Robert A. Heinlein - The Puppet Masters (1951) - Serial Version

FOR me it started too early on July 12, 2007, with my phone shrilling. The sort of phone my section uses is not standard; the audio relay was buried surgically under the skin back of my left ear—bone conduction, and skull lifting.

“All right,” I growled. “I hear you. Shut off that damned noise.”

“Emergency,” a voice said in my ear. “Report in person to the Old Man. At once.”

“Moving,” I acknowledged and sat up with a jerk that hurt my eyeballs. I went into the bath, injected a grain of “Gyro” into my arm, then let the vibro exercise machine shake me apart while the drug put me together. I stepped out a new man, or at least a good mockup of one, and got my jacket.

There is one thing no head of a country can know and that is: how good is his intelligence system? He finds out only by having it fail him. Hence our section. Security suspenders and belt, you might say. United Nations had never heard of us, nor had Central Intelligence—I think. All I really knew about us was the training I had received and the jobs the Old Man sent me on. Interesting jobs if you don’t care where you sleep, what you eat, nor how long you live. If I had had any sense, I’d have quit and taken a regular job.

The only trouble with that would be that I wouldn’t have been working for the Old Man any longer. That made the difference.

Not that he was a soft boss. He was capable of saying, “Boys, we need to fertilize this tree. Jump in that hole at its base and I’ll cover you up.”

We’d have done it. Any of us would. And the Old Man would bury us alive, too, if he thought there was a 53% probability that it was the Tree of Liberty he was nourishing.

He got up and limped toward me as I came into our section offices through a washroom booth in MacArthur Station. His face split in a wicked smile. His big hairless skull and his strong Roman nose made him look like a cross between Satan and Punch’s Judy. “Welcome, Sam,” he said. “Sorry to get you out of bed.”

The deuce he was sorry! “I was on leave,” I answered shortly.

“Ah, but you still are. We’re going on a vacation.”

“So my name is ‘Sam’,” I answered, deliberately ignoring his “vacation” crack. “What’s my last name?”

“Cavanaugh. And I’m your Uncle Charlie—Charles M. Cavanaugh, retired. Meet your sister Mary.”

I had been aware that there was another person in the room, but when the Old Man is present he gets full attention as long as he wants it. Now I looked over my “sister” and then looked her over again. It was worth it.

I could see why he had set us up as brother and sister if we were to do a job together; it would give him a trouble-free pattern. An indoctrinated agent can’t break his assumed character any more than a professional actor can intentionally muff his lines. So this one I must treat as my sister—a dirty trick if I ever met one!

A long, slender body, but pleasingly mammalian. Good legs. Broad shoulders for a woman. Flaming, wavy red hair and the real red-headed saurian bony structure to her skull. Her face was handsome rather than beautiful; she looked me over as if I were a piece of furniture.

I wanted to drop one wing and run in circles. It must have showed, for the Old Man said gently, “Tut, tut, Sammy. Your sister dotes on you and you are extremely fond of her, but in a healthy, clean-cut, sickeningly chivalrous, All-American-Boy way.”

“As bad as that?” I asked.

“Worse.”

“Oh, well—Howdy, Sis.”

She stuck out a hand. It was firm and seemed as strong as mine. “Hi, Bud.” Her voice was deep contralto, which was all I needed. Damn the Old Man!

“I might add,” he went on, “that you are so devoted to Mary that you would gladly die to protect her. I dislike telling you so, Sammy, but your sister is a leetle more valuable—for the present, at least—to the organization than you are.”

“Got it,” I acknowledged. “Thanks for the qualification.”

“Now, Sammy—”

“She’s my favorite sister; I protect her from dogs and strange men. All right, when do we start?”

“Better stop over in Cosmetics. They have a new face for you.”

“Make it a whole new head. See you. ’By, Sis.”


THEY did not quite do that, but they did fit my phone under the back of my skull and then cement hair over it. They dyed my hair to the same shade as that of my newly acquired sister, bleached my skin, and did things to my cheekbones and chin. The mirror showed me to be as good a redhead as Sis. I looked at my hair and tried to recall what its natural shade had been, way back when. Then I wondered about Sis. I hoped she was what she seemed to be.

