RICHARD WILSON

Richard Wilson's first science fiction story was published in 1940, at the beginning of sf's first "Golden Age"; since then he's produced nearly a hundred more and is known as one of the most enjoyable story-tellers in the business. The novelette below, which appears here for the first time in the U.S., shows him bringing fresh life to a theme we see too seldom these days: invisibility.

Avery didn't realize he was invisible until a few minutes after he woke up the second time. He woke the first time at the usual hour, heard his wife say something about getting the kids out of the house so he could sleep and snuggled blissfully back into the pillow. It was the first day of his vacation.

The second time he yawned prodigiously, then was wide awake. He lay on his back for a few minutes, looking at the ceiling. There was something different about the way it looked. No, it wasn't the ceiling that was different, but his view of it. A perfectly clear, unobstructed view. Then he realized that what was missing was the fuzzy, unfocused tip of nose which had always been there, just below the line of vision, and which became a definite object only when he closed one eye.

Avery closed one eye. No nose. His hand came up in alarm and felt the nose. It was there, all right. That is, he could feel it. But he couldn't see the fingers or the band.

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He shivered and lay still, observing with dubious comfort the shape of his body under the covers and the ridge made by his feet. He brought up his hands. He couldn't see them. He clapped them together. He heard the clap but all he could see was two pajama sleeves coming almost together at a right angle, then stopping inches away from each other.

He bent the sleeve toward his face and his invisible hand hit him in the chin. He forced himself to look down the empty sleeve. Seeing the emptiness, clear to the elbow, gave him a queasy feeling, as if he were looking down a deep well.

Avery threw back the covers. His wrinkled pajama legs came into view, but at the end of them—no feet.

It was impossible, Avery thought. Therefore he must be dreaming. But that couldn't be right, either, because whenever he dreamed and realized he was dreaming he woke up. Therefore he was already awake. It was impossible.

He swung his legs off the bed and put his feet on the floor. He could see distinctly the nap of the carpet under them being pressed down.

Now he was facing the big round mirror of his wife's dressing table. The sight of the pajama-clad nothing, headless, handless and footless, was unnerving. He stripped off his pajamas and disappeared completely.

The sound of tires crunching on gravel sent him to the window. It was their car. Liz was back.

He scooped up his pajamas, then changed his mind about putting them on and tossed them in the closet. Liz mustn't see him like this . . . mustn't not see him . . . What he meant, he told himself, was that he must avoid her for a while, till he reappeared, if he was going to, or at least until he knew what had happened to him. He didn't want to scare her half to death.

The front door opened and closed and his wife called: "Hello, Ave? You up?"

She must have heard him moving around.

"I'm up here," he called, going into their daughter's room. "In the bedroom."

He heard her drop bundles on the kitchen table, then start up the stairs. He waited for her to go into the bedroom, then went down the stairs. He almost slipped, not being able to see his feet, then navigated the rest of the way by not looking down. In the process he had closed his eyes

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and realized that it made no difference. He saw right through the invisible eyelids.

"Where are you?" his wife called from upstairs. "Avery?"

"Uh-down the basement, Liz," he said, going down. "Just checking the oil in the tank."

"Whatever for? It's the middle of summer."

"Well, sure." The concrete floor was cold. He raised one foot, then the other. "But the nights get nippy early in the fall . . * He banged the side of the tank with his invisible hand, just to be doing something, and looked at the gauge. There were at least a hundred gallons in it.

Liz was coming down the stairs again. He held his breath but she stopped at the first floor and went into the kitchen.

"It's almost lunchtime," she said. "You had a good sleep?"

"Sure did." He ran up the cellar stairs, then back up to the second floor and into the bathroom. He locked the door behind him and leaned against it, panting.

"... for lunch?" Liz was saying.

"What?"

"I said what would you like for lunch? Are you upstairs again? For heaven's sake, Ave . . ." He heard her only faintly.

"I'm in the bathroom," he yelled through the door. "Anything at all, thanks. But not right now."

He sat on the edge of the tub but the porcelain was cold. He stood up again.

It was a good thing this had happened to him at home, he thought. A relatively good thing, that is. It could have been much worse. Suppose he had become invisible on the commuter train? Or at the bank? What a sensation he would have caused in the credit department of the staid Peoples Trust. A conservative business suit sitting there at the desk with nothing inside it. Scare the wits out of even the most desperate loan-seeker. He chuckled.

What would he have done? he wondered. Would he have got out of his clothes and become completely invisible? What an opportunity! All those hundreds of thousands of dollars lying around. But of course he wouldn't do any such thing. . . . Besides, he was in the wrong department.

But he wasn't at the office. He wouldn't be going back for two weeks, thank goodness, and they needn't know a thing about it. If this thing wore off in two weeks, that is. What was it, anyway? How was he going to tell Liz? He couldn*t stay in the bathroom all day.

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A knock at the door made him jump. He hadn't heard her come up the stairs.

"Are you still in there?" she said.

"Just a minute," he said. Was she suspicious? But she went downstairs again.

He ran a bath. He had to have an excuse for monopolizing the place for so long. It would give him time to think.

Avery got into the tub, carefully because he wasn't exactly sure how far to lift his feet as he stepped in, and sat down. The water felt normal on his body, and soothing. But when he looked down he saw the empty place where his body displaced the water. And without the length of his body to give him perspective it seemed a long way from his eye to the surface—which then broke for the circular gap (was he that fat around?). The gap looked like a whirlpool without motion, except that it was wide at the bottom and went off in the two tunnels that were his legs.

He looked back up because he was having a touch of vertigo again. He looked at the normal things—the towels on their racks, the supposedly waterproof wallpaper that was beginning to discolor at the lower edges, the toothpaste tube with the cap off it, the shower head which leaked and dripped on a bather's back unless he sat well forward.

Liz was at the bathroom door again.

"Honestly, Ave," she said.

"You-can't-come-in-I'm-taking-a-bath," he said quickly. Sneaking up on him like that. Why couldn't she leave him alone till he worked out some kind of solution?

"Oh, really," Liz said. "Since when are you so modest? Unlock the door."

"I can't reach it."

"Nonsense. Of course you can reach it. Come on, now."

"Well— Just a minute." Avery yanked the shower curtain around the tub, then reached out across the sink and unlocked the door. He pulled his arm back inside and closed the gap in the curtain.

He heard Liz come in. "I just wanted to put the clean towels on the shelf."

"Um," he said, waiting for her to go.

There was silence on both sides of the curtain.

"Avery?" she said after a moment.

"Hm?" Why didn't she go?

"You're not taking a shower."

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-No." '

"Were you taking a shower? No, of course you weren't. The curtain's not wet."

"Mrs. Sherlock Holmes. I'm going to take a shower. How about that?"

"But you ran a bath. I heard you."

"I happen to want a bath and a shower."

"You're certainly peculiar today. What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing." Was she going to stand there all day?

"There's something the matter. Are you sick?"

"No, I'm not sick."

"Then you're hiding something. What are you hiding?"

"Nothing!" he shouted. "Can't a man have a little privacy once in a while? In his own home? He works hard fifty weeks a year and he gets two weeks off and he can't even take a bath?"

"Now I know you're hiding something." Liz's voice was calm, as it always was when she was winning. "Avery?"

"What?" he said sullenly. He could feel the tips of his fingers beginning to shrivel from being in the water too long.

"Avery?" Her voice was soft now and—well, sexy. "Darling?"

"What? What?" Was she sneaking up on the curtain?

"Darling—I feel like taking a shower, too."

"What? You mean now? With me?"

"Why not? It's been a long time since we did, Avery. Remember? And the children are away for the afternoon."

"Nol" He exploded the word at her. "You can't! No, Elizabeth!"

"Well!" He could hear her breathing indignantly. "You needn't sound as if I'd made an indecent proposal."

He was sorry instantly that he'd snapped at her. He said so. "I'm sorry, Liz. Of course I didn't mean it that way. It's just-"

"Just what?"

"I-I can't tell you."

"Certainly you can. You can tell me anything. . . . Can't you?"

"Ordinarily," he said. "But this is different."

"Different? You mean—Avery, are you sure you're not sick?"

"No, I'm not. Not in any way, shape or form. And I

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haven't been unfaithful to you and picked up a social disease, if that's what you mean."

"I'm relieved to hear it. Then what is the matter with you? Don't tell me you went and got yourself tattooed I"

He laughed. Good old Liz. He knew he could tell her now.

