change her eyes were not cast down or averted but intent on
my face, wide with concern. I had a startlingly clear sense of her
anxiety, followed by an apprehension of acute relief.

"You're--you're all right?" she asked breathlessly.

She was staring at the bandage around my head. My coverall concealed
the larger bandage extending from my left shoulder to the elbow.

"Banged up a little," I said with forced cheerfulness. "Nothing
serious."

"I was afraid--" She caught herself. "When you didn't return home, I--"

I looked at her sharply and she blushed. Her head turned away quickly,
but not before I saw the creeping stain of red under her skin. For a
moment, I was too astonished to reply. The girl's next words made me
forget all about her odd behavior.

"The police were here," she said, her glance brushing mine for only an
instant. "They wished to see you."

I felt a quick stab of warning. My gaze narrowed, trying to read her
expression. The police had not been satisfied with my story, then. And
this girl had backed up my alibi.

"Were they questioning you again--about the other night?" I asked with
an attempt at casualness.

"Oh, no!" She shook her head in a terse, firm negative. "They were
very nice. They said they would stop back to see you later."

"You didn't--tell them anything else?"

A faint smile touched her lips and I seemed to see her face revealed
for the first time without the mask of shyness. It was a face that
mirrored warmth and a hidden humor, a sensitive, lovely face.

"There was no need," she said. "I do not think they are interested any
more."

"But they didn't say why they wanted to see me?"

All at once she appeared to become aware of my close scrutiny and she
took a step back. "Nothing," she said quickly. "They--they told me
nothing."

She started to turn away and I stepped quickly toward her, catching
her arm. "Wait!" I said urgently. I could feel a faint trembling under
my fingers, a current of--what? Excitement? Fear? "I want to thank
you--for being worried about me."

Her eyes met mine briefly and I was surprised to see that they
reflected none of the timidity or apprehension that seemed to vibrate
in her body.

"It is only natural that I would be concerned," she said, and even her
voice held a different tone, a note of surprising tenderness.

And while I stared, she pulled away from me and ran lightly up the
steps and into her trailer. The door closed firmly behind her.

I took a step after her. Her words came back to me, her news about the
police. They would be back. And there could be only one reason for
their wanting to talk to me again.

It took all the control I had to keep from turning and running.

I let myself into my trailer. It seemed stuffy inside, the clean,
cool, filtered air slightly stale after a day without human smells to
combat. An impulse of caution made me go through the trailer quietly.
In the compact, carefully planned rooms, it would have been impossible
for anyone to hide. I felt the absurdity of expecting to find police
lurking in the closet or under the bed, but I was not acting very
rationally. The desire to flee followed me through the empty rooms.

A woman had been killed and the police had reason to think that I
might be involved. And I had lied. Why else should I lie unless I
was guilty? From their point of view the conclusion was obvious. And
then it occurred to me that they might have even more reason than I
knew to find me a prime suspect. Evidence could have been planted to
incriminate me. Why not? It would be one way to muffle the listener's
ears. Modern forces of justice were quick and unsentimentally ruthless
in dealing with a murderer. They had to be in an overcrowded world.

Restraint snapped. I ran into the bedroom and fumbled hastily in the
closet for my one small suitcase. Tossing it onto the bed, I began
to pull a few clothes out of the closet and the chest. I snatched a
razor from the washstand and a windproof jacket from its hook. When I
had jammed everything into it and slammed it shut, I stood over the
suitcase, panting. It seemed to me that I could smell my own fear,
sharp and acrid, soiling the conditioned air. I felt an unexpected
revulsion.

I sat on the bed. For a long moment I didn't move. My mind seemed
frozen. The trailer was very silent and I listened to my own strained
breathing. And at last I held up my fear and examined it, and I knew
that I could not run.

I was not guilty. Flight, in any event, would be more incriminating
than anything I could possibly do, and if they were really after me I
would be picked up within hours.

Besides, I thought without humor, I could always plead insanity.

       *       *       *       *       *

I had less than an hour to wait. I heard the helicopter whirring
overhead and was at the window when it dropped gently onto the landing
strip across the street. The two policemen came directly toward my
trailer, moving unhurriedly. I recognized the chunky sergeant who had
questioned me before. The same lean partner was with him. I opened the
door as they reached the steps.

Sgt. Bullock looked up mildly. "Glad we caught you in, Mr. Cameron."

"I heard you were looking for me."

"Yeah, we thought you might be a little worried about the case we
talked to you about."

I stared at him, puzzled. His attitude was not that of the aggressive
policeman. He seemed almost apologetic.

"We have our job to do, Mr. Cameron, and we have to run down every
possibility just as a matter of routine."

"Sure. I understand."

He grinned. The square face which had appeared so mean and hard
acquired the pudgy friendliness of a well-fed puppy.

"You have to admit it looked kind of funny, your asking about the girl
and her being killed a couple of hours later. It's the kind of thing we
can't ignore."

"Yes, of course. Have you--discovered anything new? I mean, do you know
who did it?"

"Oh, yeah, we got him. The owner of the restaurant where she worked."

"Harry?"

"That's his name. Seems like he's been crazy about the girl and there's
been a little trouble before. She was the friendly type. I guess she's
been servicing half the college crowd."

I shook my head. "Harry," I repeated blankly.

"Yeah. Well, he's caused trouble before this when he caught her with
some kid. He hangs around her place and he beat her up a couple of
times. So it looks like he was jealous and they had a battle and he
lost his head." The sergeant shrugged. "Happens every day."

Still stunned, I stared at the two officers. The full implications of
what Sgt. Bullock had said were just beginning to penetrate. If Harry
was the killer--

"Are you sure?" I asked.

The sergeant appeared surprised. "Oh, he hasn't confessed yet. We
picked him up a few hours ago and he wouldn't say anything. Stubborn
guy. But we'll have the results of the lie detector and serum tests
within a few hours and that'll wrap it up. He did it, all right. He
was seen near her place that night, and the neighbors heard them
quarreling. We'll be digging up more stuff on him, now that we got it
pinned down."

I felt a numbing cold settling at the base of my neck. "Thanks for
taking the trouble to tell me this," I said thickly.

"No trouble, Mr. Cameron. This is our patrol area anyway. We're around
here pretty regular. Just thought we'd drop by and take a load off your
mind."

"Thanks."

The thin, silent partner spoke for the first time. "Never thought you
did it anyway," he said laconically.

I tried a smile. My lips felt like stiff rubber. "You had me worried.
I'm glad it's all cleared up."

"Yeah," the sergeant said heavily. "So are we."

They turned away. I managed to utter a reply to their casual goodbyes.
They crossed the street and climbed into the helicopter. A moment
later, it rose slowly into the air. I watched it until it had dwindled
out of sight, lost in the afternoon haze.

All over, I thought. The mystery all cleared up. No mystery at all.
There never had been one. Lois Worthington's murder had been the one
tangible proof I had that the aliens were real and dangerous. But she
had been killed by a jealous lover.

There were no more threads to cling to.

I stumbled back into the trailer. Dropping onto the couch under the
long window, I lay motionless, my eyes open and unseeing, fixed on
some distant point beyond the ceiling. My mind turned over sluggishly.
With careful logic I tried to examine all the facts. Like a policeman,
I thought, investigating a crime. A reported crime. You check each
suspect, eliminating them one by one. When the list is limited that's
not hard. I had done that. None of my four suspects was capable of
the monstrous plot I had imagined. None had super-human powers. So
there were no suspects. Better take another look at the crime, a close
look. Question the witnesses, see if their testimony is reliable, make
sure it stands up. This time there was only one witness who claimed
that a crime had been committed, an attempt at murder. The victim
himself, Paul Cameron. Queer duck, a bastard, mother's dead so he lives
alone, keeps pretty much to himself, no close friends. Got a vivid
imagination. Keeps hearing things. Is he the only witness to the fact
that there was a crime? Yes. Well, how do we know he's not lying? How
do we know it's not all in his mind?

And that was it. Investigation completed. There was no crime. There
were no aliens.

For long, painful, unaccounted minutes I confronted this inevitable
conclusion. Then, in one of those odd mental leaps that seem to have
no apparent motive, like the sudden sideways jump of a grasshopper, I
thought of Swami Fallaninda, the Exalted One. I could hear the vibrant
echo of his voice. "Know that when your mind is opened to truth the
powers of darkness can hold no influence over you." A wise platitude,
I thought. When you examined with the cold objectivity of distance any
of the little man's pompous phrases, they resolved themselves into very
ordinary statements. His devoted circle of followers thought he was a
man apart, a special being in touch with the Cosmic Consciousness, a
man one with God. The brief episode with the little mystic had left an
unusually deep impression on me--but the message he brought back from
his astral plane could not save me.

There was another god left to me, one I had not turned to, the last one
who stood between me and the powers of darkness which sought to possess
my mind--the man of science.




                                  18


Dr. Jonas Temple was a man of about sixty, whose appearance belied
his years. His hair was a crisp iron gray, cropped close to a large,
strongly-modeled head. His features were heavy without being coarse and
the flesh was firm and ruddy. Of medium height and powerfully built,
he looked more like an athletically vigorous man who was capable of
exhausting physical labor than a renowned geophysicist who seldom left
the pale blue atmosphere of his laboratory.

His eyes, bright blue and intelligent, regarded me steadily. Their
expression was thoughtful and appraising rather than mocking. I felt
grateful.

I knew that I had been fortunate in finding him in his office alone on
a Saturday evening. The building was almost empty. One of Dr. Temple's
assistants was working in a small laboratory down the hall and janitors
were puttering about the building on their routine cleanup chores. I
reflected that it was an index to the character of the man in front
of me that I would have found him here, still working at the end of a
long day, tireless and dedicated. And it was even more characteristic
that he would take the time to listen to my story without laughing or
showing impatience.

"Let's review what you're suggesting," Dr. Temple said. He touched a
jet of flame to the fragrant ash in the deep bowl of his pipe. "What
you're asking me to believe is that some form of alien life has assumed
human form--"

"Possessed human bodies."

"Ah, yes. Possessed." The blue eyes squinted at me speculatively,
and I knew that the word had called to mind the devil-possessions
and exorcisms which had once been so prominent a part of the history
of Christianity. "They control these bodies as their own. A
kind--intelligent parasite."

I nodded. I could feel the tension in my body as I waited, like a
network of wires being stretched tighter.

"And you can hear their thoughts?" Dr. Temple asked.

"They're telepaths."

"But that means you are, too, because you're the only one who hears
them."

"Yes," I said stubbornly.

"Can you hear mine? Can you project yours to me?"

I was silent. This was one of the barriers I had run into every time
I reviewed the facts in my mind. There was one answer I had tried to
accept, but even as I voiced it now I knew it didn't sound convincing.

"Perhaps true telepathy--direct and conscious tele-communication
as opposed to the random reception of a thought--requires two
beings capable of extra-sensory perception in a highly developed
degree--sender and receiver."

"Which would help to explain why this--this talent of yours hasn't
revealed itself before now."

"But it has! That is, there were things like the vision of my father's
death--not telepathy but related experience, clairvoyance."

"Yes." The scientist frowned. "You will forgive me, Mr. Cameron, if
I do not give too much weight to that experience. It's not at all
uncommon. People envision harm to those close to them every day and
it is inevitable that they will think it extraordinary when one day
something does happen."

