Philip José Farmer

STATIONS OF THE NIGHTMARE

Part 2: THE STARTOUCHED

THE iron door with the monocle window swung inward. A small cage was shoved in, and a chain connected to it was pulled. The door of the cage rose. A large brown-gray male rat dashed out. The big door closed swiftly and silently.

The windowless room was ten by eight by twelve feet. Its white plaster walls were bare. A closed-circuit TV camera squatted on a bracket at the juncture of a wall and the ceiling. It pointed down at the only furniture: a bed, a chair, and a metal cabinet. The narrow bed held a man. Eyes closed, he lay on his back, his arms by his side, his feet pointing straight up. He was five feet six inches long, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, and slim. He was fifty-four years old and had brown hair untouched by gray, a high forehead, bushy brown eyebrows, a thick military-type mustache, and a chin like a ball, deeply indented in its middle. He wore only a hospital gown, His right arm and his left leg were chained to the metal frame of the bed.

The rat ran around the room, sniffing at the base of the walls, then clawed up the sheets of the bed to the man’s left foot. It sniffed at the shackle around the ankle and began gnawing at the thick creamy stuff smeared on the shackle.

The cheese, mixed with flecks of crabmeat, disappeared rapidly. The rat touched the man’s leg several times with its nose as if searching for more food. The man did not move his leg; his eyelids remained closed.

The rat ran along the man’s leg and stopped on the man’s stomach. When still the man did not move, the rat crept forward slowly, its nose twitching. It sprang forward at the daub of cheese mixed with meat on the man’s face.

The rat never got to the face. It slumped and rolled off the man’s body and fell by his neck. Its open mouth revealed that its teeth had been pulled.

The man behind the door turned pale, and he swore. He beckoned to a figure standing at the far end of the hall. A nurse, clothed from head to foot in white coveralls and gloves and a hood with a glass face mask, hurried to him. “Get the rat!” he said.

The nurse gave him a strange look and went inside. With gloved hands, she picked up the dead rat and put it into the cage and came back out of the room. The man locked the door and put the key in the pocket of his white laboratory coat.

“Take it to the lab.”

He looked inside the room. The man in the bed had not moved. But it was evident to the watcher that something in the man had detected the danger and taken appropriate measures. And yet it was all impossible.

* * * *

Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor, looking scared, came out of the woods. He had gone over almost every foot of the area. There were thorn tangles only rabbits could penetrate, and he had scratched his face and hands trying to get into them. His boots were wet for he had waded across the creek that bisected the woods, and mud streaked the sides of his jacket and pants. He had slipped while reaching for a branch to pull himself up a steep bank.

Of the yellow stuff that Eyre had reported, Tincrowdor had seen nothing. But the thing that had turned him pale and made him want to run out of the trees was the impression in the mud even the recent heavy rains had failed to obliterate. It looked innocuous enough. It was only an indentation of some hemispherical object that had been set upon a patch free of grass.

Eyre had told of seeing the thing in a dream, but Tincrowdor was convinced that Eyre was reporting an actual occurrence. He had driven down to the farm where Eyre had been hunting, and had heard the farmer’s story of how Riley, Eyre’s pointer, had run up onto the porch of the house and cowered under the glider. The farmer had not noticed the dog until he came home for lunch, when his wife told him of seeing the dog run panic-stricken across the fields toward the house. She thought that something had happened to Paul Eyre, but then she saw him standing near the edge of the woods. He seemed all right, so she supposed that the dog had lost its nerve over something and that Eyre would explain when he returned from his quail hunting. Eyre went into the woods and did not come out for several hours. When he did he tried to drag the dog out from under the glider. It leaped for Eyre’s face and bit his hand, which Eyre had thrust in front of his face. Eyre tossed the dog over the porch railing and then, as it came after him again, killed it with a charge from his shotgun.

When Eyre told Tincrowdor about the dog, he had professed ignorance about why it had attacked him. Eyre had come home, slept for awhile, or so he said, and had had a strange dream about his hunting of that morning. In the dream, Riley had flushed out two quail, and Eyre had shot at the lead bird. Even as he fired, he realized that it was not a quail but a flying saucer about two feet in diameter. The thing had been hit by the pellets from Eyre’s gun and had descended into the woods. Eyre had gone after it but at the edge of the woods had encountered a yellow mist. Some of the mist had coagulated into drops, like a golden-colored mercury.

Then, in his dream, he had seen the saucer drop from a tree onto the ground. He had followed it, had seen the rear parts of a lioness disappear into the bush, and a few moments later, the head and shoulders of a naked woman. She was the loveliest woman he had ever seen.

The following Monday morning, while driving to work, Eyre had suddenly pulled his car over to the side of the road. Fellow workers in a car behind his had investigated and found him in a complete mental withdrawal. Mavice, his wife, had had him taken to a nearby private sanitarium. His condition was diagnosed as catatonia originating from causes unknown.

Tincrowdor and Eyre’s son, Roger, had searched through the cornfield along the road where Eyre had stopped his car. They had found some paw prints that Roger, a zoology student, said were those of a large feline, a lion’s or a tiger’s. The big cat must have had wings, because its prints appeared suddenly between some rows about twenty yards inside the field and disappeared as suddenly about twenty feet deeper inside the field.

Tincrowdor had then gone to the sanitarium, where his friend and poker partner, Dr. Jack Croker, had shown him and Morna Tincrowdor some slides of Eyre’s blood.

Four days later, Tincrowdor had decided that he would check out the woods in which Eyre had hunted. Now he knew that Eyre had been reporting, under the guise of a dream, reality.

Tincrowdor was a writer of science fiction, and as such he should have been pleased. A wounded flying saucer, golden haze flowing from the wound, a lovely sphinx, and strange yellow brick-shaped organisms in the tissues of the man who had hunted the saucer and the sphinx. These were the stuff of which science-fiction dreams were made.

Tincrowdor did not looked pleased. He looked terrified.

* * * *

Paul Eyre had been dreaming of a glittering green city at the far end of an enormous field of red flowers. His eyes opened. He had felt happy until then. He sat up, shocked. He remembered seeing the woman’s face among the stalks of corn, the glimpse of the great tawny body beneath her torso, and his foot on the brake pedal. The car had slid to a stop on the soft shoulder of the road. He had put the gear into park and stared at her. She had smiled and waved a white arm at him. Her teeth were not human; they were sharp and widely separated, like a cat’s, though they were even. He had begun shaking, and then he had fainted.

And here he was in a strange and bare room.

He started to get off the bed and became aware that an arm and leg were chained to the bed. “Hey, what’s going on here?” he yelled. “What’s going on?”

His ears drummed, and his heart jumped. He lay down again and stared at the single bright light, a bulb in the ceiling shielded by heavy wires. Then he saw the TV camera, like a one-eyed gargoyle squatting on a metal ledge. A few minutes later, the door opened. A woman shrouded in white cloth and glass entered. In one gloved hand, she held a hypodermic syringe.