"No/' he said. "Not tattooed. Liz, can you stand a shock? Sit down someplace."

"What kind of a shock? I guess I can stand it, as long as it's not—you know. And as long as you're not sick. I couldn't help thinking of cancer."

"No. Nothing like that. Liz-first I'll tell you and then, when you've adjusted to it somewhat, I'll open the curtain."

"All right," she said. "You've got me a little scared now, I don't mind telling you. I—I think I will sit down."

"Good. Now. Are you ready?"

"I guess I have to be. Go on, Avery."

"Well, when I woke up this morning, the first time I was all right. You saw that. But when I woke up the second time. I was"—he paused and looked at where his crinkled fingertips would have been if he could see them—"invisible."

"Invisible?" There was a pause, then Liz repeated the word with a little gasp, as if she hadn't understood the first time. "Invisible? That's impossible . . ." But she let it trail off, almost with a question mark.

"That's what I thought, but it isn't. At least it happened to me. I don't know how or why, but it did."

"I don't believe it," Liz said. "Open the curtain and let me see you."

He laughed ruefully. "I wish I could. But I'll open the curtain, if you're ready."

"I'm as ready as I'll ever be. Go ahead." She tried to laugh, too. "Unveil."

He pulled back the curtain.

Liz screamed. She jumped up and stood backed against the wall, as far away as she could get.

Her scream and her attitude scared him, too. "I'm sorry, Liz, I didn't expect it to be that much of a shock."

"But you're not invisible!" she said. "You're dead! You're a ghost!"

"Nonsensel" he said sharply.

**Look at yourself! Look in the mirror!"

He stood and leaned across the sink to look. He saw himself in vague outline. He also saw through himself to the curtained window beyond his reflection.

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"It's water vapor," he said, "that's all." He took a towel from the rack and began to dry himself, shivering. As he rubbed and the vapor was absorbed by the towel he began to disappear completely.

Liz was giggling half hysterically. "I'm sorry," she said. "But you looked—awful! I wasn't prepared for that."

Avery finished drying himself. "I'm me," he said. "Just the same old me, only you can't see me. I—I guess I'd better stay away from you till you get used to it."

She was looking toward him but her eyes were focused on a spot a good foot away from his face. It was disconcerting to Avery to have her looking past him that way. But he imagined he was at least ten times as disconcerting to her.

"You're sure it's not a trick?" Liz said. "You're not playing a joke on me?"

"I wish I were. No, it's no trick. I've disappeared, that's all. I can't explain it."

"We certainly couldn't explain it to the Wormsers," Liz said.

"The Wormsers? What have they got to do with it?"

"We were supposed to go there for dinner tonight. Don't you remember? But we certainly can't go to the Wormsers with you looking like that."

"Don't you mean not looking like that?" He was glad to see her practical side coming to the fore. She might easily have panicked completely, but here she was considering the situation in relation to their social life as practically as if his problem were no more than a black eye or a missing front tooth.

He folded the towel and put it back on the rack and saw Liz watching its movements, fascinated. He made sure he did everything slowly. He said: "Now the immediate question is—shall I wear something or nothing? What would be less upsetting to you?"

"I think it would be one of those degrees without a difference. What I really think is that we'd better call Dr. Mike."

"Mike Custer? What for? I'm not sick."

"So you keep saying. But we ought to have an expert opinion. You get into bed and I'll call him."

"Bed? Why bed?"

"Because," Liz said logically, "you're going to be enough of a shock to him as it is. It'll be easier for him if he knows

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exactly where you are and doesn't have to go chasing around the room after you. Where are you now?"

"Right here. All right, call Mike. Not that I think it's going to do any good."

"No, he hasn't got a fever," Liz was saying on the telephone. "Chills? Are you chilly, Ave?"

"I'm warming up now," he said from under the covers. "Just ask him to come over. No use trying to tell him on the phone."

". . . He'll be here in a few minutes," Liz said, hanging up. She regarded the depression on the pillow where a head should have been. "Congratulate me. I can look at you now without getting the wim-wams."

"That's fine, but— Where did you say the kids were? We can't keep it from them forever. How are they going to take it?"

"I don't know. Margie's at dramatics class and Bobby's visiting Corky. Bobby'll be back first."

"He might just take it in stride. Four-year-olds are pretty adaptable. If he can believe everything he sees on television he ought to be able to take his poor old invisible Pop for granted."

"Maybe. Margie's another kettle of fish, though. She's pretty sophisticated for ten, but. . ."

"We could send them both to your mother for a while."

"We'd need a darned good reason," Liz said. "You know Mama and her boyfriend situation. She hates to be reminded she's a grandmother. But let's not cross that bridge till we have to. Maybe Dr. Mike can cure you. It might even be something he's studied in one of those journals he's always getting."

"I'd be very much surprised if he has anything in his little bag that's going to do me any good."

A car drove up. "That's him now," Liz said. "Shall I prepare him?"

"No. Let's get our money's worth. I want to see his reaction. Shall I moan? Maybe I should get under the shower and ghost myself up for him?"

"You just stay put. Sometimes I think you don't like Dr. Mike. I'll go and let him in."

"It's always been my theory that doctors don't cure anybody of anything. All they do is shoot you full of some antibiotic from our great local industry, Lindhof Labora-

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tories, while Nature heals you in her own sweet time. Except surgeons."

"Let's not get started on that again," Liz said.

Mike Custer's cheerful voice came up the stairs. "Where's the patient? Giving you much trouble, Mrs. Train? No fever, eh? It's a beautiful day for malingering, isn't it?"

"He's on vacation," Liz said coolly, "so he wouldn't be gold-bricking. He probably has a rare disease."

"The rarer die better. The practice has been a little dull , lately. In here?"

"In there," Liz said. "That's him."

"What's he doing all the way under the covers? Not afraid of me, is he?" He boomed out: "Have no fear; Dr. Mike is here!"

"Have no fear yourself," the patient said. "As Liz told you, I have a rare disease."

"What is this, ventriloquism?" the doctor asked. "Parlor tricks? Come, come, Avery, out from under. Why, your children are braver patients."

"I'm right here," Avery said. "Brace yourself, Mike. Your heart all right?"

"Sound as a dollar." Mike thumped his chest. "Sounder."

"Good. Put your hand on the pillow."

"Why? Cold sweats? Is that why you're buried under the blankets on a summer day?"

"Just feel the pillow."

Mike shrugged and put out his hand. It collided with Avery's invisible face. The doctor snatched his hand away and stepped back, sucking in his breath.

"Ave!" Liz said. "You didn't bite him, did you?"

"Of course I didn't bite him. Just scared him, the big bum."

Dr. Mike sat down on the stool of Liz's dressing table. "Whew," he said. "Well." He looked at the pillow and at his hand.

"I'm invisible," Avery said. "That was a dirty trick, but you deserved it. Where'd you pick up your bedside manner, Mike—in the Army?"

"I was in the Army," Mike told him, annoyed. "Invisible?"

"Yop," Avery said. "I was in the Army, too, Mike. I walked guard duty in ten-degree weather with a hundred and four fever because they didn't think I had pneumonia. I had it, all right."

"Where was this?"

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"Camp Crowder, Missouri."

"Then it couldn't have been me kept you out of the hospital."

"I didn't say it was. I just asked you where you got your bedside manner which, in case nobody ever told you, stinks. Well, I haven't got pneumonia now; I've got invisibiHty. Can you cure me?"

Liz was trying to suppress a case of the giggles.

The doctor looked at her. "Is he serious? This isn't some elaborate joke?"

"He's serious and it's serious. Can you help him?"

"I don't know. It's something that never came up in medical school."

"Well, aren't you going to examine him, or whatever it is you do?"

"Yes, I suppose so, now that I know which end is up. Avery?"

"I'm right here," Avery said. "Same as last time."

"I'll make the examination now."

"Go ahead. I'm not going to bite you."

"Better take your clothes off."

"They are off. Here come the bedclothes now. Steady."

The covers seemed to throw themselves back. All that could be seen of Avery was a long depression in the mattress on his side of the big double bed and a circular dent in the pillow. Wrinkles in the sheet were doubled over and pressed down.

Mike Custer, keeping his eyes on the bed, bent down and snapped open his bag. "We might as well get on with it. Are you lying on your back?"

"At title moment, but I'm getting restless."

"Dear," Liz said, "would it help if we powdered you?"

^If you what?"

"Powdered you all over with my big feather puff. Wouldn't the talcum outline you so Dr. Mike could see what he was doing?"