"But I didn't even know my father existed!"

"Perhaps." The voice was gentle, the blue eyes kindly. "You could
easily have known that he did, by deduction or through some chance
remark of your mother's. You could have reached the conclusion
subconsciously while not admitting it on a conscious level because you
found the fact unpleasant to face."

"That's possible," I said slowly, unconvinced.

"Mr. Cameron, I'm not trying to ridicule what you have suggested. I am
just trying to review all the implications of what you're asking for me
to believe--asking yourself to believe--and we must restrict ourselves
to directly pertinent information. Your vision of your father's death
could or could not be relevant. There are, I admit, fairly well
authenticated cases of clairvoyance. But with reference to your recent
experiences, that earlier vision is inconclusive and subject to varying
interpretations."

He shifted in his chair and sucked vigorously at his pipe until the
bowl glowed red. As I waited in the stillness of his office for him to
continue, my eyes strayed past him to the cabinets along one entire
wall. Behind glass doors was the famous collection of Martian crystal
and fossil formations, to the study of which the scientist had devoted
his life. Surely these must have revealed something of the nature of
Martian life. If some kind of intelligent parasite had existed there,
wouldn't it leave traces detectible to a man like Temple?

"This alien form of life you postulate could exist," Dr. Temple said.
"Grant that. There is no reason why life, intelligent life, on other
planets would have to be recognizable to us. What you postulate is
essentially a form of parasite, and the idea of a parasitical being
which is also intelligent is not completely beyond the evidence of
life we know even on earth. Let us concede that it could happen. An
intelligent being, evolving under vastly different environmental
conditions, might discover early in the progress of evolution that
it could use a material host with a more highly developed physical
organism but an undeveloped intelligence. And through the eons of
change and self-improvement such an intelligent being might evolve
physically only along those lines which would be necessary to its
survival and its mental development. If it could use the body of a
host, it would tend not to improve its own self-sufficient physical
organism, as man has developed his body, but rather to perfect the
ability to seize and to control its varied hosts."

I nodded eagerly, feeling hope stir and unfold. It was possible!

"However," the scientist said slowly, "it's rather a difficult step to
accept the idea that such a parasitical life form could live in _any_
host--even one from another planet and with a totally strange organism,
such as man."

"But it is conceivable," I said doggedly, unable to relinquish the
blossoming hope.

"Perhaps. We know so little of life, of the living organism. We know,
or at least we think we know, that any highly developed being would
have cells, and that it would be constructed ultimately of the same
limited number of atoms from which everything in our universe is
manufactured. But the forms which life could take are infinite. And the
possibility which you suggest has one interesting facet." He paused and
I leaned forward, feeling sweat on my palms. "An intelligent parasite,"
Dr. Temple said thoughtfully, "controlling and living within its host,
feeding upon its host or upon what the host consumed, is one form of
life which could easily survive space travel--providing its host could
survive. For the parasite's own environment within the host would not
substantially be altered."

He glanced at me sharply, as if a sudden thought had occurred to him.
"But why wouldn't such an intelligent being, its mental capacities
presumably far beyond man's if your experience is any indication, have
mastered space travel long before us? Why should it be dependent upon
an inferior intelligence?"

"Because it didn't have a host like man to use," I said quickly.
"That seems to be one main reason for coming here--and for wanting
to bring other aliens here. They've never known a physical organism
like man. They haven't developed one themselves because they didn't
need to--or possibly because it wouldn't have been able to exist under
Martian conditions of life. Their hosts never developed the perfection
of usefulness man's body has reached with his arms and hands and
fingers. What's more, we know that Mars is almost a dead planet.
Wouldn't a parasite eagerly seize upon any new organism that came
along--especially one that was physically far superior to anything that
had evolved on Mars?"

Dr. Temple nodded slowly. "Yes, that is a plausible explanation." He
sighed. "It's all possible, Mr. Cameron, all plausible--up to a point.
The existence of extra-sensory powers in such an intelligence would be
quite natural--even inevitable. But--"

There was reluctance in his voice, compassion in his eyes. "Go on," I
said harshly.

"There are two objections to your theory for which I can find no
answer. One is that my own studies do not reveal any evidence of the
kind of creature you have postulated. And I am led irrevocably to the
conclusion that there would be tell-tale signs."

"And the other?" I whispered.

"The second objection is the manner in which this parasite actually
came to earth--on a returning space ship. This we have from the aliens,
themselves, according to what you overheard. This is the only way they
could have got to earth. And yet that way is impossible."

I didn't want to ask why. The word was thick and hard and painful in my
throat but I had to voice it. "Why? Why?"

"Your alien said something about transferring to another body--and you
concluded that he meant this was necessary for the return trip through
space to Mars. What is especially pertinent, he wanted to effect this
transfer at the last possible moment when it would be too late for any
close physical examination."

"Yes, one of them said something like that."

"And obviously, Mr. Cameron, we do not need the alien to give us the
information that they would want to avoid close examination of the
host. The presence of a powerful parasitical organism in man's body can
quite readily be detected. We might not know what it was but we would
know that it was there. We must assume that this would be particularly
true in the case of a parasite so powerful that it was able to control
directly the human body and mind. Any exhaustive examination would
reveal the alien's existence in the body."

I felt the hope withering, turning brown and fragile.

"Mr. Cameron," Dr. Temple said quietly, "no parasite entered earth in
the body of any of the men who came back. I need hardly tell you that
each of those men was put through exhaustive, painstakingly complete
physical and mental tests under rigidly controlled conditions, even
before coming in contact with any humans back here on earth. You see,
we had to be careful. There was the risk of bringing back deadly
viruses that might not yet have visibly affected the men. There was
the question of radiation, of contagious diseases, of any number of
harmful effects. In addition, the very fact that these men had survived
extensive space flight made them priceless subjects for study. Mr.
Cameron, you needn't take my word for it, you can easily verify what
I'm saying, but nothing unusual could have escaped the examination
these men underwent." Dr. Temple swung toward the glass cases along the
wall. "Why, even every bit of rock and bone and dead fungus you see in
these cabinets was exhaustively examined and re-examined and tested
with every means known to science before ever being touched by human
hands!"

"But there must be some way--"

"Let me finish. There is another factor which you may have failed to
consider, one that you could not be expected to know. The men on our
ship never once came in direct physical contact with any object on Mars
or among the items brought back from that planet. The landing party
was never directly exposed even to the Martian atmosphere. It was too
great a risk. A protective wall always interposed between the men and
the objects they contacted. Nothing was touched by human hands. So how
would a parasite have made entry?"

"I don't know!" I said harshly. "But it happened!"

Something stirred in my mind, something urged into activity by Dr.
Temple's words, but the moment I concentrated on it, trying to isolate
it, a door seemed to close solidly down a dimly lighted corridor of my
mind.

"Maybe it was dormant when it was brought in," I said desperately.
"Maybe it didn't show up under the tests. How can we be so sure our
instruments tell us everything?"

For a moment the scientist did not answer. I saw the compassion in his
eyes and knew that he did not believe the aliens existed. He was trying
to be kind and patient. I was taking up a great deal of his valuable
time but he gave no indication of this. His pipe had burnt out again
and now he set it carefully in the big ash tray on his desk. He leaned
forward.

"Mr. Cameron, I am a scientist. When I'm presented with a strange new
set of facts or apparent facts, even if they seem to contradict my own
established theories, I have to consider them. I must try to let the
facts speak for themselves without my imposing a preconceived meaning
upon them. I've tried not to do that with what you've told me. I've
tried to consider seriously the theory or explanation you've offered
for the particular set of facts. However, when investigation appears
to preclude one possible explanation we have to look for another, an
alternative meaning, and see if it will provide a vessel into which the
facts might fit precisely. In the present situation there does seem to
be another possible answer."

"I know what you're going to say--"

"There may be no alien minds," Dr. Temple said quietly. "Or rather,
there may be only one. Your own."

The words dropped with a brutal finality into my brain.

"I am not a psychiatrist," Dr. Temple went on gently, each word falling
like the blow of a hammer, "but everything you have told me admits of
a known delusional pattern with which even I am familiar. The presence
of enemies with super-human powers, your own possession of abnormal
abilities and the fact that your unique talents make you an object of
persecution by these enemies, seems to fit a schizophrenic syndrome. I
would have to look it up, but--"

"That won't be necessary," I said dully. "I looked it up. Paranoid
schizophrenia."

"The hallucinations, if I'm not mistaken, both visual and auditory
are also part of that pattern," the scientist added. "And also the
indications of withdrawal which you've admitted. Even the idea of being
possessed, forced to do things you don't want to--"

"Oh, yes," I agreed bitterly. "It all fits. Perfectly."

Dr. Temple caught himself and stopped abruptly, as if embarrassed by
his own absorption in the problem. He coughed self-consciously. I
avoided his eyes. Silence was loud in the room.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Cameron," the scientist said at last. "You have come to
me for help. I can't give it to you--but I think you can help yourself.
You were confronted suddenly when you were young with a shocking fact
which apparently destroyed your sense of security. Now, years later,
your attempt to escape the reality you tried to push out of your mind
has created an intolerable conflict. But now that you know what has
happened you can resolve that conflict. You can face the reality. After
all, it is not so very important or shameful to know that you are the
bastard son of a very distinguished scientist and a woman you loved
deeply. Is it so hard to accept that you must escape from it into
fantasy?"

I shook my head, unable to answer. The mind is not that simple, I
thought. It does not move in such neatly laid out channels. I rose
stiffly and walked to the windows. For a moment I stood there staring
at the city becoming lost in darkness. On impulse, I opened one
window. Fresh, cool air washed against my face. I stood listening to
the whisper of voices, soft in the distance, to the tinkling fall of
laughter.

The final god had spoken. I knew at last, without doubt, that I was
insane.




                                  19


Alone and on foot, I wandered through the garish streets of the city.
I moved without purpose or destination, with the drunk's uncertain and
aimless step. Like the sponge it resembled, my brain soaked up the
sights and sounds, soon became sodden with the glut of sensation until
the images were overlapping, blurred and meaningless. I walked. Around
me there was the blare of horns, the swish of tires on pavement, the
scrape and clip of feet along the sidewalk, the eager call and the
murmured phrase. Overhead, the slow and heavy throbbing of a helicopter
or, higher in distance and frequency, the whine and clap of a jet
slapping through the sound barrier. Sometimes the rumble of an unseen
train speeding along the monorail nearby, whistling shrilly as it
neared a stop. At intervals the clashing sound effects and throbbing
voices from a public telescreen, rising in volume and urgency as I
approached, then fading slowly behind me. And always there was music,
blaring from a loudspeaker, muffled by an intervening wall, exploding
as a door was opened. The soar of a violin, the call of a trumpet, the
crash of a drum, the croon of a human voice. All these followed me
along the crowded streets.

The night was sound and it was light. Telescreens flickered in their
harsh-hued colors. Ribbons of white tubing ran overhead, bringing
the brightness of high noon to the streets, a brightness unrelieved
by shadow or warmth. The hills were a mass of light clusters, like a
field of white flowers in full bloom. And, as I moved away from a main
thoroughfare, car headlights tore great gaps out of darker streets and,
as they approached each other, seemed to fence like ancient warriors in
swordplay.