The momentarily opened door had revealed, in the hall, a broad and heavy male face with thick black eyebrows, a broken nose, and thick lips.

“How are you, Mr. Eyre?” a muffled voice said from behind the glass plate. She stood at the foot of the bed as if she were waiting for permission to advance.

“Where am I? What’s going on?”

“You’re in the Adler Sanitarium. You’ve been in a catatonic state for four days. I’m Mrs. Epples, and I’m here to help you get well. I’d like to give you a shot. It’s just to tranquilize you; it won’t hurt you”

She was speaking so strangely, so unlike a nurse, he realized, because she was afraid of him. If he said no, she wasn’t going to insist.

He felt weak, and his stomach rumbled. He was hungry and weak. His mouth felt as dry as an ostrich’s feather.

“I don’t want any shot,” he said, “so forget it. Why am I chained to this bed? What are you doing in that getup? Do I have some disease?”

The woman looked up at the cold eye of the TV camera as if she expected to get some reassurance from it.

“So many questions at once,” she said, and she laughed nervously. “You’re chained to keep you from hurting yourself. We don’t know if you have a disease or not, but your blood picture is strange. Until we know what those, uh, organisms are, we have to keep you in quarantine.”

“My left arm and right leg are not chained,” he said. “So what’s to keep me from using them to hurt myself, if that’s really what you’re worried about? And what organisms are you talking about?”

“They’re unknown,” she said, ignoring his first comment.

“What if I have to relieve myself?”

“There’s a bedpan and toilet paper on the shelf in the stand.” she said. “You can reach it.”

“And how do I call you to take the pan away?”

“We’ll know when you need someone,” she said, glancing at the TV camera.

“You mean that someone’ll be watching me?”

She shrank back, and said, “We don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“You have no right to keep me here!” he shouted. “I want out! Now!”

“I’ll bring you your food,” she said, and she left.

Eyre’s rage moved along the spectrum from red to blue. He became frightened and confused. If he had awakened in a strait jacket, and the nurse had told him he had been crazy, he would have understood that. But everything in his situation was wrong. He was being held prisoner and lied to. He had no doubt that he was here because of what had happened in the woods —when?—five days ago. And the woman, Mrs. Epples, was afraid of him for some reason. Yet, he was supposed to have lain here in a—what was it?—a cata-something or other? Like a coma? What could he have done to scare her so? Or, was she telling the truth about his blood having some sort of strange germs?

All his life, he had been unable to just sit still and think unless he was figuring out some mechanical device. And then he needed paper and pencil to work out his ideas. He read only the newspapers and journals dealing with hunting or cars or motorboats, or technical books concerned with his type of work. He could sit for an hour or so watching TV or talking to friends, but then he became restless and had to be up and doing.

Or, perhaps not so much doing, he thought, as moving. He had to keep moving. Why?

It was the first time in his life he had ever asked himself that question. The first time he had asked himself anything about himself. And why was that?

It didn’t take many brains to see that his feelings—Tincrowdor would say, his sensitivity—had been sharpened. Nor did it take much intelligence to connect this sharpening with the incident in the wood. Which might mean that the organisms in his blood were responsible. Which meant that they were beneficial. Or did it? Paul Eyre did not really like having improved insight. He was like a man who had spent his whole life building an impregnable castle only to find out that he himself was breaking down its walls.

This analogy made him even more ill at ease. He wasn’t used to thinking in nonmechanical terms.

He took refuge in logic. If the organisms had caused changes in him of which he was aware, they had also caused changes of which he knew nothing. Otherwise, why would he be isolated and why would the nurse be so scared of him?

While he was pondering this, he fell asleep. When he awoke, he felt sure that he had been drugged. There were needle marks on his left arm, so many that he must have had some of them when he had first awakened. But he had been so disturbed then that he had not noticed them. Some of them, though, must have come from intravenous feeding. While he slept, he was nourished on a liquid diet.

What had made him drop off so suddenly? He looked around and presently found what he knew he would find. There was, in the shadow cast by the TV, the opening of a small pipe. An anesthetic gas had been expelled into the room to make him unconscious, and the nurse had come in after the gas had been dispelled and had given him a shot and set up the I. V. apparatus.

The gas alone was enough to keep him from escaping. They must really fear him if they thought he also had to be chained to the bed.

His feelings were not limited to fear and rage. Such precautions also made him feel important. And this was the first time in his life that he had felt, deep down, that he was of any significance to anybody.

He sat up and tested his strength against the chains. He was weak, but even if he had had his full power, he could not come near breaking the steel links. And even if he could, whoever was watching him through the TV would release the gas.

He lay down again and contemplated his situation. It was like life; you couldn’t leave it until you died.

* * * *

Dr. Jack Croker and Leo Tincrowdor sat in Croker’s office tearing each other and themselves apart.

“Mavice says that if you don’t let her see Paul, she’ll get him out of here,” Tincrowdor said.

“She’d just be upset if she saw him,” Croker said. “And I don’t think it’d be wise for her to get anywhere near him. You know why. So why don’t you talk her into leaving him in my care?”

“I can’t tell her why it’s so vital that he be isolated,” Tincrowdor said. “And if she’s not told, she won’t see any reason not to move him elsewhere. Besides, what solid proof do you have that he is dangerous? None, none at all.”

Croker could think of evidence. He regretted now telling Tincrowdor anything at all.

“What else has happened?” Tincrowdor said.

“What do you mean?” Croker said. He lit a cigarette to give himself time to think.

“You told me that your lab tech’s face was badly scarred from adolescent acne. But after she took blood from Eyre, her face miraculously cleared up. And you said that Backers, a male nurse, had a heart attack while he was in the room with Paul. You were thinking of firing Backers because of his brutality, and you suspected that he was doing something to Paul when the heart attack occurred. It’s obvious to anyone with imagination that you believe that those alien organisms have changed Paul, have given him strange powers. And it’s obvious that you fear that those organisms might be infectious.”

Croker bit his lip. If he told Tincrowdor that the organisms had disappeared, or at least were no longer detectible, then he would have lost one more reason for keeping Eyre. But he was not sure that they had all been excreted. There might be some in tissues unavailable until Eyre died. In his brain, for instance.

“We’ve collected about two million of the yellow creatures in his urine and fecal matter,” he said. “Boiling them in hot water doesn’t kill them nor does depriving them of oxygen. About the only way they can be quickly destroyed is through burning. And that takes a minimum temperature of 1500 degrees Fahrenheit. It takes hours for the strongest acids to eat through the coating.”

Tincrowdor said, “That alone should make you think they’re of extraterrestrial origin.”

He regretted saying this immediately. He hadn’t told Croker about the paw print in the cornfield or the saucer print in the woods. If Croker really thought the yellow-brick things were from outer space, then he would be adamant about not releasing Eyre.

