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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..86e9d1c --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #63696 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63696) diff --git a/old/63696-0.txt b/old/63696-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index f0294f6..0000000 --- a/old/63696-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3155 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vanisher, by Michael Shaara - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this ebook. - -Title: The Vanisher - -Author: Michael Shaara - -Release Date: December 05, 2020 [EBook #63696] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VANISHER *** - - - - - THE VANISHER - - By MICHAEL SHAARA - - _He was expendable, this Web Hilton, this - young officer with the strange heritage. And - so it was that he was ordered out into space - where he saw the uncovered stars, and met - the naked alien, and became the first man - in history to die more than once._ - - [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from - Planet Stories Winter 1954. - Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that - the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] - - -The two girls stayed to see the picture a second time and when they got -out of the movie it was after midnight and raining and they couldn't -get a cab. Louise bought a paper and put it over her head and ran off, -laughing, in the direction of Albany Street. Ivy folded her kerchief -and turned up Livingstone. She did not run. There was nothing wrong -with rain, or with getting wet, and she enjoyed the coolness. She -plunged her hands deeply into her coat pockets and did not bother to -walk quickly at all. - -The night was very dark, made darker by the rain, which was heavy and -full. But Ivy was unconcerned. She was a small-town girl, country bred, -with three huge brothers who knew every man in the county. She had -grown up with a strong belief in the natural goodness of things, of -people, and although she was young and slim and extremely pretty she -had no worry now of walking home in the dark. This was her home town. -She had lived here all her life. She passed by huge bushes and under -the great clutching branches of trees without thinking at all of the -things which could, and did, lurk behind them. She turned up Elmwood -Road with her mind at rest, filled with skirts and dances and taffy -pulls. - -And her faith in people, as it turned out, was justified. - -For the long arm that reached out of the bushes, the darkness, and -plucked her with a rush into a deep black silence, was an arm of flesh, -and an arm of bone, but it was very far from human. - - * * * * * - -The door opened at the top of the ramp and the colonel peered -cautiously inside. - -"Nobody here but us chickens," he said, sputtering in the rain, and the -guard dropped the muzzle of the machine pistol and saluted. - -The colonel stomped in onto the concrete floor, grumbling. He -was followed by an enormous lieutenant, an immense, looming, -cliff-shouldered man well over six feet tall. The lieutenant had to -duck coming through the door, cast a downward salute to the startled -guard. The colonel moved out from under the lieutenant's dripping -overhang, pointed a lean wet finger down the hall. - -"He here?" - -"Yessir," said the guard, eyeing the monstrous lieutenant with respect. - -The colonel wiped his face with a dry handkerchief, took off his hat -and smoothed down his sparse white hair. Then he strode off down the -concrete hall, motioning for the lieutenant to follow. Together they -came to a bolted steel door. The colonel opened it without knocking, -ushered the lieutenant inside. - -The room they entered was wide and rich, oak-panelled, in great -contrast to the white-washed concrete of the halls outside. In the -center of the room was a mahogany desk, at which a small, sad, -cigar-smoking man sat absorbedly drawing doughnuts on a white lined pad. - -The colonel saluted. The man at the desk, whose name was Dundon, looked -up at the big lieutenant and chomped on his cigar. - -"Is _this_ our man?" - -"Yes sir. Lieutenant Hilton. He knows--" - -"Sure is a big bugger," Dundon said, rising. The lieutenant regarded -him calmly. - -"He knows every phase of the operation, sir," the colonel said. - -"Of course. Sit down, boy," Dundon said briefly, waving his cigar. The -lieutenant sat. "What's a few extra pounds? May need 'em, by God." He -put the cigar in his mouth and clamped his hands behind him, walked -around to the front of the desk and sat down on the edge of it. - -"When's take-off, sir?" the colonel asked. - -Dundon looked at his watch. "Less than an hour. Does he know?" - -The colonel whistled. "That soon? No, he doesn't know anything." - -The lieutenant had taken off his hat, showing himself to be much -younger and blonder than he had first appeared to Dundon. He sat -watching both men without any particular expression. - -"Well, we'd better get on with it," Dundon said, and reached out a -hand toward the colonel, without looking at him. "Do you have the -lieutenant's records?" - -The colonel reached quickly into his inside coat pocket, drew out a -long folded envelope which he laid in Dundon's hand. The small man -hefted it, looked briefly inside. - -"Hell," he said curtly. "Got to save time. If we have to brief him and -get ready I can't go through all this. What's the story?" - -Before the colonel could say anything Dundon looked at the lieutenant -with a wide, amiable, thoroughly unexpected smile. "Don't mind us son, -no time for manners. Have a cigar." - -The lieutenant politely refused. The colonel took off his coat and -began to dry himself out, talking as he moved. - -"Well, as far as I can recall, here's the poop. His name is Augustus -Webster Hilton, Second Lieutenant, RA, out of Fort Benning. He's six -foot six and a half, weighs two hundred and forty some odd pounds. Age: -25. Nickname: Web. AGCT score of 145." - -Dundon's eyes lifted. - -"He's got a head on him," the colonel agreed. "Army record superior to -excellent. Present assignment instructing in orbits and trajectory -at Base Training. Qualities of Organization, Leadership very high. -Excellent officer material." - -A slight fleeting frown crossed Dundon's face. - -"Defects," the colonel said coolly. "Several minor, no major. Minor -include a tendency to irk his superiors by failure to consult, by -failure to keep his opinions to himself. Nothing unusual for the age, -of course. Other defects are his size"--the lieutenant sat without -moving through all of this--"and his blood type. He's got some rare -kind of thing for which plasma is almost never available. That keeps -him from front line duty." - -The colonel stopped, began slowly to light a cigarette. - -Dundon looked at him oddly. - -"Nothing else?" - -The colonel shook his head. - -Dundon was suddenly flushed. "Wait a minute, son," he said to the -lieutenant, and then he took the colonel by the arm and led him briskly -into a corner. - -"What the hell is this?" he hissed angrily, lowly, into the colonel's -ear. "This boy looks like one hell of a good officer, what--" - -The colonel held his finger to his lips, gestured cautiously. - -"I couldn't tell you in front of him, chief." - -"Couldn't tell me what? Listen, I'm not goin' to kill a young kid -like--" - -"It's Security. The major defect is Security." - -Dundon quieted. - -"What did he do?" - -"Nothing he did. Chief, you won't like this. But it makes a big -difference. You know the way Security is. They checked this boy all -the way back to the cradle, found out things about him he doesn't know -himself. His history checked all right, no trouble anywhere, except for -his father. According to the records, he doesn't have any." - -Dundon cocked an eyebrow. The lieutenant, unhearing, sat without -looking at them. - -"His mother claims to have married a man named Bruce Hilton in Chicago -in 1930. There's no record of the marriage. Also, none of her friends -ever met him. She went away from her home town--Evanston--and stayed -for a year and came back with a baby, a wedding ring, and a very sad -tale of a husband who died. There's no record of the death of any Bruce -Hilton. She made up the name obviously. Her maiden name Finnerty." - -Dundon stared. "So what the hell--" he began, but the colonel cut him -off. - -"So nobody knows. Just the boy's mother and Security. But Security has -a special tab for cases like this. They figure like this: suppose the -kid gets into a sensitive job, or gets to rank pretty high, and someone -finds out about his, well, lack of parentage. You can't figure it. It -could mean blackmail, it could mean security risk, or it could mean -rumors among officers' wives, and a lot of nonsense like that. I know -it doesn't sound like a thing you should hang a guy on, but, well, you -know Security. They never take a chance. This kid will get to be a -captain, maybe a major, maybe even an L.C. But he has no future in the -army." - -Dundon was looking down studiously at his shoes. - -"So that's what you wanted," the colonel pursued, "somebody competent, -but expendable. Right?" - -Dundon looked up, his gray eyes filled with disgust. And then he -realized that the colonel could not help it, did not like this either, -and he patted him on the arm. - -"Hell of a reason to kill a kid," he said softly, and turned back to -the lieutenant, the man to be killed, who was sitting calmly in his -chair and wondering when the brass was going to get to the point. - -Dundon came back and sat down, and now with great kindness, told the -lieutenant the story. - -And so it was that Web Hilton went out into space, and saw the -uncovered stars, and met the naked man, and became the first man in -history to die more than once. - - * * * * * - -"You know of course," said Dundon, "that the satellite has been -completed and is in orbit. The first crew went up on 9 September. -Construction was finished on 20 September and the full crew was aboard -within twelve hours. The whole thing went off without a hitch. There -wasn't one thing we hadn't anticipated. We sent the green light to the -president and sat back to wait for the Russians to find out what was -'up.'" He grinned momentarily at his joke. - -"The station was in orbit for a week," he went on, "and we were -in constant radio contact. Furthermore, we had it under radar and -telescopic observation, either one or the other or both, twenty-four -hours a day, from points all over the Earth. Some of that I guess you -know. The purpose is mainly to supplement the station's own radar. We -don't want anything going near that station without our knowing about -it real quick." - -"And we know damn well," he said more slowly, his puzzlement beginning -to show in his voice, "that nothing went near that station." - -Web still waited, not following at all. Dundon sat on the edge of his -desk, beginning to fidget now as he talked. His stubby fingers were -running continually through his thin gray hair, and tightening his tie, -and tugging at his buttons, and toying with the desk top. He had been -under a great strain for a long time and it was obvious. - -"On 28 September," he said evenly, "--now get this--on 28 September, in -the middle of the afternoon, we lost radio contact with the station. -It cut off in the middle of a weather observation, just like that. -There were no background sounds at all, no noise or confusion. Just -silence. We waited, figuring of course that they had blown a tube, or -something, but we didn't hear a thing. After a few minutes we began to -get worried. They didn't come in on the emergency radio either. - -"Radar reported the satellite was still in the regular orbit. Nothing -looked wrong, but we couldn't contact her. After a couple of hours -we began to get panicky. We figured a small meteor had hit her. A -big one would have knocked her out of orbit, but a small one might -have penetrated through and knocked out both radios without altering -trajectory to any noticeable extent. We figured that that must have -been it, because by this time five hours had passed and we hadn't heard -a word. - -"So then we managed to get Visual, as soon as it got dark and the -satellite orbited to position. We had a prearranged system of light -signaling to be used in case both radios failed. In the telescopes we -could even see the reflectors sitting right out on the hub, completed -untouched. But we waited all night and we never got a thing. - -"Now dammit, it couldn't have been a meteor!" Dundon began to pace back -and forth and both Web and the colonel followed him, absorbed. - -"The station is shaped like a doughnut, with solid bulkheads all -around. How could one meteor go all around the damn thing, kill -everybody in it, knock out two separate radios, and still not disturb -the orbit. It would take a swarm, obviously, even if you forget about -the orbit, but there would have to be holes. And we had a close up view -of that station, as close as the house across the street, and there -wasn't a hole to be seen. - -"Well, that night we sent up a rocket. Nothing big enough to show -on radar had approached the station, or left it, so the only other -solution was sabotage. One or more of the men we sent up had to be -enemy agents, and they were obviously in control of the station. We had -to make damn sure we got them out real quick. If necessary, we were set -to blow up the station. And then it got worse." - -Dundon stopped, came over and sat down on the desk in front of Web, -looking straight at him, watching his reaction. Web was frozen in his -chair. - -"The rocket," said Dundon slowly, "never came back. It's still up -there, floating along a few yards from the station. We can see it -clearly. Too clearly, damn it. And the interesting part is this: nobody -got out of the rocket. Nobody went into the satellite. The rocket went -up and maneuvered itself into orbit alongside the satellite, and there -it sits. We haven't been able to contact _it_ by radio either." - - - II - -There was an icy sting lancing her arm, and then a million furry -brushes began rubbing in her body. In a moment Ivy was totally -paralyzed. - -Black shapes, dripping and lean, picked her up gently, conducted her -through the low hanging trees toward another place where a black square -loomed. The hands were impersonal, but never in her life had she been -touched like this. She was absolutely terrified. A door was opened. -She was laid upon a dark hard floor. In a moment the floor began to -move and she realized through her terror that she was in a truck. But -they left her alone. She lay for a long while upon the floor unable -to think. She could not possibly understand this, the who or the why, -because she had not dreamed about it, or ever even considered it. - -She was a girl of great natural sweetness, born of strict, respected -parents and a strict, respectable life. What was happening now was so -far from reality that she could not believe it. She lay on the floor of -the truck trying to close her eyes, but the paralysis was too great and -she couldn't. The truck drove on through the raining night, bumping, -grinding, carrying her inevitably toward the worst day of terror she -had ever known. - - * * * * * - -There was no question of sabotage. The men who went up, swore Security, -were as clean as the driven snow. And in his own mind Dundon agreed. It -was remotely conceivable that one man might just possibly slip through -the incredibly complex Security check, but this was much too thorough a -job. It would require too many men in too many places. - -Dundon's next step was clear. Under the president's signature he had -called for the Air Force file on flying saucers. He was disgusted to -find that the Air Force knew no more than it had published, which was -not very much. The file did, however, reach the tentative conclusion -that "further investigation might well prove fruitful." Dundon was -overcome. He seized a pen and wrote on the report--in great red angry -letters--the indelible words: - -"You bet your sweet--" - -But even further investigation, Dundon realized when he had cooled to -a touchable temperature, would probably not help. You could scan the -skies with telescopes, until you wore your eyeballs down to the bone, -but even if you saw, what could you do? He had a grave conviction that -whoever went up to the satellite would not come down. There was no way -of knowing what was up there or why, and it was a little more than -possible that there was a lethal something about space itself which -would never let Man off the face of the Earth. Not ever, for the rest -of Time. - -But somebody had to go. There was nothing else to do. You could not -build another satellite, or send up another fully manned rocket, not -until you found out what was wrong up there. There was always the -chance that the failures were purely mechanical. Maybe, maybe, whoever -was sent up would get back down. - -And so a man was sent. He had to be a man with a thorough knowledge of -the satellite, with an alert and adaptable mind, and at the same time a -man whose failure to return would be of no great loss to anyone. - -Such a man was Web Hilton. - - * * * * * - -"Never leave your suit," Dundon said urgently, "not for a damn minute. -You'll have a large supply of oxygen, enough to see you there and back. -Keep your eyes open and report whatever you see. We'll have a line -attached to your suit running back through the rocket and broadcasting -to us. We'll be in contact with you all the way." - -And then he became embarrassed, as a man will in a position where he is -sending someone else into a very dirty thing, and all he can do himself -is nothing. So he said good luck and that was that. - -The ship lifted shortly after midnight. Web rode up encased in his -suit, along with the volunteer pilot who was the rocket's only crew. -He did not speak to Dundon on the way up. He could not have spoken if -he'd tried. But he endured the tremendous acceleration with the patient -joy of a man who is about to do some very fast living. No more classes -in Trajectory for him, no more teaching an endless chain of men no -younger than himself to rise up above him and go out into space. He was -an impatient man, he had always been an impatient man, so he rode out -into blackness with no qualms at all. But he was not a fool. The qualms -began very soon. They began with the sudden end of the acceleration. - -The pilot--Joe Falk--spoke over the intercom to see if he was all -right. He said he was. This was the signal for Dundon, from Earth, to -cut in. They spoke back and forth, not saying very much, with cold -shivers running through them, while Falk maneuvered into position. From -his seat below the pilot Web could see nothing but wires, tubing, and -a heavy stanchion. He waited. Eventually Falk said: - -"Okay Web. In orbit. She's all yours." - -Web took a deep breath. Dundon was speaking in his ear. - -"Now watch yourself and tell me everything you see. Open the door and -let's go." - -Web freed himself from his straps, floated cautiously, hand over hand, -to the hatch. Falk was right behind him. He spun the hatch and opened -it, went through the airlock to the outer door, stepped out into space. - -In the great blazing sea in which he found himself he paused for a -second, immobile. The stars were brilliant beyond belief. He had -forgotten that they would be of different colors, not just dull shades -as seen from Earth, and the fiery reds, the yellows, the cool blues and -blazing oranges stunned him. He held tight to the airlock, absorbing it -all, while Falk came out behind him. - -"God!" Web breathed. - -"Wassamatter, wassamatter!" Dundon was immediately shouting. - -"Nothing," Web said quickly, "I was just looking at the stars." - -Dundon muttered something dark and profane. "To hell with the stars! -Maybe that's what will get you. Man, watch the things that are close!" - -"Okay," Web said with embarrassment, coming to himself and pulling his -eyes away. But this was a sight he could not absorb all at once. He -felt shaken for several minutes, and unutterably alone. - -Off to his right, half-hidden by the bow of the ship, he saw the -satellite. The huge gray ring was revolving slowly, rolling silently -along above the great green plate of the Earth. Beyond it, dimly, he -could see the floating black form of the first rocket. The entire scene -was weird, unbelievable, and incredibly beautiful. He waited again -while Dundon fumed from below, letting the sense of where he was sink -into him. Falk did the same. At last, to Dundon's great relief, they -were able to move. - -They manned the small taxi pod, shoved off carefully in the direction -of the satellite. Falk brought them with a gingerly caution to the -turret of the hub. They had to stop a few feet away because the turret -was revolving, and to try to land the pod while the turret was in -motion was useless. - -"Jump," said Dundon. - -Web gulped. Although he had no sense of gravity, he could not help but -feel the absolute emptiness all around him and beneath him. Between him -and the Earth, straight down, there was a thousand miles of nothing. - -But he rose in the taxi and braced himself. And jumped. - -He shot across space and crashed head on into the turret, came very -close to cracking his helmet against the gray steel. He swore feebly, -but sincerely and with great fright, and clutched for a hold. He had -greatly overestimated the power he needed to cross a space in which -there was no gravity at all. - -But he found a hold at last on a vane of the reflector and hung on -grimly, desperately, for several moments. - -Dundon asked how he was. - -"Delightful," Web muttered, "absolutely delightful." Then he looked -around for Falk. - -The taxi had been kicked quite some distance away, Falk, white-faced -through his helmet, was bringing her slowly back in. - -"Easy when you jump, Joe," Web called. "I like to went right through -this thing." - -Falk grunted. He slipped a rope on the pod and leaped for the turret. -Even warned he came in too hard and Web had to grab at him, wildly, -with one hand. But now the hard part was done and they were aboard. Web -looked around for the airlock. - - * * * * * - -Web went in alone. There was no need for both of them inside so Falk -waited by the airlock and fed him the radio line. As he spun the wheel -which opened the lock and looked down the long tube into darkness he -began to feel for the first time the perspiration soaking him. - -He took one last look at the whirling stars and then stepped inside the -turret. - -In the turret there was no gravity, but as he climbed down the landing -net toward the rim of the revolving doughnut centrifugal force caught -into him and gave him weight. It was immensely reassuring. He had a -small sealed light at his belt which enabled him to see his way around -and at the base of the turret he came to the main door into the -satellite. - -He stood on the net and regarded the door silently. Now, if there -really was some sabotaging gent on board this thing, right behind this -door now would be where he would be. He would have heard the boots -clump on the steel, there was no doubt about that. And he would not be -hampered by a space suit. Thoughtfully, Web considered the fact that he -had no weapon. No weapon but his size. Up to now, this moment, that had -always been enough, but he had no illusions about what would happen if -there really was somebody alive in there. Still, Dundon would know, and -that was his job after all, to let Dundon know. - -"Well," said Dundon anxiously. - -"Half a mo," Web said. He laid his helmet against the door and -listened. Nothing. If he was inside, he wasn't moving. Which was the -smart thing to do. - -"Okay," Web said, "cross your fingers." He opened the door. - -A great bright light shone out of the opening. For a brief moment he -was startled, until he realized that it was only the normal electric -light of the room, intensified by the black around him. Cautiously, -with his handflash held like a club, he stepped into the room. - -There was nobody behind the door. - -"What's up, what's up?" Dundon called. - -"Nothin'," Web said. "Listen, don't keep getting in my hair. I'll tell -you what happens as I go along. I'm in the receiving room. Nobody here. -But the lights are on." - -The room was bare, metal-floored, lined with lockers. Two of the -lockers were open, and from where he stood Web could see clothing -hanging from pegs. There was nothing unusual about the room. Web -described it to Dundon, walked across the floor to the next door. - -"Don't take your helmet off," Dundon roared. - -"You bet your sweet life," Web grinned. "I have to leave the doors open -a little to let the radio line pass through. The pressure's going down -pretty quick." - -"Oh," said Dundon. And then after a while he said, "Let's hope there's -nobody alive in there." - -"If he is," Web said, "he's somebody we don't need. There's nothing -wrong with the reflector. He could have light-signaled any time he -wanted to." - -Dundon was silent. Web pushed open the door to the next room, which -would be the radio shack, and waited. Then he peeked inside. There was -no one here either. - -"Empty," Web said. - -"Stop for a minute," Dundon said. "Put your helmet against the wall." - -"I already did," Web said, but he did it again. - -"Do you hear anything?" - -"Nope. Quiet as a ... grave." - -"Keep listening as you go along." - -Good idea. And then he thought of another good idea. He called out to -Joe Falk. - -"Yes?" - -"I just wanted to know if you were still out there." - -"I don't leave without one hell of a yell," Falk chuckled. - -"And you don't leave without me either." Web faced the next door, the -tension mounting. He could not get over the feeling that there had to -be somebody aboard. At least there had to be bodies, certainly, because -nothing had left the satellite. Forty-seven men had come up here. The -bodies were probably all pretty close together. He stopped thinking -about that because it only made it difficult to keep on looking. He -opened the next door, and there was nobody there either. - -He began to have an awful suspicion. - -He went cautiously, stealthily, from room to room, made a full round of -the doughnut. He never saw anybody. In some rooms there were a number -of shoes on the floor, and clothes were strewn around haphazardly, the -way men will do when they are living close together. Here was a pipe -lying for no apparent reason in the middle of the floor. Here was a -chessboard, laid out on a table with a game half completed. Everywhere -there was a general sense of confusion, as if these men had suddenly -dropped what they were doing and run away. The further he walked, the -more he saw, the more fantastic it became. In one room he found four -pairs of shoes sitting on the floor, four complete suits of clothes -dropped over them exactly as if-- - -"Dundon!" he cried. - ---as if the men in the clothes had ceased to exist. - - - III - -Sometime during the night the door of the truck opened and another body -was laid beside Ivy on the floor. Until then Ivy had believed that -whatever was going to happen at the end of this ride would be reserved -for her, and she thought she knew what that happening would be. With -the addition of this new body, however, which was also a girl, Ivy was -not so sure. - -She was completely paralyzed and she could not move a finger. Beside -her the other girl did not move either. But she, this other one, was -also young and pretty, and Ivy began to think through her terror. - -Rape, to Ivy's mind, was the most likely possibility. She fled from the -thought. That she was being abducted for other, more permanent reasons -was also possible, but she had no idea what they could be. Kidnapping -for ransom money was out of the question. Her parents were not wealthy -and she herself had only about thirty-three dollars in the bank. The -only other thing she could think of was that she was being abducted -into white slavery. She made a futile attempt to scream. - -Two more bodies, both young girls, joined her in the truck before -morning. White slavery began to look horribly believable. - -At last the morning came and the truck stopped, and the doors at the -rear were thrown open. Ivy was the first to be lifted out. - -She found herself being carried up the side of a heavily wooded hill, -toward a long low house half-hidden in the pines. She had a chance to -look at the man who carried her, and at the other men who were gathered -at the back of the truck, and one thing struck her immediately. - -All of the men were old. And they all looked strangely alike. They -were quite small and round-shouldered, every one of them, with -large peculiar eyes and thickly lined faces. There was about them -an almost brotherly resemblance, particularly about the nose, which -was invariably tiny, thin and sharp, like a small beak. The eerie -regularity of their faces was unnerving. She began to realize that -there was something here which was more than just abduction. - -She was carried into a long house, and once again she was laid on a -floor in darkness. She could not see anyone else but she could feel the -presence of bodies, row on row of other bodies. Back in the truck she -had tried to cry, but it hadn't worked. She tried again now. - -After a while she felt the paralysis beginning to wear off. - - * * * * * - -Web was now very tired and he sat down. He had gone through the whole -station and there was nobody aboard. Forty-seven men, all gone. Dundon -had said nothing had approached this station, or left it, but the -forty-seven men had, and that was for sure. And he knew that if he -bothered to check the other rocket, the lonesome rocket that had come -up first, there would be nobody in it either. - -"Web." - -"Yep?" - -"Did you check the space suits?" - -"Yep," Web said wearily. "And I counted 'em. They're all here. All in -the lockers, never been touched." - -"How about the escape pod?" - -"That's here too. But they couldn't have got away in that anyway. Radar -would have seen it." - -Dundon was silent. In the background Web could hear an argument going -on. Some of the really high brass were with Dundon now, listening in. -Well, Web said to himself gravely, but with a trace of cheer breaking -through, the rest is their problem. I've done my job. I think right now -I had better go home. - -He called to Falk, to let him know that he was coming, and began to -retrace his steps, reeling in his radio wire. Falk didn't acknowledge -his call, so he called again. - -"Joe," he said happily, "I'm a-comin'. Let's clear out o' here." - -Falk didn't answer. - -"Joe?" Web said. - -Nothing. - -"Joe?" - -He stopped dead in his tracks. - -"Dundon," he said thickly. - -There was nothing from Dundon either. - -He was completely alone. - - * * * * * - -In the face of emptiness, surrounded by nothing, as alone as any man -will ever be, Web waited. He heard nothing, saw nothing. Within his -suit the thumping of his heart was an endless chain of bombs. He -decided that he had to get out. He was all the way up the turret before -his mind cleared and the unrushing wave of claustrophobia fell away, -and he realized what had happened. - -Falk hadn't answered. But then, neither had Dundon. - -"Well hell," he said aloud, sweating, "so the radio got disconnected." -The whole thing had gone blank. Now, if it was just Falk who hadn't -answered.... - -Weakly, he leaned against the airlock, breathing with huge gulps. A -plug was out in the rocket, or down at the base, or a tube was blown, -and for this reason he had very nearly made a fool of himself. For all -he knew they could hear him. He began to talk anyway, questioning, -liking the sound of his voice in the really absolute silence. - -He stepped out of the turret looking for Falk. He had had a rough day, -and it was time to go home. To his great relief he saw Falk standing a -few feet away on the turret's side, his magnetized soles gripping the -metal and his head looking out toward the stars. He was not hanging on -to anything, he seemed to be totally unconcerned, and his arms were -lifted strangely. - -Web whistled. Now there, he said to himself, is a man with nerve. He -slipped hand over hand down the turret to get to Falk and the taxi. - -Falk didn't move as he approached. Falk just kept looking at the stars. - -"Come on boy, Web said aloud, let's get moving." He came up and laid -his helmet against Falk's, so they could talk to each other. - -But he didn't say anything. - -Directly in front of his eyes was the plate of Falk's helmet, and -inside the helmet was nothing. - -Web withdrew. The empty suit before him swayed slightly as he brushed -it. - -This is ridiculous, Web said. I'm going nuts. - -Around him moved the whirling stars. - -I'm screwy as a jaybird, Web said. - - * * * * * - -The arrival of Kunklin and Prule was neither coincidental nor -particularly fortunate. There is an indescribable something which a -spaceship traveling at speeds beyond light does to the fabric of space, -warping, shredding, leaving a trail which lasts for many days. Kunklin -did not need a great deal of luck to pick it up, as he did, just a -short way in from Alpha Centauri. He was equipped with a ship of the -Central Repair Command, one of the most diversely powerful mechanisms -ever produced by a living mind. Thus Kunklin and Prule arrived with -great haste, but with no great luck. They were too late to prevent the -deaths of the forty-seven men--for death it was--or the death of Joe -Falk. - -And so it was that while Web was sitting numbly on a projection of the -turret, making a mortal effort to control himself, he became watched, -in turn, by two separate sets of alien eyes. - -The first set of eyes--which were more or less human in structure, -differing only in their purple color--belonged to Kunklin and Prule. -They had swept in a wide arc around the crescent-lit limb of the Moon, -and halted at a discreet distance to survey the terrain before going -in. Telescopes of an impossible resolving power picked out first the -station, then the rockets, and eventually Web Hilton. Because they had -a knowledge of the aliens, and of the type of crime that the aliens -would commit, they knew at a glance what had happened aboard the -satellite. - -But, at the sight of it, Kunklin was startled. - -"A space station!" he cried. "Well I'll be jetted." And not yet having -noticed the empty suit of Falk--the arms of which had begun to float -out helplessly, like a beggar--Kunklin regarded the doughnut with a -delighted interest. - -Prule, a square, gloomy man who was always the more sober of the two, -grunted darkly. - -"They put up a space station right in the midst of being plundered, -poor devils. They must have walked right into it." - -It was Kunklin's turn to be sombre. - -"There's been killing." - -"Undoubtedly," Prule growled with disgust. "The Faktors could not allow -these people to be in space. They would see too much. Note the empty -suit...." - -It was at this point that Web stepped out of the turret and saw Falk. - -Kunklin watched curiously. - -"A Faktor?" - -"No. One of the people of this planet. Note the primitive equippage." -Pause. "This is extraordinary." - -"You mean because he's alive?" - -"Of course. The others are dead. Why is this one still alive?" - -Kunklin was the younger one, cocky and in many ways indolent, but he -had by far the quicker mind. - -"He is alive," Kunklin said swiftly, "because he is a Galactic. Let us -go down." - -The second set of eyes that was observing the satellite did not see Web -come out of the turret. The brain behind those eyes was rejoicing as it -approached the satellite. The plundering was very nearly done. All that -remained now was a brief investigation, and then destruction of this -station, and the bone and blood and magnificent flesh of these people -would remain in free supply below, unwarned and unaware. - -The alien landed on the skin of the doughnut, switched off his gravity -pack, and walked cheerfully around toward the turret. - -And at the turret, of course, Web Hilton was still sitting, slowly -regaining his mind. It was at that moment occurring to Web that if -there was a logical explanation for all this it would not be found up -here, or by him, and he was just then considering the quickest way down -to Earth--via rocket or escape pod in the station. He had not quite -made up his mind when he saw the alien. - -It is difficult to say which of them was the most surprised. - -The alien had been under the impression that anything human that had -been on the satellite no longer existed. Indeed, there was no possible -way that anything human could exist on the satellite. So therefore, Web -Hilton was not human. The alien was shocked. - -But for Web, who had recently undergone some extraordinary events, this -was by far the most fantastic of all. For the alien was an adaptation. -An artificial oxygen-producing mechanism in his chest, together with -silicone-adapted skin and a number of similarly ingenious devices, -enabled the alien to walk freely in space, which he did clad only in -a short white cloth and a gravity pack. And what Web saw come walking -toward him over the surface of the station, in open space, with the -moon and the stars for a background, was a naked man. The alien wore no -space suit. - -The door behind him was open, Web fell back into the turret. - -When a great many impossible things have happened to a man within a -very short time there comes a jumping-off place. The man jumps outside -himself and continues to survive by examining the whole thing from -outside, with a sort of awed detachment. It was this way with Web. - -"I am nuts," he kept saying to himself, insistently, as he rolled down -the landing net and came up with a thump against the door below. But he -did not feel nuts. His mind had been numbed and dulled at the edges, -but for some reason now outside it he was thinking very clearly. For -the disappearance of everybody there was no explanation, but for the -appearance of the naked man there had to be. The suspicion which he had -first heard back at the base, over many a beer, was truth to him now, -because he had to believe his eyes or go mad. And there was only one -thing the naked man could be. An alien. A thing from another world, as -the movies put it. A thing with cunning and science. A thing that had -destroyed Falk. - -Now think, he said to himself carefully, bolting the door behind him. -You are no match for them. You don't know how many of them are out -there or what they have. Maybe this is the first time they know you are -alive and somehow they missed you when they got Falk. So get out. - -GET OUT. - -He raced through the station, heading for the escape pod. He had to -get down to Earth. With what coherence he could muster, he had to tell -somebody about this, although it did not yet make any sense. But it -would, it would, it would have to. The naked man had been a man, yes, -but he had white round marble eyes and a knifelike, inhuman nose. If -they were on Earth, his kind could be found. - -Web lowered himself into the escape pod, strapped himself down and -pressed the button. The pod shot down from the station, down and -away, and a great orange flame spread out from its bow. It lost speed -quickly, steadily, as the rockets pushed it back. After a while the -flames died out. The pod began to fall. - - - IV - -Just as Ivy could feel the ability to move returning, the old men came -for her. She realized with despair that they knew quite well how long -the paralysis would last. They helped her to her feet and walked her -out of the building. Their hands were dry and raspy and surprisingly -strong. - -Outside it was late in the morning and the sun was high. She was on the -side of a mountain, looking down into a peaceful valley. They led her -around the low building into a shaded area farther up the mountain, -where she saw several more buildings, much smaller than the first. The -first, she thought, was a clearing house. - -"How do you feel?" said the man on her left, grinning. "Do you feel -very good?" - -He stressed the 'good' for a reason she did not understand. Apparently -the word meant something to him. His grin was wide and his teeth showed -remarkably white and firm. The other old man was grinning too. - -"I'm hungry," she said. She did not ask these men why she was here. She -thought she knew, and if she didn't she would find out soon enough. - -"Very soon," the first man said, "if you are good enough." - -Now again she did not know what he meant, but this was more obvious. -The way he spoke, his grin fading, was particularly horrible. Before -she had a chance to say anything more she was ushered into one of the -small buildings beneath the trees. - -She found herself in a room with several terrified girls, and two more -of the old men. These looked even older and were much more businesslike. - -One by one, too frightened to struggle, the girls were stripped. -Like doctors, the two old men examined them clinically. There was an -oldness, a foul and slimy something about these gaunt men that was -almost overpoweringly horrible. She wanted to run, or to scream, or -just to fight, but she held herself in and waited for the right moment. - -She was allowed to take her clothes off herself, was pushed and prodded -for several grisly moments. At last she was led naked into another -room, where a massive machine of glass and metal was wheeled into place -above her, and set to a deep, jarring hum. After a few seconds she was -given back her clothes. Then she was taken outside into the sun again, -where the other girls stood waiting. - -The same two old men took her arms. - -One bent over and looked closely into her eyes, his nose almost -touching hers. He was grinning now with great joy. - -"You were good enough," he said happily, "now you will eat." - -She stared at him, revolted as his dry rough hand ran down her arm. -Then she saw something which made her understand. - -Five girls had been in the building with her. - -Only three had come out. - - * * * * * - -The controls of the escape pod were pre-set. It checked its fall with -controlled, measured bursts, fell quickly and steeply until it bounced -off the atmosphere. Once in the air the stubby wings took hold and the -pod began to glide, blasting from time to time to slow itself down. -There was no light in the pod, and Web rode all the way down in a -silent, rushing, horrible blackness. He had plenty of time to consider -the fact that the pod had never been used before. It had never even -been tested. Well, he thought philosophically, if it did not work he -would undoubtedly never feel the end. - -That did not help at all. He waited, falling. - -Not long before the pod hit he began to hear the air scream past, and -he braced himself. The braking rockets cut loose for the last time. -There was one great rending crash, a series of enormous pops like corks -being pulled on the biggest bottles in the world, and a really awful, -shattering, bone-mangling impact. And then the pod was down. - -In the last moment Web had closed his eyes. When he opened them he saw -light streaming in through a large crack above him. - -It's all busted up, he told himself dazedly. Better get out. He -unbuckled his straps and poked himself fearfully. The hammock had held -well enough, but it had been designed for a much smaller man. When the -pod hit he had sort of flowed over the edges of the hammock, there were -long numb lines all over his body. - -But the pod might just possibly decide to burn. He crawled out -painfully, but as quickly as possible. - -Outside it was mid-afternoon. A desert afternoon. The sun was high and -white-hot, blinding. He closed his eyes, trying to accustom himself -to the glare. He thanked both God and the engineers that the pod had -apparently come down where it was supposed to come down--in the great -empty area in Arizona. Radar would have followed him down, therefore -rescue trucks were already on their way. They would cross the rough -terrain in a couple of hours. A helicopter should be here even sooner. -He breathed deeply and a bit more easily, beginning to feel much better. - -It occurred to him at last that he still had on his space suit. He took -off the helmet, regretted it almost instantly. - -The air-scorched skin of the pod by his side was glowing a brisk cherry -red, radiating slow thick waves of boiling air. Web walked quickly away -in the sand. The October sun was hot, but the pod was even worse. He -looked around in the desert, beginning now to feel very tired, looking -for a place to shelter himself, to rest until the relief came. - -He walked off over the nearest rocky hill, searched among the huge -boulders. Distances were deceptive. He had walked quite a way before he -found two gray slabs which leaned together and formed a dark opening -beneath. He made sure that he could see enough of the desert to know -when the relief trucks came. Then he crawled inside. - -He had just settled himself to wait, his eyes closing, when the pod -blew up. - -The sound came at him like a thundering wall. He whirled to face the -desert. - -Where the pod had been rose an enormous, greasy, ball-topped cloud. The -explosion was overwhelming. The whole land shook as the concussion -rolled over him, the sky and the air were black around him. After -a while the dirt and the rocks began to rain down in a heavy brown -splatter and he huddled in the rocks. - -Atomic. They were after him. - -He started to rise, agonized and tensed, thinking about the aliens and -about radioactivity. But before he reached his feet his mind took hold -of him and he stopped. - -There was no where to go. If he stepped out into the open he would be -seen at once, seen from practically any distance. He looked up into the -sky, past the tall black column of smoke. Nothing. - -He sat. Maybe they hadn't followed him down. They might not have had -time for that. Friction was friction, they could travel through the air -no faster than he could. So probably what they had done was send some -kind of missile after him. It could not have come down much faster than -the pod, it would have burned up, so what it had done was give him just -enough time to get out. He thanked God that he had. - -He leaned weakly against a rock. After a moment he crawled as deeply as -he could into the darkness. There was still no place to go. The aliens -might be very close, and he could take no chance on missing the relief -trucks. - -He was becoming rapidly very tired. If he did not want to have to walk -all the way out of the desert, he would have to stay right here. Boy, -he said to himself painfully, wearily, you got big trouble. He sat down -to brood, too tired to remind himself that he had volunteered for this -business. - -In a few moments he was deeply asleep. - - * * * * * - -When he awoke it was dark and quite cool and the stars were out. He -was instantly alert, peering off into the blackness, listening for the -rescue trucks. He crawled out from the rocks and stood up, peered off -into the night. - -There was no moon, but off in what would be the east was the first -bluish glow of the rising sun. That told him at least how long he had -slept, and he kicked himself. It was somewhere between four and five in -the morning. The truck would have been here long ago. - -He walked away from the rocks, looking for a high point on which to -stand. They wouldn't have gone away, damn it, they'd have enough sense -to stay and look around. Although if they thought he had been in the -pod.... - -Holy smoke, he said with a sad despair, I've got to walk home. - -He hadn't eaten for a day and a half. He hadn't had anything to drink -either, or even a cigarette. He was beginning to feel it. He made his -way up through the rocks to a high, flat bulge, stretched himself up -and peered out hopefully. - -The trucks rose up about a mile away. Three black hulks, vague and -square and unmoving. - -Web shouted out hoarsely, with relief and delight. He stumbled back -down the rocks in the darkness, reached the soft sand and began to run -like a sprinter. They'd waited, bless 'em. The sound of a human voice -would be, at this moment, magnificent. He could taste the hot coffee as -he ran, the steaming hot coffee and the rolls. They were probably all -around him, searching. He shouted. - -Nobody answered. It was becoming light quite quickly and although the -ground was still dark the silhouettes of the trucks stood out black and -clear as he came over the last rise. - -He stopped in his tracks, kicking up sand. - -The trucks were wrecked. - -He crouched tensely, feeling for a gun that wasn't there. - -Nothing moved in the blackness around him. The trucks were all black -and empty. After a moment of waiting in the deep silence he moved -forward slowly. - -The first truck had crashed head on into a flat rock wall. The second -lay on its side in a steep ditch to the right of the road. The third -lay right behind it. The only one that was apparently untouched was the -halftrack. - -It was standing alone halfway up a sand hill to the south, its nose -pointed up at a sharp angle. All of the trucks were empty. But in the -half light he couldn't be sure. - -He walked up to the halftrack, looking for the bodies. - -There weren't any. When he had looked around for a few moments, he -realized what had happened. The men had all disappeared. - -He was a little more ready for it now, but it was by no means easy to -take. On the seat of the halftrack he found two fatigue caps, two twill -shirts, two pairs of pants. - -On the floor were the shoes and socks. The men had disappeared rapidly, -while the trucks were still moving. - -Web looked up into the sky. - -None of the stars were moving. - -But the aliens would be coming back soon. He climbed into the -halftrack, threw out the clothes and started the engine. The thing -had stalled, probably, running off by itself up a hill. He was lucky. -The motor turned over. He was going quickly away, in no particular -direction, when he remembered food. - -He stopped the halftrack and looked in the back. - -Towing apparatus, to take the pod back. - -He groaned. - -The second truck had burned, was still hot, but the third was intact. -He found some K-rations and an untouched thermos, opened the thermos -immediately and gulped down a huge draught of pleasantly warm coffee. -With the coffee in him he felt much better and began to think. - -He would have to get out of here damn fast. - -But where? In the least likely direction. - -Which was? - -In the opposite direction to the base? - -No. At right angles. Better yet, at any old angle. Neither directly -toward home, nor directly away. Not by any means toward the nearest -town. - -So just run. - -But first cigarettes--and money. - -He rifled the first pair of pants he found, then another. The second -had belonged to an officer. In a moment of sudden clarity, realizing -the uselessness in town of the overalls he now wore, he took the full -uniform with him. He did not think about the man that had been in them. -He was coming fully awake now, beginning to realize the jam he was in. -He had as much chance of getting out of this desert alive as a crippled -snail. - -He started up the halftrack and drove off over the sand at an even -eighteen miles an hour. - - * * * * * - -"There he goes," said Kunklin. "What is that thing he is driving?" - -"Extraordinary," Prule agreed. "You'd think that even with their -primitive technology these poor souls would have reasonably comfortable -conveyances." - -"And faster," Kunklin said. "The Faktors will be back." - -"Where are they now?" - -"North. They reason, obviously, that he has slipped through on the -ground. They are taking no chance on the bong having missed, which -is characteristically thorough. They are fanning out from the North, -beginning to ring the desert." - -"There is no hurry then. If the Faktors think he is a Galactic they -will be very discreet, very cautious." - -Kunklin turned from the eyepiece, his handsome face lighted with -interest. - -"Listen, now there's a thing we'll have to discuss. Could this man be a -Galactic?" - -"Fully? No, of course not," Prule sniffed. "A Galactic run from a -Faktor? Humph!" - -"But he undoubtedly has Galactic blood," said Kunklin cheerfully, "else -how do you explain his escape from the satellite?" - -"True," said Prule seriously, "but that is not particularly -extraordinary. He has Galactic blood. So do hundreds of humanoid -peoples on hundreds of worlds. As long as we allow tourists to visit -any world they choose, whether it's aware of us or not, we will -continue to find people with traces of Galactic blood. This is a -failing of human nature which I expressly--" - -But Kunklin was grinning widely. - -"You mean his father?--" - -"Or mother," Prule said dourly. "Either party might well have been at -fault. It is not difficult to conjecture. A tourist drops in on this -planet, notes the--ah--male or female, as the case may be--to have a -certain measure of attraction, and the normal processes ensue. Most -likely, of course the tourist was his father. A Galactic mother would -have done--ah--whatever it is that--ah--well of course." - -Prule, who was something of a moralist, became somewhat flustered. -Kunklin, who was young and handsome and no moralist at all, grinned -lecherously. - -"Well, by Cosmos! This is really cute. I'll bet he doesn't even know!" - -"In all probability. Since the laws decree silence, it is not likely -that even his mother knew." - -Kunklin looked back at the halftrack, chortling. - -"Well, really, we have to look after him. Blood brother, I think the -phrase goes." - -Prule drew himself up with great dignity. - -"Agent Kunklin, we must look after them _all_. There must be no more -killing. First the satellite, then the trucks, then the helicopter--" - -"Was there a helicopter?" - -"Yes. I was too late to save it. Although I did remove the small Faktor -ship that destroyed it." - -Kunklin brooded. - -"Well now, really, it's about time we did something, don't you think?" -Prule said. - -Kunklin nodded. - -"Yes. Unfortunately, there is only one thing we can do." - -"Use the Earthman? Um. I had expected that." - -"What other course is there? They think he's a Galactic. They'll try -to get him in any way possible, to stop a patrol ship from arriving on -the scene. And we, already here, have no way of knowing where on this -planet they are, where they've cached their--uh--spoils. Hence we must -follow the Earthman." - -"Well, after all, it is his planet," Prule said. - -"His _women_," Kunklin corrected. - - * * * * * - -Late in the afternoon the halftrack struck a road. It climbed up onto -it and Web pressed full speed to thirty. He had considered hiding the -halftrack somewhere during the day and going on at night, but there was -really no place to hide, and the aliens would probably double back and -find the halftrack missing and come looking for it very soon, and they -could probably see in the dark anyway. So he got out of the desert as -quickly as he could. - -In all, three separate scouting crews found him in the first four -hours. They died silently, above him, without him being even slightly -aware of their existence. - -He had plenty of time to think. The big mystery, of course, was why in -hell he hadn't disappeared along with everybody else. The damn things -certainly wanted to kill him, or why had they followed the pod down? -Well somehow, they had missed him. And he had been so doggone lucky up -until now that he was beginning to feel invulnerable. He considered the -whole business from beginning to end, trying to figure out what they -were and why they wanted nobody in the satellite. - -They wanted no Earthmen in space. - -Then why didn't they just blow the thing up? - -Maybe they were worried about starting a war. Maybe--yes--they wanted -nobody up there because anybody up there could see what they were -doing, would give an alarm, but a full scale war would be the worst -thing that could happen, because they were undoubtedly somewhere on -Earth right now, and they would be caught in the middle of it. - -After that much thinking he was through. In the end, of course, there -was no way of knowing, but whatever it was they wanted it was certainly -pretty bad. Bad enough to kill him, which was all the bad he needed. - -He pushed the halftrack at full speed down the road. - -In the next town he stole a car. He did it quite simply, not bothering -to explain, because he was in something of a hurry. He approached the -car he wanted as it was standing at the curb, as its owner, a small, -beefy man with a greasy shirt, was just getting out. He took the keys -away from the man and took the car. - -At the first town he came to he parked the car quickly, headed for the -nearest phone booth, and tried to call Dundon. - -He couldn't get through. Neither Dundon nor the colonel were -"available," and there was no one else there who knew who he was, or -what he was doing. And he could take no time to explain. Dundon and -the Colonel were probably out looking for him. He swore thoroughly, -but all he could do was leave his name, and ask for the message to be -left that he had called, and was in the town of Huntsville. It was a -heck of a situation, but he was stuck. Who would send an escort for a -drunk-sounding second lieutenant? - -He walked out of the booth, realizing that he must forget about the car -outside, and now that he had spent a few consecutive seconds in one -place he felt a deep nervousness beginning. He searched through the -people around him, expecting any moment the coming of wide, white eyes -and knifelike noses. But the people here were all apparently human. - -Although you couldn't know. Easy to disguise eyes with contact leases. - -He left a store, found a hotel room. He could not seek safety with the -police. They would all disappear. Anyone he went to would disappear. -There was nothing to do now but hide. He lay down on a bed and waited. - - - V - -The food they gave her was thick red meat, half-cooked. They sat down -beside her, three of the old men, together in a small bare hut. None of -them ate. They watched her, grinning, speaking lowly and incoherently -among themselves. - -She felt like a blue-ribbon heifer. Best of breed. She found out that -she couldn't eat very much. - -"Food," an old man said with concern, pointing at her plate. He -apparently knew less English than the rest. "Food," he repeated -insistently, making the motions of eating. - -"No," Ivy said. She rose up suddenly and shook her head. "I don't want -any." If they wanted her to eat, maybe she'd better not eat. - -Maybe there was something in the food-- - -They looked her over thoroughly as she stood before them, grinning -horribly. They were not too concerned that she did not eat. Later, if -necessary, they would come back with vials and needles. - -The three men rose. One of them motioned the others to leave. They -bowed and walked out, looking back over their shoulders to grin. - -She faced the old man across the low wooden table. - -"It is perhaps time that you learn why you are here," the old man said -quietly. His English was perfect. His face was detached, unsmiling. - -She waited. - -"You are to be used for breeding," the old man said. - -She stared, not understanding. - -"I will be brief," he said, still quietly, his eyes white and steady. -"The sooner you realize the nature of our purpose the sooner you will -be content. There is no virtue in resistance. We can keep you under -paralysis indefinitely"--he smiled slightly--"for the full nine months, -if necessary. Do you understand?" - -She began to back slowly away. - -The old man continued to smile. - -"It is possible that you have already guessed that we are not--human. -If not I tell you so now. Our race has its origins in a system of which -you have undoubtedly never heard. But that is no matter. Our races are -compatible genetically. In the end you will breed." - -He paused, watching her with a calm amusement. Ivy could not move. - -"Our race is very old, much, much older than yours. It is also, -in a sense, biologically old. In effect, the race is dying. It -has been dying for quite some time. We have managed to keep -ourselves--virile--by use of the obvious method. It is for this reason -that we are here. We need new blood. Young blood. We must interbreed." - -He walked slowly and calmly around the edge of the table. - -"You have been chosen to bear our children. This is no particular -honor, I know, but I will repeat that you cannot possibly succeed in -resisting. Be practical, perform your function. If you are