I seemed acutely sensitive to all sensation. My eyes ached from the
assault of light, my head reverberated with the Saturday night
sounds, my body seemed bruised and battered from the jostling of the
crowds spilling along the sidewalks. I moved deliberately away into
darker, quieter streets, unconscious of weariness, hardly aware of
the dull ache of the gash in my arm or the steady throbbing of my
head. I stumbled aimlessly through the network of vast apartment
projects and sprawling trailer parks, aware of life and laughter and
shared enjoyment all around me, of the tightening kiss and the flushed
angry face and the quiet amusement and the tension of waiting. I felt
intensely alone.

I lost all sense of time. How many miles I walked I don't know. At one
time I found myself in a section of the Culver basin of trailer courts
that seemed familiar. I wondered if I had once lived here, if I could
be near the site of the trailer in which I had grown up with my mother.
I found familiar landmarks and, groping along the trail of memory, came
upon unfamiliar streets and stores and shining new trailers. Too much
had changed. The past was lost, all but a few traces obliterated by the
indifferently destructive feet of progress.

Slowly the crowds withdrew. The clamor of the city stilled. Public
telescreens clicked off, were seen as massive square patches of gray
against the darker sky. The close-packed streams of cars thinned out.
The sidewalks emptied except for the occasional straggler. Lights
winked out on the hills encircling the city.

I walked alone, a madman, looking as if for the last time at the
ugliness, the beauty, the raw scars of love and hate, the broken window
of violence, the scented flower of affection.

As dawn broke, I left the normal world of humanity behind me. I caught
an almost empty train to the top of the hill. When I reached my
trailer, the sun, still invisible behind the eastern range of hills,
had set the sky on fire. I stood on the step for a moment, casting a
long, searching look at the sleeping city.

Then I went in and closed the door.




                                  20


At first the pills seemed to have little effect. In spite of the
warning on the bottle I took a third pill. I stared fixedly at the
label: K7U. I wondered what the letters symbolized. One part of K to
seven parts of U? Or was this the formula arrived at on the seventh
try? I tried to read the words printed in Latin on the label. My eyes
refused to focus.

Drowsily I lay back on the bed. My eyelids were heavy weights, my legs
were leaden. I made an attempt to shift my feet, but I lacked the
strength. I seemed to sink deep into the soft folds of the bed. At last
I slept.

The day was broken into bright fragments of consciousness projecting
out of a woolly fuzz in which I was often neither fully awake nor
asleep. The barrier between consciousness and the oblivion of
unconsciousness seemed to have disintegrated. At one point--I thought
it was in the morning, but the time of day was not important, time
itself had ceased to exist--the phone rang incessantly and I wanted
desperately to answer it, but I was chained to the bed. And there was a
moment when the girl next door was beating upon the window, her mouth
twisted in grief. She saw me watching her and she fled. I called after
her but there was no sound. At some point in the late afternoon I stood
at the window. The sun was a blazing ball in the hard steel plate of
sky. It seemed to have not only light and heat but sound, clashing and
grinding until my head seemed sure to shatter from the vibrations.

Always in those sharp, isolated moments of crystal clarity, I saw
everything with extraordinary vividness. Colors held an intensity
I had never seen before--the shimmering green of a patch of grass,
the brown of a tree trunk projecting from the yellow hills, the hot
red of a plastic chair, the glittering white of a trailer, the shiny
yellow-and-black of a police helicopter stuck against the intense blue
of the sky. I saw in the most commonplace plant an unimaginable beauty,
an exquisite natural architecture of life.

My perspective was faulty. Distances deceived me. Walls that should
have met seemed to be in different planes. Space was an illusion. I
reached for a glass on a table and missed it completely. Once I tried
to sit on a chair and tumbled to the floor. Crawling, I seemed to inch
forward over an interminable distance, taking hours to cover the few
feet from one side of my living room to another, and this was not at
all surprising or disturbing to me. At one time I was sitting on the
floor of the kitchen looking up in wonder at the immense cliff of
the sink high above me. And again I was walking down the narrow hall
between my bedroom and the front of the trailer. The floor wobbled and
waved and the hall stretched on endlessly, a bewildering corridor of
doors that I kept reaching for and missing, until at last I burst out
of the corridor into the bedroom, and then I was falling toward the
bed, falling, floating through the cold black infinity of space.

While the hot mid-day sun beat down upon the trailer, I stood
indifferently watching the still, white face of my mother, what had
been my mother, lying rigid in the meaningless calm of death. I felt a
total numbness, an absence of feeling, as if my whole body and brain
had been shot with novocain.

But later, much, much later, I stared out at a gray city under a gray
sky, relieved only by the streaks of orange and red and purple left by
the sun at the horizon, and tears rolled down my face. I cried without
knowing why I grieved.

I slept and dreamed of waves washing over me, of voices pounding
with the fury of waves, lifting and tossing me at will, thundering
and growling. And in the chaos of semi-consciousness, I tasted the
delicious sweetness of red lips, felt the incredible softness of
breasts crushed against my chest, touched with my fingers the silken
mass of red hair--and found it inexplicably turned to gold, to the
yellow of a field of grain under a hot August sun.

And in the evening, when darkness crouched like a living thing in the
corners of the small bedroom, I woke suddenly to a moment of ordinary
reality in which I saw the room exactly as it had always been, saw the
open bottle of pills on the built-in chest within arm's reach, smelled
the odor of my sweat-drenched body. Bewilderment flooded through me.
I had the fleeting thought that this was wrong, that the pills had
failed, that the snake pit into which I had plunged had been only an
illusion. I groped toward understanding, but sleep descended upon me
like a thick black fog. I tried to escape the darkness, grasping at
the flickering light of reason, but it fled into the distance like the
vanishing light in the center of a television screen turned off, the
dot of light swiftly receding into a pinprick of brightness, winking,
winking out....

       *       *       *       *       *

The floor creaked. I woke trembling with an immediate and frightening
impression that someone was in the trailer. I was not sure what had
awakened me and for a moment I had no memory of the long, lost day.
Then the floor creaked again.

And still I didn't understand. In a tumbling confusion of pictures I
remembered the pills and the distortions they had produced. As quickly
as this memory jelled, I knew that the pills had not worked. They
had failed to induce the symptomatic exaggeration of my illness. My
reaction had been violent, but it was no more than a normal mind's
response to a heavy dosage. Moreover, the effects had worn off too fast.

All this I saw, but its significance escaped me. I was still thinking
fuzzily. My head ached with an almost unbearable pressure and my limbs
still felt heavy. The third warning creak brought me fully awake, and I
knew that someone was creeping along the narrow hall toward me. I could
see nothing in the darkness and there was no sound of breathing or of
stealthy feet. But the complaining floor was a voice too familiar to be
missed. It could mean only one thing.

I waited tensely, straining every sense. Nothing moved. I began to make
out shadowy shapes as my eyes adjusted to the dark. Doubts attacked
me. Could this be it after all--the mind's final breaking point? The
self-created monster in the darkness?

At last full understanding came. No. I was not insane. The pills had
merely proven my sanity. They had done their job after all. The danger
now was real. Everything that I had been ready to dismiss as the
delusions and hallucinations of a sick mind--all of it was real. And
now--

He attacked.

In the instant I knew that I was rational and whole, I was able to
move, rolling to the side. A giant figure crashed onto the bed where
I had lain. I could hear his hoarse, quick breathing, no longer held
in silence. I spun away from him. A huge hand caught at my arm, but
I broke free. Still rolling, I tumbled onto the floor. As he pulled
himself off the bed, I staggered to my feet. The room reeled around
me. The effects of the drug had not fully worn off. I tried to take a
step toward the hall and it was like walking through deep water, my
steps slow and sluggish. I could see the man towering above me as he
leaped off the bed. A great hand grabbed at my suit as I fell away,
and the fabric tore. I stumbled, off balance, unable to control the
loose flopping of my arms and legs. A fist slashed at me and glanced
off my cheek. Even the slashing blow was so powerful that it smashed me
backwards, half-stunned, to crash against the wall beside the bed. I
went down heavily. My cheekbone felt as if it had been pulverized.

Panic came. The relief which had first soared in me at the knowledge
that I was a sane man was lost now in the bitter realization that I had
discovered the truth too late. There was no way I could survive this
giant's attack. But who was he?

A huge hand plucked me from the floor and flung me down on the bed.
He was bending over me then, his hands clutching at my throat. His
breath whistled through his open mouth. He shifted, bringing up his
thickly-muscled leg to pin me under him. With the desperation of fear
and the blind urge to survival, I twisted wildly. One free hand raked
at his eyes. He gave a bellow of rage and pain and pulled away, pawing
at his face. I wrenched away from the loosening grasp of the hand which
still gripped my throat.

I broke past him. It was an immense effort to drag my heavy thighs
forward, straining for speed. In the fleeting seconds it took me to
stumble to the doorway, I seemed to live an eternity of effort and
jumbled thoughts. This was the alien--it must be! No subtleties now, no
clever tricks of the mind--just brute force. And I had a vivid picture
of Lois Worthington as she must have looked with her neck snapped like
a brittle twig. I knew that I would not get away, that this was the end
of all my running.

My hand, catching the door frame, brushed against a switch and the room
suddenly blazed with light. Over my shoulder I saw him charging after
me--saw the shock of black hair, the powerful shoulders and arms, the
thick features twisted now in fury. Mike Boyle!

For an instant the light blinded him. And in that moment, out of the
confusion and shock of recognition, I had time to feel a surge of
disbelief. He couldn't be the one! I knew this slow, arrogant mind. And
if he could control me as the alien had, why hadn't he stopped me now
from trying to get away?

And then he was lumbering toward me. As I tried to spin away from him
along the hall, his big hands pulled me back. I felt his arms slide
around my chest and tighten. Twisting, I stared directly into his eyes.
They were glazed, unseeing, frighteningly dumb. A crushing pressure
squeezed my ribs together. I struggled weakly, kicking at his legs,
trying to reach his eyes with my hand. Pain lanced through my chest,
increasing swiftly in intensity as the terrible pressure drove the air
from my lungs and my chest seemed to cave in.

And through the streaks of pain slipped a stab of perception. He was
controlled! This was not the alien. This was a weaker mind, helpless
to resist the command which drove him to kill just as I was helpless
in his terrible embrace. Here was a weapon I had not counted on, an
ultimate weapon beyond resistance--

The pain grew savage. I seemed to hear a cracking of bones yielding
and I thought I could not bear the pain. A stifled, breathless cry
broke through my locked jaws. Consciousness began to slip away from me
and the trailer seemed to tip slowly like a ship listing.

"There is no pain, no sickness, no evil beyond the power of the mind to
control."

The rich, vibrant voice of Swami Fallaninda echoed in the recesses of
my mind. _No pain_, I thought dimly. _Concentrate and there will be no
pain. Draw the mind in upon itself, obliterate the knowledge of the
body's anguish. Concentrate intensively, know the power of your own
mind, and there is nothing you cannot do_--

"Stop!"

I flung the mind's command at Boyle with all the force of my wavering
consciousness. I felt his powerful body go rigid against me. I had
reached him! The impulsive desperate try had broken through the barrier
of his mind. He could be controlled! If the alien could do it, why not
I?