I put on the kit they gave me and somebody handed me a jump bag already packed.

The Old Man had been in Cosmetics, too; his skull was now covered by crisp curls of a shade between pink and white. They had done something to his face, I could not tell just what—but we were all three clearly related by blood and of that curious subrace, the redheads.

“Come, Sammy,” he said. “I’ll brief you in the car.” We went by a route I had not known about and ended up on the Northside launching platform, high above New Brooklyn and overlooking the ruins of Manhattan Crater.

I drove while the Old Man talked. Once we were out of local control, he told me to set it automatic on Des Moines, Iowa. I then joined Mary and “Uncle Charlie” in the lounge. He gave us our personal histories up to date. “So here we are,” he concluded, “a merry family party—tourists. And if we should happen to run into unusual events, that is how we will behave, as nosy and irresponsible tourists.”

“But what is the problem?” I asked. “Or do we play this one by ear?”

“Possibly.”

“Okay. But when you’re dead, it’s nice to know why. Eh, Mary?”

“Mary” did not answer. She had that quality, rare in babes, of not talking when she had nothing to say.

“Sam, you’ve heard of ‘Flying Saucers’,” the Old Man said.

“Huh?”

“You’ve studied history.”

“You mean those? The Flying Saucer craze, way back before the Disorders? I thought you meant something recent and real; those were mass hallucinations.”

“Were they?”

“Well, I haven’t studied much statistical abnormal psychology, but I seem to remember an equation. That whole period was psychopathic; a man with all his gaskets tight would have been locked up.”

“Whereas this present day is sane, eh?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.” I pawed back through my mind and found the answer I wanted. “I remember that equation now—Digby’s evaluating integral for second and higher order data. It gave a 93.7 percent certainty that the Flying Saucer myth, after elimination of explained cases, was hallucination. I remember it because it was the first case of its type in which the instances had been systematically collected and evaluated. A government project, though God knows why.”

The Old Man looked benign. “Brace yourself, Sammy. We are going to inspect a Flying Saucer today. Maybe we’ll even saw off a souvenir, like true tourists.”


“SEVENTEEN hours,” the Old Man glanced at his finger watch and added, “and twenty-three minutes ago, an unidentified spaceship landed near Grinnell, Iowa. Type unknown. Approximately disc-shaped and about one hundred and fifty feet across. Origin unknown, but—”

“Didn’t they track a trajectory on it?” I interrupted.

“They did not,” he answered. “Here is a photo of it taken by Space Station Beta after landing.”

I looked it over and passed it to Mary. It was as unsatisfactory as a telephoto taken from five thousand miles out usually is. Trees looking like moss . . . a cloud shadow that loused up the best part of the pic . . . and a gray circle that might have been a disc-shaped ship and could just as well have been an oil tank or a water reservoir.

Mary handed the pic back. I said, “What else do we know?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? After seventeen hours? We ought to have agents pouring out of their ears!”

“We did have. Two within reach and four that were sent in. They failed to report back. I dislike losing agents, Sammy, especially with no results.”

I had a sudden cold realization that the situation must be damned serious. The Old, Man had chosen to bet his own brain against the loss of the organization—for he was the Section. I suddenly felt chilly. Ordinarily, an agent has a duty to save his own neck, in order to complete his mission and report back. On this job it was the Old Man who must come back, and, after him, Mary. I was as expendable as a paper clip.

“One agent, made a partial report,” the Old Man went on. “He went in as a casual bystander and reported by phone that it must be a spaceship. He then reported that the ship was opening and that he was going to try to get closer, past the police lines. The last thing he said was, ‘Here they come. They are little creatures, about—’ Then he shut off.”

“Little men?”

“ ‘Creatures’ was what he said.”

“Peripheral reports?”

“Plenty. The Des Moines stereocasting station sent mobile units in for spot cast. The pictures they sent out were all long shots, taken from the air. They showed nothing but a disc-shaped object. Then, for about two hours, no pictures and no news, followed later by closeups and a new news slant.”

I said, “Well?”