Nor could Tincrowdor blame him. Paul Eyre free could be a calamity, perhaps extinction, for humanity. But Eyre was a human being with certain inalienable rights. Never mind that most of his fellow Americans professed to believe the same but acted as if they didn’t. He believed.

Still, he didn’t want to die, along with everybody else, if Eyre really were a danger.

Yet, there were times in the velvet hours of the night, and the clanging minutes of noon, when he wondered if it wouldn’t be a good thing if humanity were wiped out. For their own good, of course. Human beings suffered much, some more than others, but they all suffered. Death would put an end to their pain. It would also prevent the birth of more babies whose main inheritance would be pain. Tincrowdor had an obsession about babies. They were born good, he believed, though they had potentialities for evil. Society invariably insisted that they should grow up good, but provided the best and the most fertilizer for evil.

Croker, like most doctors, thought that this was the best of all possible worlds, which was to be expected. Their world gave doctors great respect and prestige and much wealth. It was natural for them to become angry with anything or anybody that might change things as they were. Yet, outside of the very poor, criminals, and policemen, they saw more of evil than anybody. But they fought against anything that might soften evil, just as they had fought against medical insurance until they suddenly saw that a good thing could be made out of it.

Croker was not, however, a typical specimen of his profession. He had some imagination. Otherwise he could not have been a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, the society that proceeds on the premise that Sherlock Holmes was a living person.

It was this imagination that made Croker connect things that his duller colleagues would have seen as entirely disparate. This same gift made him a danger to Eyre.

Tincrowdor was aware that Croker was aware and that Croker, like himself, was being stretched like a piece of bubble gum between his conscience and his duty. Or perhaps, Tincrowdor thought, they were each bubbles being blown up by the situation. If they didn’t act soon, they would pop.

And the trouble with me, thought Tincrowdor, is that I’m not really concerned with Paul Eyre as an individual human being. I don’t even like Eyre. He’d be better off dead and so would his family. But then, come to think of it, so would I. So why am I interfering? Especially when logic says that the fate of one miserable human being is nothing compared to that of the fate of all humanity.

For one thing, if Eyre were done away with, the case might be closed forever. That this might break off forever any contact with extraterrestrials alarmed him. Besides, like most science-fiction writers, he secretly hoped for vast cataclysms, end-of-the-world invasions from outer space, anything that would polish off most of mankind. Among the survivors would be himself, of course. And this little band, having learned its lesson, would then make a paradise of earth.

In his more light-filled moments he laughed at this fantasy. The survivors wouldn’t do a bit better than their predecessors.

Croker, who had been silent, said, “How about a drink, Leo?”

“Drink dims the conscious and illuminates the unconscious,” Tincrowdor said, “Yes, I’ll have one. Or several.”

Croker brought out a fifth of Weller’s Special Reserve, and the two silently toasted their thoughts.

Tincrowdor asked for another three fingers and said, “If you murder Eyre, you might have to kill me, too. Not to mention Morna. You wouldn’t have enough guts to do that.”

“I could kill Eyre and then myself,” Croker said cheerfully.

Tincrowdor laughed, but he was taken aback. “You’ve got too much curiosity to do that,” he said. “You’d want to know what those yellow things are and where they came from.”

“You’d better tell me all you know,” Croker said. “I had thought that the organisms were mutations, though I didn’t really believe that.”

“You’re less hidebound and more perceptive than I thought,” Tincrowdor said. “O.K. I’ll tell you everything.”

Croker listened without interrupting except to request more detailed description of several events. Then he said, “Let me tell you about the rat I released in Eyre’s room.”

When Croker was finished, Tincrowdor poured himself another drink. Croker looked disapproving but said nothing. He had once shown the writer the brain and liver of a skid-row bum. Tincrowdor had quit drinking for three months. When he started again, he drank as if he were trying to make up for the lost time.

Tincrowdor sat down and said, “Even if Paul isn’t carrying a contagious disease, he’s a menace. He can kill anything he thinks is dangerous. Or, maybe anytime he gets angry. And he gets angry a lot.”

He downed half his drink and said, “So that should make your course of action—and mine—apparent. You can’t loose that on the world.”

“And what will you do?” Croker said.

“My God, here are two intelligent and compassionate people discussing murder!” Tincrowdor said.

“I didn’t mean that,” Croker said. “I was thinking of keeping him locked up, as if he were a sort of Man in the Iron Mask. But I don’t know if that is possible. In the first place, a fake death would have to be arranged, but that would lead to almost insuperable complications and connivery. He’d have to seem to have died in a fire, so the body would be unrecognizable. I’d have to supply a body so it’d be a closed-coffin funeral. I couldn’t keep him here, because somebody might talk. I’d have to arrange for his transportation elsewhere, and I’d have to pay for his keep. And the first time he got angry or thought he was menaced, he’d kill. And that would cause trouble wherever he’d be.”

“And if it all came out, you’d go to jail. And I’d be an accessory before, during, and after the fact. And, to tell you the truth, I don’t have the guts to be your accomplice.”

“Your only complicity would be your silence, and I’d never say anything about your knowledge of this.”

‘‘Why’d you tell me anything in the first place?” Tincrowdor said. “Is it because you wanted someone to share the guilt?”

“Perhaps I thought that if anyone else knew about it, I’d not be able to do anything,” Croker said.

“And you could release him with a clear conscience? Your hands’d be tied?”

“Perhaps. But that’s out. I can’t release him.”

He leaned toward Tincrowdor and said, “If his family could be made aware of all the facts, they just might agree to keep him here. It might not be forever, because he may lose this power to kill by thought or however he does it. After all, the organisms have gone. Perhaps the power will, too.”

“You don’t know his family. Maybe his son and daughter would go along, because they’re educated enough and have imagination enough to extrapolate from the situation. But Mavice? Never! She’d think we were crazy with all this talk of flying saucers and yellow stuff and killing by invisible means. The story would be out in no time. She would tell her brothers, who are also umimaginative clods. Not that they’d worry much about Paul. They don’t like him. But they’d want to help their sister. She’s the baby of their family, and they’d hear about it from her all right.”

“Yeah,” Croker said. “How’d you ever get to know the Eyres? They’re certainly not the type you’d be friends with.”

“Morna and Mavice were high-school buddies. Mavice stood by Morna when she was being ostracized by her other friends because of some lying story a boy was telling about her. They have been good friends ever since. Despite the disparity in their education and their attitudes—Morna’s a liberal, as you know, and Mavice’s a flaming reactionary—they manage to get along fine. I had a little affair with Mavice myself, back in the days when I was young and horny and a fine female body meant more to me than a fine female brain.”

“How you ever stood that screeching voice, I’ll never understand,” Croker said. “But that’s neither here nor there. What if Mavice were told a story that doesn’t quite fit the facts?”