"Release me!"

His throat worked and he gave a strangled cry. I could see his red
face contorting with strain. His crushing arms slackened their hold. I
tried to draw myself into a ball, to snuff out all pain, all sensation,
everything except the awareness of being, of mind, of mental force. I
existed only as awareness.

"Now!" My mind hammered the unspoken command at him. "Release me!"

I felt his arms slip loose like a broken spring uncoiling. Twisting
free, I backed away from him down the hall. He stood transfixed, his
great bulk filling the narrow space, and I saw in his eyes the dumb
pain of an animal goaded into a corner, trapped in an intolerable
dilemma of conflict. It was only then that I caught some remote
glimmering of the torment my counter-command had produced in his
captive mind.

I thought again of the swami's ringing words: "Know your own strength,
believe in it, fear not!" The little man no longer seemed ridiculous.

The squeal of a police helicopter's siren shrilled close by--so loud
that it seemed to come from almost directly overhead. Its shriek seemed
to snap something in Mike Boyle's mind. I felt a shiver of horror, as
if I had seen a mind broken even as a neck might snap or a rib crack
under pressure.

He plunged toward me. Stumbling out of the corridor, I lost my balance
and fell backwards. Boyle brushed past me as if I had not been there.
He charged across to the door, clawed at its knob, hurled himself
through the opening. His shoulder struck the door frame and he went out
staggering.

As I reached the doorway, he was lurching into the street. A spotlight
slashed toward him out of the darkness. He darted away from it, but the
beam pinned his running figure against the outline of a trailer across
the way.

"Halt!" a voice barked.

I caught the dim shape of a black police helicopter, its yellow stripe
gleaming dully, and I had time to wonder how the police had got there,
and I was aware out of the corner of my eye of light glowing in the
next-door trailer. Then Mike Boyle was sprinting down the street,
ignoring the warning shout, dodging like a halfback through an open
field, moving his bulk with startling agility and speed.

Low and vicious, a policeman's silenced special spat out of the
darkness. Boyle's legs went out from under him as if he had been hit
by a low, hard tackle. The smack as he hit the pavement was brutally
audible. Echoing it, so close that it brought me spinning around, was a
low cry.

I stared into the frightened eyes of the blonde girl next door. She
stood barely two paces away. I had a sudden intuition as if she had
spoken to me aloud.

"You called the police," I said.

She nodded. "I--I was afraid you were being hurt."

"But how did you know? How could you know what was happening?"

Her gaze wavered and she seemed to hesitate. The words tumbled out in
a rush. "I heard noises--I got up to see what was going on and--and
I saw someone trying to break into your trailer, so I--I called the
police. That's all."

For a second I frowned at her, trying to read her eyes. She was not
frightened at all, I thought with surprise. Elusive. Evasive. Hiding
something.

I heard a bellow of rage behind me and turned to see Mike Boyle
struggling to get to his feet while two policemen pinned him to the
pavement. I sprinted toward them. When I reached the group, Boyle's
struggles were growing weaker. There was blood on the paving and I saw
it seeping down his leg. He was mouthing unintelligible sounds and his
eyes had that strange, glazed, unseeing stare. I looked at the two
policemen holding him and recognized the pair who had questioned me
earlier. Sgt. Bullock's cold, hard face had regained its meanness. I
wondered what had become of the friendly puppy I had met the day before.

"What's this all about?" he snapped. "Who is he?"

"His name is Boyle," I said. "He's a student at the university--a
football star. He's--he's out of his mind."

"_Mike_ Boyle?" The sergeant's tone was incredulous.

"Yes. And Sergeant--" I weighed the words carefully, "I think he killed
Lois Worthington."

Slowly the sergeant stood up. His eyes were mean slits in the blunt
face. "You better know what you're saying," he said. "You goddam well
better know."

For an instant I faltered, less sure of myself. I had no real evidence
that Boyle had murdered the waitress, nothing but the faith I now had
in my own convictions. But I knew without question that he had been
ordered to kill her just as he had been directed to eliminate me. Yet I
couldn't tell the police how I knew. If I tried to tell them the whole
story, I would merely convince them that I was crazy.

The sergeant strode away. He reached the helicopter and pulled out a
hand mike. I looked down at Boyle. He lay still, no longer struggling.
Some of the bestial panic seemed to have drained out of his face. When
I glanced up the sergeant was charging back toward me.

"Well?" he barked as he reached me. "What makes you say he killed the
girl?"

"It was--something he said--when he was trying to kill me."

"Why would he try to kill you?"

I made my decision. "I think he blamed me--he was convinced that I had
had something to do with Lois."

"Yeah?" Sgt. Bullock's hard, narrow gaze held mine. "Funny you
should say that. I thought you were mixed up in this right from
the beginning--and I'm beginning to think so again. It's nice and
convenient for you to come up with another killer. The guy we were
holding--Harry Grayson--cleared himself. The truth tests proved it
right down the line. He's not guilty. He didn't kill her."

I stared again at Boyle. Handcuffed now, he was watching me. There was
fright in his small eyes and it seemed to me that there was something
stirring now in their depths that had been filmed over before, a
glimmer of reason.

"Boyle did it," I said. "But he wasn't responsible for what he did. You
can see that."

"Yeah? Maybe." The sergeant stared suspiciously at me. "What happened
to your head?"

"I was in an accident--in a car."

"Yeah? You seem to be in a hell of a lot of accidents. I think maybe
you better come downtown with us. You got quite a lot of explaining
to do. You keep popping up in this too often, Cameron. I don't like
coincidences."

"I killed her!" Boyle blurted out.

We all stared at him--Bullock, his lean partner, myself. The big youth
rolled over on his side. Tears spilled down his cheeks and he began to
beat his head against the pavement with a terrifying deliberateness.

"I killed her, I killed her," he moaned. "I killed her!"

The corporal bent down swiftly and jerked Boyle's head up. Sgt. Bullock
moved in quickly. Between them they held the big man immobile.

"Okay," the sergeant said after a moment, glancing at me over his
shoulder. "So he did it. So maybe that lets you out. We won't need you
tonight--but stay where I can find you. I've still got some questions
to ask you."

"What about him? What are you going to do with him?"

"There's an ambulance on the way." He looked past me, his gaze sweeping
in a circle. "If you want to help you can tell these people to go back
to bed. Then you might as well do the same."

I discovered that a large number of people had come out of their
trailers and were standing in clusters talking and staring curiously at
the tableau in the street. For some reason I was surprised. The whole
incident had happened so quickly and with so little noise that I hadn't
thought of anyone being aroused.

I moved toward the nearest group. "It's all over," I said quietly.
"Might as well go back to bed."

"What happened?"

"A man went--" I caught myself. "Just a drunk. A guy who had more than
he could take."

The groups of people gave way slowly, reluctantly. I stared back once
more at Mike Boyle. I felt only pity now. At the same time I was aware
of how timely and how lucky for me had been his guilt-ridden outcry
of confession. Without it, I would have been in more trouble than I
liked to think about, with Bullock eager to jump all over me, firing
questions which I couldn't answer.

Boyle would be cured. His illness was not a deep-seated mental
aberration but a temporary cracking under pressure. They would treat
him and, when he was rational, they would get a full confession out of
him about the murder of Lois. But they would never make sense out of
his story of being controlled by an inhuman mind. He would get off on
the plea of insanity. They would cure him and when they were sure that
he was well, he would be freed.

I wondered if he would remember or understand later what had been done
to him. Or who had done it.

Looking up, I saw the girl next door standing where I had left her. I
walked slowly toward her. In her eyes and mouth I read anxiety.

"He tried to kill you," she whispered.

I nodded. I felt an inexpressible tenderness. Gratitude, I thought. How
much I owed to her!

"Thanks for calling the police," I said. "And for--for being worried."

She blushed. Even in the darkness I could see the bright color in her
cheeks. She started to turn away and the movement of her hips brought
back, sharply and vividly, the image I had seen through her window so
long ago.

"Wait!"

She stopped, her face averted, and I caught once again the sense of a
bird trembling on the brink of flight.

"I don't even know your name," I said gently.

Her voice was low. "Erika," she said. "Erika Lindstrom."

I smiled. The name so perfectly suited her tall, blonde beauty. I felt
a renewal of that strange, deep rush of tender feeling.

"Thanks again, Erika."

"Goodnight, Mr. Cameron," she said quickly.

This time I didn't try to stop her. Watching her retreat into the
security of her trailer, I wondered why she was so anxious to help
me. The knowledge of her anxiety gave me an unfamiliar pulsation of
pleasure. In that moment I felt that I had regained more than my faith
in my own reason. I had recaptured something lost long ago. Closeness.
Warmth. The touch of humanity.




                                  21


Sleep had come to me suddenly--deep, exhausted sleep. The annoying
sound nagged at the edges of my subconscious for a long time. I became
remotely aware of it, a buzzing far off, droning on interminably.
Vainly I tried to escape it, to bury myself in the soft, black, velvet
cushion of sleep, but the sound penetrated--a thin, distant, persistent
plea.

And I woke. It was still night. The same night? Or could I have slept
the clock around? I peered at the luminous time and date dials in the
wall. It was almost three in the morning. I had slept for less than
five hours. Five hours before, I had escaped death. Time enough for a
new plan to be laid.

The phone rang again. With a groan of exasperation, I dragged myself
out of the bed and groped my way into the living room. Through bleary,
heavy-lidded eyes I tried to make out the reception button, hit it on
the third jab.

"Hello? Paul? Is that you?"

The image on the telephone screen was still dim. It brightened as I
stared in disbelief.

"Laurie! What in God's name are you doing calling me at this hour?"

"Oh, Paul! Thank God!"

She sagged visibly. Even on the black-and-white screen her face showed
pale and drawn, with a sharpness I had never seen in it before.

"What is it. What's happened?"

"I've been trying to get you for hours. You've got to help me. You've
got to come out here!"

I felt the first premonition of danger, a warning signal in the back of
my mind echoing the phone's buzz of a moment earlier. Peering narrowly
at the screen I tried to shake off the fuzziness of drugged sleep.

"Tell me what's wrong," I said sharply.

"I--I can't. Please, Paul!" She began to cry silently, bending over,
hugging her stomach as if she were in pain. "Please!"

I strained to see into the room behind her but her image filled most
of the screen. I stared closely at her. She was in her nightgown. It
had fallen off one bare shoulder and was tied loosely around her waist.
Her long red hair spilled free around her shoulders. She looked as if
she had been in bed. Something had aroused her--something frightening.
There was no mistaking the haggard aspect of fear. She seemed to be
holding herself together with an anguished effort of control.

"Is there anyone with you?" I asked quietly.

She shook her head--too quickly, I thought. Something moved in my
abdomen. Fear coiling.

"Paul, help me!" she moaned. "You've got to help me. There's nobody
else who can."

"You're at the beach house?" I asked, stalling, angry at the cowardice
that made me delay.

"Yes, yes! Alone! I'm all alone. You'll come? You'll come right away?"
Her voice grew shrill with eager hope. "I'll do anything, darling,
anything you ever want me to do. I love you! You know that, don't you?
You believe that? I didn't mean the things I said last night. Paul,
I'll do anything!"