“The thing was a hoax. The ‘spaceship’ was a sheet metal and plastic fraud, built by two farm boys, in woods near their home. The fake reports originated with an announcer who had put the boys up to it to make a story. He has been fired and the latest ‘invasion from outer space’ turns out to be a gag.”

“A hoax—but we lose six men. We going to look for them?”

“No. We would not find them. We are going to try to figure out why triangulation of this photograph—” he held up the teleshot taken from the Space Station—“doesn’t quite jibe with the news reports, and why Des Moines stereo shut down for a while.”

Mary spoke up for the first time. “I’d like to talk with those farm boys.”


I ROADED the car five miles this side of Grinnell and we started looking for the McLain farm—the news reports had named Vincent and George McLain as the culprits. It wasn’t hard to find. At a fork in the road was a big sign: THIS WAY TO THE SPACESHIP. Shortly the road was parked both sides with duos and groundcars and triphibs. A couple of stands dispensed cold drinks and souvenirs at the turnoff into the McLain place. A state cop was directing traffic.

“Pull up,” directed the Old Man. “Might as well see the fun, eh?”

“Right, Uncle Charlie,” I agreed.

The Old Man bounced out, swinging his cane. I handed Mary out and she snuggled up to me, grasping my arm. She looked up at me, managing to look both stupid and demure. “My, but you’re strong, Buddy.”

I wanted to slap her. That poor-little-me routine from one of the Old Man’s agents—a smile from a tiger.

“Uncle Charlie” buzzed around, bothering state police, buttonholing people, stopping to buy cigars at a stand, and giving a picture of a well-to-do, senile old fool, out for a holiday. He turned and waved his cigar at a state sergeant. “The inspector says it is a fraud, my dears—a prank thought up by boys. Shall we go?”

Mary looked disappointed. “No spaceship?”

“There’s a spaceship, if you want to call it that,” the cop answered. “Just follow the suckers. It’s sergeant, not inspector.”

We set out, across a pasture and into some woods. It cost a dollar to get through the gate and many turned back. The path through the woods was rather deserted. I moved carefully, wishing for eyes in the back of my head instead of a phone. Uncle Charlie and Sis walked ahead, Mary chattering like a fool and somehow appearing to be both shorter and younger than she had been on the trip out. We came to a clearing and there was the “spaceship.”

It was more than a hundred feet across, but it was whipped together out of light-gauge metal and sheet plastic, sprayed with aluminum. It was the shape of two pie plates, face to face. Aside from that, it looked like nothing in particular. Nevertheless, Mary squealed, “Oh, how exciting!”

A youngster, eighteen or nineteen, with a permanent sunburn and a pimply face, stuck his head out of a hatch in the top of the monstrosity. “Care to see inside?” he called out. He added that it would be fifty cents apiece more and Uncle Charlie shelled out.

Mary hesitated at the hatch. Pimple face was joined by what appeared to be his twin and they started to hand her down in. She drew back and I moved in fast, intending to do any handling myself. My reasons were 99% professional; I could feel danger all through the place. “It’s dark,” she quavered.

“It’s safe,” the second young man said. “We’ve been taking sightseers through all day. I’m Vince McLain. Come on, lady.”

Uncle Charlie peered down the hatch, like a cautious mother hen. “Might be snakes in there,” he decided. “Mary, I don’t think you had better go in.”

“Nothing to fear,” the first McLain said insistently. “It’s safe.”

“Keep the money, gentlemen.” Uncle Charlie glanced at his finger watch. “We’re late. Let’s go, my dears.”

I followed them back up the path, my hackles up until we reached the car. Once we were rolling, the Old Man said sharply, “Well, what did you see?”

I countered with, “Any doubt about that first report? The one that broke off?”

“None.”

“That thing wouldn’t have fooled an agent, even in the dark. This wasn’t the ship he saw.”

“Of course not. What else?”

“How much would you say that fake cost? New sheet metal, fresh paint, and from what I saw through the hatch, probably a thousand feet of lumber to brace it.”

“Go on.”

“Well, the McLain place had ‘mortgage’ all over it. If the boys were in on the gag, they didn’t foot the bill.”