“I don’t know how you could do it and still not be exposed.’’

Croker erupted from his chair spilling whiskey over his pants. “Well, something has to be done and soon!”

There was a knock on the door, and Croker said, “Who is it?”

“It’s Mrs. Epples. May I come in?”

Croker opened the door. Mrs. Epples, looking past him, said, “I wanted to speak to you alone, Doctor.”

Croker went out into the hall and shut the door. Tincrowdor looked at the fifth and decided not to have any more. A minute later, Croker entered. He looked pale.

“Eyre’s dead!”

Tincrowdor opened his mouth, but Croker held up his hand.

“I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not true, so help me God. Eyre died of natural causes. At least, I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

* * * *

Paul Eyre awoke naked on something cold and hard. A scalpel was poised above him and beyond a face, its lower half hidden by a gauze mask. Above the man there glared a hard bright light.

The man’s eyes widened, the scalpel jerked away, and he cried, “No! No!”

Eyre rolled off the stone and onto the floor. Though his legs and arms gave way to weakness, he crawled away toward the closed door. Something hard struck the marble floor. The metallic sound was succeeded a second later by the thump of a heavy body.

A few feet from the door, Eyre collapsed. He lay breathing heavily for awhile, knowing somehow that the immediate danger had passed. But out there, beyond the door, and not far away, were other dangers. They were walking up and down the corridors, intent on their business. At least two were thinking about him also.

Their thoughts were neither verbal or iconic. They blew through the door as thin susurruses from two far-off oceans. They lapped around him as the last waves of the sea would roll out on the beach and splash his feet.

As he sat up, he caught another element in the faint whisperings. It identified the sex of the thinkers.

He reached up, grabbed the edge of the stone table, and pulled himself up. Eyre walked around the table, leaning on it, and then got down on his knees to examine the man on the floor. His eyes were open and glazed, his skin was bluish, and he had no pulse. Something, probably a heart attack, had struck him down just as he was about to kill Eyre. But why had he wanted to murder Eyre and to dissect him?

He looked around the room and found nothing with which to clothe himself. The man’s clothes wouldn’t fit him, but if he had to, he would put them on. He couldn’t stay naked. He had to get to a telephone and call the police, but if he went out into the corridor, he’d be seen at once. And there must be others in this plot to kill him. This man wouldn’t have been acting alone.

Or would he?

He was confused and weak, from lack of data as well as hunger. And being naked made him feel guilty, as if he had actually committed some crime that had justified the dead man’s trying to kill him. First, he’d get some clothes and then he would get out.

He walked slowly to the door and opened it. The corridor was empty except for a very old man shuffling toward him. He wore slippers, pants, a shirt, and an old frayed bathrobe. He was about Eyre’s size. His heart beating hard, Eyre waited until the old man was opposite him. He reached out an arm, grabbed the man by his sleeve, and yanked him inside. He disliked using violence on him, yet at the same time he felt angry at him. An image of his own father, aged beyond his years, his mouth hanging open, drooling, passed before him. He hated old people, he realized, and he hated them because they prefigured his own fate.

The hate was good in one way. It gave him the strength to do what was needed. Fortunately, the old man was paralyzed with fright and did not fight. If he had, he might have caused Eyre considerable trouble, Eyre was so weak.

The old man squawked before Eyre could get a hand over the toothless mouth. The door banged shut. The old man rolled his eyes and went limp. Eyre eased him down and began to undress him. At least, the old man didn’t stink from lack of bathing. But Eyre couldn’t bring himself to put on the stained shorts. Evidently the old man had imperfect control over his bladder.

When Eyre had finished dressing, he looked at the old man, who was still unconscious but breathing. And what would the fellow do when he awoke? He’d arouse everybody, and the hunt would be on. And when Eyre did get hold of the police, what then? Wouldn’t the old man be able to charge Eyre with assault and the theft of his clothes? But surely the police would understand the necessity of this.

He had no time to consider the consequences of what he was doing. He had to get out and away.

He put the scalpel in the pocket of the bathrobe and stepped out into the hall. As he walked down the hall, he realized that he was not wearing his glasses. In fact, now that he thought back on it, he hadn’t had them when he had awakened in that room. Yet, he had seen perfectly.

This frightened him for a moment but before he reached the end of the hall he felt reassured. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t entirely malignant.

At the corner, he thought of stopping to reconnoiter. But it would be better to act as if he belonged here, so he shuffled to his right. He was in another hall, and at once he saw that he should have gone to his left. Ahead of him was a desk behind which sat a nurse, and beyond her another hall at right angles to his. And a man Eyre recognized was walking in it. His profile was that of the apish man Eyre had seen the last time Mrs. Epples had entered the room in which he had been confined.

He repressed the impulse to wheel and go in the opposite direction. A quick movement might attract the man’s eye. The male nurse passed on, and Eyre stopped, felt in his pockets as if he had suddenly discovered he’d left something in his room, and then started to turn back. The nurse looked up and saw him.

“What can I do for you?” she said, sharply.

“Nothing,” he said. “I forgot my cigarettes.”

She stood up and said, “I don’t believe I know you. Are you sure you’re on the right floor?”

“I was admitted last night,” he said and walked away. At the end of the corridor two doors opened onto a balcony. Through their windows he could see across a brightly lit court. He was on the first story.

“Just a minute!” the woman said. “I don’t see any new names of the list!”

“Look closer!” he called back and then was trying the handles of the doors. They were locked, and he was not strong enough to break them open with his body. He went on down the hall to his left, ignoring the demands of the nurse that he come back. As soon as he was out of sight, he kicked off the slippers and ran as fast as he could, which was not swiftly, toward the door at its end. It was barred and locked, too. He turned and pushed open the door of the room nearest him and entered. The bed was empty. The door to the bathroom was closed, and inside someone was flushing the toilet. On the bureau near the window were jars and tubes and boxes of ointments and powders.

The windows could be swung open inward, but the bars would prevent anything but air or messages from getting out.

He put his ear to the bathroom door. Despite the rush of water splashing in the washbowl, he could hear the voices in the hall. One was Mrs. Epples’.

“If you do see him, don’t go near him, for God’s sake!”

“Why not?” a woman said.

“Because he...”

The voices trailed off as his pursuers presumably went down the hall to their left.

He opened the door and looked out. Mrs. Epples and another nurse were walking away from him. At the middle of the other hall, the apish male nurse was opening the door to a room. He was working his way down the hall, and soon would be opening the door behind which Eyre stood.

The water was no longer splashing. The woman would be coming out in a minute. He withdrew his head from the hall, tried to estimate the time it would take for the nurse to open the next door, and stepped out into the hall. Another door down the hall was open, and a nurse was looking into the room. Eyre was around the corner and out of sight; the two nurses had disappeared. He was congratulating himself when Mrs. Epples came out of a room four doors from him. He halted, and she screamed.