You don't have to keep saying it, I thought. You don't have to bribe
me. I wondered with dull anger how long it had taken to affect the
careless arrangement of her nightgown.

And then I repented of the impulse which had momentarily made me
despise her. How could such a beautiful, spoiled child be asked to have
more strength and courage than I myself had shown? I couldn't deny
her the hope that cried out in her words, the terrified plea that was
expressed in every straining curve of her body. I couldn't refuse to
help her. For this was not an alien. This was another helpless human
being whose life had touched mine, and who was now, because of that
briefly intimate contact, in a state of almost mindless panic.

Mindless. I remembered Mike Boyle and how viciously he had been used.

"Yes," I said flatly. "I'll help you. I'll come."

She began to babble in an hysteria of relief, the words tumbling
meaninglessly over each other. Love. Darling. Help me. Anything you
want. Alone. Come. Please. Anything, anything, anything. I didn't
bother to listen. When she had run down I stared at the young, lovely,
tear-stained face and felt an inexpressible pity.

"You don't have to worry," I said. "I'll be there."

I did not want to go. When I thought about what I would find on that
isolated beach, I cringed inside. It was no good pretending the fear
did not exist, but I pushed it into a corner and tried not to look at
it.

And yet I had to consider some facts. How vulnerable were the aliens?
What weapons would touch them? If the bodies in which they lived
were destroyed, would the aliens perish? Or did they so infuse and
inform their hosts that their apparently human forms became immune
to the violence which would destroy an ordinary human body? From the
conversation overheard in the Dugout I had acquired the vague idea
that somehow the furious energy of the aliens sapped the very flesh of
the hosts they inhabited. One of them had urged the other to maintain
a tight, constant control over the body to keep it from--what had he
said?--to keep it from disintegrating. To hold it together. What did
that mean? Could a mind hold matter in a fixed state, retaining an
exterior form, when there was no longer any intrinsic unity of the
body? Mind over matter, mind ruling matter. The possibility was not so
fantastic. It was even a subject of scientific inquiry on earth.

But what weapons might affect a body so controlled? Would a bullet
smashing into that occupied brain destroy the alien's hold? I had no
way of knowing. In any event I didn't have a gun. It would have to be
some other weapon.

I made a hasty but thorough search of my trailer. I took a small knife
with a retractable blade from a drawer in the kitchen. As I pulled open
other drawers and rummaged through them, I kept wishing that I had had
the sense to arm myself with some kind of pistol. My choice of weapons
was pitifully limited. In the bottom drawer of a small cabinet built
into the corridor, among a jumbled collection of tools and gadgets, I
found a small pocket flame-thrower, one of those all-purpose gas-fired
lighters that is adjustable for the small flame needed to light a
cigarette or the steady blaze that will ignite charcoal for a fire or
even a miniature jet of heat suitable to cut thin pieces of metal. I
started to discard the gadget but some obscure tug of memory stopped
me. Heat. Heat brought more than searing pain. It consumed. All living
organisms were vulnerable to it. On those planets where the temperature
was too high, scientists agreed, life could not exist.

I stuck the little flame-thrower in my pocket. At least some of the
time I had spent in the library had not been wasted, I thought, though
the gadget seemed ridiculously small and ineffectual as a potential
weapon against super-human beings.

The rest of my search was fruitless. I didn't let myself dwell on the
futility of the weapons I had. If I did that I wouldn't go out. I would
cower in a corner of the trailer with my panic and wait for them to
come after me. It was better to face them in the open and with what
protection the darkness of night might afford.

I slipped on a coverall, shoes and a light windproof jacket. I turned
out all the lights and stood by the door in the living room. It
crossed my mind that I might never be returning to these small rooms.
The thought left me strangely unmoved. I opened the door quietly and
stepped out into the cold and the darkness.

Walking along the road toward the elevated station, I glanced back
once. A light shone yellow and misty, its rays radiating like a stain
in the dark mist. I stopped, thinking that I had failed to turn off all
the lights. Checking back in my mind I remembered the total darkness
the moment before I stepped out of the trailer. This light, then, had
just gone on. It wasn't from one of my rooms.

The girl next door was awake, once again aware of everything I was
doing. It was uncanny. I was convinced that I hadn't made enough noise
to awaken her. Unless she had been lying wide-eyed and sleepless,
listening. But why? With a shrug of impatience, I turned away from the
puzzle and hurried along the deserted road toward the station.

I stepped up to the landing platform cautiously. One slim tube of light
ran overhead, dimmed now by the curling mist. There was no one else
on the platform. I checked the night schedule listed on the board and
saw that a local beach train was due in seven minutes. I was in luck.
There wouldn't be another beach local for forty minutes after this
one. I pressed the night pickup light and saw its red warning glow a
quarter-mile away down the monorail.

A feeling of tension increased as the minutes ticked by. Little could
happen to me here on this platform except for that one split-second
when the train would slide in front of me, and it was unlikely that
there was any danger. They wouldn't go to all the trouble of pretending
to lure me to the beach if they wanted to kill me in my own back yard.
Nevertheless I kept far back from the edge of the platform, and when I
first heard the rush of the approaching train, the muscles tightened
involuntarily in my chest and arms.

Then the serpentine column of the train slid swiftly into the station,
braking fast, and I saw the warm glow of the lighted interior, the
familiar sight of passengers dozing or staring out the windows. I
stepped into the train and, seconds later, while I walked toward a seat
at the rear of the car, the train was once more speeding away over the
ridge of the hills, the momentum of its plunge hardly detectible inside
the car.

There were very few travelers at this time of night. It was too early
for the night shifts to be getting out, too late for revelers to be
coming home. There were a half-dozen people in my car but none of them
paid any attention to me after the first curious glance. I felt the
tension easing in my body.

Most of the time, the thick early morning mist hid the sleeping city
that lay at the foot of the hills. Occasionally I caught glimpses of
light patterns far below through open patches in the fog. But generally
there were no landmarks visible, not even the familiar yawning canyons
or the sculptured back of the hills, and I kept getting a peculiar
feeling of isolation, of rushing through a void. I thought of the
men who had cruised through the infinite emptiness of space between
Earth and Mars, little dreaming on their return that they brought
two stowaways. How had the aliens concealed themselves? Dr. Temple's
logical arguments meant little now. Somewhere there was a flaw, a
crack in the wall of checks and precautions through which the aliens
had slipped. I knew that I had been driven by a compulsion to face
the inevitable decisive clash with the enemy. I had had to come in
answer to Laurie's plea, knowing that I was probably walking into a
trap. Choice really hadn't played a part in my decision. This was the
inescapable moment toward which I had been compelled by everything that
had happened to me--not just in the recent crowded days but in the
months I had listened to the whispered voices in my mind and wondered,
in the nights when I had awakened shivering from the dream.

Yes. The dream. This too I had to face. The smashing waves, the
dominating voice. For an instant, remembering, I felt again the weight
of hopelessness. Just as quickly I rejected it. The dream need not have
been clairvoyant. It could have been a subconscious projection of my
fear of the voices I had heard--and my tormenting doubt that the voices
existed. No. I couldn't think about the dream. And this time the aliens
would not be confronting a dumbly acquiescent, frightened animal. They
were not invincible. This time the clash might be a little more equal.
Unless--

A quick contraction of muscles shattered my illusion that I had
conquered the fear. Unless both of the aliens would be there for the
kill. I forced myself to examine the possibility rationally. The
older one, the leader, did not want them to be together unless it was
absolutely necessary. And why should they believe that handling me
would require two superior minds? One would be enough. No, the young
one would be alone, the junior partner, who wouldn't admit being unable
to eliminate me without difficulty.

The reflection stirred me to a fresh sensation, a stubborn, smoldering
anger.




                                  22


There was a local stop less than a half-mile south of the Beachcomber
Trailer Lodge. I made no move. The train slid smoothly along its
single overhead rail once more. Seconds later, when I guessed that we
had traveled less than a mile, I rose, walked quickly to the end of
the car and jabbed the emergency stop signal. While the few sleepy
passengers in the car were staring at me, startled, the train came
to one of its gently quivering sudden stops. I stepped on the floor
panel just inside the narrow emergency exit. A door slid open. Damp,
salt-smelling ocean mist swirled in through the door. Dropping quickly
to the floor, I eased myself over the edge. For several seconds I hung
by my arms in mid-air outside the car, my hands gripping the door sill.
In the thick mist I couldn't see the ground below. From inside the car
someone shouted. The emergency door started to close and I dropped.

Falling through space I endured a slowly turning moment of panic. I had
misjudged the distance! Then I hit the ground with a jarring force that
seemed to unhinge my jaws. I tumbled and rolled, slamming finally to a
stop against a solid wall of earth. Breathless and dazed, I lay peering
up at the train. The emergency door opened again and a uniformed man
stood framed in the oblong panel of yellow light some fifteen feet
overhead. He muttered angrily. Although he appeared to be looking
directly at me, I was sure that he couldn't see me. After a moment he
drew back inside. The door closed. After a brief interval the train
eased into motion, humming softly as it gathered speed. The last car
vanished abruptly and I was alone in the thick black silence. I could
feel a throbbing in my left arm. Something wet trickled into the crook
of my elbow and I realized that the still-fresh cut had re-opened.

Painfully I pushed myself erect. Now I could hear the noisy clamor of
the surf nearby. The mist curled and eddied around me, dense patches
giving way to open gaps through which I caught the wet reflection of
pavement. I tried to orient myself. The monorail was on the inland side
of the beach highway. I would probably have to follow the road back to
Laurie's trailer community. I had intended to come up to it along the
beach, but in this fog there was little chance that I would find or
recognize her trailer group.

I set off along the road. There was no traffic at all. When I had been
walking for ten minutes I began to realize that I had underestimated
the train's speed. I had overshot the Beachcomber Lodge by more than
I had thought. Still I didn't regret the decision not to get out at
the station. There, I would have been too vulnerable, making a public
announcement of my arrival. At least now I had the faint possibility of
surprise.

From the edge of the road I could barely make out the lighted signs
which spelled out the names of the different trailer parks, their
letters hardly distinguishable blurs in the mist. This wasn't like
the dream, I thought, unable to disguise a quick surge of relief.
Everything had been clear in the dream. I walked on slowly, cautiously,
feeling the damp cold steal through the fabric of my coverall and
jacket. And at last, winking at me from a flat hollow of the beach, I
saw the sign: BEACHCOMBER TRAILER LODGE.

I stopped. Trying to open my mind to every impulse, I stood motionless,
thinking of nothing, waiting and listening. There was only the steady,
rhythmic roll and crash of the ocean beating against the edge of the
land. There was no foreign whisper of sound, no strange vibration of
thought. Nothing out of the ordinary. Yet I felt danger around me
like a physical presence. Some unfathomed ear of the mind heard and
telegraphed its message to the taut nerves of my body. I began to
tremble. It's the cold, I thought angrily, gritting my teeth to stop
their chattering. It's this damned cold wet fog.

Moving now in a crouch, I turned and retraced my steps to a point a
hundred yards north of the Beachcomber's sign. There I scrambled down
the incline from the road to the lower level where trailers huddled
close like motionless animals hiding in the protective mist. I made
my way carefully among them until I reached the empty strip of beach
fringing the ocean. Here the roar of the waves was almost deafening,
magnified in the darkness and the silence of the night. Dimly, I could
make out the white foam boiling up the wet slope toward me. I had to
fight down the cringing panic, holding my mind closed like a steel trap
against the invasion of memory, against the terror of the dream whose
vivid details crowded forward, demanding to be seen and heard and felt.