"You mean the way the water vapor did, in the bathroom? It probably would, if you could stand me looking like a ghost again."

"No" Custer said. "Let's not complicate him with any foreign matter just yet. You sound healthy enough—breathing and all that—but I'll just give you a quick runover before I take some samples." ,

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"Samples!" Avery said. "If you think I'm going to let you slice off pieces of me to show to your pals—"

"Cut it out, Ave. You know what I mean. Urine, blood—"

"Oh. You mean specimens."

Custer sighed. "I just love it when people tell me my business. Let's start with your chest. Better guide my hand."

Another car crunched into the driveway. Liz looked out the window. "It's Joan returning Bobby. Shell have seen Dr. Mike's car. What'll I say to her? What have you got?"

"Anything. How about Custer's disease? They'll probably name it in Mike's honor."

"I'll think of something." Liz went down.

Avery listened to their voices as Mike plied his stethoscope. He had to hand it to the doctor. Mike had settled down from what must have been a real shock to solid professionalism.

". . . just one of those crazy summer colds, I guess," he heard Liz saying to Joan. Then to Bobby as Joan drove off: "You can see Daddy after Dr. Mike is through with him. No, he doesn't hurt. . .."

"There's nothing wrong with you as far as I can see," Mike Custer said. "I mean as far as I can tell. What I mean is that you seem to be all right physically. But of course you're not, are you? I'll go right to the hospital and run a test on the samples— Hey, that's interesting!"

"What?" Avery said.

"They're reappearing." He took the little stoppered bottles back out of his bag. The dull gray snips from Avery's finger-and toe-nails could be seen clearly. So could the yellow of the urine. But the blood was still invisible.

"Why not the blood, too?" Avery asked.

"I'd better go try to find out."

"Maybe it's because the parings are dead and the urine is waste, but the blood is still alive. Therefore—"

"Maybe," Mike Custer said. "And maybe I should have studied medicine in a bank. Then I'd be as smart as you are. Therefore. Will you for Pete's sake let me be the doctor, Ave?"

^All fight HI be good."

"And don't worry. There's nothing to indicate that there's anything wrong with you aside from your obvious symptom. And I'm confident we can straighten that out. If it happened, it can unhappen, when we know more about it."

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"How long do you think it'll be before you know something?" Avery asked. "I mean the results of the tests."

"A day or two. Meanwhile I'd advise you not to say anything to anybody outside your family. Stay indoors."

"You mean drop out of sight for a few days?"

"That's it—try to keep your sense of humor. But resist the temptation to play practical jokes on people just because you've got the equipment for it."

"It's funny," Avery said, "but I haven't been able to think of a single way to take advantage of it. You'd think I'd be full of ideas."

"Good thing," Mike said. "Then you'll stay out of trouble. I'll go now. Uh—be seeing you."

"Thanks. I hope so."

Bobby ran up the stairs while Liz was seeing the doctor out. "Daddy!" he said. "Did he give you the pink medicine the kind I had?" He was in the bedroom before Liz could catch up with him.

Avery was back under the covers. "Hi, Bob," he said. "I've got a surprise for you, boy."

"What?"

Liz came in, looking anxious, but Avery said, "It's all right, Liz. We've got to break it to him sometime." To his son he said, "I'm playing a game, Bobby. I'm invisible."

"What's imbisible?" Bobby asked. "Is that when you're under the covers?"

"Sort of, son. Did you ever see somebody you couldn't see? Maybe on television?"

"I don't know," Bobby said. He grabbed Avery's foot through the blanket. "I found you."

"Good boy." Avery wiggled his toes and Bobby laughed. He grabbed the other foot. "Now can you find my head?"

"It's under the covers. Up top."

"Avel" Liz said. "Don't you think you'd better go easy?"

"Not with old Bobbo Magobbo. He's a big grown up fella, hey, Bob?"

"I'm bigger than Corky," Bobby said. He climbed up on the bed and sat on his father's stomach. "Giddy-ap, Daddy. Ride me on a horse."

"Sure. Up and down. This is a bouncy old horse."

Bobby bounced off. Instead of climbing back on, he sat looking at the bulge Avery made under the blanket. He said, "The horse is in his tent. I want to get in the tent, too."

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Liz said promptly, "Time for your nap, Bobby."

"Okay," the boy said. Til get under the covers with Daddy."

"No!" Liz's voice sounded a trifle panicky. "Into your own room."

"Now, Liz," Avery said. "Let him alone. There couldn't be a better way for him to find out than in a play situation."

"We can't take a chance. It might leave a scar on his mind that would affect him the rest of his life."

"Nuts. Come on, boy, get under the tent with old horse and we'll gallop off to dreamland. Take your shoes off first."

Bobby pulled off his shoes without untying them and climbed under the covers. Avery had to remove his invisible face quickly to avoid being kicked in it by Bobby's feet. The little boy went under head and all, as his father seemed to be, and his muffled voice said, "Tell me a story, Daddy."

"He'll smother," Liz said.

"Relax, Liz, will you, and let us men take care of each other? I'll see that he doesn't."

"Tell me a story, Daddy," Bobby said again.

"Sure, Bob. But I only tell stories to people who know the magic word."

"Please," Bobby said dutifully.

"That's the word. Well, once upon a time there was a boy named Bobby."

"MeP

"That's right. Robert Bobby Train; and he was four years old going-on-five. And he was the only boy in the whole world who had an invisible Daddy. Do you know what invisible really means?"

"What?"

"It's like when you turn on Mr. Jolly Jellybean on the television and at first you can hear him but you can't see him."

"It has to warm up," Bobby said. "That's why."

Liz giggled. She sat down on the foot of the bed. "You'll have to do better than that," she said.

Avery sighed. "They're making them too smart these days."

"You're not telling the story," Bobby said.

"That's what I mean. All right. This daddy got invisible and nobody could see him and one day the bad men came on their horses and they rode up to the corral and opened the gates so they could steal the cows from the invisible daddy's little boy's mommy."

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Bobby yawned. Tm going to take my nap now," he announced from under the covers.

"A fine thing/' Avery said. "Just when I was getting started/'

"You can tell me when I really go to sleep, in the night time," Bobby said.

"It's a deal. Good night, son. Have a good nap."

"G'night." Bobby snuggled his off-blond head onto the pillow, his face away from his father's invisible one, and closed his eyes.

"I love you two/' Liz said. She blinked away some tears.

"We love you, too," Avery said. "I'm kind of moist-eyed myself, if you could but see. You know what else, though?"

"No; what?"

"I'm hungry."

"Oh, you-"

"Well, consider. I haven't even had breakfast, what with all the goings on."

Avery felt very alone when Liz had gone. He sat up carefully to avoid disturbing Bobby and leaned forward to look into the mirror over the dressing table. It was almost a new shock, though he knew perfectly well what to expect, to prove to himself again that he had no reflection. He reached out and picked up Liz's hairbrush to make the proof positive. It was even more eerie to see the reflection of the brush seem to levitate itself than to watch the object itself, which was solid in his hand.

He gave a short sigh and tossed the brush back to the table. He got out of bed and walked around the room. He misjudged the distance between his invisible shin and a chair and banged himself painfully. He sat down and cursed for half a minute, senselessly and repetitively, rubbing his shin.

He stopped when it occurred to him to see if there was a visible black and blue mark on the invisible shin. There wasn't. Then he thought to look for the tiny wound in the ball of his left ring finger where Mike Custer had taken the blood sample. He could feel the sensitive area but found it impossible to judge how far to hold his invisible finger away from his invisible face so as to be able to see anything in focus, if there was anything to see.

He went to the mirror and put the tip of the finger against the glass but even then he wasn't sure exactly where to look.

He solved the problem by dipping the finger into a box

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of Liz's face powder. There, in the faint pink circle, was a tiny clot of brown blood.

He remembered Mike's jibes at his layman's theorizing but followed his thought through. His blood had remained invisible long after his urine and nail parings had reappeared. But now, less than an hour later, his blood was visible, too. Was it clotting that did it? Then he remembered having read somewhere that blood was a colorless liquid to start with, and that the color came from hemoglobin. But he couldn't remember what hemoglobin was. And what was clotting, anyway—a chemical change? Probably Mike was right—he should leave the doctoring to doctors.

Avery's reflections went no further because Bobby woke up. Avery considered making a dash to get back under the covers, but sat still. He didn't want to scare the boy to death.

Bobby sat up. "I can't sleep," he said. "I'm too old for naps."