Before he could go on, she had dodged back into the room and slammed the door. Behind him he heard a shout and the slap of shoes on the floor.

Eyre ran again. There was another shout. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the apish man standing by the corner. Evidently he had no intention of pursuing him any further.

A door opened ahead of him and a thin young man with tousled hair and wild eyes looked out, but when he saw Eyre he shut the door. Eyre opened it and walked in, and the young man cowered against the bed. Eyre did not believe that he was frightened because he knew anything about him. The young man would have been frightened by any stranger.

Eyre said nothing. He went to the closet, opened it, and took out a pair of hush puppies and a jacket. In the bureau drawer he found a wallet and removed a ten-dollar bill, a five, four ones, and some change.

“I’ll pay you back later,” he said.

The young man shivered and his teeth chattered.

Paul Eyre stepped out of the room just as Mrs. Epples and the apish male nurse came around a corner. They halted, stared at him, and fled.

They were afraid of him, no doubt, but they must have gone for help. However, if everybody was as scared as those two, nobody was going to stop him. Not unless they shot at him from a distance.

Two minutes later, he walked out of the Adler Sanitarium. Only a security guard, a sixty-year-old man, stood between Eyre and freedom. He stepped aside as Eyre approached him because Mrs. Epples was screaming at him from the front entrance.

“Don’t use your gun! Let him go! The police will take care of him!”

This startled Eyre. Why would they bring in the police? He was the one who had been held prisoner and whom they, or at least some of them, had tried to kill. Or, did they have some good reason for having held him? Was he—he felt cold at the thought—was he carrying some dreadful disease? Had he been infected by that yellow stuff?

If this were so, why hadn’t he been told? He would have cooperated to the fullest.

There were about thirty cars in the parking lot. Some of them had unlocked doors, but none of them had keys in the ignition locks. He didn’t want to take the time to cross wire one, so he started walking down the road. As soon as he was out of sight of the sanitarium, he turned right into the woods. The Illinois River lay a mile and a half away, and a half mile up its bank was a refuge.

* * * *

The cottage belonged to a friend who had invited the Eyre family Saturday afternoons for boating and water-skiing and a big meal at night. They would sleep in the two extra rooms, get up for a big breakfast about ten, go to a nearby church, and spend the afternoon on the river. Eyre paid for these weekends by repairing Gardner’s boat motors or helping him paint his boats.

The season was over, and the house was shut up. Eyre knew that it held canned foods and blankets. He could hide out there while he tried to find out what was happening to him.

The cottage was about twenty yards from the river and was isolated from the neighboring houses by thick woods on each side. He crouched in the thick bushes behind a big tree while the moon rose.

About two hours after he had hidden, car lights probed down the narrow dirt road leading to the cottage. Shivering, he lay down flat on the cold ground in a little hollow behind the bush. When the lights had passed him, he raised his head. Two cars were parked in the moonlit area before the house. Men in the uniforms of the county police were tramping around the house with flashlights. Presently two went in, and their flashlights speared the darkness within. After ten minutes, the two came out. One of them said, “There’s no sign he’s been here.”

“Yeah, but he might come here later.”

One talked over the radio for a minute, then called to the others. “The sheriff said to watch the Y-fork for an hour.”

The cars drove away. Eyre stayed where he was. A half-hour later a patrol car, its lights off, rolled into the open area before the house. Two men got out quietly, tried the locks, and cast their flashlight beams through the windows. A few minutes later, they got into the car and drove off.

Eyre waited until three in the morning before entering the house. An extra key was hidden in a stump by the woodpile. Whoever had told the police about this cottage—he suspected Mavice—had forgotten about the key. The moonlight coming in the windows and his knowledge of the place enabled him to locate a bottle of distilled water, a box of powdered milk, and cans of fruit and meat. The water and gas were shut off, so he could not cook, and he had to go outside to relieve himself.

At three thirty, he crawled onto the unsheeted mattress under a pile of blankets. He fell asleep at once but dreamed of flying saucers, yellow bricks, and a green city far off across a red field. He felt a great longing for the city, an overwhelming homesickness. He awoke with the tears only half-dried.

* * * *

Half an hour after dawn, carrying two blankets, a can that he had filled with water, two opened cans of food, and a sack of garbage, he went back to his hiding place. He fell asleep. Two hours later he was awakened by noises from the house. A car with two county officers was parked out front. He was glad that he had replaced the key in the stump, for an officer was looking inside the stump. Somebody had recalled that it was there. Was it Mavice who had betrayed him? Or one of the kids? Gardner must have given a key to the police, but somebody in Eyre’s family had told the police about the cottage. They would not have known about Gardner otherwise.

An officer came out of the house and called to the other.

“Everything’s just as we left it.”

Fortunately, they had not counted the blankets.

A moment later, the sound of a motor announced another car. His ear identified it as a Porsche, and thus he was not overly surprised when Tincrowdor drove up. What was he doing here?

Tincrowdor got out and talked to the officers, but they spoke too softly for Eyre to hear what they were saying. Several times, Tincrowdor looked out at the woods, and once he looked directly at Eyre but could not see him, of course. Eyre hoped that he wasn’t going to suggest to the police that they search the woods.

The policeman got into the car, and Tincrowdor started toward his. As he passed the stump, he dropped something into its open end.

Eyre waited for a half-hour and went to the stump. The key still dangled on a thick cord from a nail driven into the interior wall. Below it lay an old and frayed wallet. He opened it and found a folded letter in it.

Paul,

I’m taking a chance that you may come here and find this. The police don’t know I’m doing this, but if they find this, there’s nothing they can do about it. I’m only trying to get you to surrender yourself. But please don’t tear this up at this point. Read on, because it is vitally important that you do. And when I say vitally, I am not exaggerating. It’s vital not only for you but possibly for the world itself that you make yourself available at once for study. Study by scientists.

Roger and I found evidence that you were lying when you said you’d dreamed. We know that it must have been reality but that you were afraid you’d be thought crazy if you reported it as reality. And Croker, poor dead Croker, found evidence that you were infected with a completely unknown organism.

It’s evident that these things have made some changes in your body. And in your mind. Mrs. Epples had a very badly scarred face from adolescent acne. The scars disappeared after she assisted in getting you to bed in the sanitarium. A male nurse, Backers, suffered a heart attack when he apparently manhandled you. He is a rather brutal person and was not discharged only because help is hard to get at Adler’s. No wonder, considering its very low pay scale.

It’s obvious that you have powers that nobody else has ever had. Except in science-fiction stories. Or, possibly, some people in the past have had them—Jesus, Faustus, some others, maybe some so-called witch doctors of so-called primitive peoples.

I wouldn’t advise you to try walking on the surface of the Illinois. But you can hurt, you can kill, and you can heal. I don’t mean that you can do this consciously. At least not yet. But when you, or your unconscious, or whatever, feels threatened, it reacts violently. By what means, I don’t know. I’d guess, by mental means. Definitions or analyses don’t matter just now.