My body rigid with the tension of enforced discipline, I crept along
the beach, counting my steps, measuring the distance until I knew I had
covered the hundred yards and must be opposite the sign which faced
the highway, invisible now in the dark gray soup of mist lying over
the beach. I stopped, trying to place exactly in my mind the location
of Laurie's trailer. It was in the front row of trailers facing the
beach, half-concealed behind the swelling curve of a dune. I remembered
being able to see the surface of the water from the raised interior of
the trailer but being cut off from it by the dune when I was standing
outside. And it seemed to me that, entering the trailer park from the
highway, I had followed a curving walk toward the left.

I saw the patch of light through a gap in the mist not more than thirty
yards away. It was blotted out almost instantly. I edged forward and
away from the shoreline, moving onto slightly higher ground. The mist
tore again and I saw the window clearly, its glow touching the swirling
fog outside with a pale phosphorescence. The bright window seemed a
warm invitation, not dangerous at all.

For perhaps a full minute I crouched motionless on the cold sand while
the mist curled around me. Every sense strained to detect the unseen
menace lurking behind the veil of darkness. Nothing. Not a sound, not a
quiver of sensation, not a single vibrating wave of thought.

I began to inch forward. The light grew closer, visible now as a
blurred rectangle even through the dense portions of the fog. With each
step that brought me nearer to the beckoning rectangle of light, I
could feel my heart beat faster, louder.

It stopped in that instant when I rose to bring my eyes over the edge
of the window. It tripped and caught again like a sluggish motor. I
could feel its labored thudding in my temples.

Laurie sat huddled in a corner of the room. Her green eyes were wide
open, staring fixedly at the door. In her hand was a small pistol,
squat and ugly, its muzzle pointing across the room. No one else
was in sight. I frowned suspiciously. Then I realized that the fear
radiating from the whole attitude of her body was directed and focused
on something outside the room, beyond the door. And I knew that the gun
was for me.

Cautiously I circled the trailer. I saw no shadow stirring. I paused
outside the door, listening. I stood clear of it and reached out to
turn the knob. It wasn't locked. The door swung open easily under the
pressure of my hand. I jumped back as the pistol spoke, its bark low
and sharp. The bullet struck metal somewhere behind me and ricocheted,
whining off into the darkness. I was already moving forward up the
steps and into the trailer.

"Drop it, Laurie!"

I looked into the muzzle of the pistol. It wavered unsteadily. Laurie
didn't move. The cords of her throat were working visibly and I sensed
the horror of a scream frozen inside of her by muscles that refused to
function.

"Drop it!"

The gun fell from nerveless fingers and clattered to the floor. I
crossed the room quickly and reached for Laurie's shoulders.

"Laurie! Laurie--"

The scream found a slim opening, sliced through not as a full-throated
cry but as a thin high wail of terror. She shrank away from me. Her
dressing gown fell open at the throat as she drew back. Half-naked, her
eyes fixed and blank with fright, she cowered in the corner. I could
see the shudders pass along her body. I caught her by the arms and
pulled her erect, holding her tightly.

"I'm here, Laurie," I said hoarsely. "Paul. I came. There's nothing to
be afraid of any more. I'm here."

I spoke with a confidence I did not feel, but something in the urgency
of my voice reached her. Suddenly she collapsed against me. A sob tore
from her throat and then she was crying, openly and without control,
tears bathing her cheeks while the deep sobs wrenched her body. I held
her, stroking her shoulders and her back gently, murmuring soothing
meaningless phrases. And slowly the terror seemed to draw back inside
her, subsiding to an occasional quiver, until at last the flow of tears
dried up and her eyes were empty.

I drew her over to the couch and sat beside her, holding her hands. Her
fingers gripped mine with involuntary tension like the grasping fingers
of a baby.

"Can you tell me what happened? Laurie, can you hear me? Do you know
what I'm saying?"

A spasm shook her. I spoke quickly, gently.

"You don't have to be afraid any more. You won't be harmed. Do you
understand that?"

Her eyes were wide and staring. Her lips were slack, red slashes
trembling in the bloodless white of her face. I squeezed her hands.

"Laurie!" I said sharply. "How long ago was it? When did it happen?"

Her lips moved soundlessly. She began to shake again, to vibrate like
an animal too terrified to run.

"Who did it, Laurie? Who made you call me? Who wanted you to kill me?"

I knew it was hopeless to question her even as my hands gripped her
shoulders and shook her. She couldn't answer. In a deep state of shock,
exuding fear, she could hardly be aware of what I asked. But I didn't
need her reply. I already knew.

And I felt the anger growing in me, active and violent, a deep
revulsion and a raging hatred for the alien things to whom human beings
were simply inferior organisms to be possessed and used, discarded or
destroyed. Looking down at Laurie, at this young and slim and beautiful
woman, at the vivid red hair spilling over white quivering shoulders,
I knew that what I felt for her was not love but something equally
important, sympathy and compassion and a strong affection that could
easily, under other circumstances, erupt into desire and need. I felt
linked with her in a common humanity and a common anger.

And I hated what I had to do to her.

I picked up the small pistol which had fallen from her fingers. For a
moment I was tempted to discard the plan which had formed itself in my
mind. Perhaps it wouldn't be necessary. Perhaps I could squeeze the
trigger myself before my finger froze in the paralysis of obedience.

No. There was only one slim chance. It might fail but I had to risk it.
I had to try to turn the alien's own weapon against it.

"Laurie," I said gently. "Listen to me."

I spoke to her then without words.




                                  23


The challenge came. It was quite close, coming from out there in the
mist and the darkness, strong and cold and relentless. It pulled me
across the room. I jerked open the door. As I stepped out into the
night I heard Laurie give a whimpering cry. Ahead of me the pounding
surf beckoned. I felt the unwanted constriction of fear but I felt
something more--human pride and defiance.

It was chill and damp and dark as a mine on the beach. The heavy mist
was moist against my face. I stood facing the pulsations of the alien
mind and slowly, like the curtain rising on a play, the mist began to
lift. With a fog's capriciousness, it rose above my head and stopped to
hang suspended over the beach, revealing now the white curve of sand,
the black swell of waves, the dim gray shapes of trailers, but still
blotting out the hills rising beyond.

And I saw her--a slim, small figure some fifty paces away, standing
very straight, a figure of fragile innocence. I thought with pity of
the young girl she once had been, the girl now soul-destroyed, the
human named Helen Darrow.

I felt no surprise. How easily I had been duped! I wondered if her
parents knew what she was or if they too were puppets dancing on a
string, playing a perfect pantomime of human life. And then I severed
all these cords of thought, cutting off the smell and taste and touch
of the sea air, opening my mind to the vibrations beating against it,
seeing, not with my eyes, but with the sightless vision of the mind.

I saw a coldness which wore the mask of hate but had not hatred's
feeling. My spirit shriveled at the sight of the ugliness, the vicious
indifference of the alien mind. An instinctive repugnance made me
recoil as if, feeling blindly in the grass, I had touched the cold
white belly of a snake. At that moment the alien struck.

"Drown!" The voice spoke.

"No!" I shouted aloud. "Not this time!"

The alien lashed out again, its overpowering vibrations forming words
that were in my mind but not of it. "Drown! Drown yourself!"

My feet dug into the sand. I braced myself against the thundering echo
in my ear.

"Walk! Now! Into the water!"

The strange motionless struggle continued, two minds locked in conflict
in that first struggle for mastery, like two wrestlers testing
strength, standing with feet spread wide, thick legs firm, hand linked
behind each other's neck, muscles bulging as the heads and shoulders
bend under the pressure, until the greater strength begins to tell and
in the weaker man a foot shifts suddenly, the corded forearms begin to
tremble, he feels himself slipping, weakening, falling as the force
comes down hard and strong and overpowering.

Tears blinded me. The alien voice obliterated thought, blotting out the
frustration and the anger and the pride. And one foot moved. A feeble
protest formed in familiar words as I spoke to myself, to the robot
body that had always been mine to command. Now the body heard another
voice, was deaf to the child's protesting cry.

"Walk! Walk! Walk!"

And I lived the dream of long ago, the nightmare which had brought me
here to the final crisis, the vision I had known would come true. I
felt the remembered numbing cold around my ankles, rising swiftly in a
cascade of foam. My feet dragging in the heavy surf, each step a battle
lost, each movement a breach smashed in the crumbling wall of my will.
I saw on the beach the alien enemy, cold, merciless, all-powerful, and
the consciousness that I had lost even before I had begun to fight
struck me down. My knees gave way and a toppling breaker tore my feet
from under me.

I rose out of the water to fight and lose again. And slowly I was
driven out to meet the deep black oblivion of the sea. Rigidly I kept
my mind locked against the one remaining hope. I walked, a broken,
tottering shell of resistance, without strength.

"Walk! Drown! Drown!"

And the undertow joined its tugging weight to the pressure of the mind
that drove me. The water swelled and dipped, rose at last above my
head and I went under. I had failed. Now it was over. Defeat and the
knowledge of hopelessness pushed me deeper. Now I could cease to fight.
Now I could give myself to the freezing numbness that stunned my flesh.
Now I could taste the warming draught of memory, relive in the final
instant of existence all that I had ever known and felt and dreamed,
all that I had loved and lost--

The feeble spark of life still flickered. Mind and body rebelled
against obliteration. I struggled weakly, straining upwards, steeling
my mind against the final, crushing blow of the alien mind.

Its voice was silent.

I dared not believe the sudden stab of reviving hope. For only a moment
I existed in what seemed a mental vacuum, hardly realizing that this
was but the normal state of the mind's autonomy. My eyes were open to
the cold wet sting of the salt water. I could see the brightness above
me near the surface. Lungs straining to burst, I thrust suddenly toward
the surface. There was a chance. It might have worked!

I burst like a bubble into the open, gulped life-giving air, my chest
heaving convulsively. I went under again as the bosom of the ocean
heaved in a giant swelling. I came up sputtering.

"Swim back!"

The alien spoke once more in my mind. My arms and legs began to move
automatically. They felt as if they were weighted down. I tried to
grasp the meaning of the new command. The voice had not been stilled,
but--

"Swim! Swim!"

Confused, still unable to control my limbs, I struck out weakly toward
the shore, was caught by the gathering thunderhead of a breaker and
carried swiftly forward, only to fall behind as the foaming crest
rushed on. Another wave picked me up like a bobbing cork and flung me
onward, arms threshing. In the torrent of the smashing waves another
tumult raged in my mind, a bewilderment of questions and brightening
hope.

"Swim!"

I caught the panic in the alien cry, sensed that the call was weaker.
The strength of exultation surged in my arms. With a renewed vigor,
I drove on to reach the peak of a swiftly rolling wave and soared in
like a surfboard on the rushing crest, was flung ahead to tumble head
over heels in the churning uproar of the broken wall of water. And now
the water rushed swiftly back away from me, receding down the slope of
the shore, and I was kneeling on my hands and knees just a few steps
away from the glistening sand of the shoreline. I dragged myself up and
staggered forward, stumbled, felt the strength go out of my legs and
fell face downward on the sand.