Avery said nothing. He thought of tiptoeing out of the room, but remained still.

"Ain't I, Daddy?" Bobby said.

Avery resisted the temptation to correct the "ain't." Where were the kids getting their atrocious speech habits? Even Margie, presumably protected by a belt of suburbs from big-city barbarisms, had shocked him during a recent family breakfast. Avery had run short of lunch money and had asked Liz for a dollar. Margie, apparently fearing her allowance was threatened, had said: "You ain't gonna hock no money off a me!"

Those were the good old days, Avery thought, when his children's grammar was his big concern.

"You're not so invisible, Daddy," Bobby said. "I know where you're hiding."

"Where?" It slipped out.

"On Mommy's stool."

Avery's naked skin prickled. "How do you know?"

"I can hear you breathing," Bobby said, "and the seat is all pushed down, too."

"Oh." Avery sighed in relief. "I'm glad it's that simple. I thought for a minute you had second sight, you old Bob. One sideshow exhibit in the family's enough."

"What's a sideshow, Daddy?"

"That's where funny people are. Giants and fat ladies and sword swallowers and—invisible people. What do you

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think about your invisible daddy, boy? You worried about it?"

"Nah."

"Do you think it's fun?"

"Sure. Can I be inbisible too?"

"I hope not. You're hard enough to keep track of sometimes just the way you are."

"I don't go out on the road, Daddy."

"I know you don't, Bobby. You're a good boy." Avery took a deep breath. "Come on over and shake hands with your invisible daddy."

"Okay." Bobby scrambled out from under the covers and dropped backwards off the side of the bed, onto Avery's foot. He apologized. "I'm sorry, Daddy."

Avery got a little choked up and realized he was in something of an emotional state. "That's all right, Bobby. Want to shake your old invisible daddy's invisible hand?"

"Sure."

Avery forced his hand out to meet the one that Bobby unhesitatingly offered. The boy grasped it and shook it up and down. He giggled.

"What's so funny?" his father asked.

"Corky doesn't have an invisible daddy."

"That's right."

"Corky's daddy has a jeep, though. Why can't we have a jeep?"

"We can't have everything," Avery said. "Which would you rather have?"

Bobby considered it. "An invisible daddy and a jeep."

Margie came banging into the house. "Where is everybody? I went swimming in the Vogels' new pool. It cost two thousand dollars. I got my hair wet. Can we afford a swimming pool? Are you all upstairs?"

"That girl," Liz said admiringly. "At least we don't have to worry about her. We're up here, honey!"

"If you mean I'm not going to be a shock to her, you're crazy," Avery said. He handed Liz his plate and slid down under the covers, grumbling. "Why couldn't this have happened in the wintertime, if it had to happen? It's hot under here. Take it easy, now, Liz. Margie's not all that sophisticated."

"Don't worry—I've got the door locked."

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Margie was already banging on it. "Hey! Everybody gone back to bed?"

Liz said: "Before I open the door I want to prepare you. Daddy's the only one in bed. He's got something the matter with him."

"Oh. That's too bad. Want me to call the doctor?"

"Dr. Mike's already seen him. I'll open the door now."

Margie, who had straight blonde hair and looked closer to thirteen than ten, came in on tiptoe.

"How do you feel, Daddy? What are you doing all the way under the covers? Do you feel cold?"

"I'm all right," Avery said. "It's just that I'm invisible."

Margie laughed. "That's silly. Nobody's invisible. Let me see."

"That's just it," Avery said. "You can't. Hey. Don't do that!"

Margie had pulled back the covers. Her eyes bulged and her mouth opened. Then her eyes rolled up in their sockets and she gave a little moan and collapsed.

Liz grabbed her before she could hit the floor. "Now look what you've done," she said. "My poor baby! Help me get her onto her bed. No, don't. That would really be too much for her if she came to again. Get some water."

Avery brought a glass of water and a wet washcloth from the bathroom and held them out to Liz, who had got Margie onto her own bed. Liz was sitting on the edge of it, rubbing her daughter's wrists. Liz gave a little shriek.

"Don't sneak up on people," she said. "Especially when you're holding things." She took the wash cloth and folded it across Margie's forehead. "Put the glass on the night table and get out of here."

"I'll go visit my son," Avery said. "He accepts me, at least."

"Don't you dare wake him up. I couldn't stand it to come in and find him sitting on an invisible lap again—four inches above the chair! That boy!"

"He's adaptable," Avery said. "I'll say that for him."

"Scoot," Liz said. "I think she's coming around."

Late afternoon sunlight poured through the living room windows and dust motes danced in its beams.

"Don't stand there" Liz told Avery. "I can see you in outline. I mean—where the dust stops, that's you."

"It's all right, Mother," Margie said. She was leaning back

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on the couch, her feet up on the coffee table. "I think I'm getting used to it."

"Thanks, friend," Avery said. "How do you feel now? Your color's coming back. Wish I could say the same for me."

"I'm okay. It was pretty silly to faint, wasn't it?"

"Perfectly feminine thing to do. Where's Bobby?"

"Out playing imbisible cowboy," Liz said. "He's all right."

"I know he's all right. I just wanted to know where he was. Hadn't you better call the Wormsers, Liz, and tell them I'm indisposed? And cancel the baby sitter. We'll have a quiet family evening at home."

"We'll have an evening at home," Liz said, "but I don't know how quiet it'll be." She went to the phone.

"What do you want to do tonight, Daddy?" Margie asked. "Where are you now, by the way?"

"In the armchair. Oh, we could play Monopoly or something."

Margie giggled. "You'd cheat."

"I would not."

"And nobody could tell. You'd steal thousand-dollar bills from the bank."

He laughed, glad the girl was beginning to accept his condition.

Dinner was not a success. It was bad enough to watch the knife and fork apparently manipulating themselves (though Bobby kept giving yelps of delight) but Avery could see that Liz found it revolting to watch the food being chewed by invisible teeth and traveling down an invisible gullet.

"I just can't stand it," Liz said. She started to get up.

"Me, too," Margie said. "I'm sorry, Daddy."

"No," Avery said. "I'll go." He took his plate upstairs.

He sat at the dressing table and ate, watching the reflection of the process in fascination. But then the downward procession of masticated food and its visible accumulation in his invisible stomach began to make him ill. He put down his fork and turned away from the mirror.

"Steady," he told himself.

When he was sure his dinner would stay down he went to the closet and took out slacks and a long-sleeved sport shirt. From his dresser he took knee-length socks, a bandanna, to help cover the neck, and gloves. He dressed and when he heard the clatter of dishes being washed he took his plate and went downstairs. He paused to look in the hall

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mirror. Except for the fact that he was headless he felt that he looked rather well.

At the kitchen door he asked: "Can I come in? I put on some clothes."

"Thanks for the warning," Liz said. "Everybody ready for Daddy? Sure, come on in."

Good old Bobby, who was still eating his dessert, looked at him and laughed. "Daddy doesn't have no head."

"Any head," Avery said automatically.

But he wasn't making a hit with the womenfolk. Margie moved closer to Liz and murmured, "Oh. Mommy—"

Liz carefully put down a platter she had been drying. "Better take them off," she said. "You look like the Invisible Man."

"I am the Invisible Man. But I can't take them off till I've digested my dinner. Besides, it's getting chilly."

Bobby went to bed. Liz, Avery and Margie played half a game of Monopoly, then Margie went to bed.

Avery lit a cigarette and leaned back in the armchair. Liz watched the spectacle. "I suppose it'd be worse with a pipe. Ave, what are you going to do?"

"Do? What do you want me to do? Take up a life of crime? Offer my services to the FBI? Become a spy in Moscow? What do you mean, do?"

"You know perfectly well what I mean, Avery Train. I mean right here. You can't go around invisible for the rest of your life."

"I suppose I could if I had to." The cigarette between the invisible lips moved and pointed at her. "Oh. Of course. You mean it's rough on you. Would—would you want a divorce if it keeps up?"

"What a thing to say! I was thinking of you—not me. When I married you I took the A Train, as our humorous friends are fond of pointing out, and I have no intention of getting off till the last stop."

Avery's invisible hand—he'd removed the cumbersome gloves during the Monopoly game—took the cigarette and mashed it out.

"You're an angel, Liz," he said, moved. "I'd come over and give you a big kiss if I thought it wouldn't be a traumatic experience for you."

"Later," Liz said.