You have powers for good and evil. You struck down Croker in, I presume, a moment of panic. Yet, Croker was not trying to kill you. He thought you were dead. You were kept prisoner in that room, and your unconscious, or whatever, took the only means of getting you out of that room. At least, I’m presuming you didn’t do it consciously. Your body became, as far as Croker could tell, dead. But you came out of that fake-death state when you were about to be dissected. And Croker paid the price for trying to keep your condition a secret.

It’s a good thing I’m squeamish and wasn’t present to watch the dissection. I went home and so was spared. The old man whose clothes you took seemed to have had a mild heart attack. Apparently you, or whatever, didn’t feel that he was an important threat. He died a few hours later, anyway. His old heart couldn’t take the minor injury you gave it.

I’m asking you to turn yourself in, Paul. You should voluntarily allow yourself to be locked up, for awhile, at least. You won’t be charged with murder or manslaughter, because you couldn’t help the deaths. But if you persist in hiding, in running away, you’ll be killing more people, and, eventually, you’ll be killed.

At the moment, there is very little evidence that your story is true. Croker hid the slides of your blood and his reports on you. We can’t find them. Not yet. But Epples and Backers saw the experiment with the rat. You were in an unconscious state, Paul, but you killed a rat that had been released in your room and tried to bite you. It couldn’t because its teeth had been removed. You killed it without moving a muscle.

If you give yourself up, the scientists can test you and they’ll have to believe what they see. They won’t want to, but they’ll have to. And then they’ll have to believe that an extraterrestrial of some sort, mechanical or biological, has landed on earth. This knowledge they will have to keep to themselves while a quiet search for the extee is conducted. If the news got out, the panic would be terrible.

I won’t lie to you, Paul. If the world found out that you were a possible source of infection, you’d be in grave danger. But that’s why you need to be kept in a place that is heavily guarded. While you’re running around loose, the news might get out, and every man’s hand would be against you.

Why do I take the chance that the police may find this letter and so bring about the very situation I’ve described? Because the situation demands that I take this chance. You are the most important person in the world, Paul. The most important.

You must give yourself up and let events fall where they may.

You know my phone number. Call me, and I’ll make arrangements to meet you and have you given a safe conduct.

Leo

* * * *

Paul Eyre sat in his daughter Glenda’s car in the parking lot of Busiris Central High School. It had taken him three hours to settle down his heart and thoughts. By the end of that time he had half-convinced himself that he was indeed the danger Tincrowdor had said he was. He still did not intend to give himself up; at least, not yet. He had little imagination but the letter had shown him what could happen to him. He might be kept the rest of his life in a hospital room. He might be killed by some fanatic who wanted to rid the world of the threat to it he represented. All the guards and precautions that could be imagined would not be enough to make him safe from determined men.

And yet, he wanted to do his duty. Duty demanded that he sacrifice himself for the sake of the world. He could be a walking bomb a thousand times more fatal than a dozen H-bombs.

He did not really feel that he was. He felt lonely and helpless and very scared. He felt like a leper. He felt self-pity. Why had this horrible thing happened to him, of all people? What had he done to deserve it? He wasn’t a wicked person. He had his faults, though at the moment he couldn’t think of any, but they weren’t great enough for him to be singled out for a singular punishment. All he had wanted to do was to keep working at Trackless and on his own little business, to enjoy a beer now and then, to go fishing and hunting, to retire someday and spend his remaining years camping, fishing, and hunting. And work on some gadget that would make him rich and famous.

That was all he wanted.

Now, he thought, he knew what the deer and the rabbits felt like when he had been after them. Not that he regretted shooting them. They were beasts of the field, provided by God for his pleasure and good. He had none of that false sentimentality that permitted some to be horrified by the deaths of gentle-eyed and harmless deer, while they thought nothing of slaughter of gentle-eyed and harmless cattle and sheep for their tables. He didn’t see them confining themselves to nuts, carrots, and apples.

Nevertheless, as he had made his way through the woods and the city to this parking lot, he had experienced the same horror that the deer must have experienced.

Busiris, a city of 150,000 population, stretched six miles along the western shores of the Illinois. It also covered the three bluffs inland for a distance of five miles. He had walked through the forests and by the farms and the few industries on its northern side, ascended the bluff through some woods, and walked through the outlying areas. He had to cross some of the major roads, and the closer he got to the high school, the more chance he had of being recognized. But he had shaved off his mustache in the cottage, and he was not wearing his glasses.

Using a screwdriver taken from the cottage, Eyre pried open the front left window of Glenda’s car. Reaching in with the other, he brought up the lock on the inside of the door. A moment later, he had crosswired the car and had the motor running. If he were spotted by a patrol car, he would at least try to get away in her Impala.

Three thirty came. The big building spewed forth students. Over two-thirds of the cars had left the lot when Glenda appeared. She had a beautiful though thin face and long black hair. Yet, she was a pitiful figure. She would have been five feet eight inches tall if her back had been an exclamation mark instead of an interrogative. Her legs seemed as thin as the back of a cigarette package. One leg was several inches shorter than the other. She walked with a motion suggestive of a sick snake.

Glenda was a living reproach to her father, though he had only recently recognized it. He had been disappointed when she was born because he had wanted another son. Girls were useless; they demanded special care, became a worry when they were pubescent, and beyond helping their mothers when they got older, couldn’t pay their way in his household. Paul Eyre had, however, determined that his daughter was going to be as much like a boy as possible. He had taught her how to repair cars and outboard motors, to do carpentry and electrical work, and to hunt and fish. At least, when she got married, she wasn’t going to be a drag like Mavice. Mavice had refused to learn enough to help him in his business. And when she reluctantly went along on his outdoor trips, she griped about the cooking, the boredom and the discomforts.

When Glenda was ten, she had gone with him and Roger to Wisconsin on a fishing trip. She had not been feeling well for several days and had objected to going. Mavice had objected, too. He had stormed at both of them until they subsided. On reaching the little lake, Glenda had become too sick to leave the tent. Eyre had ignored all except her most basic demands and had, in fact, been angry because he thought she was malingering. The second day, Glenda had a high fever and was only conscious now and then. Finally realizing the seriousness of the situation, he had bundled her into a car and driven all night back to Busiris.

Glenda had almost died of infantile paralysis. And she would always be a cripple.

She had never said anything to him about his forcing her to go on the trip. Mavice, however, had more than made up for Glenda’s silence. How many times, when they were quarreling, had Mavice thrown this up to him?

Now, watching her hobble bent-backed across the lot, he felt sick. And he understood why her mere presence had made him so angry, why he had longed for the day she would go off to college. Deep down, he knew that it was his selfishness and stupidity that had wrecked her. He had refused to admit that knowledge to his consciousness, but it had nevertheless disturbed him.