"Get up!" The alien voice spoke feebly. "Come here!"

I raised my head. The being housed in the body of Helen Darrow crouched
on the wet sand thirty feet away. Her face was grotesquely white like
the painted mask of a clown, her eyes huge black holes in the white
mask. She was pressing one hand tightly to her side and against the
pale color of her dress I saw a darker stain. My gaze swung up the
beach.

Laurie Hendricks lay inert, sprawled forward on her face. Beyond her
outflung hand something metallic glittered on the sand. The gun!
Triumph burst full blown in my mind. It had worked! While the alien
fought to drive me into the sea, Laurie, obedient to the impulse I had
planted in her mind, had crept unnoticed from her trailer and--

But what had happened to her? What had I done to her?

"Come here!"

The thought struck viciously with a desperate strength. I looked again
at the alien's twisted face, at the arm held out toward me in dramatic
repetition of the call to come. And at the end of the outstretched arm
was a crumbling stump. There was no hand!

I fought then with all the power that still remained in me, sensing
that I had almost won, driving from my mind the horror that beckoned
me, admitting no thought save the single dominant denial of the alien
call. And still the overwhelming pull of the strange vibrations dragged
me forward--one, two, three painful steps. There I held. I felt the
momentary flutter of her terror, saw a strange vision of the frozen
state of death, and from the alien's weakness found the power to hold.
She was dying! Life was pouring out of the mortally wounded body--and
the thing pulsating within wanted me! Wanted my body! _Needed_ it!

I held and knew the rising pulsation of its fear. The force which
pulled at me grew weaker. At last it hesitated, lashed out weakly,
stopped. The alien mind drew in upon itself. The vibrations of its
panic hammered at me without the power to move.

I stood motionless and watched the girl die. In the final moment of
life she gave a human cry. The body toppled forward and rolled over on
its back.

The pulsations of the alien mind went on. I felt them now as pain, wave
after wave of wordless vibrations beating in my brain until my eyes
filmed over. I blinked against the tears. Through the blur, the body on
the sand seemed to lose its distinguishable shape, to shed its human
form, to disintegrate in the way that the trunk of a hollow, rotten
tree eaten away from within will present a smooth, untarnished shell
to the eye until one day a sudden blow smashes the outer crust and the
tenuous hold of form is broken and the whole tree topples, collapses,
dank smelling, into a soft and shapeless heap of dust and debris.

And I saw the alien. It flowed like saliva from the open mouth, flowed
out and began to spread, out of the mouth that was no longer a mouth
but a shapeless hole in the face that was caving in upon itself.
Rigid with horror, I saw the body dissolve into powder. And among
the soft crumbling bones moved a thing of dazzling colors, a network
of glistening chains of cells spreading like the fingers of a spider
web. Salt spray blew over it and the dust of the decaying body stirred
like ashes in the wind. I saw the faintly gleaming, almost transparent
membranes that joined the network of cell fingers. Drops of water from
the spray clung to the filmy membranes like dew. The thing spread like
a stain upon the sand, groping among the powdery remains of Helen
Darrow's body, reaching out, stretching astonishingly.

Then it began to shrink, to draw its fingers in, folding in upon
itself, its movements jerky now, stiffening. The clamor of the alien
voice grew shrill. A probing tentacle touched the gray wet body of a
dead fish washed up on the shore. With blinding speed the membraneous
web contracted upon the fish, enveloping it in a tissue-thin film that
seemed to part and shrink as the alien invaded the foreign body, oozing
through the gaping mouth. I saw the white slit of a cut on the belly of
the fish and stared incredulous as the gash began to close, knitting
together, the wound healing as the alien exerted its terrifying power
upon the dormant flesh.

With a soft, wet squish, the dead body of the fish exploded, unable to
contain the hideous force. My skin crawled with revulsion. This was a
power of which I could not have dreamed, a force which had invaded a
human body, sapping its very fibers, devouring it from within while
holding its matter together until the last spark of life was snuffed
out, the alien's hold broken by the bullet from Laurie's gun smashing
into the decayed body. Sickness twisted in my stomach. I swayed
dizzily. The strumming vibrations of the alien mind shivered through my
head, soundless yet like an unendurable, endless screech.

And still I could not move as the alien flowed again on the wet sand,
drawing together as a cluster of frothy bubbles, spreading out once
more, the moist membranes hardly visible, the rainbow-hued strings of
its web-like body reaching, groping blindly, creeping toward me, closer
and closer. And a small sand crab scuttled toward it across the sand
between us. Sweating and shaking, I watched the hard-shelled creature
crawl toward its unseen enemy. A claw touched the moist tissue and the
alien struck with sudden violence, silent and terrible, enveloping,
smothering, invading the helpless body.

At last I moved. Looking around wildly I saw a chunk of jagged rock
half buried in the sand. I pawed it loose. The crab, possessed now,
turned a beady eye toward me as I swung around. The painful pulsing
in my mind rose harrowingly. With a choking sob of fury I smashed the
rock down upon the crab, raised it and smashed down again and again and
again, burying the broken, pulpy body in the sand. A sticky piece of
protoplasm flew through the air and stuck to my wrist. I brushed it off
and it adhered to my fingers like a living thing. I saw the glitter of
a tiny string of beads. It moved.

Acting without thought, I clawed in my pocket with my free hand and
grasped the small metal cylinder of the pocket lighter. I jerked it out
and pressed the button on the end. A thin blue finger of fire danced
from the nozzle. I turned the flame upon my fingers where the sticky
bit of substance stirred. In my mind there was a snap and shriek like a
violin string breaking. Gritting my teeth against the searing pain of
the burning flesh, I shook my fingers. The blackened thing dropped off.

I bent down to direct the flame upon the smashed remains of the crab
where the alien still crawled. I held it there until at last I was
struck by silence. The pulsations were gone. I stared down at the
contracted body of the alien.

At first my mind could register only shocked disbelief. What I saw was
so familiar that I could not comprehend its meaning. I thought I must
be truly mad. Glittering on the wet sand was a small hard cluster of
surfaces arranged into the frozen patterns of ordinary rock crystals.
On impulse I turned the blue jet of fire upon the chunk. It blackened
slowly. At first there seemed to be an infinitesimal shrinking, then
only a dark discoloration. When at last I stood erect, turning off the
lighter, I knew this alien mind was silenced forever.

I stared down at the blackened chunk of crystals, trying to sort out
all the answers that crowded through the suddenly opened door in my
mind. This much I knew for certain--strange rock and crystal formations
had been brought back from Mars. I had seen them carefully placed on
their shelves behind special glass doors. I remembered how strikingly
beautiful they had appeared in their dazzling interplay of light and
color.

With a shudder I thought of the scientist's habit of touching strange
crystals with the tongue.

       *       *       *       *       *

When I reached Laurie, she was already stirring. I felt an intense
relief. Oblivious of the throbbing burn in my left hand, I knelt beside
her and put my arm under her shoulders to raise her to a sitting
position. Fainting had saved her life--and mine. If she had been
conscious the alien would not have needed _my_ body. He would have had
no need to call me back from the grave.

"Laurie? Can you hear me?"

Her eyes fluttered open, widened as she recognized me. I felt her
stiffen.

"It's all right now. She's dead. Because of you. Because you helped
me--"

She wrenched violently away from my supporting arm, cringing back from
me. "Don't touch me!"

Her voice was shrill with hysteria.

"There's nothing to be afraid of," I said soothingly. "It's all over
now."

I put out my hand and she began to whimper. "No! No, don't!
You're--you're one of them!"

The accusation stunned me.

"You're one of them!" Her mouth began to quiver. I saw the bloodless
lips, the glazed eyes of shock and fear. "Please," she begged. "Please
don't."

"Laurie, it's not true. I'm not one of them. I had to use you, I had to
make you shoot her. It was the only way...."

The words didn't reach her. For a moment longer I knelt beside her
trembling body on the sand, tasting the bitterness of her fear of me.
Of me! I knew there was nothing I could say that would wipe away the
memory of the dreadful whiplash of my own projected thoughts.

I stood up. She shrank further away from me. I turned to stare at the
blackened crystal fragment, at the shapeless heap of dust beside it,
washed now by the incoming tide. I felt no sense of triumph. In the end
it was not I who had won. The alien had been destroyed by an ordinary,
frightened human being.

The thought startled me. I confronted it with growing wonder. I had
used the phrase automatically: an ordinary human being. And what was I?
A thing to be feared. A step beyond.

I too was an alien mind.

In that moment I was conscious of a new aloneness. For years, I had
known an isolation from the world around me. I had walked apart, and
the sense of exile had walked with me, not understood, beyond any
experience that would have allowed me to understand it. And now I knew
at last the thing which made me different, like the impulse which had
driven the first feeble-legged creature from the sea to walk apart upon
the land.

I turned back to Laurie. For a moment longer I stared at her. Slowly,
I bent to pick up the gun she had dropped. The movement made me wince
as pain shot through me from the stiff, scorched fingers of my left
hand. They felt as if the flame still burned upon them. They smelled
of smoking flesh. I set my teeth against the pain. Without a word, I
turned my back on the girl's frightened eyes and walked back down the
slope of the beach.

The blackened crystal glittered wet. I picked it up. A dead piece of
rock. Frozen matter. Nothing. I took it with me. It seemed fitting that
the two aliens should meet once more, the one who had died--and the one
who lived.




                                  24


All the offices in the Science building were dark. The corridors glowed
with a glassy, empty brightness. Behind me the campus was dark and
deserted. I tried the main doors. They were locked. I had started to
turn away when a thought struck me. I stared at the lock. Concentrating
on it, I tried to see the naked mechanism. I thought of a key turning,
of the tumblers dropping, of the click of the opening lock. Sweat
broke out on my forehead. I bent the full weight of my mind upon the
resisting sliver of metal. It clicked.

For a moment I leaned against the door. I was near a state of total
exhaustion. The pain in my hand now was almost unbearable. I had
wrapped a handkerchief around it. Charred flesh had stuck to the cloth.

When I looked up a watchman was moving along the corridor directly
toward me. I ducked back out of sight. I felt neither surprise nor
satisfaction over the power I had just discovered. After waiting a
moment, I edged forward and peered through the glass in the door. The
watchman was not in sight.

I went in through the unlocked door. My steps sounded loud on the hard
polished surface of the corridor. As I reached the office door, the
watchman's footsteps thudded on the stairs nearby, descending with
a weary, deliberate tread. Apprehensively, I twisted the handle of
the door. It was locked. My new trick worked on this door, too. The
watchman's legs were visible on the staircase as I slipped into the
dark room, not daring to close the door completely for fear of the
noise it would make.

I stood tense behind it, waiting and listening. I heard the low quick
catch of my own breath and felt the fluttering heartbeat of excitement.
The watchman's steps shuffled past the door. They stopped. Through the
glass panel I saw the shadow of an arm reaching out. The door opened
part way. Standing behind it, holding my breath, I heard the watchman
grunt. He pulled the door shut with a decisive bang.

I waited a moment before checking the door. It had an automatic lock
which was now set.