tractable, -you will be given much. If you are stubborn, you will be paralyzed. -You will not under any circumstances be killed or allowed to die. You -will have company. We have--collected--many of your race, both male and -female. You will not, of course, be allowed association with the males." - -He turned and strode to the door. He paused with his hand on the knob, -his smile grew wide and his teeth showed. - -"I think it best that you be paralyzed now." - -Ivy still could not move. There was in all this a dreamlike quality -which she could not believe. Within her mind she slowly retreated. - -The old man opened the door. Two men who had been waiting came quickly -in, clutched her, injected her. In a moment she lay on the floor, the -drug hanging heavily on her wildly pulsing heart. - -The first old man stood over her, pulled out a small notebook. - -"You are lucky," he said, with an ironic smile, "I think I will breed -you myself." - -He bent down and touched her. The white eyes grew dark at the edges. - -"I think I will breed you tomorrow," he said. - - * * * * * - -The scout ship of the Galactics hung in a hole in space several feet -in the air above Main Street. The bending mechanism was on, light rays -were diverted around it. It was invisible, unapproachable, although it -admitted enough light so that it itself could see. Kunklin and Prule, -who were for a while similarly almost nonexistent, floated down from -the ship and walked away curiously in the middle of the street. They -adjusted themselves to solidity in the alley behind Web's hotel. The -power necessary to maintain the bender was enormous, and had to come -from portable power sources, and they decided that it would be best -to save power for emergencies. Prule searched for a moment through a -small, voluted lens. He found Web. - -"What's he doing?" - -"Nothing." - -"Ingenious man. Is he armed?" - -"No." - -"Um. We cannot permit him to be killed." - -"Well, he is apparently very strong." - -"There are times when that helps." - -"Still, we had better record him." - -"Wait. He's coming down." - - * * * * * - -It was time to do something. Web did not know what, but he had to do -something. There was a phone in the shabby little foyer, but he passed -it by. It had occurred to him that Dundon would be no help at all. He -stepped out into the street. - -He had a strong fleeting impulse to tell somebody, anybody, just for -the companionship of another human being. Immediately, the thought -passed. - -"I have just come down from a space satellite," he would say, "where -I encountered forty-seven disappearing men and a naked man in open -space--" - -He looked around for the nearest drugstore. It was quite dark in the -streets and he was not too conspicuous in the tight army clothes--a -field jacket will fit an elephant--but he could not help feeling like a -neon sign. But a gun. He needed a gun, and a quick way out of here. - -Hell, where could you get a gun? - -From the police. - -He looked around seriously and purposefully, but no blue coat was near. -He walked into the drugstore. - -At the counter there were five people. All with their backs turned. The -counter man was a young boy with a fat nose. Web slipped into the phone -booth, deciding on an impulse to call Dundon anyway. It was possible -that he would die soon, and there ought to be someone who knew about -the naked man. - -In his pockets were a half dollar and three pennies. No other change. -He swore. - -At that moment he looked up out of the booth, saw a small, dry man walk -stiffly into the store. - -He froze. - -There was something-- - -The man looked around, saw him. - -The man was old, his face was expressionless. His eyes were all right, -were dark and usual, but his nose was alien. - -There was no doubt about that. To any other human it would look merely -odd, but to Web it was alien. Knifelike and alien. - -They stood facing each other across the few feet of store. Web reached -again for the gun he did not have. Quickly--but with a gliding -smoothness, in no hurry at all--the alien turned away. He sat down on a -stool at the fountain. - -Web stood for several seconds in the booth, watching. - -He tried to think, but there was no time. Others would be gathering -outside. He fought the impulse to run. After a long moment he opened -the door of the booth and walked out into the store. The alien did not -turn. The huge glass window of the store was unblocked. Web could see -dozens of shoppers pass by in the night. In the crowd there would be -old men. To go out now was foolish. - -He walked over to the fountain and sat down two seats away from the -alien. There was a fat, soda-eating woman between them. He ordered -coffee. - -No way out. They were not likely to come in, but there was no way out. -Through the back door would be useless. Darker, less people. He looked -down toward the alien. The little man was sitting quietly, the glass -untouched before him. The nose was sharp in profile. - -Web made up his mind quickly, in the only way possible. His strength, -his size was his only asset. He would have to use it. - -He paid for his coffee, picked up his change, then stood up and looked -for the light switch. There were four long fluorescent tubes above him, -no chance to break them all. He saw the light switch against the back -wall, then took a deep breath. - -He walked up quickly behind the alien. - -The little man did not move. - -"You," Web said. - -The alien face swung toward him. - -"Get up," Web said. - -The dry face whitened, but the expression did not change and the old -man did not say anything. - -"I asked you to get up," Web said gently. His right hand hung low, Web -clamped down on the alien's frail shoulder and jerked him to his feet. -When the alien opened his mouth, Web hit him low. The man doubled. -Web picked him up and heaved him the full length of the store, in the -direction of the light switch. He leaped after the hurtling body, threw -the switch. - -In the sudden blessed blackness he found the alien's head on the floor, -crashed it down twice with a great, nerveless strength. Frantically, -savagely, while the fat lady screamed and the few other people bellowed -toward the door, he searched the alien's pockets. There was nothing -resembling a gun. What he found he jammed quickly into his own pocket, -then whirled and waited, crouching. - -Outside were shouts, and a crowd was forming. When there were enough -people outside he stood up and ran for the door. - -He weighed two hundred and forty pounds. He came through the door like -a freight express, ripped into the crowd with all the power of his -enormous body. He went through and over, came out the other side, let -out his speed and began to run. - -A light orange flame touched a brick wall near him, glowed briefly on -a car, on a post, on a sign above him. He swerved. There was an alley, -dark and open. - -He ran into it, over the fence at the other end, and through a back -yard. The flame followed in soft bursting balls. He was in another -alley with open light in front of him, when the flame caught up with -him. - -It took him just under the right shoulder blade, burned a hole clean -through him in the space of a second. He died on his feet, still -running. - - * * * * * - -The recording was made in the drugstore, from an alley a few feet away. -It was made just in time for the Galactics to turn their talents to -other things. Altogether they had observed seven Faktors in the crowd -that gathered in front of the store. Kunklin had already obliterated -the four who lay in wait in the darkness at the rear, and the three at -the hotel. - -It was not difficult. There is no single being in the entire galaxy -with the massed, polarized power of a Galactic repairman. - -They found Web's body in the alley. It was of no use anymore, to -anybody, and was inconvenient. So they dissolved it. - - * * * * * - -When Web awoke there was a light gentle clicking in his mind that -he did not follow at all. He lay listening to it for a long while, -gathering himself, creeping out of a thick numbness. - -And then he sat bolt upright. - -He was on a train. - -The clicking was the sound of wheels against rails. He stared at the -room around him, at the open window and the flat green fields rolling -by beyond it. For a moment he was extremely dizzy. He lowered his head -and waited. - -After a while his head cleared and he could stand up. He walked -unsteadily to the window and looked out, saw nothing but fields and -quick-swishing poles. He turned back to the bunk on which he had been -lying. He was alone in the compartment. - -A train? - -How in God's name did he get on a train? - -The last thing he remembered was a numbing crouch, a heart-bursting -need for action. Slowly at first, then with great clarity, he -remembered being on the floor of the drugstore, waiting for the crowd -to gather so he could make a dash for the door. - -But he could not remember moving. He could not remember anything but -crouching. And then--nothing. His memory ended like a burned-out match. - -And there were no bruises or lumps on his head. He felt it carefully -to make sure. The only pain he felt anywhere in his body was a dull, -left-over aching in his side--that had come from the landing in the pod. - -Well somehow, obviously, he had been knocked out. - -But--the train. - -Dammit, hadn't they been trying to kill him? - -It made no sense. Never in his life had his mind just up and gone -blank. But he had not been hit. He had been paralyzed somehow, and -taken out of the drugstore and-- - -He put his hand in his pocket. For the first time it occurred to him -that he was wearing different clothes. - -He sat down abruptly, looked down at himself with increasing amazement. -The army clothes were gone. In their place was a stiff white shirt and -brown tweed pants, and a loosely knotted red plaid tie. His eyes leaped -to the door of the compartment. A matching tweed coat, obviously new, -hung from a wire coat hanger. - -Am I me? he asked himself. He was utterly lost. - -Across from the bunk there was a small wash room and a mirror. He went -over and looked at himself. He had not seen himself in a white shirt -for a long time and for a moment it was odd, but then, it was his own -face. There was no change. And he needed a shave. - -He went back and sat down on the bed. - -The minutes ticked by and when he had sat long enough without thinking -of anything at all he caught a firm grip on himself and tried to go -back over the whole thing. It was none of it real, and he immediately -rejected it. He had not gone up in a satellite at all, or driven a -halftrack out of a desert, and there was no naked man-- - -Yes he had. He damn well had. - -He was Lieutenant Augustus Webster Hilton, and all of this had -happened. He focused again on where he was. - -A train. Alone. - -Bound for where? - -He moved suddenly, with a baffled, growing anger. One thing at least he -could find out. He stood up and put on the jacket. He was on his way -out to find a porter when he felt the bulge in his pocket. - -Instantly, he remembered the things he had taken from the dead alien. -They had been transferred to the pocket of his new clothes. The -courtesy of it struck him as incredible. He spread the things out on -the bed. - -There was a set of keys, ordinary keys. There was a metallic disc about -the size of a quarter, engraved with meaningless figures. A coin? A -lucky piece? Probably a coin. There was a handkerchief, soiled, and a -small box of pasty white tablets. He put them down immediately. The -important thing was a card. A calling card, on the face of which, -simply printed, were the words: - - Albert Bosco, M.D. - 213 Wingate Rd. - Chicago, Ill. - -The card was white paper, nothing unusual, but he stared at it with -mixed amazement and disbelief. It occurred to him for a rather horrible -second that the man he had killed might conceivably not have been an -alien. - -But no. He recalled the nose clearly. The nose was alien, the man was -alien. And where he had gotten the card, and what use he had for it, -had probably died with him. - -And then, of course, there was no reason why an alien named Albert -Bosco could not be a doctor. - -But that was all he had gotten from the alien's pockets. It was a -curiously ordinary and unexciting mess of nothing, there was no -trace here of anything not human. But it did give him one thing: his -destination. - -And whoever had put him on the train knew that too. - -The first porter he found let slip, luckily, that his name had been -given as Mr. Pringle. Where they got that one, or how they got him on -the train, Web was never to know. And yessir, why sutinly, sir, said -the porter, looking at him oddly, as he had every right to look, this -here now train sho' does stop at Chicago. - -When he left the train at Chicago it was after midnight. - -Dammit, he said to himself bitterly, I got to do everything at night. - -He had planned to dodge around the station a bit before leaving, but -there was no crowd. The place was wide and bare, stony, with a few -night travelers dozing on benches. None of them he could see had sharp -noses. - -But now he was not sure whether they were after him or not, because-- - ---who in God's name had put him on the train? - -He brooded for a while in a small coffee shop, but it got more and more -complicated. Since the aliens had not killed him, and in fact obviously -meant for him to go to Chicago and look up this man Bosco, there was -no way to understand the bombing of the pod, or the empty trucks, or -anything. Were there two kinds of aliens, the good guys and the bad -guys? That was possible. His mind opened up. If you accept the presence -of one alien, you might just as well accept dozens. - -And that was quite a thought. As a matter of fact, how many aliens -were there, really? The whole darn world could be shot through with -aliens, skinny ones, fat ones, straight ones, bent ones, maybe all the -odd-looking people he knew were aliens. Maybe even, maybe Dundon was an -alien. - -He looked around furtively. In a coffee shop, late at night and not a -very clean coffee shop, it is remarkable how thoroughly inhuman people -can look. - -He left the shop. - -Well, he had no way of knowing what was up, who was good or who was -bad. But a lot of men had died, and until he knew why, and who did -it, and how, and could protect himself, he was going to trust nobody. -He was not going to walk deserted streets in the middle of the night -looking for Bosco. He hailed a cab for the Statler Hotel. To his -relief, he found that there was a Statler in Chicago. - -He was given a room for which he could not possibly pay if he stayed -here for any length of time, and he thought once more of Dundon. - -He would have to call Dundon. He would explain the last few hours as -some kind of amnesia, during which he had gotten out of the drugstore -safely, bought some new clothes, read the alien's card, and boarded a -train for Chicago, all without knowing it. - -Although that was the most logical explanation, there was an odd -feeling in his mind and he did not believe it. But he decided to tell -Dundon that anyway. - -It was while he was making the call that the Faktors found him again. - - - VI - -Toward morning reality began to close in upon Ivy with a cold, numbing -flow. She sat examining the things around her, the wall, the table, the -ceiling. As the morning came on a soft rose crept into the sky. She -went to the plastic window and stood watching the dawn. - -This thing was going to happen. - -The impossibility was fading now as the sun rose and the huts across -the way stepped out of darkness. That old, that horrible thing, that -dry, wrinkled thing.... - -She was too much afraid, and revolted, to cry. What followed now was an -animal fear, an animal desperation, and for the first time she felt an -urgent, vital energy gathering within her. She had to get out, she had -to get away. This thing was unbelievable and could not happen at all, -not ever, because she would not let it happen. She moved back from the -window and began to pace her cage. - -And the anger was replaced by a dissolving helplessness. She had no -plan. She searched, thought desperately, pleaded with herself, but she -had no plan. When they came all she could do would be fight, which -would not be enough, and the thing would happen. - -Eventually, because carrying this load in her mind was much too great, -she tried at last to accept it. If she could just endure. She would -have to shut off her mind, like a radio is shut off, and live inside -herself, in silence. - -She knew that would not work either. - -By mid-morning it became obvious that the man was in no hurry, or was -busy. He did not come after breakfast, and she waited out the morning. -She was just beginning to begin to hope when two of the older men, the -guards, came into the hut. - -It was evidently a formal thing, this breeding. They took her clothes, -gave her a single, pale yellow garment which reached not quite to her -knees. She put it on. The two old men were dressed differently today, -in soft pastel robes which were flowing and ridiculous around their -spindly legs. She gathered that today there would be a celebration. - -One of the old men gave her the needle as she stood dressing, before -she had a chance to struggle. She was lain for the last time upon the -floor, to wait for the evening. - -And then, to her great amazement, a calm possession took over her. All -the school girl fear and disgust and revulsion fell away for a moment, -and she examined the situation critically. - -What the hell, she said to herself, startled but at the same time -pleased at the feel of strength in her. - -What was this after all? This was sex, really, so what? It was going to -happen? Well, let it happen. It happened to other women, and it had not -killed them. Now it was going to happen to her, and she would certainly -live through it, and since none of it was her fault, there was merely -a physical thing that took place, like in the old days when girls were -married against their will, so she guessed she could bear it. - -She was shocked at herself. But she felt her sanity, which had slowly -begun to slip away, return with a rush. Her youth did not return with -it. She would have preferred to have her initiation take place in some -other manner, certainly, with someone more suitable, and she knew that -afterwards she might regret it all very much. - -But she had a whole afternoon to pass lying flat on her back and -thinking, and she passed the afternoon in growing up quickly, as -countless women had done before her, helpless and alone, captured in -wax by barbarian soldiers. - - * * * * * - -"I said this is Hilton, by God! Me. Web. Lieutenant Hilton!" - -It was a little while, understandably, before Dundon got hold of the -idea of the aliens. And then--also with great understanding--Web -decided not to tell him the full story. Not over the phone. In person -it would be bad enough, but over the phone it was too great an effort, -and anyway, he was not really sure that he was himself. He told Dundon -where he was. - -"Chicago? Chicago? Chica--" - -"That's right, chief. Chicago. You got it. I'm in the Statler Hotel. -Incidentally, I need quite a buck to pay my way out. And if you will -come here right away I will tell you what's up." - -Dundon was still asking him about Chicago. - -"At the Statler," Web insisted, "under my own name. Bring money. And -bring an escort. Watch out for old men with sharp noses. What? We've -been invaded. Yes, by little old men with sharp--look, chief, never -mind, come out here and I'll tell you the whole thing." - -With that he hung up. - -At the thought of how Dundon must look, he grew cheerful for the first -time since the whole business had begun. For a risingly happy moment he -began to feel for once like his old gay carefree self. - -I am going to wait, he said happily to himself, until the whole damn -army gets here. - -I am not going to move a foot. I will sleep and eat until the cows come -home, I will load up on scotch and I will lock my door, because, by -heck, I deserve it. - -Because he had had little experience with hotel rooms, especially rooms -of such a lavish nature, he did not think of room service. He strode -through the door gaily whistling, and was halfway to the elevator when -the orange flash cut him down. - - * * * * * - -Kunklin and Prule joined to rake in twelve more Faktors, and to -dissolve Web once again. - -"This is quite hard on the boy, really," Prule observed reproachfully. - -Kunklin was unmoved. "He doesn't feel a thing. He will never know about -it." - -Prule agreed, but he was a sensitive man, and he sighed. And then he -said: - -"They found him with remarkable celerity, don't you think?" - -"Tracing a Galactic--an unequipped Galactic--is not difficult. The wave -length, of course." - -"Yes, but they had no idea he was coming to this place." - -"They certainly did. They expected him at the center of -operations--which this town must obviously be--sooner or later. When -their men did not return from the desert, or the town, they must have -grown apprehensive." - -"Well, anyway, we don't need this poor fellow anymore. Why don't we let -him go, and mop up ourselves." - -Kunklin grinned righteously. - -"I'm a great believer in letting these people help themselves," he -said. "It seems more sporting that way. He's doing fine so far. I think -we ought to leave him in just to see how far he can go. Really, he does -deserve to be in at the end." - -"I suppose. But you know, we almost didn't finish that last recording -in time." - -It was a sobering thought. - -"We'll have to follow him more closely," Kunklin said, beginning the -work of assembly. "But after all, we're very near the end. I expect we -will be going home--" - -He broke off in mid-sentence as a tall, unusually symmetrical young -woman walked leggily around the corner of the hall. Kunklin was -invisible behind the warp shield, but although she could not see him he -could clearly see her, and his eyebrows rose happily. - -"Um," he began, "it begins to come home to me now why this planet is so -well-visited. First this Earthman's father, then the Faktors--" - -Prule cut him off. Kunklin was a first rate repairman, but he was -also a first rate lecher, a trait he had carried to several harrowing -extremes on other humanoid worlds, to Prule's almost Quakerian sorrow. -Prule soberly pressed him back to work, to the messy job of assembling -Web Hilton from the molecular recording. - -And when Kunklin's head was down and busy, Prule's eyes quickly -followed the pneumatic young lady as she walked down the carpeted hall. - - * * * * * - -And now Web was walking down a street in the black night, walking -slowly, without purpose or direction or intelligence. He was aware of -walking for quite some while, numbly, vacantly, as if he was rising -from a long dark tunnel, before he reached the end and came suddenly -alive. - -He stopped in the center of the sidewalk. - -It had happened again. - -Bewildered, he looked around him. There was nothing about the street, -about the long low rows of squat black houses, which was familiar. He -had no reason of his own to come here; he was not even sure he was -still in Chicago. - -He put his hand to his forehead and rubbed his eyes. A feeling of -great emptiness, of being utterly alone in an impossible world, swept -through him. This time his memory went as far as the call to Dundon, no -farther. He had begun to walk from the room, and it was as if he had -walked off a cliff into nothing, into a cloud, and he had emerged from -the other side still walking, only now he was walking on an unknown -street. What happened in between was not in his mind. After a moment he -did not try to remember, because there was not even an association. In -that area his mind was totally empty. - -He gathered himself quickly. There was a great drive inside him -which all the years up to now had not really touched, but now he was -beginning to feel himself move. He was confused. He was alone. But -he was also becoming deeply angry. He was going to find out what had -happened, was happening, and he would do it if it meant searching to -the end of his life. - -He walked quickly to the nearest corner. - -The street he was on was Wingate Street. - -Which was, he recalled instantly, the address of Albert Bosco. - -So he had been directed here. The blank in his mind was not amnesia. -Someone had guided his movements to Wingate Street, had picked him up -out of the hotel like you pick up a toy train that has gone off the -track. - -His anger rose. - -He would follow that trail, all right, and when he reached the end-- - -He began to look for the Doctor's house. - -It was a high, narrow building near the end of the block. There was no -light in any of the windows. - -He strode up to the front door without hesitation, forcefully punched -the bell. - -Lights came on upstairs. Something came clumping down the hall toward -the door, opened it. - -Bosco was an old, old man in a shining bathrobe. In the light of the -hall his alien nose was keen and obvious. - -"Emergency," said Web quickly, "are you the Doctor?" He stepped inside -the door before the old man, startled, could answer. He stood poised -upon a thick carpet, listening for sounds from other parts of the -house. The house was silent. - -"I am Doctor Bosco," the old man said weakly, nervously, "what is it -you want? Who sent you to me?" - -"I need your help," Web said. He thought: this one doesn't know me. -"Can you come?" - -"But ... but ... but ... I do not leave this house. I am not ... I -cannot go out. You will have to find someone else." He reached past Web -to open the door again. Web decided to make his move. - - * * * * * - -The arm reached by him. He closed his hand upon the wrist. - -The alien froze, stared with enormous horror straight up into his eyes. -The wrist in Web's grip was remarkably gaunt and brittle. With a quick -downward motion he could break it, and both of them knew it. - -The old man started to back away, moaned once with a bubbling hum, and -collapsed. - -Web bent down to look at the man. He wasn't dead, but he was out cold. -Scared damn near to death. Web was amused, grinned once very swiftly. -If this was a sample, these aliens weren't much. - -He picked up the old man, light and wispy as a bundle of leaves, and -carried him under one arm into the big living room which opened off of -the hall. He thought better of turning on a light, slumped the old man -on a couch and sat down beside him. - -A street bulb outside the house threw a white soft glow of light into -the room. That was enough to see by for his purposes. He moved over on -the couch to a position from which he could see the door. And then, in -darkness, he waited. - -It was several minutes before the old man moved. Web had time to think, -to form a plan. The first thing that moved in Web's mind was a wonder -of why in heck the old man should have fainted, and then it occurred -to him that this thing here was alien, truly alien, and probably had a -science so far beyond ours as to be impossible to comprehend. He would -undoubtedly be long-lived. Web thought; could just as well be immortal. - -But anyway, no matter what else he was, it was pretty sure that he -lived a long while, and death, any death, was a rare thing among his -people. Hence the unusual, to an Earthman, fear of dying. It figured. -Humans fear dying all right. But a lot of them face it every day as -part of their jobs, because life on Earth must be something like a -jungle compared to the germ-free, war-free, super-sanitary world of the -future. Death to a man like this would be quite a fearful thing. - -And so the collapse. - -And a weapon for Web. - -He smiled in the darkness, cruelly, as the alien stirred. He would find -out from this man whatever he wanted to know. - -Awake at last, with Web above him like a huge black mountain, the old -man nearly fainted again. But he managed to recover slowly, in a state -of really pitiful terror. He had known from the beginning that Web -was not a Galactic--a Galactic would never have approached in person. -The thought helped him to survive. But even then this Earthman was a -barbarian, an unaccountable man with no scruples against killing, and -Web was perfectly right about the fear of death. The alien talked. - -For a while he babbled, but then it began to make sense. - -He told about the coming extinction of his race, and the plan for -interbreeding which would save it. He had been on Earth, he said, for -several years, choosing specimens for test purposes. The tests had -proved positive and the first step of selection was almost completed. -He had been stationed as a real doctor with a real practice, so that he -would have the opportunity of giving preliminary physical examinations -and passing on the names of potentially acceptable candidates. And -there were many doctors like him spread all over the world. Since the -United States was by far the Earth's healthiest country of any size, -most of the selecting had been done right here. - -"But what did you do with the men in the satellite?" Web asked, doing -his best to follow but fast losing ground. - -"How did you know--?" And then the alien almost collapsed again. He had -heard, undoubtedly, of the one man that had escaped from the satellite. -But that had been a Galactic-- - -"Why did you do that, kill all those men, and how?" - -Web shook him, the alien yelped feebly, then babbled it out. - -"The satellite was in a very dangerous position. It could see all our -intercontinental travel, the ships we have going and coming daily. It -would undoubtedly warn the planet of what it saw. But we could not -simply destroy it. Blame for that might conceivably be placed on your -enemies, and you are such unstable peop--that is--we--there was no need -for a general war. We could not risk that, being ourselves just as -vulnerable to atomic attack as any life. So we--removed the men on the -satellite." - -"How, dammit, how?" - -When he swore the alien jumped. - -"Through devices which you--if you do not already know, you cannot -be--oh--yes--I will tell, I will tell--" The old man searched -desperately for an explanation. "Your body has--every body is held -together by electric forces. By million upon millions of tiny electric -currents. The