And later, in bed, in the dark, there were moments of

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forgetting. And then, remembering again. Avery heard his wife murmur, "For me, now, you're complete. Maybe in the morning . , "

But Bobby cried in his sleep, then woke and ran from his room to theirs and climbed onto their bed.

"What's the matter, old Bob?" his father asked. He lifted the boy in the protective darkness and slid him under the covers.

"An imbisible bad man chased me."

"It was just a dream, Bobby," Liz said, reaching across Avery to stroke the boy's forehead.

"I know it," Bobby said. He wriggled against his father and went back to sleep.

Avery struggled up out of sleep. Bobby was sitting on him, bouncing and talking to himself.

"What?" Avery said. "Get off me, you cowboy."

"Daddy's got whiskers."

Avery ran his hand over his cheek. So he had. Stood to reason, though. He hadn't shaved yesterday and his beard grew fast. It would have been a gory business, shaving an invisible face . . .

Then he realized he had seen the hand that felt the beard.

"Hey!" he said. "I came back!"

Bobby was looking straight at him, not merely in his general direction.

"Hey, Bob! You haven't got an invisible daddy any more."

"Nope."

Avery, anxious to have further proof, put up two fingers in the victory sign. "How many fingers?"

"One-two," Bobby said. "Two."

Avery laughed. "Right! You're a genius, boy. Liz, wake up. I'm back!"

"Mmh?" She rolled over and opened her eyes. "Morning. You need a shave."

"Really?" He was delighted. "What makes you think so?"

"I can see, can't I?" She sat up. "I can see? I can see you, Avery! You're back!" She ran a hand over his bristly face.

"Exactly the way I put it. We've got to celebrate. While I shave, Liz, why don't you make us a big family breakfast."

She groaned and dropped back on the pillow.

". . . Pancakes and sausages," he said. "And a platter of eggs, sunny side up. Old-fashioned oatmeal and a big pitcher

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of milk and fresh coffee and fresh orange juice and—what else, Bobby?"

"Corn flakes."

"Right. With strawberries and cream. Up, good wife! Hie thee to the kitchen."

"I'll up you," she said. "We haven't got half those things in the house. How about you celebrating by taking us all out to a restaurant for this big old-fashioned family breakfast, if you're so crazy for it?"

"Why not? It's an occasion. Waffles, too, with butter and maple syrup. Everybody up! Margie I" He shouted into their daughter's room. "Wake up! Your old pappy's back!"

But when they had dressed Liz became doubtful. "Much as I'd like a respite from the old hot-stove routine," she said, "do you think it's safe?"

"Safe?" Avery asked. "How do you mean, safe?"

"I mean how do you know it's permanent? Maybe we should check with Dr. Mike first."

"We'll drop in on him after breakfast, if you like. I'm hungry, woman. I barely ate at all yesterday. Let's go."

Avery disappeared again as he was swabbing up syrup with his last bit of pancake. Even so, they might have managed to sneak out but Bobby, noisily proud, hollered, "Hey, lookl My daddy got imbisible again!" That not only called attention to it, but put a public name to the phenomenon.

The waitress screamed when she saw the man in the summer suit without head or hands and she dropped three plates of eggs. And so everybody in the Hearth and Home Restaurant saw, and within minutes the whole town knew.

A dozen people had surrounded their car as they got into it.

"You drive, Liz, for God's sake." Avery said as she started to get in the passenger door.

And Margie didn't help matters by saying in her best pre-adolescent wail: "Oh, I'm so humiliated!"

A crowd collected, as one will at the hint of anything unusual. People ran out of stores and office buildings. Liz started the engine and raced it and blew the horn to force her way through. People pressed close to the windows and pointed and shouted to each other as Avery huddled down in the front seat. Liz found an opening and roared the car away from the curb.

People scattered, some going to their own cars to tag

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along. But Liz had theirs up to sixty within seconds, discouraging immediate pursuit. Nevertheless there was a cluster of cars around their house when they reached it. Two of the cars were in the driveway. Word had obviously preceded them by telephone.

"I can't get in," Liz said. "We're blocked off."

"Drive across the lawn," Avery said. "The hell with the grass. Oh-oh, that's Schreiber's car."

Schreiber was a photographer-reporter on the local paper.

"We'll fix him," Liz said. "Margie, you cover Mr. Schreiber while we get Daddy in the house. Make believe his camera is a basketball and you keep between it and Daddy. Don't let him take a picture—but be careful not to hurt the camera."

"Sure," Margie said. "That'll be fun."

"Good." They were as close as they could get to the front door. "Okay, here we go."

Schreiber was aiming his camera and three or four other people were converging on them when all four doors of their sedan flew open.

Margie dashed up to the photographer.

Liz ran with Bobby to the front door and unlocked it.

A pair of pants came running out of the car and into the house. Liz slammed the door.

The pants sat down on a chair and their beltline heaved in and out.

"What was that for?" Liz asked. "Did you have to make an exhibition of yourself?"

"I thought I'd have time to get them all off," Avery said. "You'd better call Margie in. She's still playing touch tackle with poor Schreiber."

Margie slipped through the door and Liz slammed it in the photographer's face. "Go away," she said. "No pictures. Leave us alone."

"More cars are coming," Margie announced. "Hundreds of them."

It was an exaggeration, but cars were arriving in considerable numbers. A crowd collected on the lawn but only a few people approached the house. Schreiber tried to peer in a window and was joined by two strangers. One of them caught sight of the pair of pants sitting on the chair and said, "There it is! I see it!" and waved to others behind him to come look. Schreiber aimed his camera.

RICHARD WILSON

Liz yanked down the shade and yelled: "If you don't go away 111 call the police!"

Avery realized that his hands were shaking. He felt be-seiged. He steadied his hands on the arms of the chair and the shaking transferred itself to his body. He went into the kitchen and looked out the window there. Nobody was at that part of the house yet. He paced up and down, then opened the cupboard where Liz kept what she called the cooking whisky.

The bottle shook in his invisible hand as he read what it said on the label about the grain neutral spirits. This information failed to take his mind off his problem and he unscrewed the cap. He took a swallow, sputtered, then took another. He screwed the cap back, then unscrewed it and took another drink.

He felt better. All of a sudden he began to see that there was a funny side to the situation. It was they who should be scared of him. Him, the invisible menace. He marched back to Liz.

"I'll take my pants off and go tweak a few noses/' Avery told his wife. He took off his pants and underpants and was completely invisible again. "That ought to scatter 'em."

"You'll do no such thing," Liz said. "They're the ones who are creating the disturbance. I don't want you blamed."

Avery didn't answer her.

"Avery! Where are you?" A window in the front room opened and closed and Liz rushed to it. A voice said faintly, "About time I got some fun out of this thing."

"Ohh." Liz picked up the telephone and dialed Police.

Avery found it exhilarating to walk unseen in a crowd. There weren't so many people that he had trouble avoiding them. Their eyes looked mostly at the house but flickered around occasionally as if apprehensive. He could sense a thrill of the unknown in the faces and wondered how close they were to fear or panic.

He made his first experiment with a heavy-set stranger who was standing solidly in Liz's petunia patch. Avery moved to within a few feet of him and said softly, "You're trespassing, you know. We petunias don't go for that."

The solid man gave a shiver and turned his head left, then right. He stepped out of the petunia patch, then made a grab with both arms. He had grabbed in the wrong direction and Avery moved away as the man began to yell:

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"Here he is! Over here!"

Half a dozen people headed toward the man, two of them running, the rest walking cautiously. Avery sprinted away. At the back of the house a woman he recognized as Miss Barksdale, the spinster who had the real estate agency in town, was peering in the curtained kitchen window. Avery resisted an urge to plant a kick on her fat rump. Instead he reached invisibly over her shoulder and opened the top half of the window.

He said in her ear, "That should give you a clearer view, Miss Barksdale."

The woman whirled and her face turned white. Avery hoped she wasn't going to faint but didn't wait to see. He returned to the front of the house, to where a group of men had spaced themselves along the border of the lawn with the road.

Avery pulled back the branch of a young tree and let it snap at the nearest of the men. As it caught him in the chest Avery yelled, "Get off my property!"

The man the branch had hit looked less startled than Avery had hoped. He said purposefully to the next man in line, "Oh, he wants to play. This guy could be dangerous. Let's get him before he really hurts somebody."

The line of men joined hands and began to run across the lawn, toward the house. Avery had to sprint to avoid being caught immediately. He felt a surge of fear. These men were hunting him, as if he were an animal!

In an instant his position had switched from that of an indignant householder chasing people off his property to that of a weird creature being run to earth.

