Chapter VI: Part 6

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