atoms of any body are kept in position by a--by an -attraction between them. Now, if that attraction is nullified, the -atoms will drift apart, disperse. The atoms will no longer exist in -any form. That was what happened to the men in the satellite. They -were--turned off." - -Web sat perfectly still for a long moment. Then he said swiftly, -viciously: - -"But why didn't it get me?" - -The alien writhed on the couch. - -"Your blood must be different. We thought you were a Galactic. Your -body chemistry is unusual, your--your charge is different." - -Once again Web sat in silence, trying to follow that. Galactic and -different blood. But he wrenched his mind away. The sun would be up -soon and he would have to be out of here quickly. He would need to know -where their main base was. Then it was the army's turn. Although what -could the army do? - -He got the location out of the old man. It was surprisingly near to -Chicago. - -And the time of the first take-off, the first shipment, would be that -night. - -He rose to leave. Then he turned back to the old man. - -He debated it for a moment, but saw nothing else possible. The old man -knew who he was and where he was going, and what he knew. He could not -leave the old man to warn the others. The old man knew that too, looked -up at him and saved him the trouble. - -He died just before Web's great hands reached him. - - - VII - -Within the next hour he had a gun, taken from an amiable but -unfortunate young cop who had the courtesy to stop and give him a match -on a dark back street. He was sincerely sorry for that, knowing what -would happen to the cop, but he was also acutely aware that he needed -the gun a hell of a lot more than the cop did, even if this was Chicago. - -Later on, when the sun was up, he reconsidered. It occurred to him that -where he was going noise would be no virtue, not if he was going in -alone. So he bought himself a knife--Bowie, with a double edged tip. -Anyway, he had been schooled in knives in jump school, and he knew how -to use one even better than a wild .45. The thing to do now was get -within reach. - -A cab took him to the bus terminal. It was a beautiful morning, brisk -and clear and cold, and on the way he picked up three Faktors. - -At discreet intervals, they followed him into the terminal. He did not -notice them. They ringed him at a distance, following a set plan of -destruction, prepared to close in. Since there had been no time for -another recording, Kunklin and Prule had no choice. The three Faktors -died at once, in their tracks, in separate parts of the waiting room. - -It was a short while before the slumping men were noticed and the -uproar began. By that time Web was outside boarding a bus, and he -went on his way knowing nothing at all of the Faktors, nor of the -unfortunate incident that immediately befell the Galactics. - -He rode the bus for two hours. As he got nearer and nearer to his -destination his resolve began to slip away. He was utterly alone, and -these enemies were alien. What in heck could he accomplish? - -The bus pulled into a town called Alford just before noon. He stepped -down into the quiet street. There were no aliens around, none that he -could tell. He decided that there was probably no sense in waiting for -the dark. He did not know his way and the layout would be important, so -he decided to go up into the hills right away. - -It was a long walk. He stayed with the road for about two miles, then -cut off abruptly into the woods. The ground became steeper, he began to -climb. - -He had not gone forty feet before he tripped the first alarm. - - * * * * * - -The catastrophe, which neither Kunklin nor Prule had anticipated, -occurred as the result of a power failure. - -Continued operation of the machine known as the "bender," together with -the enormous power drain of the anti-gravity webs they used to float -back and forth, had sapped the power of their suits down below danger -level. The one last burst which destroyed the three Faktors reduced -that power completely. - -Both Kunklin and Prule became immediately visible. - -They caused quite a stir. - -Dressed as they were in white, satin-like suits, with glass bowl -helmets on their heads and a large back pack sprouting antennae in all -directions, they were an instantaneous focus of interest in the bus -terminal. - -They were greatly annoyed, and also somewhat embarrassed. - -"Galactic obscenity," said Kunklin, as a crowd gathered, "I thought you -recharged the suits." - -"I thought you did," muttered Prule anxiously. "But let's get out of -here. Which way is the ship?" - -They began to walk forward toward the door and the curious, grinning -crowd parted. - -"It's way down this wide street. Oh fine!" Kunklin swore gloomily, -attempting at the same time to keep his face impassive. Fortunately, -Earthmen were humanoid. If they were not, of course, the Galactics -would never have allowed this to happen. And if experience on other -planets of this culture level was any judge, these people here would -think the Galactics and the suits were some kind of stunt. But though -this accident had happened quite often to other Galactic agents, it had -never happened to them, and they were apprehensive. They eyed the crowd -warily as they walked. - -Grinning, giggling, pointing, the crowd eyed them back, and followed. - -Out into the street they went, two tall, undeniably weird-looking men -unable to keep their embarrassment from their faces. One wide-eyed -little boy ran up to Prule, grabbed at his sleeve with taffy-smeared -fingers. He chirped loudly to his parents to "looka the space men." -The mother came up, politely disengaged his fingers, gave a smiling, -unintelligible apology to Prule. Prule nodded as graciously as he -could, tried to walk faster. - -"Listen," Prule groaned, "the power is too low to work the translator. -Suppose we're stopped? We can't talk to them." - -"Here comes one in a uniform," said Kunklin, beginning to perspire. - -"Police?" - -"Yes." - -"I suggest we run." - -They broke into a trot. The crowd around them had grown rapidly and -began to trot with them, wondering where the show would take place. The -policeman ran too. - -They let out their speed. Now a whole host of people began to shout -and new ones joined them, running, as they crossed a main street -against a light. - -"Faster," grunted Kunklin. - -Prule swore. "I can't. The suit's too heavy." - -"Just a little way. When we get to the ship we'll put on a -demonstration." - -They tore down the avenue, narrowly evading children, old ladies, -and newsstands. Two more blue-coated officials joined in the chase, -converging and blowing whistles. Several more were coming up in front -of them when they finally reached the ship. - -They stopped in the center of the wide street. Traffic screeched to a -halt on all sides. - -"Are you sure it's here?" - -Kunklin looked around uneasily, then spied the faint hazy circle of -the opening, several feet in the air above them. He pushed at his -anti-gravity knob, felt himself lightening, but not lifting. He swore. - -The crowd was reaching them, small boys and men lurched to a stop -around them. - -"They're waiting for us to do something," Prule hissed. - -"Quick! Before the police get here! Jump!" - -Prule looked up helplessly at the hazy circle. - -"How"--he began, but Kunklin pushed him aside, assumed a broad stance -in the center of the crowd. He thrust his arms outward dramatically, -as if for silence. Just then the first cop broke through and into the -center of the circle and began to speak virtuously, angrily, in the -manner of cops, but the people around him were staring at Kunklin and -waiting expectantly. - -"Well," said Kunklin, speaking cheerfully in Galactic, "it's been fun." -He threw the anti-gravity to full power, waited till he could feel that -the lift would no longer increase. It was not enough to get him off the -ground, but he now weighed next to nothing. He crouched, then leaped -for the haze above. He shot up like a rocket, went through the circle -and disappeared. - -A moment later Prule followed him. As he sailed up through the haze the -ship became immediately visible above, he reached out and caught on to -a rung of the ladder below Kunklin. Thankfully, wearily, not bothering -to look down at the stunned, open-mouthed crowd which he could see -below him but which could no longer see him, he followed Kunklin up -into the ship. - -Kunklin did not wait at the airlock, he ran quickly away. Prule, -puffing, paused to look down at last on the crowd below. Their ascent -had been a success. The crowd was beginning to applaud. - -Prule closed the airlock and the invisible, untouchable ship lifted. -He went to join Kunklin. The big Galactic was bent over the controls, -guiding the ship not upward--as Prule had thought--but horizontally -down the length of the wide street. - -"Eh?" said Prule. - -"Got to get a live Faktor," Kunklin said anxiously, his eyes glued to -the viewscreen. "We've lost the Earthman. He could be anywhere now, and -we can't help him. He may be headed for the Faktor's main base. If so -he will be killed. We've got to get to the base first." - -Prule pursed his lips. "If he dies on our account, just because of your -foolish idea to use him--" - -"I know," Kunklin cut in. "So we need a Faktor to tell us where the -base is. They're probably all over this city. I think I even saw one in -the crowd." He stopped. "That's another thing," he said unhappily, "if -there were Faktors in the crowd, they'll know a Galactic ship is here." - -Prule grunted, peered down at the left side of the screen. - -"Look, isn't that one?" - -He indicated a small, furtive-looking man who was walking swiftly away -from the area they had just left. - -Kunklin adjusted for a close view. - -"Yep." He moved to the instrument panel, worked carefully at a -traversing mechanism. "Get down to the airlock. We'll suck him up." - -"He'll die of fright," Prule predicted. "They always do." - -Kunklin shrugged. "We have to try. Maybe this will be a strong one." - -"Let's hope so." - -Prule readied himself at the open airlock. Kunklin threw a switch, -there was a deep, subtle hum, and a magnetic beam dosed down on the man -below. He flipped straight up toward the ship, like a hooked minnow. - -But he was not one of the stronger Faktors. He was dead before he -reached the door. - - * * * * * - -In the late afternoon, when the wind had died and the day was quiet, -the door opened. - -The same two men--she had begun to be able to tell them apart--came in -and, this time, bowed. - -Ivy yawned, rose up on an elbow and blinked her eyes. - -The two men, surprised, stared at her. - -"All right, what is it?" Ivy said as briskly as she could, trying to -force down the sudden fear. "Stop that damned bowing. A sillier bunch -of skinny idiots I never saw. Men! Huh! You're dying out, all right, -that's obvious." - -The two men looked at each other. Then one of them recaptured his grin. - -"It is time for your breeding," he said lecherously. - -Ivy yawned again, started to rise. - -"Okay, I'll be with you in a minute. I hope it doesn't take too long. -I've lost a lot of sleep." - -She managed to stand up calmly, with composure. The only thing she -could think of to do now was to regard this whole thing lightly, and -to make an occasional remark about the rather obvious defects of her -captors. - -There was no sense in collapsing. - -The two men, puzzled, followed her with their eyes as she fluffed up -her hair. - -"No need of that," one of them said quickly, "you will be prepared by -others." - -Ivy let her hair fall. "Okay Oscar. Whatever you say." In a very -unladylike manner, she yawned again, scratched herself. She grinned at -them both. - -"I don't mean to be nasty, fellas, but why don't you pull up a chair -for a minute? Old guys like you shouldn't be running around all day--" - -The near one growled. The other one restrained him, smiled thinly. - -"We have no need of rest," he said slowly. "We possess a -certain--vitality." His smile broadened. "As you shall presently see -for yourself." - -Ivy did not look at him, walked suddenly past him and out the door. - -They made a motion to grab her, but held back as she stopped. She -stood in the afternoon sun and stretched lazily. - -"To your left," the man behind her said. - -She waited for a moment, and then she walked. She strode upon bare -ground, upon soft grass, unable to be flippant now, looking stiffly -ahead toward a flat gray building. The door was open and she could see -the far wall, which was richly hung and colored in a strange deep red. -The two men left her at the door, where another man, very old and white -gowned and prissy, took her by the arm. - -The man prepared her. She dropped all pretense at hardness, at -disinterest, and sat like a stone. In with the other, the breeder, she -would have to be icy. She became vaguely aware of a thick fragrance -around her, a musky, oily smell. Then the man released her. She was -prepared. He stood her up, waved at the door at the far end of the room. - -"There," he said without interest, turning away. - -She took a deep breath and walked forward. - - * * * * * - -It was a long way up and Web went most of the way at a crouch, the -knife and the gun both ready at his belt. He had taken off his coat and -tie; it was chilly in the woods but he did not feel it. - -Four miles north of Alford, the old man had said. Just a half mile -off the highway, on the tallest hill, the really steep one. He kept -the highway to his right going up, beginning to wonder at last if the -alien had told the truth. For all he knew, the camp might really be in -northern Tibet, and he could be stealing his way ever so stealthily -through total emptiness. But no. The old man had been scared to death. -Literally. And anyway, the thing he was walking into was undoubtedly a -trap, and knowing it did not do much good. - -He cleared the first rise and climbed in among some rocks. Nearby below -he could see the highway, empty. The sun was high in the afternoon. -Four miles was not a long way, even crouching, and he could probably -make it before dark. In the dark shadows of the bushes around him, -nothing moved. He went up the next hill. - -When he reached the top he was beginning to perspire. He sat down for -a moment to think. - -Now that he was close and the moment of contact was so near he could -almost touch it, his mind began to function with a cold, comforting -clarity. It was time to make a plan. His target was the ship, yes, -but he would have to proceed on the assumption that they knew he was -coming. They would have some kind of warning system, and a variety of -weapons. But for the time being he held the ace. - -He grinned cheerlessly to himself and headed for the next rise. - -On the other side of this one there was a long flat space, scrub-bushed -and empty, and then the last hill, the steep one, began. He went -forward across the open space in broad daylight. He felt like he was -walking into the mouth of a primed cannon. In effect, he was. - -It was in among a clump of pines, silent and green, that the thing fell -to the ground near him. He froze, momentarily panic-stricken, his hand -to his belt. The fallen thing lay on the ground a few inches from his -right hand, stiff and unmoving, dark among the leaves. - -He relaxed slightly. - -It was only a bird. - -A dead bird. He stared at it for a long while, motionless. Out of the -trees above him a dead bird had fallen. - -Coincidence? - -Or were they now turning on the power? - -He lay flat on the ground. They knew where he was and they did not -like it. They had fired on him. He did not know whether the thing that -killed the bird had missed him, or whether it had hit him too and his -incredible immunity had protected him. Perhaps they had already fired -on him with the other gun, the one from the satellite. He did not know -that either. But in front of him lay the dead bird. - -And now, if he tripped another electronic eye, they would probably come -out in person. - -All for the best. He peered intently through the trees up the hill, -searching for some sign of buildings. If he could get to the edge of -a clearing, could see, he would stand a better chance. But there was -nothing but bushes, the bare brown shafts of trees. Now that they knew -where he was, he was deeply thankful that he'd had the sense to bring -the gun. - -He moved forward on his hands and knees, watching, listening, praying -that he didn't trip another eye. - -The bushes crackled around him. The wind, dammit. - -He stopped and listened, heard his heart beating in his throat. He -decided he could crawl just as well with one hand, so he took out the -gun. It was at that moment that he saw the first Faktor. - -An instant silhouette through the trees ahead, moving silently toward -him. They were coming. - - * * * * * - -He dropped to his stomach, crawled with a cold silent slide into the -nearest bush clump. Although they probably knew to the foot where he -was, he had to lie still. - -In a brief, brutal flash of reproach and disgust, he realized what an -idiot he'd been to come out here alone. - -But there was no helping that now. He moved down behind a fallen log, -laid the barrel of the .45 on the trunk and sighted through the leaves. - -Now he could hear them. They were small, but sloppy. Maybe they didn't -care. That didn't figure. But by now they had undoubtedly understood -his immunity, were coming to kill him in the bloody ways of Earth. - -He had no way of knowing that the Faktors had been terrified to realize -that a Galactic was approaching, but immensely relieved to see that -the Galactic was afoot. To the Faktors, Web was one of two things: a -hybrid, or a stranded Galactic. For no agent would ever approach on -foot, not in his right mind. Short of a force field, no armor known -will stop a high velocity missile. And a Galactic on foot could not -have that. - -The killing of a Galactic was a rare thing, a delectable thing. Seven -Faktors converged on Web. - -He let them come in very close, counting them and noting their -positions, before he fired. When the nearest man was ten yards away, -crawling toward Web at an angle, the white round eyes looked past him. -In the last second he saw that they were circling the wrong spot. They -had not expected his sideward movement. He fired. - -The heavy police bullet caught the Faktor in the head. He died where he -lay, instantly. There were swift, rising, horribly frightened screams -from the bushes around him. - -Web rolled back from the log, crawled around to the other side of the -tree. The god-awful things were whimpering. - -He peered furtively around the tree looking for another shot while the -shooting was good, wondering how in hell they'd ever gotten the nerve -to come in after him. And then he looked at the body of the alien he'd -killed, saw the small brown bomb in his hand, and knew. - -They'd never intended to get in close. They probably hadn't even -expected him to be armed. - -He grinned viciously, turning his head the while to look for a way out. - -In that instant he saw another alien move. He fired. - -The shot went home. There were more screams. - -Good God, he said, almost aloud, shocked. He did not fire again, the -fear of the things was revolting. He wanted to get out. - -He started to move, but they located him. The first bomb hit on the -other side of the tree, blew with a white blinding flash, a thin, -screaming, ripping explosion. - -The tree saved him. He fell flat, tried to crawl away. Two more bombs -let go on the other side of the tree, spattered among the bushes and -leaves, cut the tree in half. The tree fell in the direction of another -bomb, the top of it was blown away. In frantic desperation, the Faktors -were giving it everything they had. - -There was a tense moment of silence. Web started to rise. He had to -get away. He fired again and again into the woods around him, rose and -started to run, hoping that the shooting would keep the aliens flat, -that some of them at least had died of fear and that he could outrun -them. He made it as far as another fallen log before the next bomb let -go, giving him a great crunching shove in his back. He fell face down -over the log. - -Oh hell, he said painfully, oh hell oh hell oh hell. A bomb fell near -him, and another, and he turned to rise and fire back just once more, -swearing, his flesh rising to greet the one last killing explosion, and -damn it all, he was going to die. - -A huge fist hit him squarely between the eyes. He fell over backwards. - -And there was dark, blessed silence. - - * * * * * - -The doors opened automatically when Prule pushed the right button. -Three hundred and twelve young girls and two hundred and fourteen -young men, all of them the cream of Earth's children and most of them -mother-naked, peered out cautiously, furtively, into the gathering -dusk. One made a move, then another. A rather brazen young woman, -nude, walked right out into the center of the camp. And then they all -emerged, wide-eyed and taut, looking for the Faktors. - -"All gone," said Kunklin, waving his hands expressively. But since his -suit was recharged and working, nobody saw him. - -They did not see the Faktors either. They began to gather and talk with -each other, some dangerously close to shock, some excitedly none the -worse for wear. Most of the women were recovered so far as to return to -modesty, began to search for covering. - -This did not please Kunklin at all. He was tempted to push the button -again and close all the doors, thereby making all clothing unavailable, -but--after a thoughtful look at Prule--he let it go. It had been an -extraordinary sight, a delectable sight, and his opinion of the virtues -of Earth was skyrocketing. - -Right then and there Kunklin decided the spot for his next vacation. - -And now at last, as they watched, the men and the girls began to leave. -It was growing dark and quite cold and they could not stay here. One by -one, in varying degrees of undress, they strode off down the mountain. -The sensation they created in Alford was nothing next to the sensation -they created the next day, in newspapers the world over. - -Kunklin watched them go with mixed torture and delight. - -Prule brought him back to the next order of business. - -"The Earthman," he said gloomily. - -"Um?" - -"The man from the satellite. Where is he?" - -"Um," said Kunklin, sobering. "Where is he indeed?" - -Prule pointed a lean finger at the near woods. - -"There were explosions going on over there when we flew down. I -suppose--" he fixed his eyes reproachfully on Kunklin--"they bombed -him." - -Kunklin shrugged. "The man came all the way up here. Really. You know, -you have to admire these people, in more ways than one. I--" - -He broke off. - -For out of the woods, stumbling, holding his head in one hand and his -colt .45 in the other, came the great battered figure of Web Hilton. He -was scarred and bloody, one eye was closed and he walked with a heavy -limp, but he was walking at least, and Kunklin brightened. - -"Well by Jupiter, he made it!" - -Prule smiled happily. - -"We must have just got here in time. The Faktors were probably bombing -him when they disappeared." - -"Yes, yes. Well, well, well." Kunklin fussed with a knob, turned off -his bender and switched on the translator. "I suppose, now that it's -all over, we owe this fellow an explanation. Lord, man, we owe him more -than that. He's one of us!" He started walking quickly toward Web. "Ho! -Hey! You there!" - -Web stopped, peered confusedly through bleary eyes at the incredible -figures on the mountain side before him. His gun was in his hand, but -he had forgotten it. He had not yet collected himself and there was an -awful ringing in his head. - -Kunklin and Prule surrounded him, babbling away cheerfully, set him -down and gave him first aid. In an astonishingly short time he was -feeling well again and the Galactics did their best to bring him up -to date on what had occurred, being careful to praise his undeniable -courage in the face of such odds. They admitted to using him as decoy, -but told him nothing about the recording business. They saw no reason -to tell this boy that he had, during the course of recent events, died -twice. No telling how he would react. Although really, since he was -atom for atom identical with the original Web Hilton, what difference -did it make? - -"--and so we finally found a Faktor with some strength of will--had to -inject the man as he came aboard--then came out here and eliminated the -rest of them." - -Web stared dazedly around at the empty buildings. - -"All gone?" - -"Completely." Kunklin grinned. "We used the same device on them that -they used on your people. We thought it only fitting. Quite a weapon. -Used to be the most dangerous weapon in this part of the universe until -we found immunity. You could wipe out whole planets without a single -leaf being harmed--" - -"Yes, yes," said Prule, "but the job is ended. Thank you my friend. You -have been of great help. Any time you need us. Kunklin?" - -"What?" said Kunklin, straightening. "You mean leave him here? Well -really, Prule, that's hardly--" And then his whole face brightened. He -clapped Web heavily on the back. "Why Prule, this boy's a Galactic! -After all he's done for us, the least we can do is take him back with -us"--Prule jumped--"to headquarters, at least, and introduce him -around. Why, the boy has a heritage! You can see that from the way he -held up his end. Oh yes, yes, we'll have to take him back." - -Web looked up blearily, beginning to understand. - -"Back where?" - -But Kunklin reached down and took him by the arm, and began leading -him toward the ship. He explained, as painlessly as he could, the -fact of Web's Galactic parentage. He did not say that it was Web's -father--which, for biological reasons, it had to be--but only that some -ancestor, somewhere along the line, had been extraterrestrial. - -And while Web was downing that, and Prule was protesting, Kunklin spoke -gaily on. - -"You'll need time, my boy, won't you, before you come along with us? -You'll need time, eh?" - -"I have to see Dundon--" - -"Of course, of course," Kunklin chuckled, "take all the time you want. -Take weeks, take months. And in the meantime," he grinned toward Prule, -in whom just now a great light was dawning--"in the meantime Prule and -I will wander the byroads of your lovely planet. Eh, Prule? A vacation!" - -And in a mood of genial lechery--for Earthman, Galactic, Faktor, this -one thing is constant--the three men climbed into the ship, and then, -the sky. - - * * * * * - -Ivy Jean Thompson, to complete the story in the coldest of truth, never -set eyes on Web Hilton in her life. And if she had, it would have made -little difference, for the fact of the matter is that Ivy Jean Thompson -had had quite enough of men. Any kind of men. The disappearance of -the Faktors had occurred, coincidentally, at the last possible moment -for the saving of Ivy's virtue. It was, understandably, an unnerving -experience. - -She opened her eyes to find nobody there. She left the camp firmly -convinced that there should never be anybody there. She retired to a -small town in north Jersey where she became a particularly grouchy -librarian spinster, the last of all the casualties in the case of the -Blood Brother. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VANISHER *** - -***** This file should be named 63696-0.txt or 63696-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/6/9/63696/ - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this ebook. - -Title: The Vanisher - -Author: Michael Shaara - -Release Date: December 05, 2020 [EBook #63696] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VANISHER *** -</pre> - -<div class="titlepage"> - - -<h1>THE VANISHER</h1> - -<h2>By MICHAEL SHAARA</h2> - -<p><i>He was expendable, this Web Hilton, this<br /> -young officer with the strange heritage. And<br /> -so it was that he was ordered out into space<br /> -where he saw the uncovered stars, and met<br /> -the naked alien, and became the first man<br /> -in history to die more than once.</i></p> - -<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br /> -Planet Stories Winter 1954.<br /> -Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br /> -the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>The two girls stayed to see the picture a second time and when they got -out of the movie it was after midnight and raining and they couldn't -get a cab. Louise bought a paper and put it over her head and ran off, -laughing, in the direction of Albany Street. Ivy folded her kerchief -and turned up Livingstone. She did not run. There was nothing wrong -with rain, or with getting wet, and she enjoyed the coolness. She -plunged her hands deeply into her coat pockets and did not bother to -walk quickly at all.</p> - -<p>The night was very dark, made darker by the rain, which was heavy and -full. But Ivy was unconcerned. She was a small-town girl, country bred, -with three huge brothers who knew every man in the county. She had -grown up with a strong belief in the natural goodness of things, of -people, and although she was young and slim and extremely pretty she -had no worry now of walking home in the dark. This was her home town. -She had lived here all her life. She passed by huge bushes and under -the great clutching branches of trees without thinking at all of the -things which could, and did, lurk behind them. She turned up Elmwood -Road with her mind at rest, filled with skirts and dances and taffy -pulls.</p> - -<p>And her faith in people, as it turned out, was justified.</p> - -<p>For the long arm that reached out of the bushes, the darkness, and -plucked her with a rush into a deep black silence, was an arm of flesh, -and an arm of bone, but it was very far from human.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The door opened at the top of the ramp and the colonel peered -cautiously inside.</p> - -<p>"Nobody here but us chickens," he said, sputtering in the rain, and the -guard dropped the muzzle of the machine pistol and saluted.</p> - -<p>The colonel stomped in onto the concrete floor, grumbling. He -was followed by an enormous lieutenant, an immense, looming, -cliff-shouldered man well over six feet tall. The lieutenant had to -duck coming through the door, cast a downward salute to the startled -guard. The colonel moved out from under the lieutenant's dripping -overhang, pointed a lean wet finger down the hall.