When I was sure the watchman was out of earshot, I searched the office
and its connecting laboratory. Both were empty. I went back to the desk
in the office and took the black crystal from my pocket. I set it on a
sheet of paper in the center of the desk top. Turning away, I brushed
my burned hand against the edge of the desk. A sheet of pain shot up my
arm. I swayed dizzily, gritting my teeth. It seemed to take a long time
for the pain to ebb. My heart thudded heavily.

As I crouched behind the door to wait, the first light of dawn sent
thin streamers above the horizon. In the darkness of the room the black
crystal on the desk seemed to have a glow from within. Its many facets
caught and held the feeble light filtering through the opaque glass
from the bright corridor. I thought of the thing's active state. I
thought of viruses on earth which in their inanimate state had all the
properties of ordinary rock crystals, responded to chemical experiments
in a predictable way--until they touched the living organism on which
they fed and thrived, became themselves living, breathing, growing
parasites. I thought of a dead planet dotted with beautiful colored
crystals....

       *       *       *       *       *

Slowly, the building came to life. Gray early morning light washed the
office. Voices spoke nearby in the corridor and the sounds of movement
whispered through the walls. It seemed to me to be hours before firm
steps approached the office door and halted. I felt too tired to move.
A key turned in the lock.

Dr. Temple had taken no more than two steps into the room when he
sensed my presence. He stopped in mid-stride. I slammed the door shut
and stepped close behind him. He swung around slowly. I marveled at the
iron discipline that kept him from showing surprise or shock. His face
was expressionless, his eyes like pieces of polished blue slate. They
were fixed on the muzzle of the gun I held inches away from his skull.

"You won't have time to stop me, Doctor," I said softly.

Only his eyes moved, shifting cautiously from the gun to my face. "What
is the meaning of this?"

"You don't seem surprised to see me."

"I am too old for surprises."

"How old are you, Doctor--in human years, that is?"

He frowned, eyeing me speculatively. His gaze swiveled around the room.

"She's not here," I said.

"I don't know what you mean."

"I mean she's dead. I killed her."

He looked at me sharply. "You killed someone?"

"Not a person--but I killed the thing you see on your desk."

He spun toward the desk. I saw the bunching of his shoulder muscles
under his jacket and my finger tensed, hovering against the trigger.
The black crystal on the desk top winked with reflected light.

"And what is that supposed to be?"

"The alien, Doctor. I used a flame on it. It was the only thing I could
think of that would be effective."

I thought the skin of his neck paled, but I couldn't be sure. Again I
was struck by the degree of his self-control. But perhaps he has no
emotions, I thought. Perhaps he doesn't feel anything at all--love
or hate, excitement or fear. He might be able to analyze them coldly
but he wouldn't understand them. The thought excited me. Here was a
weakness in the alien mind.

"You are a sick man, Mr. Cameron," Dr. Temple said quietly. "I realized
that you were ill when you talked to me on Saturday--but I did not then
believe you capable of murder. If you've really killed someone you are
in serious trouble. And you have also been hurt. Your hand--"

"I only need one good finger to kill you," I said. "I could have done
it as you walked through the door but I wanted you to know it was
coming."

He smiled thinly. "And why should you want to kill me?"

"Because you are one of them--the leader. I should have known
it before, I guess. It wasn't until I saw the hardened crystal
that I knew. That's how you got to earth, Doctor--as a pair of
innocent-looking crystals. I don't pretend to understand what kind of
creature you are but I've seen the other crystal there in both its
frozen and its active states. I imagine you were the first one to be
activated. The real Dr. Temple received the crystals for research. He
was probably the first one to touch them with his bare hands--or his
tongue."

"You have a vivid imagination, Mr. Cameron."

"Then all you had to do was find a suitable subject for the other
crystal. Helen Darrow was a shrewd choice. She would never be suspected
and she could work closely with you under the guise of a student."

"Helen Darrow?"

I laughed. "It's no good, Doctor. It won't work."

"I'm going to call a doctor for you, Mr. Cameron. I hope what you say
about killing a girl is not true. But I'm afraid I shall also have to
call the police."

For the first time I felt a twinge of doubt. His reactions were not
what I had expected. But he had to be the other alien. It couldn't be
anyone else.

He took a step away from me. "Don't move!" I snapped.

He froze. I pushed the muzzle of the gun hard against the back of his
neck.

"If you do that again, I'll kill you!" I said savagely.

For a moment he was silent. Then he spoke quietly, his voice soothing
like that of a parent talking to an offended child. "That will
accomplish nothing except my pointless murder, Mr. Cameron. I will
do all I can to help you. And I assure you that you will not be held
responsible for the killing of this--this girl you say is dead. You are
not of sound mind. I can testify to that and I'll be believed. My word
carries a lot of weight."

"I'm sure it does. But you're not going to testify to anything. I'll
think no more of destroying you than the other one. It will give me
pleasure."

"You keep saying you killed one of these--these aliens of yours. Tell
me, how did you succeed in doing it? Didn't you tell me they were able
to control your mind? Surely the creature would have been able to stop
you."

"She did stop me, Doctor--but I'd figured on that. I took precautions.
I had someone else there with me--a girl. She had a gun. While the
alien tried to make me drown myself, the girl got behind her unnoticed
and shot her."

The scientist was silent for a moment. When he spoke his voice seemed
harder, colder. "Clever, if true," he said. "But it surprises me that a
bullet would destroy the hold this creature had on its body. If it was
as powerful as you say it was, I would think--"

"Hope, you mean, don't you, Doctor? Are you still wondering whether a
bullet would disturb your body? I think it will. I gambled on that and
won. You'll lose control. There really isn't much of that body left, is
there?"

"You should write fiction, Mr. Cameron. This is all very interesting,
but since I'm not one of your aliens will you please remove that gun
from my neck? It is not a pleasant feeling."

I hesitated. He hadn't introduced one false note. If he were not
the alien I would be destroying one of the world's greatest men, an
irreplaceable mind. But there was only one way of finding out. I had to
make him act.

"I'm sorry, Doctor," I said. "I can't take any chances. And I've
delayed too long. I have to kill you."

"You'll never get away--the shot will be heard."

"I'll have to run that risk."

My finger started to tighten on the trigger. My hand was shaking and my
mouth was dry.

"Stop!"

The unleashed force of his mind was beyond any power I had yet
experienced, crushing and terrible. My right hand was a thing of
petrified wood, without nerve or feeling, incapable of the fractional
pressure that would have sent a bullet smashing into the alien's brain.

"You force me to do this," he said harshly. "You are a stupid man."

I fought to open the constricted muscles of my throat. "You--you didn't
think I'd come alone, did--did you?" I choked out.

He smiled. "That's a very old trick, Mr. Cameron. I am in full
possession of Dr. Temple's memory so I cannot be fooled by your
childish ruses. I'm perfectly aware that there is no one behind me.
Coming alone was very foolish. You might have won."

He had to believe me. I had to break for an instant the unbearable
pressure of the force that froze my hand. Then I realized that my
burned hand could move. I controlled the first leap of excitement. He
wouldn't believe I had an ally--unless he read my mind! If he felt the
wild rush of my relief and excitement he would believe. And it wouldn't
have to be relief--it could be any emotion! Any feeling at all! He
wouldn't immediately know the difference!

And suddenly I looked past him. My eyes brightened with delight and
a smile leaped to my lips. In that same instant, I scraped the raw,
burned flesh of my left hand across the sharp-edged buckle of my
belt. Pain stormed through my body and exploded in my brain--searing,
hideous, heart-stopping pain. And the alien turned in frantic haste.

For a split-second I felt relief from the pressure of his mind. My
finger jabbed the trigger and the gun spat. A raw, black hole opened in
his skull.

As he fell, I was already jamming the gun into my pocket and fumbling
for the lighter. The sound of the shot had been loud in my ears, but
I felt sure that it would have been only a muffled retort in the
corridor. It might be another minute before anyone came to investigate.
Or it might be seconds.

His face started to decompose. The coverall he wore began to sag as his
body disintegrated before my eyes, no longer held together by the power
of the alien mind, pulsating now in shrill, meaningless waves. I saw
behind the powdery tissue a withdrawing tentacle of cells. Feet sounded
in the corridor outside and there was a murmur of voices. Someone tried
the door.

The alien shrank, the fingers folding inward, wrapped in the hardening
membraneous tissue. I waited a moment longer. An urgent knock rattled
the glass panel of the door. The singing vibrations dimmed in my mind
like the fading wail of a siren.

And the glittering crystal lay still on the floor among the dust and
the soft white bones and the crumpled coverall. I turned on the blue
jet of flame and held it on the bright surface of the crystal chunk,
held it while the coverall's smoking stench filled my nostrils, held it
until the blackened face of death had seeped deep into the heart of the
thing on the floor.

I heard voices through the haze in my brain. "Something's burning!"
"Open up in there!" "Dr. Temple? Are you there?"

I scooped up the crystal chunk. It was still hot, but there was no
life in it. I grabbed the other from the desk and jammed both into my
pocket. Then I bundled the pile of soft, pulpy bones and decayed tissue
in the folds of the coverall and threw the bundle into a wastebasket
beside the desk. I grabbed a pile of papers and crammed them into the
basket.

When the door was smashed inward I was heroically trying to put out
the fire which had somehow started in the wastebasket. I had burned my
left hand badly in the process. There was nothing left of the man who
had been Dr. Jonas Temple but a pile of smoking ash.




                                  25


Morning sunlight had dissipated the early mist. I walked slowly along
the road from the elevated station toward my trailer. Behind me the
night's nightmare, the hour of suspicious questioning about the fire.
Someone had remembered my visit to Dr. Temple on Saturday, so my
appearance there this morning had seemed plausible. There would be more
questions, I knew, when Dr. Temple did not appear. I didn't care. There
would be questions but no answers.

The two small crystal clusters felt heavy in my pocket. I stopped and
took them out, weighing them in my hand like marbles. I had an impulse
to throw them into the dust at the side of the road. Instead I pushed
them back into my pocket.

Souvenirs, I thought. One needed to remember.

I looked up. A tall slim figure stood at the edge of the highway, her
blonde hair shimmering in the sunlight. She began to run toward me. I
couldn't move. I felt an elation I had never known before, a strange
whispering excitement. And suddenly I knew what I must subconsciously
have divined at the very beginning, knew the incredible truth. Here was
more than a woman's suppliant beauty, so marvelously warm and human.
Here now the reason for the shy withdrawal, the trembling eagerness,
the intimate knowledge. Here was--

"Erika!"

The cry arrested her. She stopped not ten feet away from me,
breathless. I felt the quivering of her unvoiced fear for me, the surge
of joy that leaped into her mind.

Her mind!

I knew then that I had not called aloud.

       *       *       *       *       *




                          MADNESS ON HIS MIND


Paul Cameron heard voices.

There were two of them. They were whispering to each other in the bones
of his skull, wearily, interminably, making monstrous plans to conquer
the Earth....

Cameron was an educated man, an English professor at a leading
university. Was he going insane? Or was he really tuned in somehow on
the telepathic conversations of a recon patrol for a terrible Martian
invasion?

He tried warning the others, but nobody believed him.

And then one day the voices stopped for a moment. "_Wait_," one of them
said then. "_There's a listener. We've got to get the listener. When
you find out who he is, kill him...._"


                           A ZENITH ORIGINAL



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