Avery made the mistake of looking down. Not seeing his feet made him stumble. As he fell he tried to roll to a spot between two of the men in the running human chain. But a foot caught him painfully in the ribs and he cried out. Immediately the line of men threw themselves to the ground in the general vicinity of his cry. Their numbers made his capture inevitable.

"I got him!" one said, and the others rushed over and piled on as if in a football game.

Avery fought back in panic but he was pinned and overwhelmed. He stopped struggling. "Okay," he said. "I give up. Watch where you put those big feet."

"Try to scare people to death, will you?" one of the men said. "You goddamn freak." He said to the others, "I've got

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one arm. The left one, I think. Yeah. Let's get his arms and legs and spread-eagle him."

They were very rough about it and Avery realized that mob violence could be very close to the surface, even in his home town. It frightened him to see the contorted, straining face of the man kneeling on his chest and to know that the last time he had seen him he had been the mild-mannered checker at the supermarket.

They were holding him down on his back, pulling at his arms and legs from four directions. Avery knew they probably had no intention of hurting him seriously, but he felt it would not have taken much more provocation for them to get carried away enough to maim or kill him—maybe by accident, maybe not.

The crowd, grown now to fifty or more, formed an ominous circle around him.

"Look!" somebody said. "I can see part of him. He's greenl" The crowd murmured and pressed closer.

"That's right," one of the men holding him said. "It's where the grass rubbed off on him. Here, Joey, take over my hold and I'll rub some more grass on him. His face ought to be ... about here."

Liz ran out of the house, screaming, and battered at backs with her fists to be let through the crowd.

One of Avery's captors was roughly applying a stain of green to his face when the police arrived, sirens wailing.

From his bedroom window Avery could see the deep tire scars in the soft lawn, now free-of-cars, and the two officers near the parked police vehicles, keeping traffic moving along the road.

Avery was still shaking a little. He wore a bathrobe and sat in a chair and when he looked in the mirror he could see the pale green outline of his face below the hairline, looking like a mask suspended over the empty neck of the robe.

Two other men were in the room with Avery and Liz. One was the doctor, Mike Custer. The other Avery knew by sight as Lieutenant Winick of the township police. The children had been banished to their rooms with strict orders to stay there, and stay quiet.

"I told you not to go out," Mike Custer said. "They sure roughed you up. You're going to be sore for the next few days."

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"Why didn't you arrest them?" Liz asked the lieutenant. "The sadists!"

Lieutenant Winick sat regarding Avery with a mixture of fascination and uncertainty. "In my business you get used to damn near anything. I'm sorry, Mrs. Train, if I don't sound sympathetic, but how do you think those people out there felt? Just think what he could do if he had a mind to do it."

"If you'd let me wash my face," Avery said, "I wouldn't look so much like a spook. I'm just a quiet, law-abiding citizen who woke up a freak one morning and I resent it. I also resent having people trample all over Liz's garden while they try to get a look at the monster. So I took my little revenge. If I'd been visible I'd have taken a baseball bat to them. Wouldn't you?"

Winick had a pad in his hand. "I wouldn't be in your shoes for a thousand bucks. Next could come the FBI. For all I know this is a federal case, with security angles."

Liz said angrily, "My husband's not a criminal."

"At the very least," he said with a flash of humor, "he was disturbing the peace. That puts him in the public domain."

"The mob put him there," Liz said, still angry.

"He put himself there when he went around sneaking up on people, even if they were on your property. If you'd called us first, we'd have cleared them off and there wouldn't have been any trouble."

"It's true, Liz," Avery said. "I guess he's right."

"That's the attitude to take, Mr. Train," Winick said. "We'd better know as much as we can. The press is going to be calling up from all over creation and if we can give them some of the answers you'll be bothered that much less. I'm surprised your phone isn't ringing already."

"It's off the hook," Liz said.

"Good." The lieutenant turned to a new page in his notebook. "Now, Mr. Train, when did you first realize you were —I guess we'll have to use the word—invisible? There doesn't seem to be any other."

"Yesterday morning," Avery said. He answered questions and watched the pages of the notebook fill.

When Lieutenant Winick had gone, leaving one of the police cars on guard at the front of the house, Mike Custer said:

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"Now would you like to know what I've learned about you at the lab?"

"I'd like to know whether those cops are down there to keep the people out or to keep me in*"

"A little of both, possibly/' Mike said. "Listen, Avery, I have a colleague who'd very much like to see you. He'll only be in the country a little while—"

"Where's he from?"

"He's the foremost Latin-American specialist in tinctorial abnormalities of the blood."

"Oh? Is that what I've got?"

"It's too early to tell what you've got. Will you let him examine you?"

"Sure. And to show what a Good Neighbor I am I won't even charge him admission."

"Now, Avery," Liz said.

" 'Now, Avery,' " he mimicked. "As the only tinctorial abnormality north of the border I guess Ihave a right to be temperamental. Is that what you learned about me in the lab, Mike, that I'm abnormal? I could have told you that."

"Stop it, Avery," his wife said. To the doctor she said, "Ask your colleague to come over, Dr. Mike. Don't mind Avery. He's fust had a trying time."

"He's just outside," Mike said. He went to the window and waved to one of the policemen, who let a small, dapper man through the little knot of people still gathered just beyond the Trains' property.

"This is Dr. Jos6 Ramindez Oaca," Mike said. "Mr. and Mrs. Avery Train."

Oaca came in on the balls of his feet, it seemed to Avery. He stared at the green mask in total fascination, ignoring Liz's offered hand.

"Ah, ah, ah!" he exclaimed. He turned to Mike Custer, hands gesturing ecstatically. "Can you believe it, my friend? Can you believe there is such a phenomenon here within a few miles of the Laboratories? Here, in this sleepy little town only a stone's throw from our research? My friend, I am deeply, deeply obligated."

"What Laboratories?" Avery growled suspiciously.

"Laboratories doing magnificent work in many little known fields barely suspected by the layman."

Avery turned his green face toward Mike, who looked a little uncomfortable. "What Laboratories?" Avery demanded.

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"Lindhof," Mike said shortly.

"Lindhof!" Avery said. "You, my friend, would turn me over to a Lindhof man, knowing what I think of them? Those commercial medicine men? Purveyors to a pill-ridden popu-lacer

Avery shook his green mask. Lindhof Laboratories—purveyors of invisibility now, if he let them use him as a guinea pig. He had begun to appreciate the powers inherent in invisibility—and they were mostly for no good.

Oaca had glided to within steps of Avery, still in a transport of delight and apparently oblivious to Avery's outburst.

"Dr. Oaca is a good man, Avery/' Mike Custer said. "You'll have to take my word for it."

Liz said, "Do you think anything can be done for him?"

Oaca seemed to notice her for the first time. "I am certain, madam. But we must enlist his cooperation."

Liz said pleadingly to her husband, "Avery, let him try."

"1*11 submit to an examination," Avery said sullenly, "but Til want to have a good long talk with Mike before I go any further."

"Excellent," Oaca said. "First, then, wash to achieve a complete lack of tinctoriality. The conditions would be inexact otherwise."

Avery suppressed a grudging admiration for Dr. Oaca, who seemed to know what he was up to, and showed his resentment at being ordered around.

"Listen, Dr. Oaca—" he began.

"Please, Mr. Train. Off with the green."

Avery went away, muttering. When he came back from the bathroom, tingling from the scrubbing he'd given himself, Oaca was perched on the edge of the bed, talking.

". . . from tribe to tribe. So you see they do achieve a sort of invisibility, at least for themselves. A person from outside would see him, of course, but not for long because the outsider would be killed. So for their purpose, at least, they have achieved invisibility and we cannot say it does not exist. The case of your husband, now, is likely of a different kind, though we must not rule out any possibility. Ah, Mr. Train, you are with us again. Good. Remove the robe, please, and place yourself prone upon the bed."

"Are you implying that I'm psychosomatic?" Avery asked, continuing to stand. "That this is all autohypnosis? Because if you are—"

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"Avery," Mike cut in. "Will you kindly lay off the jargon? Just get down on your stomach, as the doctor asked."

"I know what prone means," Avery said haughtily. He took off the robe and had the satisfaction of seeing Dr. Oaca move back a bit as he disappeared completely. Avery lay down, prone. He saw Dr. Oaca approach and felt his fingers on his buttocks.

"Kindly elevate yourself by bringing up your knees," Oaca said.

Avery elevated his backside. "What for?"