</p> - -<p>"He here?"</p> - -<p>"Yessir," said the guard, eyeing the monstrous lieutenant with respect.</p> - -<p>The colonel wiped his face with a dry handkerchief, took off his hat -and smoothed down his sparse white hair. Then he strode off down the -concrete hall, motioning for the lieutenant to follow. Together they -came to a bolted steel door. The colonel opened it without knocking, -ushered the lieutenant inside.</p> - -<p>The room they entered was wide and rich, oak-panelled, in great -contrast to the white-washed concrete of the halls outside. In the -center of the room was a mahogany desk, at which a small, sad, -cigar-smoking man sat absorbedly drawing doughnuts on a white lined pad.</p> - -<p>The colonel saluted. The man at the desk, whose name was Dundon, looked -up at the big lieutenant and chomped on his cigar.</p> - -<p>"Is <i>this</i> our man?"</p> - -<p>"Yes sir. Lieutenant Hilton. He knows—"</p> - -<p>"Sure is a big bugger," Dundon said, rising. The lieutenant regarded -him calmly.</p> - -<p>"He knows every phase of the operation, sir," the colonel said.</p> - -<p>"Of course. Sit down, boy," Dundon said briefly, waving his cigar. The -lieutenant sat. "What's a few extra pounds? May need 'em, by God." He -put the cigar in his mouth and clamped his hands behind him, walked -around to the front of the desk and sat down on the edge of it.</p> - -<p>"When's take-off, sir?" the colonel asked.</p> - -<p>Dundon looked at his watch. "Less than an hour. Does he know?"</p> - -<p>The colonel whistled. "That soon? No, he doesn't know anything."</p> - -<p>The lieutenant had taken off his hat, showing himself to be much -younger and blonder than he had first appeared to Dundon. He sat -watching both men without any particular expression.</p> - -<p>"Well, we'd better get on with it," Dundon said, and reached out a -hand toward the colonel, without looking at him. "Do you have the -lieutenant's records?"</p> - -<p>The colonel reached quickly into his inside coat pocket, drew out a -long folded envelope which he laid in Dundon's hand. The small man -hefted it, looked briefly inside.</p> - -<p>"Hell," he said curtly. "Got to save time. If we have to brief him and -get ready I can't go through all this. What's the story?"</p> - -<p>Before the colonel could say anything Dundon looked at the lieutenant -with a wide, amiable, thoroughly unexpected smile. "Don't mind us son, -no time for manners. Have a cigar."</p> - -<p>The lieutenant politely refused. The colonel took off his coat and -began to dry himself out, talking as he moved.</p> - -<p>"Well, as far as I can recall, here's the poop. His name is Augustus -Webster Hilton, Second Lieutenant, RA, out of Fort Benning. He's six -foot six and a half, weighs two hundred and forty some odd pounds. Age: -25. Nickname: Web. AGCT score of 145."</p> - -<p>Dundon's eyes lifted.</p> - -<p>"He's got a head on him," the colonel agreed. "Army record superior to -excellent. Present assignment instructing in orbits and trajectory -at Base Training. Qualities of Organization, Leadership very high. -Excellent officer material."</p> - -<p>A slight fleeting frown crossed Dundon's face.</p> - -<p>"Defects," the colonel said coolly. "Several minor, no major. Minor -include a tendency to irk his superiors by failure to consult, by -failure to keep his opinions to himself. Nothing unusual for the age, -of course. Other defects are his size"—the lieutenant sat without -moving through all of this—"and his blood type. He's got some rare -kind of thing for which plasma is almost never available. That keeps -him from front line duty."</p> - -<p>The colonel stopped, began slowly to light a cigarette.</p> - -<p>Dundon looked at him oddly.</p> - -<p>"Nothing else?"</p> - -<p>The colonel shook his head.</p> - -<p>Dundon was suddenly flushed. "Wait a minute, son," he said to the -lieutenant, and then he took the colonel by the arm and led him briskly -into a corner.</p> - -<p>"What the hell is this?" he hissed angrily, lowly, into the colonel's -ear. "This boy looks like one hell of a good officer, what—"</p> - -<p>The colonel held his finger to his lips, gestured cautiously.</p> - -<p>"I couldn't tell you in front of him, chief."</p> - -<p>"Couldn't tell me what? Listen, I'm not goin' to kill a young kid -like—"</p> - -<p>"It's Security. The major defect is Security."</p> - -<p>Dundon quieted.</p> - -<p>"What did he do?"</p> - -<p>"Nothing he did. Chief, you won't like this. But it makes a big -difference. You know the way Security is. They checked this boy all -the way back to the cradle, found out things about him he doesn't know -himself. His history checked all right, no trouble anywhere, except for -his father. According to the records, he doesn't have any."</p> - -<p>Dundon cocked an eyebrow. The lieutenant, unhearing, sat without -looking at them.</p> - -<p>"His mother claims to have married a man named Bruce Hilton in Chicago -in 1930. There's no record of the marriage. Also, none of her friends -ever met him. She went away from her home town—Evanston—and stayed -for a year and came back with a baby, a wedding ring, and a very sad -tale of a husband who died. There's no record of the death of any Bruce -Hilton. She made up the name obviously. Her maiden name Finnerty."</p> - -<p>Dundon stared. "So what the hell—" he began, but the colonel cut him -off.</p> - -<p>"So nobody knows. Just the boy's mother and Security. But Security has -a special tab for cases like this. They figure like this: suppose the -kid gets into a sensitive job, or gets to rank pretty high, and someone -finds out about his, well, lack of parentage. You can't figure it. It -could mean blackmail, it could mean security risk, or it could mean -rumors among officers' wives, and a lot of nonsense like that. I know -it doesn't sound like a thing you should hang a guy on, but, well, you -know Security. They never take a chance. This kid will get to be a -captain, maybe a major, maybe even an L.C. But he has no future in the -army."</p> - -<p>Dundon was looking down studiously at his shoes.</p> - -<p>"So that's what you wanted," the colonel pursued, "somebody competent, -but expendable. Right?"</p> - -<p>Dundon looked up, his gray eyes filled with disgust. And then he -realized that the colonel could not help it, did not like this either, -and he patted him on the arm.</p> - -<p>"Hell of a reason to kill a kid," he said softly, and turned back to -the lieutenant, the man to be killed, who was sitting calmly in his -chair and wondering when the brass was going to get to the point.</p> - -<p>Dundon came back and sat down, and now with great kindness, told the -lieutenant the story.</p> - -<p>And so it was that Web Hilton went out into space, and saw the -uncovered stars, and met the naked man, and became the first man in -history to die more than once.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"You know of course," said Dundon, "that the satellite has been -completed and is in orbit. The first crew went up on 9 September. -Construction was finished on 20 September and the full crew was aboard -within twelve hours. The whole thing went off without a hitch. There -wasn't one thing we hadn't anticipated. We sent the green light to the -president and sat back to wait for the Russians to find out what was -'up.'" He grinned momentarily at his joke.</p> - -<p>"The station was in orbit for a week," he went on, "and we were -in constant radio contact. Furthermore, we had it under radar and -telescopic observation, either one or the other or both, twenty-four -hours a day, from points all over the Earth. Some of that I guess you -know. The purpose is mainly to supplement the station's own radar. We -don't want anything going near that station without our knowing about -it real quick."</p> - -<p>"And we know damn well," he said more slowly, his puzzlement beginning -to show in his voice, "that nothing went near that station."</p> - -<p>Web still waited, not following at all. Dundon sat on the edge of his -desk, beginning to fidget now as he talked. His stubby fingers were -running continually through his thin gray hair, and tightening his tie, -and tugging at his buttons, and toying with the desk top. He had been -under a great strain for a long time and it was obvious.</p> - -<p>"On 28 September," he said evenly, "—now get this—on 28 September, in -the middle of the afternoon, we lost radio contact with the station. -It cut off in the middle of a weather observation, just like that. -There were no background sounds at all, no noise or confusion. Just -silence. We waited, figuring of course that they had blown a tube, or -something, but we didn't hear a thing. After a few minutes we began to -get worried. They didn't come in on the emergency radio either.</p> - -<p>"Radar reported the satellite was still in the regular orbit. Nothing -looked wrong, but we couldn't contact her. After a couple of hours -we began to get panicky. We figured a small meteor had hit her. A -big one would have knocked her out of orbit, but a small one might -have penetrated through and knocked out both radios without altering -trajectory to any noticeable extent. We figured that that must have -been it, because by this time five hours had passed and we hadn't heard -a word.</p> - -<p>"So then we managed to get Visual, as soon as it got dark and the -satellite orbited to position. We had a prearranged system of light -signaling to be used in case both radios failed. In the telescopes we -could even see the reflectors sitting right out on the hub, completed -untouched. But we waited all night and we never got a thing.</p> - -<p>"Now dammit, it couldn't have been a meteor!" Dundon began to pace back -and forth and both Web and the colonel followed him, absorbed.</p> - -<p>"The station is shaped like a doughnut, with solid bulkheads all -around. How could one meteor go all around the damn thing, kill -everybody in it, knock out two separate radios, and still not disturb -the orbit. It would take a swarm, obviously, even if you forget about -the orbit, but there would have to be holes. And we had a close up view -of that station, as close as the house across the street, and there -wasn't a hole to be seen.</p> - -<p>"Well, that night we sent up a rocket. Nothing big enough to show -on radar had approached the station, or left it, so the only other -solution was sabotage. One or more of the men we sent up had to be -enemy agents, and they were obviously in control of the station. We had -to make damn sure we got them out real quick. If necessary, we were set -to blow up the station. And then it got worse."</p> - -<p>Dundon stopped, came over and sat down on the desk in front of Web, -looking straight at him, watching his reaction. Web was frozen in his -chair.</p> - -<p>"The rocket," said Dundon slowly, "never came back. It's still up -there, floating along a few yards from the station. We can see it -clearly. Too clearly, damn it. And the interesting part is this: nobody -got out of the rocket. Nobody went into the satellite. The rocket went -up and maneuvered itself into orbit alongside the satellite, and there -it sits. We haven't been able to contact <i>it</i> by radio either."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">II</p> - -<p>There was an icy sting lancing her arm, and then a million furry -brushes began rubbing in her body. In a moment Ivy was totally -paralyzed.</p> - -<p>Black shapes, dripping and lean, picked her up gently, conducted her -through the low hanging trees toward another place where a black square -loomed. The hands were impersonal, but never in her life had she been -touched like this. She was absolutely terrified. A door was opened. -She was laid upon a dark hard floor. In a moment the floor began to -move and she realized through her terror that she was in a truck. But -they left her alone. She lay for a long while upon the floor unable -to think. She could not possibly understand this, the who or the why, -because she had not dreamed about it, or ever even considered it.</p> - -<p>She was a girl of great natural sweetness, born of strict, respected -parents and a strict, respectable life. What was happening now was so -far from reality that she could not believe it. She lay on the floor of -the truck trying to close her eyes, but the paralysis was too great and -she couldn't. The truck drove on through the raining night, bumping, -grinding, carrying her inevitably toward the worst day of terror she -had ever known.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>There was no question of sabotage. The men who went up, swore Security, -were as clean as the driven snow. And in his own mind Dundon agreed. It -was remotely conceivable that one man might just possibly slip through -the incredibly complex Security check, but this was much too thorough a -job. It would require too many men in too many places.</p> - -<p>Dundon's next step was clear. Under the president's signature he had -called for the Air Force file on flying saucers. He was disgusted to -find that the Air Force knew no more than it had published, which was -not very much. The file did, however, reach the tentative conclusion -that "further investigation might well prove fruitful." Dundon was -overcome. He seized a pen and wrote on the report—in great red angry -letters—the indelible words:</p> - -<p>"You bet your sweet—"</p> - -<p>But even further investigation, Dundon realized when he had cooled to -a touchable temperature, would probably not help. You could scan the -skies with telescopes, until you wore your eyeballs down to the bone, -but even if you saw, what could you do? He had a grave conviction that -whoever went up to the satellite would not come down. There was no way -of knowing what was up there or why, and it was a little more than -possible that there was a lethal something about space itself which -would never let Man off the face of the Earth. Not ever, for the rest -of Time.</p> - -<p>But somebody had to go. There was nothing else to do. You could not -build another satellite, or send up another fully manned rocket, not -until you found out what was wrong up there. There was always the -chance that the failures were purely mechanical. Maybe, maybe, whoever -was sent up would get back down.</p> - -<p>And so a man was sent. He had to be a man with a thorough knowledge of -the satellite, with an alert and adaptable mind, and at the same time a -man whose failure to return would be of no great loss to anyone.</p> - -<p>Such a man was Web Hilton.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"Never leave your suit," Dundon said urgently, "not for a damn minute. -You'll have a large supply of oxygen, enough to see you there and back. -Keep your eyes open and report whatever you see. We'll have a line -attached to your suit running back through the rocket and broadcasting -to us. We'll be in contact with you all the way."</p> - -<p>And then he became embarrassed, as a man will in a position where he is -sending someone else into a very dirty thing, and all he can do himself -is nothing. So he said good luck and that was that.</p> - -<p>The ship lifted shortly after midnight. Web rode up encased in his -suit, along with the volunteer pilot who was the rocket's only crew. -He did not speak to Dundon on the way up. He could not have spoken if -he'd tried. But he endured the tremendous acceleration with the patient -joy of a man who is about to do some very fast living. No more classes -in Trajectory for him, no more teaching an endless chain of men no -younger than himself to rise up above him and go out into space. He was -an impatient man, he had always been an impatient man, so he rode out -into blackness with no qualms at all. But he was not a fool. The qualms -began very soon. They began with the sudden end of the acceleration.</p> - -<p>The pilot—Joe Falk—spoke over the intercom to see if he was all -right. He said he was. This was the signal for Dundon, from Earth, to -cut in. They spoke back and forth, not saying very much, with cold -shivers running through them, while Falk maneuvered into position. From -his seat below the pilot Web could see nothing but wires, tubing, and -a heavy stanchion. He waited. Eventually Falk said:</p> - -<p>"Okay Web. In orbit. She's all yours."</p> - -<p>Web took a deep breath. Dundon was speaking in his ear.</p> - -<p>"Now watch yourself and tell me everything you see. Open the door and -let's go."</p> - -<p>Web freed himself from his straps, floated cautiously, hand over hand, -to the hatch. Falk was right behind him. He spun the hatch and opened -it, went through the airlock to the outer door, stepped out into space.</p> - -<p>In the great blazing sea in which he found himself he paused for a -second, immobile. The stars were brilliant beyond belief. He had -forgotten that they would be of different colors, not just dull shades -as seen from Earth, and the fiery reds, the yellows, the cool blues and -blazing oranges stunned him. He held tight to the airlock, absorbing it -all, while Falk came out behind him.</p> - -<p>"God!" Web breathed.</p> - -<p>"Wassamatter, wassamatter!" Dundon was immediately shouting.</p> - -<p>"Nothing," Web said quickly, "I was just looking at the stars."</p> - -<p>Dundon muttered something dark and profane. "To hell with the stars! -Maybe that's what will get you. Man, watch the things that are close!"</p> - -<p>"Okay," Web said with embarrassment, coming to himself and pulling his -eyes away. But this was a sight he could not absorb all at once. He -felt shaken for several minutes, and unutterably alone.</p> - -<p>Off to his right, half-hidden by the bow of the ship, he saw the -satellite. The huge gray ring was revolving slowly, rolling silently -along above the great green plate of the Earth. Beyond it, dimly, he -could see the floating black form of the first rocket. The entire scene -was weird, unbelievable, and incredibly beautiful. He waited again -while Dundon fumed from below, letting the sense of where he was sink -into him. Falk did the same. At last, to Dundon's great relief, they -were able to move.</p> - -<p>They manned the small taxi pod, shoved off carefully in the direction -of the satellite. Falk brought them with a gingerly caution to the -turret of the hub. They had to stop a few feet away because the turret -was revolving, and to try to land the pod while the turret was in -motion was useless.</p> - -<p>"Jump," said Dundon.</p> - -<p>Web gulped. Although he had no sense of gravity, he could not help but -feel the absolute emptiness all around him and beneath him. Between him -and the Earth, straight down, there was a thousand miles of nothing.</p> - -<p>But he rose in the taxi and braced himself. And jumped.</p> - -<p>He shot across space and crashed head on into the turret, came very -close to cracking his helmet against the gray steel. He swore feebly, -but sincerely and with great fright, and clutched for a hold. He had -greatly overestimated the power he needed to cross a space in which -there was no gravity at all.</p> - -<p>But he found a hold at last on a vane of the reflector and hung on -grimly, desperately, for several moments.</p> - -<p>Dundon asked how he was.</p> - -<p>"Delightful," Web muttered, "absolutely delightful." Then he looked -around for Falk.</p> - -<p>The taxi had been kicked quite some distance away, Falk, white-faced -through his helmet, was bringing her slowly back in.</p> - -<p>"Easy when you jump, Joe," Web called. "I like to went right through -this thing."</p> - -<p>Falk grunted. He slipped a rope on the pod and leaped for the turret. -Even warned he came in too hard and Web had to grab at him, wildly, -with one hand. But now the hard part was done and they were aboard. Web -looked around for the airlock.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Web went in alone. There was no need for both of them inside so Falk -waited by the airlock and fed him the radio line. As he spun the wheel -which opened the lock and looked down the long tube into darkness he -began to feel for the first time the perspiration soaking him.</p> - -<p>He took one last look at the whirling stars and then stepped inside the -turret.</p> - -<p>In the turret there was no gravity, but as he climbed down the landing -net toward the rim of the revolving doughnut centrifugal force caught -into him and gave him weight. It was immensely reassuring. He had a -small sealed light at his belt which enabled him to see his way around -and at the base of the turret he came to the main door into the -satellite.</p> - -<p>He stood on the net and regarded the door silently. Now, if there -really was some sabotaging gent on board this thing, right behind this -door now would be where he would be. He would have heard the boots -clump on the steel, there was no doubt about that. And he would not be -hampered by a space suit. Thoughtfully, Web considered the fact that he -had no weapon. No weapon but his size. Up to now, this moment, that had -always been enough, but he had no illusions about what would happen if -there really was somebody alive in there. Still, Dundon would know, and -that was his job after all, to let Dundon know.</p> - -<p>"Well," said Dundon anxiously.</p> - -<p>"Half a mo," Web said. He laid his helmet against the door and -listened. Nothing. If he was inside, he wasn't moving. Which was the -smart thing to do.</p> - -<p>"Okay," Web said, "cross your fingers." He opened the door.</p> - -<p>A great bright light shone out of the opening. For a brief moment he -was startled, until he realized that it was only the normal electric -light of the room, intensified by the black around him. Cautiously, -with his handflash held like a club, he stepped into the room.</p> - -<p>There was nobody behind the door.</p> - -<p>"What's up, what's up?" Dundon called.</p> - -<p>"Nothin'," Web said. "Listen, don't keep getting in my hair. I'll tell -you what happens as I go along. I'm in the receiving room. Nobody here. -But the lights are on."</p> - -<p>The room was bare, metal-floored, lined with lockers. Two of the -lockers were open, and from where he stood Web could see clothing -hanging from pegs. There was nothing unusual about the room. Web -described it to Dundon, walked across the floor to the next door.</p> - -<p>"Don't take your helmet off," Dundon roared.</p> - -<p>"You bet your sweet life," Web grinned. "I have to leave the doors open -a little to let the radio line pass through. The pressure's going down -pretty quick."</p> - -<p>"Oh," said Dundon. And then after a while he said, "Let's hope there's -nobody alive in there."</p> - -<p>"If he is," Web said, "he's somebody we don't need. There's nothing -wrong with the reflector. He could have light-signaled any time he -wanted to."</p> - -<p>Dundon was silent. Web pushed open the door to the next room, which -would be the radio shack, and waited. Then he peeked inside. There was -no one here either.</p> - -<p>"Empty," Web said.</p> - -<p>"Stop for a minute," Dundon said. "Put your helmet against the wall."</p> - -<p>"I already did," Web said, but he did it again.</p> - -<p>"Do you hear anything?"</p> - -<p>"Nope. Quiet as a ... grave."</p> - -<p>"Keep listening as you go along."</p> - -<p>Good idea. And then he thought of another good idea. He called out to -Joe Falk.</p> - -<p>"Yes?"</p> - -<p>"I just wanted to know if you were still out there."</p> - -<p>"I don't leave without one hell of a yell," Falk chuckled.</p> - -<p>"And you don't leave without me either." Web faced the next door, the -tension mounting. He could not get over the feeling that there had to -be somebody aboard. At least there had to be bodies, certainly, because -nothing had left the satellite. Forty-seven men had come up here. The -bodies were probably all pretty close together. He stopped thinking -about that because it only made it difficult to keep on looking. He -opened the next door, and there was nobody there either.</p> - -<p>He began to have an awful suspicion.</p> - -<p>He went cautiously, stealthily, from room to room, made a full round of -the doughnut. He never saw anybody. In some rooms there were a number -of shoes on the floor, and clothes were strewn around haphazardly, the -way men will do when they are living close together. Here was a pipe -lying for no apparent reason in the middle of the floor. Here was a -chessboard, laid out on a table with a game half completed. Everywhere -there was a general sense of confusion, as if these men had suddenly -dropped what they were doing and run away. The further he walked, the -more he saw, the more fantastic it became. In one room he found four -pairs of shoes sitting on the floor, four complete suits of clothes -dropped over them exactly as if—</p> - -<p>"Dundon!" he cried.</p> - -<p>—as if the men in the clothes had ceased to exist.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">III</p> - -<p>Sometime during the night the door of the truck opened and another body -was laid beside Ivy on the floor. Until then Ivy had believed that -whatever was going to happen at the end of this ride would be reserved -for her, and she thought she knew what that happening would be. With -the addition of this new body, however, which was also a girl, Ivy was -not so sure.</p> - -<p>She was completely paralyzed and she could not move a finger. Beside -her the other girl did not move either. But she, this other one, was -also young and pretty, and Ivy began to think through her terror.</p> - -<p>Rape, to Ivy's mind, was the most likely possibility. She fled from the -thought. That she was being abducted for other, more permanent reasons -was also possible, but she had no idea what they could be. Kidnapping -for ransom money was out of the question. Her parents were not wealthy -and she herself had only about thirty-three dollars in the bank. The -only other thing she could think of was that she was being abducted -into white slavery. She made a futile attempt to scream.</p> - -<p>Two more bodies, both young girls, joined her in the truck before -morning. White slavery began to look horribly believable.</p> - -<p>At last the morning came and the truck stopped, and the doors at the -rear were thrown open. Ivy was the first to be lifted out.</p> - -<p>She found herself being carried up the side of a heavily wooded hill, -toward a long low house half-hidden in the pines. She had a chance to -look at the man who carried her, and at the other men who were gathered -at the back of the truck, and one thing struck her immediately.</p> - -<p>All of the men were old. And they all looked strangely alike. They -were quite small and round-shouldered, every one of them, with -large peculiar eyes and thickly lined faces. There was about them -an almost brotherly resemblance, particularly about the nose, which -was invariably tiny, thin and sharp, like a small beak. The eerie -regularity of their faces was unnerving. She began to realize that -there was something here which was more than just abduction.</p> - -<p>She was carried into a long house, and once again she was laid on a -floor in darkness. She could not see anyone else but she could feel the -presence of bodies, row on row of other bodies. Back in the truck she -had tried to cry, but it hadn't worked. She tried again now.</p> - -<p>After a while she felt the paralysis beginning to wear off.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Web was now very tired and he sat down. He had gone through the whole -station and there was nobody aboard. Forty-seven men, all gone. Dundon -had said nothing had approached this station, or left it, but the -forty-seven men had, and that was for sure. And he knew that if he -bothered to check the other rocket, the lonesome rocket that had come -up first, there would be nobody in it either.</p> - -<p>"Web."</p> - -<p>"Yep?"</p> - -<p>"Did you check the space suits?"</p> - -<p>"Yep," Web said wearily. "And I counted 'em. They're all here. All in -the lockers, never been touched."</p> - -<p>"How about the escape pod?"</p> - -<p>"That's here too. But they couldn't have got away in that anyway. Radar -would have seen it."</p> - -<p>Dundon was silent. In the background Web could hear an argument going -on. Some of the really high brass were with Dundon now, listening in. -Well, Web said to himself gravely, but with a trace of cheer breaking -through, the rest is their problem. I've done my job. I think right now -I had better go home.</p> - -<p>He called to Falk, to let him know that he was coming, and began to -retrace his steps, reeling in his radio wire. Falk didn't acknowledge -his call, so he called again.</p> - -<p>"Joe," he said happily, "I'm a-comin'. Let's clear out o' here."</p> - -<p>Falk didn't answer.</p> - -<p>"Joe?" Web said.</p> - -<p>Nothing.</p> - -<p>"Joe?"</p> - -<p>He stopped dead in his tracks.</p> - -<p>"Dundon," he said thickly.</p> - -<p>There was nothing from Dundon either.</p> - -<p>He was completely alone.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In the face of emptiness, surrounded by nothing, as alone as any man -will ever be, Web waited. He heard nothing, saw nothing. Within his -suit the thumping of his heart was an endless chain of bombs. He -decided that he had to get out. He was all the way up the turret before -his mind cleared and the unrushing wave of claustrophobia fell away, -and he realized what had happened.</p> - -<p>Falk hadn't answered. But then, neither had Dundon.</p> - -<p>"Well hell," he said aloud, sweating, "so the radio got disconnected." -The whole thing had gone blank. Now, if it was just Falk who hadn't -answered....</p> - -<p>Weakly, he leaned against the airlock, breathing with huge gulps. A -plug was out in the rocket, or down at the base, or a tube was blown, -and for this reason he had very nearly made a fool of himself. For all -he knew they could hear him. He began to talk anyway, questioning, -liking the sound of his voice in the really absolute silence.</p> - -<p>He stepped out of the turret looking for Falk. He had had a rough day, -and it was time to go home. To his great relief he saw Falk standing a -few feet away on the turret's side, his magnetized soles gripping the -metal and his head looking out toward the stars. He was not hanging on -to anything, he seemed to be totally unconcerned, and his arms were -lifted strangely.