“Obviously. You, Mary?”

“Uncle Charlie, did you notice how they treated me?”

“Who?” I said sharply.

“The state sergeant and the two boys. When I use the sweet-little-bundle-of-sex routine, something should happen. Nothing did.”

“They were attentive,” I objected.

“You don’t understand. Something was wrong with them. Harem guards, if you know what I mean.”

“Hypnosis?” asked the Old Man.

“Possibly. Or drugs, perhaps.” She frowned and looked puzzled.

“Sammy, take the next turn to the left. We’re investigating a point two miles south of here.”

“The triangulated location by the pic?” I asked.

“What else?”

But we didn’t get there. First it was a bridge out and I didn’t have room enough to make the car hop it, aside from traffic regulations for a duo on the ground. We circled south and came in again, the only remaining route. We were stopped by a young highway cop. A brush fire, he told us; go any farther and we would probably be drafted into firefighting. He didn’t know but what he ought to send me up to the firelines anyhow.

Mary waved her lashes at him and he relented. She pointed out that neither she nor Uncle Charlie could drive, a double lie.

After we pulled away, I asked her, “Harem guard?”

“Oh, my, no! A most attractive man.”

Her answer annoyed me.

The Old Man vetoed taking to the air and making a pass over the spot. He said it was useless. We headed for Des Moines. Instead of parking at the toll gates, we paid to take the car into the city and ended up at the studios of Des Moines stereo. Uncle Charlie blustered our way into the office of the general manager. He told several lies—unless “Charles M. Cavanaugh” was actually a big wheel with the Federal Communications Authority. It wouldn’t surprise me.

Once inside, he continued the Big Brass act. “Now, sir, what is this nonsense about a spaceship hoax? Speak plainly. Your license may depend on your answer.”

The manager was a little round-shouldered man, but he did not seem cowed, merely irritated. “We’ve made full explanation over the channels,” he said. “We were victimized. The man has been discharged.”

“Hardly adequate, sir.”

The little man—Barnes, his name was—shrugged. “What do you expect? Want us to string him up by his thumbs?”

Uncle Charlie pointed his cigar at him. “I warn you, sir, I am not to be trifled with. I am not convinced that two farm louts and a junior announcer could have pulled off this preposterous business. There was money in it. Yes, sir—money! Now tell me, just what did you—”

Mary had seated herself close by Barnes’ desk. She had done something to her costume and her pose put me in mind of Goya’s Disrobed Lady. She made thumbs-down to the Old Man.

Barnes should not have caught it; his attention appeared to be turned to the Old Man. But he did. He turned toward Mary and his face went dead. He reached for his desk.

“Sam! Kill him!” the Old Man rapped.

I burned his legs off and his trunk fell to the floor. It was a poor shot; I had intended to get him neatly.

I stepped in and kicked his gun away from still-groping fingers. I was about to give him coup de grace—a man burned that way is dead, but it takes a while to die—when the Old Man snapped, “Don’t touch him! Mary, stand back!”

He sidled toward the body, like a cat investigating the unknown. Barnes gave a long sigh and was quiet. The Old Man poked him gently with his cane.

“Boss,” I said, “time to git, isn’t it?”

Without looking around he answered, “We’re as safe here as anywhere. This building may be swarming with them.”

“Swarming with what?”

“How would I know? Swarming with whatever he was.” He pointed at Barnes’ body. “That’s what I’ve got to find out.”

Mary gave a choked sob and gasped, “He’s still breathing. Look!”

The body lay face down; the back of the jacket heaved as if the chest were rising. The Old Man looked and poked at it with his cane. “Sam, come here.” I came. “Strip it,” he went on. “Wear gloves. And be careful.”

“Booby trap?”

“Shut up. Use care.”

He must have had a hunch that was close to truth. I think the Old Man’s brain has a built-in integrator which arrives at logical necessity from minimum facts the way a museum Joe reconstructs an animal from a single bone. First pulling on gloves—agent’s gloves; I could have stirred boiling acid, yet I could feel a coin in the dark and call heads or tails—I started to turn him over to undress him.