"For the sake of scientific progress, Mr. Train," Oaca said. Avery saw him take a swab out of his bag, then felt a tingle as something was applied to his bottom.

"Now, listen—" Avery started to say.

"See?" Oaca said to Mike. "It appears!"

"True," Mike said. "But how different from the grass stains?"

"The world's own difference," Oaca said. "Grass has color of its own; this does not. Come; back to the Laboratories."

"How about me?" Avery asked. "Can I de-elevate now?"

"Yes, yes," Oaca said. The Latin American seemed to have lost interest in him, now that he had his smear, or whatever it was. "Come, Dr. Custer. There is much to be done."

"And then will I be cured?" Avery asked. He was beginning to feel like the guinea pig he had fought against being.

"Can't promise anything," Mike said shortly. "But keep your fingers crossed. I'll get in touch with you."

"Thanks," Avery said bitterly. "Oh, thanks a bunch."

They tried putting the phone back on the hook.

The first caller was a Miss Ethel Sturbridge, who lived in a house down the road with her spinster sister. Avery said, "Yes, Miss Sturbridge. . . . No, Miss Sturbridge. . . • No, ma'am—it wasn't me. ... Of course I'm sure I wouldn't do a thing like that. . . . Yes, Miss Sturbridge. . . . Yes. Thanks for calling. Goodbye."

"What's with the Misses Sturbridge?" Liz asked.

"They suspect a peeping torn. I assured her it wasn't me. Why anybody would want to peep at those two dried-up old biddies I can't imagine."

The next caller was a hoarse-voiced man who wouldn't identify himself.

"You the guy they can't see?" he asked.

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"That's me."

"Well, I got the perfect layout for us if you're interested. You know the bank in Long Ridge? It's got those low counters? A set-up."

"You mean a stick-up?" Avery asked.

^uNo, no. You just climb over the counter, quiet. Nobody sees you. Then when the teller steps away from his cash drawer you take out the money. Slip it to me across the counter when nobody's looking. I'll be sort of standing around."

^Who is this?"

"Never mind yet. First you got to say you're in with me."

"Of course I'm not in with you. I work in a bank myself."

"All the better. Then you know how things work. Look, I'd like to get together with you. This could be the cinch of the world."

"No, thanks," Avery said. "But thanks for calling." He hung up.

"What was that all about?" Liz asked.

"Just an offer to rob the bank in Long Ridge. Some nut. I could do a thousand times better robbing my own bank, if that's what I wanted to do."

"It's nice to know you're in demand."

"But look who by. Crooks and a profit-happy pill factory that takes a couple of cents worth of chemicals and sells it for ten bucks."

The phone rang again and a childish voice chanted the fingle about the little man who wasn't there. Avery said as he hung up, "I'm not going to answer it any more, that's all."

Liz took the next call. "It's NBC Television," she said.

"What could they possibly want?"

"Something about a guest appearance tonight."

"Appearance? Who knows when I'll appear?"

"They don't mean you have to be visible. You know what they mean."

"How can you photograph nothing? You don't want me to go, do you? Haven't we had enough publicity for one day? Tell them no."

The phone rang again immediately after Liz hung up. "Don't answer it," Avery said, but she already had.

"Oh, hello Joan. . . . Hectic isn't the word for it. . . . You will? You're a doll, Joan. Thanks a million." Liz said to Avery: "Joan's going to take the kids for the rest of the day. I'll run them over there. They've been awfully good, though."

RICHARD WILSON

"They've been too quiet, if you ask me. Margie! Bobby! What are you doing?"

A door opened upstairs. "We're coming," Margie's voice said. "Go on, Bobby, show them." Bobby giggled.

The boy was naked and green from head to foot. "Nobody can't see me," he announced. "I'm the imbisible boy." Margie's dress was stained and her hands were green.

"Bobby!" Liz cried. "Margie! What have you been up to? Look at him!"

"It's only green chalk and water color," Margie said.

"I'm imbisible, like Daddy," Bobby said.

"Up to the bathroom!" Liz said. "You, too, young lady. You start a tub running. Oh! Honestly, Avery, I don't know which is.,worse—your problem or its side effects."

Liz was still looking harassed when she came back from taking the children to Joan's. "Running the gauntlet of police just to get in and out of your own driveway," she said. "Honestly, it's too much."

It didn't help her state any to come into the living room and see the telephone suspended in air and a cigarette puffing away a few inches from the mouthpiece. It never stopped being something of a shock to be confronted anew with proof of his invisibility.

Avery was saying: ". . . when you said 'lab' I didn't know you were talking about Lindhof. I thought you meant the lab at the hospital."

"Who is it?" Liz asked. "Dr. Mike?"

Avery nodded, forgetting that Liz couldn't see a nod till she repeated the question.

"Yes," he said to her, then into the telephone: "No, I wasn't agreeing with you. That was Liz. . . . She's fine. A little ragged around the edges but bearing up. As for me, I thought about it, Mike, and Lindhof is out."

"Lindhof Laboratories," Mike said, "happens to be the foremost organization in the field of tinctorial research."

"I thought Dr. Oaca was the authority," Avery said.

"He's working very closely with Lindhof on an exchange fellowship. Lindhof has been on the trail of invisibility for years, if you must know. As a matter of fact"—Mike's voice dropped conspiratorially—"they have a grant from the Pentagon."

"You don't have to be so melodramatic. There are no Russian spies on the extension."

SEE ME NOT

"I'm just trying to show you this is no wild-hare project. Lindhof gets its money from one of those bills the House Appropriations Committee passes in closed session. Frankly, they're excited about your case at Lindhof and they'd like to see you."

"If they could see me," Avery said sourly, "they wouldn't give me the time of day."

"Don't be semantic. Will you come with me to Lindhof? The best minds in the hemisphere are there to help you. If anyone can solve your problem, they can."

"Solve whose problem? They don't care about me—Avery Train. They just care about the patents and government contracts they'd get if they produced an invisible man of their own making. But I'm not of their making and I'm not going to let them take credit for me. I'm an accident—a sport, biologically speaking—"

"Frankly," Mike said, "I'm getting sick and tired of you quoting to me out of the latest selection of the Science Book Club."

"And I'm getting tired of hearing you tout for Lindhof. The last I read about them, they were being sued for a million dollars because their polio vaccine was contaminated and killed somebody instead of immunizing him."

"You're a layman," Mike said patiently. "There's more to these things than you read in the papers."

"I'm an invisible layman, though. That's what makes me valuable to Lindhof. And I don't want any part of them."

"Listen, you pig-headed fool. You're not in the least valuable to Lindhof any more and they could very well not want any part of you. They don't need you—you need them. They've got the problem licked. You're just its proof. At this very moment you're unique in your invisibility, but tomorrow you could be only one in a dozen. The big difference is that the other eleven will be able to turn it on and off, but you'll be stuck with it."

"You mean they can control it?" Avery asked.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you. I've done all I can for you as your personal physician and I admit it's not enough. I haven't got the equipment. Lindhof has. It's that simple."

"Damn Lindhof."

"All right," Mike said. "Damn them. But if you persist in your attitude you'll persist in your invisibility. Goodbye, Avery."

RICHARD WILSON

"Goodbye."

Liz watched the phone seem to slam itself down.

"Well," she said, "you sure told him off."

"Yeah."

"And that got you somewhere?"

"I don't know where it got me, but I'm not going to be one of Lindhof's guinea pigs."

"Not even if they cure you in the process?"

"No."

"You mustn't be so stubborn, Avery. You've got to think of your family, too. I don't want to go through another day like today—"

"Yow don't want to go through another day!" he exploded. "You talk as if you were the one who got beat up!"

"That happens to be what I meant," Liz said. "My concern for you— Oh, skip it. If you want to be a stubborn, invisible fool, go ahead."

She went out. In a few minutes he heard the sewing machine going like mad. That was one of Liz's ways of working off excess emotion.

But a few minutes later he heard her dialing. He wondered who she was calling. He listened but couldn't hear what she was saying. After a few minutes she hung up. The phone rang almost immediately.

"Hello?" he heard her say in a normal voice. "Who? Life? Yes?" There was a silence. Then she called: "Avery, it's Life Magazine. Something about some exclusive pictures. They emphasize 'exclusive.'"

"Tell them to go to hell," Avery yelled down the stairs. "Tell them I'm a Democrat."

"He says to tell you he's a Democrat," Liz repeated. "What? I think he means he doesn't like your editorial policy. .. . No. No. Goodbye." She hung up.