</p> - -<p>Web whistled. Now there, he said to himself, is a man with nerve. He -slipped hand over hand down the turret to get to Falk and the taxi.</p> - -<p>Falk didn't move as he approached. Falk just kept looking at the stars.</p> - -<p>"Come on boy, Web said aloud, let's get moving." He came up and laid -his helmet against Falk's, so they could talk to each other.</p> - -<p>But he didn't say anything.</p> - -<p>Directly in front of his eyes was the plate of Falk's helmet, and -inside the helmet was nothing.</p> - -<p>Web withdrew. The empty suit before him swayed slightly as he brushed -it.</p> - -<p>This is ridiculous, Web said. I'm going nuts.</p> - -<p>Around him moved the whirling stars.</p> - -<p>I'm screwy as a jaybird, Web said.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The arrival of Kunklin and Prule was neither coincidental nor -particularly fortunate. There is an indescribable something which a -spaceship traveling at speeds beyond light does to the fabric of space, -warping, shredding, leaving a trail which lasts for many days. Kunklin -did not need a great deal of luck to pick it up, as he did, just a -short way in from Alpha Centauri. He was equipped with a ship of the -Central Repair Command, one of the most diversely powerful mechanisms -ever produced by a living mind. Thus Kunklin and Prule arrived with -great haste, but with no great luck. They were too late to prevent the -deaths of the forty-seven men—for death it was—or the death of Joe -Falk.</p> - -<p>And so it was that while Web was sitting numbly on a projection of the -turret, making a mortal effort to control himself, he became watched, -in turn, by two separate sets of alien eyes.</p> - -<p>The first set of eyes—which were more or less human in structure, -differing only in their purple color—belonged to Kunklin and Prule. -They had swept in a wide arc around the crescent-lit limb of the Moon, -and halted at a discreet distance to survey the terrain before going -in. Telescopes of an impossible resolving power picked out first the -station, then the rockets, and eventually Web Hilton. Because they had -a knowledge of the aliens, and of the type of crime that the aliens -would commit, they knew at a glance what had happened aboard the -satellite.</p> - -<p>But, at the sight of it, Kunklin was startled.</p> - -<p>"A space station!" he cried. "Well I'll be jetted." And not yet having -noticed the empty suit of Falk—the arms of which had begun to float -out helplessly, like a beggar—Kunklin regarded the doughnut with a -delighted interest.</p> - -<p>Prule, a square, gloomy man who was always the more sober of the two, -grunted darkly.</p> - -<p>"They put up a space station right in the midst of being plundered, -poor devils. They must have walked right into it."</p> - -<p>It was Kunklin's turn to be sombre.</p> - -<p>"There's been killing."</p> - -<p>"Undoubtedly," Prule growled with disgust. "The Faktors could not allow -these people to be in space. They would see too much. Note the empty -suit...."</p> - -<p>It was at this point that Web stepped out of the turret and saw Falk.</p> - -<p>Kunklin watched curiously.</p> - -<p>"A Faktor?"</p> - -<p>"No. One of the people of this planet. Note the primitive equippage." -Pause. "This is extraordinary."</p> - -<p>"You mean because he's alive?"</p> - -<p>"Of course. The others are dead. Why is this one still alive?"</p> - -<p>Kunklin was the younger one, cocky and in many ways indolent, but he -had by far the quicker mind.</p> - -<p>"He is alive," Kunklin said swiftly, "because he is a Galactic. Let us -go down."</p> - -<p>The second set of eyes that was observing the satellite did not see Web -come out of the turret. The brain behind those eyes was rejoicing as it -approached the satellite. The plundering was very nearly done. All that -remained now was a brief investigation, and then destruction of this -station, and the bone and blood and magnificent flesh of these people -would remain in free supply below, unwarned and unaware.</p> - -<p>The alien landed on the skin of the doughnut, switched off his gravity -pack, and walked cheerfully around toward the turret.</p> - -<p>And at the turret, of course, Web Hilton was still sitting, slowly -regaining his mind. It was at that moment occurring to Web that if -there was a logical explanation for all this it would not be found up -here, or by him, and he was just then considering the quickest way down -to Earth—via rocket or escape pod in the station. He had not quite -made up his mind when he saw the alien.</p> - -<p>It is difficult to say which of them was the most surprised.</p> - -<p>The alien had been under the impression that anything human that had -been on the satellite no longer existed. Indeed, there was no possible -way that anything human could exist on the satellite. So therefore, Web -Hilton was not human. The alien was shocked.</p> - -<p>But for Web, who had recently undergone some extraordinary events, this -was by far the most fantastic of all. For the alien was an adaptation. -An artificial oxygen-producing mechanism in his chest, together with -silicone-adapted skin and a number of similarly ingenious devices, -enabled the alien to walk freely in space, which he did clad only in -a short white cloth and a gravity pack. And what Web saw come walking -toward him over the surface of the station, in open space, with the -moon and the stars for a background, was a naked man. The alien wore no -space suit.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus.jpg" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>The door behind him was open, Web fell back into the turret.</p> - -<p>When a great many impossible things have happened to a man within a -very short time there comes a jumping-off place. The man jumps outside -himself and continues to survive by examining the whole thing from -outside, with a sort of awed detachment. It was this way with Web.</p> - -<p>"I am nuts," he kept saying to himself, insistently, as he rolled down -the landing net and came up with a thump against the door below. But he -did not feel nuts. His mind had been numbed and dulled at the edges, -but for some reason now outside it he was thinking very clearly. For -the disappearance of everybody there was no explanation, but for the -appearance of the naked man there had to be. The suspicion which he had -first heard back at the base, over many a beer, was truth to him now, -because he had to believe his eyes or go mad. And there was only one -thing the naked man could be. An alien. A thing from another world, as -the movies put it. A thing with cunning and science. A thing that had -destroyed Falk.</p> - -<p>Now think, he said to himself carefully, bolting the door behind him. -You are no match for them. You don't know how many of them are out -there or what they have. Maybe this is the first time they know you are -alive and somehow they missed you when they got Falk. So get out.</p> - -<p>GET OUT.</p> - -<p>He raced through the station, heading for the escape pod. He had to -get down to Earth. With what coherence he could muster, he had to tell -somebody about this, although it did not yet make any sense. But it -would, it would, it would have to. The naked man had been a man, yes, -but he had white round marble eyes and a knifelike, inhuman nose. If -they were on Earth, his kind could be found.</p> - -<p>Web lowered himself into the escape pod, strapped himself down and -pressed the button. The pod shot down from the station, down and -away, and a great orange flame spread out from its bow. It lost speed -quickly, steadily, as the rockets pushed it back. After a while the -flames died out. The pod began to fall.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">IV</p> - -<p>Just as Ivy could feel the ability to move returning, the old men came -for her. She realized with despair that they knew quite well how long -the paralysis would last. They helped her to her feet and walked her -out of the building. Their hands were dry and raspy and surprisingly -strong.</p> - -<p>Outside it was late in the morning and the sun was high. She was on the -side of a mountain, looking down into a peaceful valley. They led her -around the low building into a shaded area farther up the mountain, -where she saw several more buildings, much smaller than the first. The -first, she thought, was a clearing house.</p> - -<p>"How do you feel?" said the man on her left, grinning. "Do you feel -very good?"</p> - -<p>He stressed the 'good' for a reason she did not understand. Apparently -the word meant something to him. His grin was wide and his teeth showed -remarkably white and firm. The other old man was grinning too.</p> - -<p>"I'm hungry," she said. She did not ask these men why she was here. She -thought she knew, and if she didn't she would find out soon enough.</p> - -<p>"Very soon," the first man said, "if you are good enough."</p> - -<p>Now again she did not know what he meant, but this was more obvious. -The way he spoke, his grin fading, was particularly horrible. Before -she had a chance to say anything more she was ushered into one of the -small buildings beneath the trees.</p> - -<p>She found herself in a room with several terrified girls, and two more -of the old men. These looked even older and were much more businesslike.</p> - -<p>One by one, too frightened to struggle, the girls were stripped. -Like doctors, the two old men examined them clinically. There was an -oldness, a foul and slimy something about these gaunt men that was -almost overpoweringly horrible. She wanted to run, or to scream, or -just to fight, but she held herself in and waited for the right moment.</p> - -<p>She was allowed to take her clothes off herself, was pushed and prodded -for several grisly moments. At last she was led naked into another -room, where a massive machine of glass and metal was wheeled into place -above her, and set to a deep, jarring hum. After a few seconds she was -given back her clothes. Then she was taken outside into the sun again, -where the other girls stood waiting.</p> - -<p>The same two old men took her arms.</p> - -<p>One bent over and looked closely into her eyes, his nose almost -touching hers. He was grinning now with great joy.</p> - -<p>"You were good enough," he said happily, "now you will eat."</p> - -<p>She stared at him, revolted as his dry rough hand ran down her arm. -Then she saw something which made her understand.</p> - -<p>Five girls had been in the building with her.</p> - -<p>Only three had come out.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The controls of the escape pod were pre-set. It checked its fall with -controlled, measured bursts, fell quickly and steeply until it bounced -off the atmosphere. Once in the air the stubby wings took hold and the -pod began to glide, blasting from time to time to slow itself down. -There was no light in the pod, and Web rode all the way down in a -silent, rushing, horrible blackness. He had plenty of time to consider -the fact that the pod had never been used before. It had never even -been tested. Well, he thought philosophically, if it did not work he -would undoubtedly never feel the end.</p> - -<p>That did not help at all. He waited, falling.</p> - -<p>Not long before the pod hit he began to hear the air scream past, and -he braced himself. The braking rockets cut loose for the last time. -There was one great rending crash, a series of enormous pops like corks -being pulled on the biggest bottles in the world, and a really awful, -shattering, bone-mangling impact. And then the pod was down.</p> - -<p>In the last moment Web had closed his eyes. When he opened them he saw -light streaming in through a large crack above him.</p> - -<p>It's all busted up, he told himself dazedly. Better get out. He -unbuckled his straps and poked himself fearfully. The hammock had held -well enough, but it had been designed for a much smaller man. When the -pod hit he had sort of flowed over the edges of the hammock, there were -long numb lines all over his body.</p> - -<p>But the pod might just possibly decide to burn. He crawled out -painfully, but as quickly as possible.</p> - -<p>Outside it was mid-afternoon. A desert afternoon. The sun was high and -white-hot, blinding. He closed his eyes, trying to accustom himself -to the glare. He thanked both God and the engineers that the pod had -apparently come down where it was supposed to come down—in the great -empty area in Arizona. Radar would have followed him down, therefore -rescue trucks were already on their way. They would cross the rough -terrain in a couple of hours. A helicopter should be here even sooner. -He breathed deeply and a bit more easily, beginning to feel much better.</p> - -<p>It occurred to him at last that he still had on his space suit. He took -off the helmet, regretted it almost instantly.</p> - -<p>The air-scorched skin of the pod by his side was glowing a brisk cherry -red, radiating slow thick waves of boiling air. Web walked quickly away -in the sand. The October sun was hot, but the pod was even worse. He -looked around in the desert, beginning now to feel very tired, looking -for a place to shelter himself, to rest until the relief came.</p> - -<p>He walked off over the nearest rocky hill, searched among the huge -boulders. Distances were deceptive. He had walked quite a way before he -found two gray slabs which leaned together and formed a dark opening -beneath. He made sure that he could see enough of the desert to know -when the relief trucks came. Then he crawled inside.</p> - -<p>He had just settled himself to wait, his eyes closing, when the pod -blew up.</p> - -<p>The sound came at him like a thundering wall. He whirled to face the -desert.</p> - -<p>Where the pod had been rose an enormous, greasy, ball-topped cloud. The -explosion was overwhelming. The whole land shook as the concussion -rolled over him, the sky and the air were black around him. After -a while the dirt and the rocks began to rain down in a heavy brown -splatter and he huddled in the rocks.</p> - -<p>Atomic. They were after him.</p> - -<p>He started to rise, agonized and tensed, thinking about the aliens and -about radioactivity. But before he reached his feet his mind took hold -of him and he stopped.</p> - -<p>There was no where to go. If he stepped out into the open he would be -seen at once, seen from practically any distance. He looked up into the -sky, past the tall black column of smoke. Nothing.</p> - -<p>He sat. Maybe they hadn't followed him down. They might not have had -time for that. Friction was friction, they could travel through the air -no faster than he could. So probably what they had done was send some -kind of missile after him. It could not have come down much faster than -the pod, it would have burned up, so what it had done was give him just -enough time to get out. He thanked God that he had.</p> - -<p>He leaned weakly against a rock. After a moment he crawled as deeply as -he could into the darkness. There was still no place to go. The aliens -might be very close, and he could take no chance on missing the relief -trucks.</p> - -<p>He was becoming rapidly very tired. If he did not want to have to walk -all the way out of the desert, he would have to stay right here. Boy, -he said to himself painfully, wearily, you got big trouble. He sat down -to brood, too tired to remind himself that he had volunteered for this -business.</p> - -<p>In a few moments he was deeply asleep.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>When he awoke it was dark and quite cool and the stars were out. He -was instantly alert, peering off into the blackness, listening for the -rescue trucks. He crawled out from the rocks and stood up, peered off -into the night.</p> - -<p>There was no moon, but off in what would be the east was the first -bluish glow of the rising sun. That told him at least how long he had -slept, and he kicked himself. It was somewhere between four and five in -the morning. The truck would have been here long ago.</p> - -<p>He walked away from the rocks, looking for a high point on which to -stand. They wouldn't have gone away, damn it, they'd have enough sense -to stay and look around. Although if they thought he had been in the -pod....</p> - -<p>Holy smoke, he said with a sad despair, I've got to walk home.</p> - -<p>He hadn't eaten for a day and a half. He hadn't had anything to drink -either, or even a cigarette. He was beginning to feel it. He made his -way up through the rocks to a high, flat bulge, stretched himself up -and peered out hopefully.</p> - -<p>The trucks rose up about a mile away. Three black hulks, vague and -square and unmoving.</p> - -<p>Web shouted out hoarsely, with relief and delight. He stumbled back -down the rocks in the darkness, reached the soft sand and began to run -like a sprinter. They'd waited, bless 'em. The sound of a human voice -would be, at this moment, magnificent. He could taste the hot coffee as -he ran, the steaming hot coffee and the rolls. They were probably all -around him, searching. He shouted.</p> - -<p>Nobody answered. It was becoming light quite quickly and although the -ground was still dark the silhouettes of the trucks stood out black and -clear as he came over the last rise.</p> - -<p>He stopped in his tracks, kicking up sand.</p> - -<p>The trucks were wrecked.</p> - -<p>He crouched tensely, feeling for a gun that wasn't there.</p> - -<p>Nothing moved in the blackness around him. The trucks were all black -and empty. After a moment of waiting in the deep silence he moved -forward slowly.</p> - -<p>The first truck had crashed head on into a flat rock wall. The second -lay on its side in a steep ditch to the right of the road. The third -lay right behind it. The only one that was apparently untouched was the -halftrack.</p> - -<p>It was standing alone halfway up a sand hill to the south, its nose -pointed up at a sharp angle. All of the trucks were empty. But in the -half light he couldn't be sure.</p> - -<p>He walked up to the halftrack, looking for the bodies.</p> - -<p>There weren't any. When he had looked around for a few moments, he -realized what had happened. The men had all disappeared.</p> - -<p>He was a little more ready for it now, but it was by no means easy to -take. On the seat of the halftrack he found two fatigue caps, two twill -shirts, two pairs of pants.</p> - -<p>On the floor were the shoes and socks. The men had disappeared rapidly, -while the trucks were still moving.</p> - -<p>Web looked up into the sky.</p> - -<p>None of the stars were moving.</p> - -<p>But the aliens would be coming back soon. He climbed into the -halftrack, threw out the clothes and started the engine. The thing -had stalled, probably, running off by itself up a hill. He was lucky. -The motor turned over. He was going quickly away, in no particular -direction, when he remembered food.</p> - -<p>He stopped the halftrack and looked in the back.</p> - -<p>Towing apparatus, to take the pod back.</p> - -<p>He groaned.</p> - -<p>The second truck had burned, was still hot, but the third was intact. -He found some K-rations and an untouched thermos, opened the thermos -immediately and gulped down a huge draught of pleasantly warm coffee. -With the coffee in him he felt much better and began to think.</p> - -<p>He would have to get out of here damn fast.</p> - -<p>But where? In the least likely direction.</p> - -<p>Which was?</p> - -<p>In the opposite direction to the base?</p> - -<p>No. At right angles. Better yet, at any old angle. Neither directly -toward home, nor directly away. Not by any means toward the nearest -town.</p> - -<p>So just run.</p> - -<p>But first cigarettes—and money.</p> - -<p>He rifled the first pair of pants he found, then another. The second -had belonged to an officer. In a moment of sudden clarity, realizing -the uselessness in town of the overalls he now wore, he took the full -uniform with him. He did not think about the man that had been in them. -He was coming fully awake now, beginning to realize the jam he was in. -He had as much chance of getting out of this desert alive as a crippled -snail.</p> - -<p>He started up the halftrack and drove off over the sand at an even -eighteen miles an hour.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"There he goes," said Kunklin. "What is that thing he is driving?"</p> - -<p>"Extraordinary," Prule agreed. "You'd think that even with their -primitive technology these poor souls would have reasonably comfortable -conveyances."</p> - -<p>"And faster," Kunklin said. "The Faktors will be back."</p> - -<p>"Where are they now?"</p> - -<p>"North. They reason, obviously, that he has slipped through on the -ground. They are taking no chance on the bong having missed, which -is characteristically thorough. They are fanning out from the North, -beginning to ring the desert."</p> - -<p>"There is no hurry then. If the Faktors think he is a Galactic they -will be very discreet, very cautious."</p> - -<p>Kunklin turned from the eyepiece, his handsome face lighted with -interest.</p> - -<p>"Listen, now there's a thing we'll have to discuss. Could this man be a -Galactic?"</p> - -<p>"Fully? No, of course not," Prule sniffed. "A Galactic run from a -Faktor? Humph!"</p> - -<p>"But he undoubtedly has Galactic blood," said Kunklin cheerfully, "else -how do you explain his escape from the satellite?"</p> - -<p>"True," said Prule seriously, "but that is not particularly -extraordinary. He has Galactic blood. So do hundreds of humanoid -peoples on hundreds of worlds. As long as we allow tourists to visit -any world they choose, whether it's aware of us or not, we will -continue to find people with traces of Galactic blood. This is a -failing of human nature which I expressly—"</p> - -<p>But Kunklin was grinning widely.</p> - -<p>"You mean his father?—"</p> - -<p>"Or mother," Prule said dourly. "Either party might well have been at -fault. It is not difficult to conjecture. A tourist drops in on this -planet, notes the—ah—male or female, as the case may be—to have a -certain measure of attraction, and the normal processes ensue. Most -likely, of course the tourist was his father. A Galactic mother would -have done—ah—whatever it is that—ah—well of course."</p> - -<p>Prule, who was something of a moralist, became somewhat flustered. -Kunklin, who was young and handsome and no moralist at all, grinned -lecherously.</p> - -<p>"Well, by Cosmos! This is really cute. I'll bet he doesn't even know!"</p> - -<p>"In all probability. Since the laws decree silence, it is not likely -that even his mother knew."</p> - -<p>Kunklin looked back at the halftrack, chortling.</p> - -<p>"Well, really, we have to look after him. Blood brother, I think the -phrase goes."</p> - -<p>Prule drew himself up with great dignity.</p> - -<p>"Agent Kunklin, we must look after them <i>all</i>. There must be no more -killing. First the satellite, then the trucks, then the helicopter—"</p> - -<p>"Was there a helicopter?"</p> - -<p>"Yes. I was too late to save it. Although I did remove the small Faktor -ship that destroyed it."</p> - -<p>Kunklin brooded.</p> - -<p>"Well now, really, it's about time we did something, don't you think?" -Prule said.</p> - -<p>Kunklin nodded.</p> - -<p>"Yes. Unfortunately, there is only one thing we can do."</p> - -<p>"Use the Earthman? Um. I had expected that."</p> - -<p>"What other course is there? They think he's a Galactic. They'll try -to get him in any way possible, to stop a patrol ship from arriving on -the scene. And we, already here, have no way of knowing where on this -planet they are, where they've cached their—uh—spoils. Hence we must -follow the Earthman."</p> - -<p>"Well, after all, it is his planet," Prule said.</p> - -<p>"His <i>women</i>," Kunklin corrected.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Late in the afternoon the halftrack struck a road. It climbed up onto -it and Web pressed full speed to thirty. He had considered hiding the -halftrack somewhere during the day and going on at night, but there was -really no place to hide, and the aliens would probably double back and -find the halftrack missing and come looking for it very soon, and they -could probably see in the dark anyway. So he got out of the desert as -quickly as he could.</p> - -<p>In all, three separate scouting crews found him in the first four -hours. They died silently, above him, without him being even slightly -aware of their existence.</p> - -<p>He had plenty of time to think. The big mystery, of course, was why in -hell he hadn't disappeared along with everybody else. The damn things -certainly wanted to kill him, or why had they followed the pod down? -Well somehow, they had missed him. And he had been so doggone lucky up -until now that he was beginning to feel invulnerable. He considered the -whole business from beginning to end, trying to figure out what they -were and why they wanted nobody in the satellite.</p> - -<p>They wanted no Earthmen in space.</p> - -<p>Then why didn't they just blow the thing up?</p> - -<p>Maybe they were worried about starting a war. Maybe—yes—they wanted -nobody up there because anybody up there could see what they were -doing, would give an alarm, but a full scale war would be the worst -thing that could happen, because they were undoubtedly somewhere on -Earth right now, and they would be caught in the middle of it.</p> - -<p>After that much thinking he was through. In the end, of course, there -was no way of knowing, but whatever it was they wanted it was certainly -pretty bad. Bad enough to kill him, which was all the bad he needed.</p> - -<p>He pushed the halftrack at full speed down the road.</p> - -<p>In the next town he stole a car. He did it quite simply, not bothering -to explain, because he was in something of a hurry. He approached the -car he wanted as it was standing at the curb, as its owner, a small, -beefy man with a greasy shirt, was just getting out. He took the keys -away from the man and took the car.</p> - -<p>At the first town he came to he parked the car quickly, headed for the -nearest phone booth, and tried to call Dundon.</p> - -<p>He couldn't get through. Neither Dundon nor the colonel were -"available," and there was no one else there who knew who he was, or -what he was doing. And he could take no time to explain. Dundon and -the Colonel were probably out looking for him. He swore thoroughly, -but all he could do was leave his name, and ask for the message to be -left that he had called, and was in the town of Huntsville. It was a -heck of a situation, but he was stuck. Who would send an escort for a -drunk-sounding second lieutenant?</p> - -<p>He walked out of the booth, realizing that he must forget about the car -outside, and now that he had spent a few consecutive seconds in one -place he felt a deep nervousness beginning. He searched through the -people around him, expecting any moment the coming of wide, white eyes -and knifelike noses. But the people here were all apparently human.</p> - -<p>Although you couldn't know. Easy to disguise eyes with contact leases.</p> - -<p>He left a store, found a hotel room. He could not seek safety with the -police. They would all disappear. Anyone he went to would disappear. -There was nothing to do now but hide. He lay down on a bed and waited.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">V</p> - -<p>The food they gave her was thick red meat, half-cooked. They sat down -beside her, three of the old men, together in a small bare hut. None of -them ate. They watched her, grinning, speaking lowly and incoherently -among themselves.</p> - -<p>She felt like a blue-ribbon heifer. Best of breed. She found out that -she couldn't eat very much.</p> - -<p>"Food," an old man said with concern, pointing at her plate. He -apparently knew less English than the rest. "Food," he repeated -insistently, making the motions of eating.</p> - -<p>"No," Ivy said. She rose up suddenly and shook her head. "I don't want -any." If they wanted her to eat, maybe she'd better not eat.</p> - -<p>Maybe there was something in the food—</p> - -<p>They looked her over thoroughly as she stood before them, grinning -horribly. They were not too concerned that she did not eat. Later, if -necessary, they would come back with vials and needles.</p> - -<p>The three men rose. One of them motioned the others to leave. They -bowed and walked out, looking back over their shoulders to grin.</p> - -<p>She faced the old man across the low wooden table.</p> - -<p>"It is perhaps time that you learn why you are here," the old man said -quietly. His English was perfect. His face was detached, unsmiling.</p> - -<p>She waited.</p> - -<p>"You are to be used for breeding," the old man said.</p> - -<p>She stared, not understanding.</p> - -<p>"I will be brief," he said, still quietly, his eyes white and steady. -"The sooner you realize the nature of our purpose the sooner you will -be content. There is no virtue in resistance. We can keep you under -paralysis indefinitely"—he smiled slightly—"for the full nine months, -if necessary. Do you understand?"</p> - -<p>She began to back slowly away.</p> - -<p>The old man continued to smile.</p> - -<p>"It is possible that you have already guessed that we are not—human. -If not I tell you so now. Our race has its origins in a system of which -you have undoubtedly never heard. But that is no matter. Our races are -compatible genetically. In the end you will breed."</p> - -<p>He paused, watching her with a calm amusement. Ivy could not move.</p> - -<p>"Our race is very old, much, much older than yours. It is also, -in a sense, biologically old. In effect, the race is dying. It -has been dying for quite some time. We have managed to keep -ourselves—virile—by use of the obvious method. It is for this reason -that we are here. We need new blood. Young blood. We must interbreed."</p> - -<p>He walked slowly and calmly around the edge of the table.</p> - -<p>"You have been chosen to bear our children. This is no particular -honor, I know, but I will repeat that you cannot possibly succeed in -resisting. Be practical, perform your function. If you are tractable, -you will be given much. If you are stubborn, you will be paralyzed. -You will not under any circumstances be killed or allowed to die. You -will have company. We have—collected—many of your race, both male and -female. You will not, of course, be allowed association with the males."