Chapter II: Part 2

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.