"Avery," she said, "I'm going out."

"Out where?" He came downstairs.

"Are you sure you won't change your mind and let Lindhof help you?"

"Sure I'm sure. Them and their Latin American anus specialists."

"All right. Then I'm going."

"But where?"

"Don't worry; I'm not going to Reno. I'll be back"

"Liz—" But she got into the car. One of the policemen

SEE ME NOT

stationed at the end of the lawn gave her a salute as the car went by, heading for town.

Liz had been gone a long time. Avery wandered around the empty house. It would have been a good time to eat, with no one to get sick watching him, but he didn't feel hungry.

He found the latest book club selection, left in its heavy mailing carton in the excitement. He hefted it and put it down again. Probably some fat historical novel he had forgotten to not-request. He didn't feel like reading.

He opened the door and walked out on the lawn toward the two policemen pn guard. He was about to call to the nearest one but remembered in time that it would be a shock and that the cop might just happen to be the nervous, shoot-first type. He went back to the house, quietly. He didn't feel like getting shot.

He opened the book club package. It was as he feared, a bosom opera laid in one of the French courts, titled The Queen's Men. Another three-ninety-five, plus postage-and-handling, shot to hell. He tossed it on a chair and threw the wrapper in the fireplace. On the mantelpiece above the fireplace was a bottle of bourbon.

Avery looked at it, away from it, then back at it.

"Avery," he said, "how about a little drink?

"Don't mind if I do, Train, old boy," he replied to himself.

He took the bottle into the kitchen, poured three dollops into a tall glass and held the glass under the faucet briefly.

"Cheers," he said, raising the glass.

"Astonishing good luck, old chap."

He took a long slug of it.

He wandered over to the living room mirror and regarded the reflection of the glass. He moved the glass from side to side, then up to drink. He misgauged and spilled some on his bare chest.

"Tricky," he said, and tried again more carefully.

He was working on his third drink, sitting on the end of his spine in the armchair, when he heard the car crunch on the gravel of the driveway. He didn't get up. He was absorbed in trying to remember how the old barracks parody went after the first two lines. He sang them over again:

"When you wore a nightie, a little pink nightie, "And I wore my B.V.D.'s ..."

RICHARD WILSON

The front door opened and closed.

". . . B.V.D.'s." He closed his eyes to concentrate. "Some thing and something, oh something and something, and did just as I pleased ..."

"Just what I need," Liz said. He felt the glass being taken out of his hand.

"Quiet woman," he said. "I almost had it. Something^and something ... Do you remember, Liz? I forget that line." He opened his eyes. "Liz? Where'd you go?"

"I'm right here," she said.

"Right where?" He looked around. "Liz!"

There was the glass, suspended about eighteen inches from the floor, and Liz's voice coming from behind it. But no Liz.

"What happened to you? My God. I've infected you!" He sat up straight. "Oh, Liz!"

"I'd like a cigarette," she said. "Never mind, I'll get it myself."

A sound sent his eyes to the coffee table. He saw the lid of the cigarette box slide itself off and a cigarette rise into the air. There was a scratch and a little burst of flame before he noticed the book of matches. Then his attention went to the smoke, which vaguely outlined a pair of lungs before it was expelled.

"Elizabeth!" he said.^This is horrible!"

"It's not bad at all," her voice said. The glass, which he had lost track of, came up from the floor and liquid poured into nothing, then moved downward in a series of jerks. "Good stuff," she said. "This isn't from the kitchen."

"Don't," Avery said miserably. "What have I done to you?"

"Every invisible man needs an invisible woman," she said calmly. "Don't you agree?"

"No," he said. "Liz, I'm sorry. I didn't know it was contagious."

"You don't know very much at all, Avery Train," she told him. "You're a stubborn, pig-headed man who I happen to love very much regardless. It isn't contagious. You want to know something? You didn't do this to me. I did it to myself."

"You did it? What do you mean you did it to yourself?"

"I mean I went to the Lab, since you wouldn't go, to find out what they know about your condition. They showed me everything. They have an antidote, I saw it with rabbits.

SEE ME NOT

They made one invisible and brought it back. Then I asked them to make me invisible."

"But you're not a rabbit!"

"No, I'm not. But neither are you. And I'm only as invisible as you are."

"They made you invisible at Lindhof?" Avery asked.

"That's what I said. How many of these have you had?"

"And you came back that way? Invisible?"

"Yes."

"Driving?"

"I didn't drive. Dr. Mike did."

"Where are your clothes?"

"In the car."

"You mean you came back naked with Mike? Where is he? That bedside Romeo! Ill punch him in the nose!"

"Oh, stop it, Avery. I didn't undress till we got here. Besides, he couldn't see anything—you know that. And what's more, we had a chaperon—Dr. Oaca."

"That anus painter!" Avery said. "Is he out there, too?"

"Yes, he is. They're out there, visible, and you and I are in here, invisible, and the question is, are we going to join them in visibility or are we not? In other words, Avery Train, I'm going to stay invisible as long as you do. Whatever you are, I can be, just as good."

The glass tilted again as Liz took another drink. The last of the bourbon and water poured out. Avery looked away.

"Having made my speech," Liz said, "I'd like another drink. Avery? Where are you?"

"I'm right here."

"Why are you so quiet?"

"I'm surrendering, I guess. I don't want an invisible wife. You're too pretty to be invisible."

"You mean you'll go to the Lab?"

"I don't see what else I can do. There's no sense in me holding out if they've got to the point where they can make anybody disappear. Damn them. Sure I'll go."

"Oh, Avery, I'm so glad. You don't know what a strain it's been." Her voice was closer now and Avery felt himself kissed on the nose. "Missed," she said.

He reached out and found her naked invisible body.

"Wow!" he said. "On second thought I don't want to go just yet."

Liz wriggled out of his grasp. "Come on, now. You promised."

RICHARD WILSON

"Sure, but why don't we have another drink first, and—"

"And nothing. You said I was too pretty to be invisible. Was that just the bourbon talking?"

"Not at all. But-"

"But nothing. Let's go get our bodies back."

"All right." Avery got up to go. But he stopped at the door. "Wait a minute. What's the big rush? What are they in such a hurry about?"

"They're just trying to help you, Ave."

"Yeah? Look, I was confused there for a minute. Befuddled by drink and your invisible sexiness. But it begins to make sense now. They're all so fired up to help me—and sent you as a decoy—because it's their fault in the first place."

"Their fault?" Liz asked.

"Who else's? They've admitted that all the preliminary work is done. They've perfected their invisibility pills—had them for some time. How else could I have become the way I am if I hadn't taken their pills?"

"But you never take pills!" Liz said. "Except aspirin."

"Except that last day on the job when I was feeling jumpy and I decided I needed a good night's sleep before my vacation; and on the way home I stopped at our friendly neighborhood druggist. And he recommended a non-prescription pill—'Something new from Lindhof.' And I took two before I went to bed."

Liz's disembodied voice said: "And you think—"

"I know. They're the only pills I've taken in at least a year."

"Oh- Where are the rest of them?"

"Smart girl! Upstairs. In my coat pocket."

"Hadn't we better bring them along?"

"And give Lindhof the chance to destroy the evidence? Neverl They stay right where they are. Come on. Now I'm ready to go."

Avery found her hand and the invisible couple went out to the car where Custer and Oaca and a man he recognized as a Lindhof vice-president were waiting. The doctors were in the front seat of Dr. Mike's car. The official of the drug firm was in the rear.

Avery was glad to see the brass represented. It was fitting neatly together. Lindhof Labs was trying to cover up its latest mistake as so many other—what did they call themselves?—ethical pharmaceutical houses?—had tried to cover up theirs.

SEE ME NOT

Avery, speaking out of nowhere before the other men were sure where he was, said: "111 settle for a million dollars/*

Startled, shocked, the drug firm's vice-president blurted: "We weren't prepared to go that high. I mean—"

Avery's guess was right. "After taxes," he said. "Don't forget I've still got the rest of the pills. Get in the front seat, Lindhof, will you? My wife and I'll ride in the back."

"Hartman," the official said. "Mr. Lindhofs my father-in-law."

"Splendid," Avery said. "That keeps it in the family. Just hold the door open for my beautiful and naked but fortunately invisible wife, Hartman. We may do a little necking on the way."

Hartman closed the door gently behind Avery and squeezed into the front seat.

"Let's go, gentlemen," Avery said. "It promises to be a delightful ride."