He also saw for the first time that Mavice was to blame, too. Why hadn’t she held out against him? No matter how he had ranted, she should have refused to let him take an obviously sick child on such a trip.

Both of them were guilty. Both had refused to admit their guilt. The only difference now was that Mavice was still blind, and something had suddenly and painfully opened his eyes.

He knew what that something was. The strange organisms in his body had worked a change in him.

* * * *

Glenda, seeing him in the driver’s seat, stopped. Her pale face became even whiter. Then she came around the side of the car and got in beside him. Tears ran down her cheek.

“What are you doing here, Dad?”

He refrained from telling her that she was his second choice. Busiris College was too far away and too well patrolled for him to try to see Roger.

He told her all that had happened and described Tincrowdor’s letter, Glenda looked stunned.

“I didn’t want to phone Leo because the police might’ve tapped his wires,” he said. “I want you to get to his house and arrange for him to be in the phone booth near the downtown public library. I’ll call him from another booth.”

“I just can’t believe all this!” Glenda said. “It’s too fantastic!”

“I’m not crazy, and Leo will tell you so,” he said. “The world has enough problems, more than it can handle, as everybody, including God, knows. But now, in the past few days, it has two new problems. And both make all past problems look simple. One is that saucer creature. The other is me. I can turn myself in and give the world a chance to solve the dilemma I represent. But what’s going to prevent the saucer thing from infecting other people? Nothing, nobody, is going to be able to do anything about that. Except me.”

“What do you mean?” she said. She leaned over and placed a hand on his arm. He moved it away, feeling that he might be contagious.

“I mean that there’s something of the saucer thing in me. It’s changed me, is still changing me. I’m part saucer thing myself. Otherwise, why would I have those dreams of that green city and the longing for it? You see before you a man who’s still your father but not your father. Half-human. Or, maybe I was only half-human before and it’s making me more human. I don’t know. Anyway, it takes a thief to catch a thief, and I’m the only one who can catch the saucer thing. That’s because I’m part saucer thing, and the saucer thing herself is dogging me. Why, I don’t know. There’s so much I don’t know. But I’m convinced that only I can trap her. Which is why I’m not going to turn myself in. But I need help to stay out of the hands of the police. That’s why I want to talk to Tincrowdor. Maybe he’ll help me.”

“Dad,” Glenda said in a choked voice. “I’m sick!”

She fell against him, and even through his shirt he could feel the heat from her face. He pushed her back so that she sat up as straight as she ever would be able to. Her head hung forward, mouth open; she breathed as if a rusty windmill was in her throat.

“I’m not angry with you, Glenda!” he cried. “My God, I love you!”

* * * *

Once, he had deserted her when she had been sick. There had been no excuse then for what he had done. Now, if he deserted her, he would have an excuse. He couldn’t let himself be caught. And logic certainly told him to leave her. He could phone in to the hospital and then take off. Glenda would be taken care of, and he would be safe.

He thought for sixty seconds or so and then drove out of the lot and headed toward the Methodist Hospital. Glenda probably needed to get to a hospital as swiftly as possible, and he would not be responsible for even a second’s delay.

He drove as fast as he could, passing three stop signs and two red lights. His car pulled up at the emergency entrance four minutes later. After running inside and telling the nurse at the admittance desk, he went to the public phone down the hall. He dialed his home number but hung up after the phone had rung twenty times. Then he dialed Tincrowdor’s number. Morna answered.

He told her to shut up and listen while he explained the situation.

“You get Mavice and Roger down here and take care of things,” he said, “And tell Leo I’ll be getting in touch with him. ‘Bye!”

He walked down the hall away from the emergency room. He heard the nurse calling after him but did not look back. A minute later, he went out by the main exit, past the policeman standing guard there. He strode up the slope along the hospital, cut over to a side street that led to Main Street, and took a bus. Two blocks from his house, he got off at Sheridan and Lux. He phoned the hospital and asked for Mavice Eyre, the mother of the girl who had just been brought in. He waited for two minutes before Mavice answered, then hung up and walked to his house, hoping that Roger would not be there.

He saw no one who knew him until he got to his house. Across the street was the three-storied nursing home filled with old people who had often seen him come and go and watched him when he worked on cars and boats in his driveway. About eight of them, mostly old ladies, were sunning themselves on the side porch as he went up the driveway to the rear of his house. They looked curiously at him but none waved. Apparently, his strange clothes and lack of spectacles and mustache had deceived them.

Under a washbowl on a stand by the rear door was a key. Fifteen minutes later, he left his house. He was dressed in his own clothes and carried a wallet with fifty dollars, and a shotgun and thirty shells. He got into Roger’s car; its motor was still warm. Evidently Roger had gotten home just in time to drive his mother to the hospital in her car.

Paul Eyre had no specific place in mind to go to. He would drive out of the city, abandon the car, and walk to one of the riverside cottages deserted for the season. There he would wait as long as he was left alone.

It didn’t matter where he was. Sooner or later, the saucer thing in its saucer form, or in that of the sphinx, would show up. And then he would destroy it. Or, it would destroy him.

As he got to the end of his street, he saw a patrol car pull across it, blocking his car. He slammed on the brakes, backed with a squeal of tires into a driveway, and raced away. The rear-view mirror showed him the police car backing up so it could swing around.

When he looked again, he saw another black-and-white car, its red lights flashing, pull around the corner ahead of him.

He put the car into neutral, opened the door, and fell out of it while it was still moving. He ran for the old folks’ home, the sanctuary of senior citizens, the elephants’ graveyard. The old ladies on the front porch screamed. One stood in his path. Rage flashed through him. The woman fell on her face. Shouts of male voices tore at him, and as he went through the door into a huge dining room, he heard a shot. A warning fired into the air.

He crossed a big room into a smaller one, went past that through a kitchen, and out the door. He vaulted over a fence with an agility he did not know he possessed. But he had forgotten about the savage police dog the Hunters kept. Though it was chained, it had enough leash to get at him. It sprang at him and dropped upon the ground and lay still, its tongue hanging out, its eyes glazing.

He stopped and turned toward the big house, his arms up in the air. If he kept on running, he would kill half the world, and he could not endure that thought. He would surrender now, and if the police shot him because they were afraid to let him stay alive, so much the better. That would solve many problems.

The police, of course, did not shoot. They had not been told how dangerous he was, nor did they know then that he had left three old women dead behind him. Even if they had, they would have thought that the excitement was too much for the aged hearts.

That is exactly what the few authorities who knew the truth allowed the police and the public to think. He was not brought to trial on any charge but was declared to have been examined by psychiatrists and found insane.

Eyre did not argue with the decision. Nor did he tell his keepers about the incident, three nights after being locked up, when he had awakened and looked out of the window. Outlined in its frame was a saucer shape. It hovered for a few seconds and then flashed upward out of sight. Eyre felt that it—she—was watching over him because he was her only living offspring. Or, something inside him was.