</p> - -<p>He turned and strode to the door. He paused with his hand on the knob, -his smile grew wide and his teeth showed.</p> - -<p>"I think it best that you be paralyzed now."</p> - -<p>Ivy still could not move. There was in all this a dreamlike quality -which she could not believe. Within her mind she slowly retreated.</p> - -<p>The old man opened the door. Two men who had been waiting came quickly -in, clutched her, injected her. In a moment she lay on the floor, the -drug hanging heavily on her wildly pulsing heart.</p> - -<p>The first old man stood over her, pulled out a small notebook.</p> - -<p>"You are lucky," he said, with an ironic smile, "I think I will breed -you myself."</p> - -<p>He bent down and touched her. The white eyes grew dark at the edges.</p> - -<p>"I think I will breed you tomorrow," he said.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The scout ship of the Galactics hung in a hole in space several feet -in the air above Main Street. The bending mechanism was on, light rays -were diverted around it. It was invisible, unapproachable, although it -admitted enough light so that it itself could see. Kunklin and Prule, -who were for a while similarly almost nonexistent, floated down from -the ship and walked away curiously in the middle of the street. They -adjusted themselves to solidity in the alley behind Web's hotel. The -power necessary to maintain the bender was enormous, and had to come -from portable power sources, and they decided that it would be best -to save power for emergencies. Prule searched for a moment through a -small, voluted lens. He found Web.</p> - -<p>"What's he doing?"</p> - -<p>"Nothing."</p> - -<p>"Ingenious man. Is he armed?"</p> - -<p>"No."</p> - -<p>"Um. We cannot permit him to be killed."</p> - -<p>"Well, he is apparently very strong."</p> - -<p>"There are times when that helps."</p> - -<p>"Still, we had better record him."</p> - -<p>"Wait. He's coming down."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It was time to do something. Web did not know what, but he had to do -something. There was a phone in the shabby little foyer, but he passed -it by. It had occurred to him that Dundon would be no help at all. He -stepped out into the street.</p> - -<p>He had a strong fleeting impulse to tell somebody, anybody, just for -the companionship of another human being. Immediately, the thought -passed.</p> - -<p>"I have just come down from a space satellite," he would say, "where -I encountered forty-seven disappearing men and a naked man in open -space—"</p> - -<p>He looked around for the nearest drugstore. It was quite dark in the -streets and he was not too conspicuous in the tight army clothes—a -field jacket will fit an elephant—but he could not help feeling like a -neon sign. But a gun. He needed a gun, and a quick way out of here.</p> - -<p>Hell, where could you get a gun?</p> - -<p>From the police.</p> - -<p>He looked around seriously and purposefully, but no blue coat was near. -He walked into the drugstore.</p> - -<p>At the counter there were five people. All with their backs turned. The -counter man was a young boy with a fat nose. Web slipped into the phone -booth, deciding on an impulse to call Dundon anyway. It was possible -that he would die soon, and there ought to be someone who knew about -the naked man.</p> - -<p>In his pockets were a half dollar and three pennies. No other change. -He swore.</p> - -<p>At that moment he looked up out of the booth, saw a small, dry man walk -stiffly into the store.</p> - -<p>He froze.</p> - -<p>There was something—</p> - -<p>The man looked around, saw him.</p> - -<p>The man was old, his face was expressionless. His eyes were all right, -were dark and usual, but his nose was alien.</p> - -<p>There was no doubt about that. To any other human it would look merely -odd, but to Web it was alien. Knifelike and alien.</p> - -<p>They stood facing each other across the few feet of store. Web reached -again for the gun he did not have. Quickly—but with a gliding -smoothness, in no hurry at all—the alien turned away. He sat down on a -stool at the fountain.</p> - -<p>Web stood for several seconds in the booth, watching.</p> - -<p>He tried to think, but there was no time. Others would be gathering -outside. He fought the impulse to run. After a long moment he opened -the door of the booth and walked out into the store. The alien did not -turn. The huge glass window of the store was unblocked. Web could see -dozens of shoppers pass by in the night. In the crowd there would be -old men. To go out now was foolish.</p> - -<p>He walked over to the fountain and sat down two seats away from the -alien. There was a fat, soda-eating woman between them. He ordered -coffee.</p> - -<p>No way out. They were not likely to come in, but there was no way out. -Through the back door would be useless. Darker, less people. He looked -down toward the alien. The little man was sitting quietly, the glass -untouched before him. The nose was sharp in profile.</p> - -<p>Web made up his mind quickly, in the only way possible. His strength, -his size was his only asset. He would have to use it.</p> - -<p>He paid for his coffee, picked up his change, then stood up and looked -for the light switch. There were four long fluorescent tubes above him, -no chance to break them all. He saw the light switch against the back -wall, then took a deep breath.</p> - -<p>He walked up quickly behind the alien.</p> - -<p>The little man did not move.</p> - -<p>"You," Web said.</p> - -<p>The alien face swung toward him.</p> - -<p>"Get up," Web said.</p> - -<p>The dry face whitened, but the expression did not change and the old -man did not say anything.</p> - -<p>"I asked you to get up," Web said gently. His right hand hung low, Web -clamped down on the alien's frail shoulder and jerked him to his feet. -When the alien opened his mouth, Web hit him low. The man doubled. -Web picked him up and heaved him the full length of the store, in the -direction of the light switch. He leaped after the hurtling body, threw -the switch.</p> - -<p>In the sudden blessed blackness he found the alien's head on the floor, -crashed it down twice with a great, nerveless strength. Frantically, -savagely, while the fat lady screamed and the few other people bellowed -toward the door, he searched the alien's pockets. There was nothing -resembling a gun. What he found he jammed quickly into his own pocket, -then whirled and waited, crouching.</p> - -<p>Outside were shouts, and a crowd was forming. When there were enough -people outside he stood up and ran for the door.</p> - -<p>He weighed two hundred and forty pounds. He came through the door like -a freight express, ripped into the crowd with all the power of his -enormous body. He went through and over, came out the other side, let -out his speed and began to run.</p> - -<p>A light orange flame touched a brick wall near him, glowed briefly on -a car, on a post, on a sign above him. He swerved. There was an alley, -dark and open.</p> - -<p>He ran into it, over the fence at the other end, and through a back -yard. The flame followed in soft bursting balls. He was in another -alley with open light in front of him, when the flame caught up with -him.</p> - -<p>It took him just under the right shoulder blade, burned a hole clean -through him in the space of a second. He died on his feet, still -running.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The recording was made in the drugstore, from an alley a few feet away. -It was made just in time for the Galactics to turn their talents to -other things. Altogether they had observed seven Faktors in the crowd -that gathered in front of the store. Kunklin had already obliterated -the four who lay in wait in the darkness at the rear, and the three at -the hotel.</p> - -<p>It was not difficult. There is no single being in the entire galaxy -with the massed, polarized power of a Galactic repairman.</p> - -<p>They found Web's body in the alley. It was of no use anymore, to -anybody, and was inconvenient. So they dissolved it.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>When Web awoke there was a light gentle clicking in his mind that -he did not follow at all. He lay listening to it for a long while, -gathering himself, creeping out of a thick numbness.</p> - -<p>And then he sat bolt upright.</p> - -<p>He was on a train.</p> - -<p>The clicking was the sound of wheels against rails. He stared at the -room around him, at the open window and the flat green fields rolling -by beyond it. For a moment he was extremely dizzy. He lowered his head -and waited.</p> - -<p>After a while his head cleared and he could stand up. He walked -unsteadily to the window and looked out, saw nothing but fields and -quick-swishing poles. He turned back to the bunk on which he had been -lying. He was alone in the compartment.</p> - -<p>A train?</p> - -<p>How in God's name did he get on a train?</p> - -<p>The last thing he remembered was a numbing crouch, a heart-bursting -need for action. Slowly at first, then with great clarity, he -remembered being on the floor of the drugstore, waiting for the crowd -to gather so he could make a dash for the door.</p> - -<p>But he could not remember moving. He could not remember anything but -crouching. And then—nothing. His memory ended like a burned-out match.</p> - -<p>And there were no bruises or lumps on his head. He felt it carefully -to make sure. The only pain he felt anywhere in his body was a dull, -left-over aching in his side—that had come from the landing in the pod.</p> - -<p>Well somehow, obviously, he had been knocked out.</p> - -<p>But—the train.</p> - -<p>Dammit, hadn't they been trying to kill him?</p> - -<p>It made no sense. Never in his life had his mind just up and gone -blank. But he had not been hit. He had been paralyzed somehow, and -taken out of the drugstore and—</p> - -<p>He put his hand in his pocket. For the first time it occurred to him -that he was wearing different clothes.</p> - -<p>He sat down abruptly, looked down at himself with increasing amazement. -The army clothes were gone. In their place was a stiff white shirt and -brown tweed pants, and a loosely knotted red plaid tie. His eyes leaped -to the door of the compartment. A matching tweed coat, obviously new, -hung from a wire coat hanger.</p> - -<p>Am I me? he asked himself. He was utterly lost.</p> - -<p>Across from the bunk there was a small wash room and a mirror. He went -over and looked at himself. He had not seen himself in a white shirt -for a long time and for a moment it was odd, but then, it was his own -face. There was no change. And he needed a shave.</p> - -<p>He went back and sat down on the bed.</p> - -<p>The minutes ticked by and when he had sat long enough without thinking -of anything at all he caught a firm grip on himself and tried to go -back over the whole thing. It was none of it real, and he immediately -rejected it. He had not gone up in a satellite at all, or driven a -halftrack out of a desert, and there was no naked man—</p> - -<p>Yes he had. He damn well had.</p> - -<p>He was Lieutenant Augustus Webster Hilton, and all of this had -happened. He focused again on where he was.</p> - -<p>A train. Alone.</p> - -<p>Bound for where?</p> - -<p>He moved suddenly, with a baffled, growing anger. One thing at least he -could find out. He stood up and put on the jacket. He was on his way -out to find a porter when he felt the bulge in his pocket.</p> - -<p>Instantly, he remembered the things he had taken from the dead alien. -They had been transferred to the pocket of his new clothes. The -courtesy of it struck him as incredible. He spread the things out on -the bed.</p> - -<p>There was a set of keys, ordinary keys. There was a metallic disc about -the size of a quarter, engraved with meaningless figures. A coin? A -lucky piece? Probably a coin. There was a handkerchief, soiled, and a -small box of pasty white tablets. He put them down immediately. The -important thing was a card. A calling card, on the face of which, -simply printed, were the words:</p> - -<p class="ph1">Albert Bosco, M.D.<br /> -213 Wingate Rd.<br /> -Chicago, Ill.</p> - -<p>The card was white paper, nothing unusual, but he stared at it with -mixed amazement and disbelief. It occurred to him for a rather horrible -second that the man he had killed might conceivably not have been an -alien.</p> - -<p>But no. He recalled the nose clearly. The nose was alien, the man was -alien. And where he had gotten the card, and what use he had for it, -had probably died with him.</p> - -<p>And then, of course, there was no reason why an alien named Albert -Bosco could not be a doctor.</p> - -<p>But that was all he had gotten from the alien's pockets. It was a -curiously ordinary and unexciting mess of nothing, there was no -trace here of anything not human. But it did give him one thing: his -destination.</p> - -<p>And whoever had put him on the train knew that too.</p> - -<p>The first porter he found let slip, luckily, that his name had been -given as Mr. Pringle. Where they got that one, or how they got him on -the train, Web was never to know. And yessir, why sutinly, sir, said -the porter, looking at him oddly, as he had every right to look, this -here now train sho' does stop at Chicago.</p> - -<p>When he left the train at Chicago it was after midnight.</p> - -<p>Dammit, he said to himself bitterly, I got to do everything at night.</p> - -<p>He had planned to dodge around the station a bit before leaving, but -there was no crowd. The place was wide and bare, stony, with a few -night travelers dozing on benches. None of them he could see had sharp -noses.</p> - -<p>But now he was not sure whether they were after him or not, because—</p> - -<p>—who in God's name had put him on the train?</p> - -<p>He brooded for a while in a small coffee shop, but it got more and more -complicated. Since the aliens had not killed him, and in fact obviously -meant for him to go to Chicago and look up this man Bosco, there was -no way to understand the bombing of the pod, or the empty trucks, or -anything. Were there two kinds of aliens, the good guys and the bad -guys? That was possible. His mind opened up. If you accept the presence -of one alien, you might just as well accept dozens.</p> - -<p>And that was quite a thought. As a matter of fact, how many aliens -were there, really? The whole darn world could be shot through with -aliens, skinny ones, fat ones, straight ones, bent ones, maybe all the -odd-looking people he knew were aliens. Maybe even, maybe Dundon was an -alien.</p> - -<p>He looked around furtively. In a coffee shop, late at night and not a -very clean coffee shop, it is remarkable how thoroughly inhuman people -can look.</p> - -<p>He left the shop.</p> - -<p>Well, he had no way of knowing what was up, who was good or who was -bad. But a lot of men had died, and until he knew why, and who did -it, and how, and could protect himself, he was going to trust nobody. -He was not going to walk deserted streets in the middle of the night -looking for Bosco. He hailed a cab for the Statler Hotel. To his -relief, he found that there was a Statler in Chicago.</p> - -<p>He was given a room for which he could not possibly pay if he stayed -here for any length of time, and he thought once more of Dundon.</p> - -<p>He would have to call Dundon. He would explain the last few hours as -some kind of amnesia, during which he had gotten out of the drugstore -safely, bought some new clothes, read the alien's card, and boarded a -train for Chicago, all without knowing it.</p> - -<p>Although that was the most logical explanation, there was an odd -feeling in his mind and he did not believe it. But he decided to tell -Dundon that anyway.</p> - -<p>It was while he was making the call that the Faktors found him again.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">VI</p> - -<p>Toward morning reality began to close in upon Ivy with a cold, numbing -flow. She sat examining the things around her, the wall, the table, the -ceiling. As the morning came on a soft rose crept into the sky. She -went to the plastic window and stood watching the dawn.</p> - -<p>This thing was going to happen.</p> - -<p>The impossibility was fading now as the sun rose and the huts across -the way stepped out of darkness. That old, that horrible thing, that -dry, wrinkled thing....</p> - -<p>She was too much afraid, and revolted, to cry. What followed now was an -animal fear, an animal desperation, and for the first time she felt an -urgent, vital energy gathering within her. She had to get out, she had -to get away. This thing was unbelievable and could not happen at all, -not ever, because she would not let it happen. She moved back from the -window and began to pace her cage.</p> - -<p>And the anger was replaced by a dissolving helplessness. She had no -plan. She searched, thought desperately, pleaded with herself, but she -had no plan. When they came all she could do would be fight, which -would not be enough, and the thing would happen.</p> - -<p>Eventually, because carrying this load in her mind was much too great, -she tried at last to accept it. If she could just endure. She would -have to shut off her mind, like a radio is shut off, and live inside -herself, in silence.</p> - -<p>She knew that would not work either.</p> - -<p>By mid-morning it became obvious that the man was in no hurry, or was -busy. He did not come after breakfast, and she waited out the morning. -She was just beginning to begin to hope when two of the older men, the -guards, came into the hut.</p> - -<p>It was evidently a formal thing, this breeding. They took her clothes, -gave her a single, pale yellow garment which reached not quite to her -knees. She put it on. The two old men were dressed differently today, -in soft pastel robes which were flowing and ridiculous around their -spindly legs. She gathered that today there would be a celebration.</p> - -<p>One of the old men gave her the needle as she stood dressing, before -she had a chance to struggle. She was lain for the last time upon the -floor, to wait for the evening.</p> - -<p>And then, to her great amazement, a calm possession took over her. All -the school girl fear and disgust and revulsion fell away for a moment, -and she examined the situation critically.</p> - -<p>What the hell, she said to herself, startled but at the same time -pleased at the feel of strength in her.</p> - -<p>What was this after all? This was sex, really, so what? It was going to -happen? Well, let it happen. It happened to other women, and it had not -killed them. Now it was going to happen to her, and she would certainly -live through it, and since none of it was her fault, there was merely -a physical thing that took place, like in the old days when girls were -married against their will, so she guessed she could bear it.</p> - -<p>She was shocked at herself. But she felt her sanity, which had slowly -begun to slip away, return with a rush. Her youth did not return with -it. She would have preferred to have her initiation take place in some -other manner, certainly, with someone more suitable, and she knew that -afterwards she might regret it all very much.</p> - -<p>But she had a whole afternoon to pass lying flat on her back and -thinking, and she passed the afternoon in growing up quickly, as -countless women had done before her, helpless and alone, captured in -wax by barbarian soldiers.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"I said this is Hilton, by God! Me. Web. Lieutenant Hilton!"</p> - -<p>It was a little while, understandably, before Dundon got hold of the -idea of the aliens. And then—also with great understanding—Web -decided not to tell him the full story. Not over the phone. In person -it would be bad enough, but over the phone it was too great an effort, -and anyway, he was not really sure that he was himself. He told Dundon -where he was.</p> - -<p>"Chicago? Chicago? Chica—"</p> - -<p>"That's right, chief. Chicago. You got it. I'm in the Statler Hotel. -Incidentally, I need quite a buck to pay my way out. And if you will -come here right away I will tell you what's up."</p> - -<p>Dundon was still asking him about Chicago.</p> - -<p>"At the Statler," Web insisted, "under my own name. Bring money. And -bring an escort. Watch out for old men with sharp noses. What? We've -been invaded. Yes, by little old men with sharp—look, chief, never -mind, come out here and I'll tell you the whole thing."</p> - -<p>With that he hung up.</p> - -<p>At the thought of how Dundon must look, he grew cheerful for the first -time since the whole business had begun. For a risingly happy moment he -began to feel for once like his old gay carefree self.</p> - -<p>I am going to wait, he said happily to himself, until the whole damn -army gets here.</p> - -<p>I am not going to move a foot. I will sleep and eat until the cows come -home, I will load up on scotch and I will lock my door, because, by -heck, I deserve it.</p> - -<p>Because he had had little experience with hotel rooms, especially rooms -of such a lavish nature, he did not think of room service. He strode -through the door gaily whistling, and was halfway to the elevator when -the orange flash cut him down.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Kunklin and Prule joined to rake in twelve more Faktors, and to -dissolve Web once again.</p> - -<p>"This is quite hard on the boy, really," Prule observed reproachfully.</p> - -<p>Kunklin was unmoved. "He doesn't feel a thing. He will never know about -it."</p> - -<p>Prule agreed, but he was a sensitive man, and he sighed. And then he -said:</p> - -<p>"They found him with remarkable celerity, don't you think?"</p> - -<p>"Tracing a Galactic—an unequipped Galactic—is not difficult. The wave -length, of course."</p> - -<p>"Yes, but they had no idea he was coming to this place."</p> - -<p>"They certainly did. They expected him at the center of -operations—which this town must obviously be—sooner or later. When -their men did not return from the desert, or the town, they must have -grown apprehensive."</p> - -<p>"Well, anyway, we don't need this poor fellow anymore. Why don't we let -him go, and mop up ourselves."</p> - -<p>Kunklin grinned righteously.</p> - -<p>"I'm a great believer in letting these people help themselves," he -said. "It seems more sporting that way. He's doing fine so far. I think -we ought to leave him in just to see how far he can go. Really, he does -deserve to be in at the end."</p> - -<p>"I suppose. But you know, we almost didn't finish that last recording -in time."</p> - -<p>It was a sobering thought.</p> - -<p>"We'll have to follow him more closely," Kunklin said, beginning the -work of assembly. "But after all, we're very near the end. I expect we -will be going home—"</p> - -<p>He broke off in mid-sentence as a tall, unusually symmetrical young -woman walked leggily around the corner of the hall. Kunklin was -invisible behind the warp shield, but although she could not see him he -could clearly see her, and his eyebrows rose happily.</p> - -<p>"Um," he began, "it begins to come home to me now why this planet is so -well-visited. First this Earthman's father, then the Faktors—"</p> - -<p>Prule cut him off. Kunklin was a first rate repairman, but he was -also a first rate lecher, a trait he had carried to several harrowing -extremes on other humanoid worlds, to Prule's almost Quakerian sorrow. -Prule soberly pressed him back to work, to the messy job of assembling -Web Hilton from the molecular recording.</p> - -<p>And when Kunklin's head was down and busy, Prule's eyes quickly -followed the pneumatic young lady as she walked down the carpeted hall.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>And now Web was walking down a street in the black night, walking -slowly, without purpose or direction or intelligence. He was aware of -walking for quite some while, numbly, vacantly, as if he was rising -from a long dark tunnel, before he reached the end and came suddenly -alive.</p> - -<p>He stopped in the center of the sidewalk.</p> - -<p>It had happened again.</p> - -<p>Bewildered, he looked around him. There was nothing about the street, -about the long low rows of squat black houses, which was familiar. He -had no reason of his own to come here; he was not even sure he was -still in Chicago.</p> - -<p>He put his hand to his forehead and rubbed his eyes. A feeling of -great emptiness, of being utterly alone in an impossible world, swept -through him. This time his memory went as far as the call to Dundon, no -farther. He had begun to walk from the room, and it was as if he had -walked off a cliff into nothing, into a cloud, and he had emerged from -the other side still walking, only now he was walking on an unknown -street. What happened in between was not in his mind. After a moment he -did not try to remember, because there was not even an association. In -that area his mind was totally empty.</p> - -<p>He gathered himself quickly. There was a great drive inside him -which all the years up to now had not really touched, but now he was -beginning to feel himself move. He was confused. He was alone. But -he was also becoming deeply angry. He was going to find out what had -happened, was happening, and he would do it if it meant searching to -the end of his life.</p> - -<p>He walked quickly to the nearest corner.</p> - -<p>The street he was on was Wingate Street.</p> - -<p>Which was, he recalled instantly, the address of Albert Bosco.</p> - -<p>So he had been directed here. The blank in his mind was not amnesia. -Someone had guided his movements to Wingate Street, had picked him up -out of the hotel like you pick up a toy train that has gone off the -track.</p> - -<p>His anger rose.</p> - -<p>He would follow that trail, all right, and when he reached the end—</p> - -<p>He began to look for the Doctor's house.</p> - -<p>It was a high, narrow building near the end of the block. There was no -light in any of the windows.</p> - -<p>He strode up to the front door without hesitation, forcefully punched -the bell.</p> - -<p>Lights came on upstairs. Something came clumping down the hall toward -the door, opened it.</p> - -<p>Bosco was an old, old man in a shining bathrobe. In the light of the -hall his alien nose was keen and obvious.</p> - -<p>"Emergency," said Web quickly, "are you the Doctor?" He stepped inside -the door before the old man, startled, could answer. He stood poised -upon a thick carpet, listening for sounds from other parts of the -house. The house was silent.</p> - -<p>"I am Doctor Bosco," the old man said weakly, nervously, "what is it -you want? Who sent you to me?"</p> - -<p>"I need your help," Web said. He thought: this one doesn't know me. -"Can you come?"</p> - -<p>"But ... but ... but ... I do not leave this house. I am not ... I -cannot go out. You will have to find someone else." He reached past Web -to open the door again. Web decided to make his move.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The arm reached by him. He closed his hand upon the wrist.</p> - -<p>The alien froze, stared with enormous horror straight up into his eyes. -The wrist in Web's grip was remarkably gaunt and brittle. With a quick -downward motion he could break it, and both of them knew it.</p> - -<p>The old man started to back away, moaned once with a bubbling hum, and -collapsed.</p> - -<p>Web bent down to look at the man. He wasn't dead, but he was out cold. -Scared damn near to death. Web was amused, grinned once very swiftly. -If this was a sample, these aliens weren't much.</p> - -<p>He picked up the old man, light and wispy as a bundle of leaves, and -carried him under one arm into the big living room which opened off of -the hall. He thought better of turning on a light, slumped the old man -on a couch and sat down beside him.</p> - -<p>A street bulb outside the house threw a white soft glow of light into -the room. That was enough to see by for his purposes. He moved over on -the couch to a position from which he could see the door. And then, in -darkness, he waited.</p> - -<p>It was several minutes before the old man moved. Web had time to think, -to form a plan. The first thing that moved in Web's mind was a wonder -of why in heck the old man should have fainted, and then it occurred -to him that this thing here was alien, truly alien, and probably had a -science so far beyond ours as to be impossible to comprehend. He would -undoubtedly be long-lived. Web thought; could just as well be immortal.</p> - -<p>But anyway, no matter what else he was, it was pretty sure that he -lived a long while, and death, any death, was a rare thing among his -people. Hence the unusual, to an Earthman, fear of dying. It figured. -Humans fear dying all right. But a lot of them face it every day as -part of their jobs, because life on Earth must be something like a -jungle compared to the germ-free, war-free, super-sanitary world of the -future. Death to a man like this would be quite a fearful thing.</p> - -<p>And so the collapse.</p> - -<p>And a weapon for Web.</p> - -<p>He smiled in the darkness, cruelly, as the alien stirred. He would find -out from this man whatever he wanted to know.</p> - -<p>Awake at last, with Web above him like a huge black mountain, the old -man nearly fainted again. But he managed to recover slowly, in a state -of really pitiful terror. He had known from the beginning that Web -was not a Galactic—a Galactic would never have approached in person. -The thought helped him to survive. But even then this Earthman was a -barbarian, an unaccountable man with no scruples against killing, and -Web was perfectly right about the fear of death. The alien talked.</p> - -<p>For a while he babbled, but then it began to make sense.</p> - -<p>He told about the coming extinction of his race, and the plan for -interbreeding which would save it. He had been on Earth, he said, for -several years, choosing specimens for test purposes. The tests had -proved positive and the first step of selection was almost completed. -He had been stationed as a real doctor with a real practice, so that he -would have the opportunity of giving preliminary physical examinations -and passing on the names of potentially acceptable candidates. And -there were many doctors like him spread all over the world. Since the -United States was by far the Earth's healthiest country of any size, -most of the selecting had been done right here.