* * * *

Six months passed without his seeing a human being in the flesh. From time to time he awoke knowing that a gas had put him to sleep and samples of his tissues had been taken from him. Once, he awoke with an x-ray photo on the table beside him. The TV had come to life then, and Dr. Polar’s image had told him what the x-ray meant. It was of his brain, and the arrow drawn on it pointed to a tiny spot in his cerebellum, the “hind brain.” This was something that had been detected by radioactive tracing. It might be a tumor, but Dr. Polar did not think it was. Its shape was too much like a brick’s. Dr. Polar admitted that he would like to operate to extract it. But he was afraid that the surgeon would drop dead before the knife could make its first cut.

“Apparently, it doesn’t object to our taking tissue samples or doing certain other experiments,” Polar said. “These don’t threaten you, or it, I should say.”

Eyre asked about its nature but was told that Polar and his colleagues didn’t even have any theories about it. Eyre then asked if Polar planned to kill him so he could dissect him. Polar did not answer.

He also asked a number of times about Glenda. Each time, he was told that she was alive and doing well. That was all he could, or would, be told.

On the first day of the seventh month, as Eyre paced back and forth, the door to his room opened. Glenda walked in, and the door was quickly shut and locked.

Eyre was so overwhelmed that he had to sit down in his chair. Glenda stood tall and straight, her breasts were no longer just little buds, and her legs were even and shapely. She smiled at him and then broke into tears and ran to him. He cried, too, though at one time he would have thought it unmanly to do so.

“I almost died,” she said, after she had left his arms. “My bones got soft. The doctors said nothing like this had ever happened before. They said the calcium was semi-dissolved. The bones were like rubber at first and then like a hard jelly. They kept me in a kind of bath-bed; I floated in water while they put braces and molds around me to straighten me out. After a few weeks, the bones began to get hard again. It took two months for them to become completely hard, and it was so long, so very long, and so frightening! But look at me now!”

Eyre was happy for a long time. But when Glenda said that he wasn’t going to be freed, he became angry.

“Why not? I can do great good, more good than anybody has ever done before!”

“Dad, they can’t let you go. Every time you got mad at someone, you’d kill him. Besides...”

“Well, what is it?” he said. He hoped he wouldn’t be getting angry with her. Maybe he should tell her to get out now.

“We’re all in prison here!” she said, and she began to cry.

Though there was no reason to ask why, he did so. The authorities, whoever they were, had locked up not only his family but the two Tincrowdors, Mrs. Epples, and Backers in this place. They were well treated and given everything they wanted except their freedom.

“But what about our friends and relatives?”

“They’ve been told we are all being treated for a rare contagious disease. I don’t know how long they’re going to believe that, but I think some sort of indirect pressure is being put on them. They’re not to say anything about this to anybody else. We get letters, and we can write letters. But they’re censored. We’ve had to rewrite some of them.”

Eyre was in a rage for two days and a funk for three. The sixth day, Dr. Polar appeared on the TV screen. He waited until Eyre had quit storming at him and then said, “It’s not as bad as it seems to you, Paul. There may be a way out for all of us. I want you to go to the door now. The view-window will be opened for a minute. I want you to just look through it. That’s all.”

Since there was no reason to refuse, Eyre did so. He saw only a baby, about a year old, lying on a bed. The baby had a wasted face and very thin arms and legs and was obviously dying. Eyre felt pity for it.

Then the window was slid shut by someone out of his view.

Three days later, the door opened, and Glenda entered. They embraced each other, and Glenda said, “The baby is completely cured, Dad. It had leukemia and would have died in a week or so. Now, it’s cured. The doctors won’t admit that, but they do admit that there’s been a complete remission.”

“I’m glad of that,” he said. “But what does that mean for me? And for you?” he added hastily. “And the others?”

Glenda gave him an uninterpretable look, and said, “If you’ll cooperate, Dad, we’ll be set free. We can’t tell the truth when we get out, and if we should slip up, we’ll be in trouble. But we’ll be free. If. . .”

It was evident that she was ashamed, and yet she longed desperately for him to say yes. Nor could he blame her. She had been set free from her crooked body only to be denied the new life promised her.

“What do the others say?”

“Mom is going to go crazy, literally crazy, Dad, if she can’t get out. Roger says the decision is up to you. Morna Tincrowdor says she’ll do everything she can to get you out, but she’s just talking, and she knows it. Leo Tincrowdor says you’re not to give in to the bastards. But then he’s happy. He gets all the books and booze he wants and he doesn’t have to support himself. He sends a message. ‘Stone walls do not a prison make.’ I think he means by that you’ll get out by yourself, somehow.”

“If they wanted me to do something evil,” he said, “I’d have to refuse, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to say yes. But I do say yes. Only, Glenda, promise me you won’t forget me. You’ll write me at least once a week. And you’ll come to see me once in awhile.”

“Of course I will, Dad,” Glenda said. “But it doesn’t seem fair! You have this gift, you’ll be doing good for many people, and yet you’ll be kept in prison!”

“I won’t be the first,” he said. “Nor the last. Anyway, they’re keeping me here so I won’t hurt people, though God knows I don’t wish anyone harm. Not consciously, anyway.”

He bent close to her and whispered, “Tell Tincrowdor to keep looking. He’ll know what I mean.”

Late that night, he awoke knowing that someone, or something, was near and wanted him awake. He rose and went to the window and looked out over a wall and a river beyond it and a city sparkling with many lights. Near the window, perhaps twenty feet away, the saucer hung. It was whirling, and its rotation seemed to be making the noise he had heard in his sleep. The humming was modulated, and its message, so it seemed to him, was one of farewell. Farewell and sadness. It had come to earth for some unknown reason, had met with an accident, had caused an unplanned change in another creature, and now must leave. Whatever it had planted in him, it felt that the planting had not and would not come to fruition.

Suddenly, it shot upward. He thrust his face against the bars and looked up but could no longer see it. When he walked away from the window, the vision of the red fields and the green city flashed before him. Was that a vision of the thing’s home? Was the vision broadcast to him by some mental means from the thing? Or, did he carry inside himself one of its progeny, and did this child carry inside itself an ancestral memory of the home of its mother? And was it able to transmit this hereditary vision to him now and then, when he, or it, or both, were under some stress?

He would never know now, he told himself. The visitor had come because of mysterious reasons and had left for mysterious reasons. Whatever her mission was, it had been aborted.

It was his fate to be the only human being touched by the stars. And it was his fate that other human beings were afraid of the startouched. So, while the giver of the two-edged gift roamed through the spaces between the stars, he, the recipient, was shut up in one small room. Forever.

“Not forever,” he muttered. “You might keep me in if I was just a human being. But I’m more than that now. And you will wish you hadn’t locked me up. You’ll wish you had treated me like a human being.”