</p> - -<p>"But what did you do with the men in the satellite?" Web asked, doing -his best to follow but fast losing ground.</p> - -<p>"How did you know—?" And then the alien almost collapsed again. He had -heard, undoubtedly, of the one man that had escaped from the satellite. -But that had been a Galactic—</p> - -<p>"Why did you do that, kill all those men, and how?"</p> - -<p>Web shook him, the alien yelped feebly, then babbled it out.</p> - -<p>"The satellite was in a very dangerous position. It could see all our -intercontinental travel, the ships we have going and coming daily. It -would undoubtedly warn the planet of what it saw. But we could not -simply destroy it. Blame for that might conceivably be placed on your -enemies, and you are such unstable peop—that is—we—there was no need -for a general war. We could not risk that, being ourselves just as -vulnerable to atomic attack as any life. So we—removed the men on the -satellite."</p> - -<p>"How, dammit, how?"</p> - -<p>When he swore the alien jumped.</p> - -<p>"Through devices which you—if you do not already know, you cannot -be—oh—yes—I will tell, I will tell—" The old man searched -desperately for an explanation. "Your body has—every body is held -together by electric forces. By million upon millions of tiny electric -currents. The atoms of any body are kept in position by a—by an -attraction between them. Now, if that attraction is nullified, the -atoms will drift apart, disperse. The atoms will no longer exist in -any form. That was what happened to the men in the satellite. They -were—turned off."</p> - -<p>Web sat perfectly still for a long moment. Then he said swiftly, -viciously:</p> - -<p>"But why didn't it get me?"</p> - -<p>The alien writhed on the couch.</p> - -<p>"Your blood must be different. We thought you were a Galactic. Your -body chemistry is unusual, your—your charge is different."</p> - -<p>Once again Web sat in silence, trying to follow that. Galactic and -different blood. But he wrenched his mind away. The sun would be up -soon and he would have to be out of here quickly. He would need to know -where their main base was. Then it was the army's turn. Although what -could the army do?</p> - -<p>He got the location out of the old man. It was surprisingly near to -Chicago.</p> - -<p>And the time of the first take-off, the first shipment, would be that -night.</p> - -<p>He rose to leave. Then he turned back to the old man.</p> - -<p>He debated it for a moment, but saw nothing else possible. The old man -knew who he was and where he was going, and what he knew. He could not -leave the old man to warn the others. The old man knew that too, looked -up at him and saved him the trouble.</p> - -<p>He died just before Web's great hands reached him.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">VII</p> - -<p>Within the next hour he had a gun, taken from an amiable but -unfortunate young cop who had the courtesy to stop and give him a match -on a dark back street. He was sincerely sorry for that, knowing what -would happen to the cop, but he was also acutely aware that he needed -the gun a hell of a lot more than the cop did, even if this was Chicago.</p> - -<p>Later on, when the sun was up, he reconsidered. It occurred to him that -where he was going noise would be no virtue, not if he was going in -alone. So he bought himself a knife—Bowie, with a double edged tip. -Anyway, he had been schooled in knives in jump school, and he knew how -to use one even better than a wild .45. The thing to do now was get -within reach.</p> - -<p>A cab took him to the bus terminal. It was a beautiful morning, brisk -and clear and cold, and on the way he picked up three Faktors.</p> - -<p>At discreet intervals, they followed him into the terminal. He did not -notice them. They ringed him at a distance, following a set plan of -destruction, prepared to close in. Since there had been no time for -another recording, Kunklin and Prule had no choice. The three Faktors -died at once, in their tracks, in separate parts of the waiting room.</p> - -<p>It was a short while before the slumping men were noticed and the -uproar began. By that time Web was outside boarding a bus, and he -went on his way knowing nothing at all of the Faktors, nor of the -unfortunate incident that immediately befell the Galactics.</p> - -<p>He rode the bus for two hours. As he got nearer and nearer to his -destination his resolve began to slip away. He was utterly alone, and -these enemies were alien. What in heck could he accomplish?</p> - -<p>The bus pulled into a town called Alford just before noon. He stepped -down into the quiet street. There were no aliens around, none that he -could tell. He decided that there was probably no sense in waiting for -the dark. He did not know his way and the layout would be important, so -he decided to go up into the hills right away.</p> - -<p>It was a long walk. He stayed with the road for about two miles, then -cut off abruptly into the woods. The ground became steeper, he began to -climb.</p> - -<p>He had not gone forty feet before he tripped the first alarm.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The catastrophe, which neither Kunklin nor Prule had anticipated, -occurred as the result of a power failure.</p> - -<p>Continued operation of the machine known as the "bender," together with -the enormous power drain of the anti-gravity webs they used to float -back and forth, had sapped the power of their suits down below danger -level. The one last burst which destroyed the three Faktors reduced -that power completely.</p> - -<p>Both Kunklin and Prule became immediately visible.</p> - -<p>They caused quite a stir.</p> - -<p>Dressed as they were in white, satin-like suits, with glass bowl -helmets on their heads and a large back pack sprouting antennae in all -directions, they were an instantaneous focus of interest in the bus -terminal.</p> - -<p>They were greatly annoyed, and also somewhat embarrassed.</p> - -<p>"Galactic obscenity," said Kunklin, as a crowd gathered, "I thought you -recharged the suits."</p> - -<p>"I thought you did," muttered Prule anxiously. "But let's get out of -here. Which way is the ship?"</p> - -<p>They began to walk forward toward the door and the curious, grinning -crowd parted.</p> - -<p>"It's way down this wide street. Oh fine!" Kunklin swore gloomily, -attempting at the same time to keep his face impassive. Fortunately, -Earthmen were humanoid. If they were not, of course, the Galactics -would never have allowed this to happen. And if experience on other -planets of this culture level was any judge, these people here would -think the Galactics and the suits were some kind of stunt. But though -this accident had happened quite often to other Galactic agents, it had -never happened to them, and they were apprehensive. They eyed the crowd -warily as they walked.</p> - -<p>Grinning, giggling, pointing, the crowd eyed them back, and followed.</p> - -<p>Out into the street they went, two tall, undeniably weird-looking men -unable to keep their embarrassment from their faces. One wide-eyed -little boy ran up to Prule, grabbed at his sleeve with taffy-smeared -fingers. He chirped loudly to his parents to "looka the space men." -The mother came up, politely disengaged his fingers, gave a smiling, -unintelligible apology to Prule. Prule nodded as graciously as he -could, tried to walk faster.</p> - -<p>"Listen," Prule groaned, "the power is too low to work the translator. -Suppose we're stopped? We can't talk to them."</p> - -<p>"Here comes one in a uniform," said Kunklin, beginning to perspire.</p> - -<p>"Police?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"I suggest we run."</p> - -<p>They broke into a trot. The crowd around them had grown rapidly and -began to trot with them, wondering where the show would take place. The -policeman ran too.</p> - -<p>They let out their speed. Now a whole host of people began to shout -and new ones joined them, running, as they crossed a main street -against a light.</p> - -<p>"Faster," grunted Kunklin.</p> - -<p>Prule swore. "I can't. The suit's too heavy."</p> - -<p>"Just a little way. When we get to the ship we'll put on a -demonstration."</p> - -<p>They tore down the avenue, narrowly evading children, old ladies, -and newsstands. Two more blue-coated officials joined in the chase, -converging and blowing whistles. Several more were coming up in front -of them when they finally reached the ship.</p> - -<p>They stopped in the center of the wide street. Traffic screeched to a -halt on all sides.</p> - -<p>"Are you sure it's here?"</p> - -<p>Kunklin looked around uneasily, then spied the faint hazy circle of -the opening, several feet in the air above them. He pushed at his -anti-gravity knob, felt himself lightening, but not lifting. He swore.</p> - -<p>The crowd was reaching them, small boys and men lurched to a stop -around them.</p> - -<p>"They're waiting for us to do something," Prule hissed.</p> - -<p>"Quick! Before the police get here! Jump!"</p> - -<p>Prule looked up helplessly at the hazy circle.</p> - -<p>"How"—he began, but Kunklin pushed him aside, assumed a broad stance -in the center of the crowd. He thrust his arms outward dramatically, -as if for silence. Just then the first cop broke through and into the -center of the circle and began to speak virtuously, angrily, in the -manner of cops, but the people around him were staring at Kunklin and -waiting expectantly.</p> - -<p>"Well," said Kunklin, speaking cheerfully in Galactic, "it's been fun." -He threw the anti-gravity to full power, waited till he could feel that -the lift would no longer increase. It was not enough to get him off the -ground, but he now weighed next to nothing. He crouched, then leaped -for the haze above. He shot up like a rocket, went through the circle -and disappeared.</p> - -<p>A moment later Prule followed him. As he sailed up through the haze the -ship became immediately visible above, he reached out and caught on to -a rung of the ladder below Kunklin. Thankfully, wearily, not bothering -to look down at the stunned, open-mouthed crowd which he could see -below him but which could no longer see him, he followed Kunklin up -into the ship.</p> - -<p>Kunklin did not wait at the airlock, he ran quickly away. Prule, -puffing, paused to look down at last on the crowd below. Their ascent -had been a success. The crowd was beginning to applaud.</p> - -<p>Prule closed the airlock and the invisible, untouchable ship lifted. -He went to join Kunklin. The big Galactic was bent over the controls, -guiding the ship not upward—as Prule had thought—but horizontally -down the length of the wide street.</p> - -<p>"Eh?" said Prule.</p> - -<p>"Got to get a live Faktor," Kunklin said anxiously, his eyes glued to -the viewscreen. "We've lost the Earthman. He could be anywhere now, and -we can't help him. He may be headed for the Faktor's main base. If so -he will be killed. We've got to get to the base first."</p> - -<p>Prule pursed his lips. "If he dies on our account, just because of your -foolish idea to use him—"</p> - -<p>"I know," Kunklin cut in. "So we need a Faktor to tell us where the -base is. They're probably all over this city. I think I even saw one in -the crowd." He stopped. "That's another thing," he said unhappily, "if -there were Faktors in the crowd, they'll know a Galactic ship is here."</p> - -<p>Prule grunted, peered down at the left side of the screen.</p> - -<p>"Look, isn't that one?"</p> - -<p>He indicated a small, furtive-looking man who was walking swiftly away -from the area they had just left.</p> - -<p>Kunklin adjusted for a close view.</p> - -<p>"Yep." He moved to the instrument panel, worked carefully at a -traversing mechanism. "Get down to the airlock. We'll suck him up."</p> - -<p>"He'll die of fright," Prule predicted. "They always do."</p> - -<p>Kunklin shrugged. "We have to try. Maybe this will be a strong one."</p> - -<p>"Let's hope so."</p> - -<p>Prule readied himself at the open airlock. Kunklin threw a switch, -there was a deep, subtle hum, and a magnetic beam dosed down on the man -below. He flipped straight up toward the ship, like a hooked minnow.</p> - -<p>But he was not one of the stronger Faktors. He was dead before he -reached the door.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In the late afternoon, when the wind had died and the day was quiet, -the door opened.</p> - -<p>The same two men—she had begun to be able to tell them apart—came in -and, this time, bowed.</p> - -<p>Ivy yawned, rose up on an elbow and blinked her eyes.</p> - -<p>The two men, surprised, stared at her.</p> - -<p>"All right, what is it?" Ivy said as briskly as she could, trying to -force down the sudden fear. "Stop that damned bowing. A sillier bunch -of skinny idiots I never saw. Men! Huh! You're dying out, all right, -that's obvious."</p> - -<p>The two men looked at each other. Then one of them recaptured his grin.</p> - -<p>"It is time for your breeding," he said lecherously.</p> - -<p>Ivy yawned again, started to rise.</p> - -<p>"Okay, I'll be with you in a minute. I hope it doesn't take too long. -I've lost a lot of sleep."</p> - -<p>She managed to stand up calmly, with composure. The only thing she -could think of to do now was to regard this whole thing lightly, and -to make an occasional remark about the rather obvious defects of her -captors.</p> - -<p>There was no sense in collapsing.</p> - -<p>The two men, puzzled, followed her with their eyes as she fluffed up -her hair.</p> - -<p>"No need of that," one of them said quickly, "you will be prepared by -others."</p> - -<p>Ivy let her hair fall. "Okay Oscar. Whatever you say." In a very -unladylike manner, she yawned again, scratched herself. She grinned at -them both.</p> - -<p>"I don't mean to be nasty, fellas, but why don't you pull up a chair -for a minute? Old guys like you shouldn't be running around all day—"</p> - -<p>The near one growled. The other one restrained him, smiled thinly.</p> - -<p>"We have no need of rest," he said slowly. "We possess a -certain—vitality." His smile broadened. "As you shall presently see -for yourself."</p> - -<p>Ivy did not look at him, walked suddenly past him and out the door.</p> - -<p>They made a motion to grab her, but held back as she stopped. She -stood in the afternoon sun and stretched lazily.</p> - -<p>"To your left," the man behind her said.</p> - -<p>She waited for a moment, and then she walked. She strode upon bare -ground, upon soft grass, unable to be flippant now, looking stiffly -ahead toward a flat gray building. The door was open and she could see -the far wall, which was richly hung and colored in a strange deep red. -The two men left her at the door, where another man, very old and white -gowned and prissy, took her by the arm.</p> - -<p>The man prepared her. She dropped all pretense at hardness, at -disinterest, and sat like a stone. In with the other, the breeder, she -would have to be icy. She became vaguely aware of a thick fragrance -around her, a musky, oily smell. Then the man released her. She was -prepared. He stood her up, waved at the door at the far end of the room.</p> - -<p>"There," he said without interest, turning away.</p> - -<p>She took a deep breath and walked forward.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It was a long way up and Web went most of the way at a crouch, the -knife and the gun both ready at his belt. He had taken off his coat and -tie; it was chilly in the woods but he did not feel it.</p> - -<p>Four miles north of Alford, the old man had said. Just a half mile -off the highway, on the tallest hill, the really steep one. He kept -the highway to his right going up, beginning to wonder at last if the -alien had told the truth. For all he knew, the camp might really be in -northern Tibet, and he could be stealing his way ever so stealthily -through total emptiness. But no. The old man had been scared to death. -Literally. And anyway, the thing he was walking into was undoubtedly a -trap, and knowing it did not do much good.</p> - -<p>He cleared the first rise and climbed in among some rocks. Nearby below -he could see the highway, empty. The sun was high in the afternoon. -Four miles was not a long way, even crouching, and he could probably -make it before dark. In the dark shadows of the bushes around him, -nothing moved. He went up the next hill.</p> - -<p>When he reached the top he was beginning to perspire. He sat down for -a moment to think.</p> - -<p>Now that he was close and the moment of contact was so near he could -almost touch it, his mind began to function with a cold, comforting -clarity. It was time to make a plan. His target was the ship, yes, -but he would have to proceed on the assumption that they knew he was -coming. They would have some kind of warning system, and a variety of -weapons. But for the time being he held the ace.</p> - -<p>He grinned cheerlessly to himself and headed for the next rise.</p> - -<p>On the other side of this one there was a long flat space, scrub-bushed -and empty, and then the last hill, the steep one, began. He went -forward across the open space in broad daylight. He felt like he was -walking into the mouth of a primed cannon. In effect, he was.</p> - -<p>It was in among a clump of pines, silent and green, that the thing fell -to the ground near him. He froze, momentarily panic-stricken, his hand -to his belt. The fallen thing lay on the ground a few inches from his -right hand, stiff and unmoving, dark among the leaves.</p> - -<p>He relaxed slightly.</p> - -<p>It was only a bird.</p> - -<p>A dead bird. He stared at it for a long while, motionless. Out of the -trees above him a dead bird had fallen.</p> - -<p>Coincidence?</p> - -<p>Or were they now turning on the power?</p> - -<p>He lay flat on the ground. They knew where he was and they did not -like it. They had fired on him. He did not know whether the thing that -killed the bird had missed him, or whether it had hit him too and his -incredible immunity had protected him. Perhaps they had already fired -on him with the other gun, the one from the satellite. He did not know -that either. But in front of him lay the dead bird.</p> - -<p>And now, if he tripped another electronic eye, they would probably come -out in person.</p> - -<p>All for the best. He peered intently through the trees up the hill, -searching for some sign of buildings. If he could get to the edge of -a clearing, could see, he would stand a better chance. But there was -nothing but bushes, the bare brown shafts of trees. Now that they knew -where he was, he was deeply thankful that he'd had the sense to bring -the gun.</p> - -<p>He moved forward on his hands and knees, watching, listening, praying -that he didn't trip another eye.</p> - -<p>The bushes crackled around him. The wind, dammit.</p> - -<p>He stopped and listened, heard his heart beating in his throat. He -decided he could crawl just as well with one hand, so he took out the -gun. It was at that moment that he saw the first Faktor.</p> - -<p>An instant silhouette through the trees ahead, moving silently toward -him. They were coming.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He dropped to his stomach, crawled with a cold silent slide into the -nearest bush clump. Although they probably knew to the foot where he -was, he had to lie still.</p> - -<p>In a brief, brutal flash of reproach and disgust, he realized what an -idiot he'd been to come out here alone.</p> - -<p>But there was no helping that now. He moved down behind a fallen log, -laid the barrel of the .45 on the trunk and sighted through the leaves.</p> - -<p>Now he could hear them. They were small, but sloppy. Maybe they didn't -care. That didn't figure. But by now they had undoubtedly understood -his immunity, were coming to kill him in the bloody ways of Earth.</p> - -<p>He had no way of knowing that the Faktors had been terrified to realize -that a Galactic was approaching, but immensely relieved to see that -the Galactic was afoot. To the Faktors, Web was one of two things: a -hybrid, or a stranded Galactic. For no agent would ever approach on -foot, not in his right mind. Short of a force field, no armor known -will stop a high velocity missile. And a Galactic on foot could not -have that.</p> - -<p>The killing of a Galactic was a rare thing, a delectable thing. Seven -Faktors converged on Web.</p> - -<p>He let them come in very close, counting them and noting their -positions, before he fired. When the nearest man was ten yards away, -crawling toward Web at an angle, the white round eyes looked past him. -In the last second he saw that they were circling the wrong spot. They -had not expected his sideward movement. He fired.</p> - -<p>The heavy police bullet caught the Faktor in the head. He died where he -lay, instantly. There were swift, rising, horribly frightened screams -from the bushes around him.</p> - -<p>Web rolled back from the log, crawled around to the other side of the -tree. The god-awful things were whimpering.</p> - -<p>He peered furtively around the tree looking for another shot while the -shooting was good, wondering how in hell they'd ever gotten the nerve -to come in after him. And then he looked at the body of the alien he'd -killed, saw the small brown bomb in his hand, and knew.</p> - -<p>They'd never intended to get in close. They probably hadn't even -expected him to be armed.</p> - -<p>He grinned viciously, turning his head the while to look for a way out.</p> - -<p>In that instant he saw another alien move. He fired.</p> - -<p>The shot went home. There were more screams.</p> - -<p>Good God, he said, almost aloud, shocked. He did not fire again, the -fear of the things was revolting. He wanted to get out.</p> - -<p>He started to move, but they located him. The first bomb hit on the -other side of the tree, blew with a white blinding flash, a thin, -screaming, ripping explosion.</p> - -<p>The tree saved him. He fell flat, tried to crawl away. Two more bombs -let go on the other side of the tree, spattered among the bushes and -leaves, cut the tree in half. The tree fell in the direction of another -bomb, the top of it was blown away. In frantic desperation, the Faktors -were giving it everything they had.</p> - -<p>There was a tense moment of silence. Web started to rise. He had to -get away. He fired again and again into the woods around him, rose and -started to run, hoping that the shooting would keep the aliens flat, -that some of them at least had died of fear and that he could outrun -them. He made it as far as another fallen log before the next bomb let -go, giving him a great crunching shove in his back. He fell face down -over the log.</p> - -<p>Oh hell, he said painfully, oh hell oh hell oh hell. A bomb fell near -him, and another, and he turned to rise and fire back just once more, -swearing, his flesh rising to greet the one last killing explosion, and -damn it all, he was going to die.</p> - -<p>A huge fist hit him squarely between the eyes. He fell over backwards.</p> - -<p>And there was dark, blessed silence.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The doors opened automatically when Prule pushed the right button. -Three hundred and twelve young girls and two hundred and fourteen -young men, all of them the cream of Earth's children and most of them -mother-naked, peered out cautiously, furtively, into the gathering -dusk. One made a move, then another. A rather brazen young woman, -nude, walked right out into the center of the camp. And then they all -emerged, wide-eyed and taut, looking for the Faktors.</p> - -<p>"All gone," said Kunklin, waving his hands expressively. But since his -suit was recharged and working, nobody saw him.</p> - -<p>They did not see the Faktors either. They began to gather and talk with -each other, some dangerously close to shock, some excitedly none the -worse for wear. Most of the women were recovered so far as to return to -modesty, began to search for covering.</p> - -<p>This did not please Kunklin at all. He was tempted to push the button -again and close all the doors, thereby making all clothing unavailable, -but—after a thoughtful look at Prule—he let it go. It had been an -extraordinary sight, a delectable sight, and his opinion of the virtues -of Earth was skyrocketing.</p> - -<p>Right then and there Kunklin decided the spot for his next vacation.</p> - -<p>And now at last, as they watched, the men and the girls began to leave. -It was growing dark and quite cold and they could not stay here. One by -one, in varying degrees of undress, they strode off down the mountain. -The sensation they created in Alford was nothing next to the sensation -they created the next day, in newspapers the world over.</p> - -<p>Kunklin watched them go with mixed torture and delight.</p> - -<p>Prule brought him back to the next order of business.</p> - -<p>"The Earthman," he said gloomily.</p> - -<p>"Um?"</p> - -<p>"The man from the satellite. Where is he?"</p> - -<p>"Um," said Kunklin, sobering. "Where is he indeed?"</p> - -<p>Prule pointed a lean finger at the near woods.</p> - -<p>"There were explosions going on over there when we flew down. I -suppose—" he fixed his eyes reproachfully on Kunklin—"they bombed -him."</p> - -<p>Kunklin shrugged. "The man came all the way up here. Really. You know, -you have to admire these people, in more ways than one. I—"</p> - -<p>He broke off.</p> - -<p>For out of the woods, stumbling, holding his head in one hand and his -colt .45 in the other, came the great battered figure of Web Hilton. He -was scarred and bloody, one eye was closed and he walked with a heavy -limp, but he was walking at least, and Kunklin brightened.</p> - -<p>"Well by Jupiter, he made it!"</p> - -<p>Prule smiled happily.</p> - -<p>"We must have just got here in time. The Faktors were probably bombing -him when they disappeared."</p> - -<p>"Yes, yes. Well, well, well." Kunklin fussed with a knob, turned off -his bender and switched on the translator. "I suppose, now that it's -all over, we owe this fellow an explanation. Lord, man, we owe him more -than that. He's one of us!" He started walking quickly toward Web. "Ho! -Hey! You there!"</p> - -<p>Web stopped, peered confusedly through bleary eyes at the incredible -figures on the mountain side before him. His gun was in his hand, but -he had forgotten it. He had not yet collected himself and there was an -awful ringing in his head.</p> - -<p>Kunklin and Prule surrounded him, babbling away cheerfully, set him -down and gave him first aid. In an astonishingly short time he was -feeling well again and the Galactics did their best to bring him up -to date on what had occurred, being careful to praise his undeniable -courage in the face of such odds. They admitted to using him as decoy, -but told him nothing about the recording business. They saw no reason -to tell this boy that he had, during the course of recent events, died -twice. No telling how he would react. Although really, since he was -atom for atom identical with the original Web Hilton, what difference -did it make?</p> - -<p>"—and so we finally found a Faktor with some strength of will—had to -inject the man as he came aboard—then came out here and eliminated the -rest of them."</p> - -<p>Web stared dazedly around at the empty buildings.</p> - -<p>"All gone?"</p> - -<p>"Completely." Kunklin grinned. "We used the same device on them that -they used on your people. We thought it only fitting. Quite a weapon. -Used to be the most dangerous weapon in this part of the universe until -we found immunity. You could wipe out whole planets without a single -leaf being harmed—"</p> - -<p>"Yes, yes," said Prule, "but the job is ended. Thank you my friend. You -have been of great help. Any time you need us. Kunklin?"</p> - -<p>"What?" said Kunklin, straightening. "You mean leave him here? Well -really, Prule, that's hardly—" And then his whole face brightened. He -clapped Web heavily on the back. "Why Prule, this boy's a Galactic! -After all he's done for us, the least we can do is take him back with -us"—Prule jumped—"to headquarters, at least, and introduce him -around. Why, the boy has a heritage! You can see that from the way he -held up his end. Oh yes, yes, we'll have to take him back."</p> - -<p>Web looked up blearily, beginning to understand.</p> - -<p>"Back where?"</p> - -<p>But Kunklin reached down and took him by the arm, and began leading -him toward the ship. He explained, as painlessly as he could, the -fact of Web's Galactic parentage. He did not say that it was Web's -father—which, for biological reasons, it had to be—but only that some -ancestor, somewhere along the line, had been extraterrestrial.</p> - -<p>And while Web was downing that, and Prule was protesting, Kunklin spoke -gaily on.</p> - -<p>"You'll need time, my boy, won't you, before you come along with us? -You'll need time, eh?"</p> - -<p>"I have to see Dundon—"</p> - -<p>"Of course, of course," Kunklin chuckled, "take all the time you want. -Take weeks, take months. And in the meantime," he grinned toward Prule, -in whom just now a great light was dawning—"in the meantime Prule and -I will wander the byroads of your lovely planet. Eh, Prule? A vacation!"</p> - -<p>And in a mood of genial lechery—for Earthman, Galactic, Faktor, this -one thing is constant—the three men climbed into the ship, and then, -the sky.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Ivy Jean Thompson, to complete the story in the coldest of truth, never -set eyes on Web Hilton in her life. And if she had, it would have made -little difference, for the fact of the matter is that Ivy Jean Thompson -had had quite enough of men. Any kind of men. The disappearance of -the Faktors had occurred, coincidentally, at the last possible moment -for the saving of Ivy's virtue. It was, understandably, an unnerving -experience.</p> - -<p>She opened her eyes to find nobody there. She left the camp firmly -convinced that there should never be anybody there. She retired to a -small town in north Jersey where she became a particularly grouchy -librarian spinster, the last of all the casualties in the case of the -Blood Brother.</p> - -<pre style='margin-top:6em'> -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VANISHER *** - -This file should be named 63696-h.htm or 63696-h.zip - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/6/9/63696/ - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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