The back was still heaving. I did not like the look of it—unnatural. I placed a palm between the shoulderblades.

A man’s back is bone and muscle. This was soft and undulating. I snatched my hand away.

Without a word, Mary handed me a pair of scissors from Barnes’ desk. I took them and cut the jacket away. The body was dressed in a light singlet. Between this and the skin, from the neck halfway down the back, was something which was not flesh. A couple of inches thick, it gave the corpse an odd round-shouldered, slightly humped appearance.

It pulsed.


AS we watched, it slid off the back, away from us. I reached out to peel up the singlet, but my hand was knocked away by the Old Man’s cane.

“Make up your mind,” I said, and rubbed my knuckles.

He did not answer, but tucked his cane under the shirt and worried it up the trunk. The thing was uncovered.

Grayish, faintly translucent, and shot through with darker structure, shapeless—but it was clearly alive. As we watched, it flowed down into the space between Barnes’ arm and chest, filled it and stayed there, unable to go farther.

“Poor devil,” the Old Man said softly.

“Huh? That?”

“No. Barnes. Remind me to see that he gets the Purple Heart, when this is over. If it ever is over.” The Old Man straightened up and stumped around the room, as if he had forgotten completely the thing nestling in the crook of the dead man’s arm.

I drew back and continued to stare at it, my gun ready. It could not move fast; it obviously could not fly; but I did not know what it could do. Mary pressed her shoulder against mine, as if for human comfort. I put my free arm around her.

On a side table there was a stack of cans, the sort used for stereo tapes. The Old Man took one, spilled out the reels and came back with it. “This will do, I think.” He placed the can on the floor, near the thing, and began chivying it with his cane, trying to irritate it into crawling over the side and into the can.

Instead it oozed back until it was almost entirely under the body. I grabbed the free arm and heaved Barnes away; the thing clung, then flopped to the floor. Under Uncle Charlie’s direction, Mary and I used our guns at lowest power to force it, by burning the floor close to it, into the can. We got it in, a close fit, and I slapped the cover on.

The Old Man tucked the can under his arm. “On our way, my dears.”

He paused in the door to call out a parting, then, after closing the door, stopped at the desk of Barnes’ secretary. “I’ll be seeing Mr. Barnes tomorrow,” he told her. “No, no appointment. I’ll phone.”

Out we went, slow march, the Old Man with the can full of thing under his arm and me with my ears cocked for alarums. Mary played the silly little moron, with a running monologue. The Old Man even paused in the lobby, bought a cigar, and inquired directions, with bumbling, self-important good nature.

Once in the car he gave directions, then cautioned me against driving fast. The directions led us into a garage. The Old Man sent for the manager and said, “Mr. Malone wants this car immediately.” It was a signal I had had occasion to use myself; the duo would cease to exist in about twenty minutes, save as anonymous spare parts in the service bins.

The manager looked us over, then answered quietly, “Through that door over there.” He sent the two mechanics out of the room and we ducked through the door.


WE ended up in the apartment of an elderly couple. There the Old Man got his bald head back, I acquired a mustache, and Mary looked as well dark as she had as a redhead. The “Cavanaugh” combination was dropped; Mary got a nurse’s costume and I was togged out as a chauffeur while the Old Man became our elderly, invalid employer, complete with lap robe and tantrums.

A car was waiting for us. The trip back was no trouble; we could have remained the carrot-topped Cavanaughs. I kept the screen tuned to Des Moines, but, if the cops had turned up the late Mr. Barnes, the newsboys hadn’t heard about it.

We went straight to the Old Man’s office and there we opened the can. The Old Man sent for Dr. Graves, head of the Section’s bio lab, and the job was done with handling equipment.

What we needed were gas masks, though. A stink of decaying organic matter filled the room and forced us to slap the cover on and speed up the blowers.

Graves wrinkled his nose. “What in the world was that?” he demanded.

The Old Man was swearing softly. “Find out,” he said. “Work it in suits, in a germ-free compartment, and don’t assume that it is dead.”

“If that is alive, I’m Queen Anne.”

“Maybe. Just don’t take chances. It’s a parasite, capable of attaching itself to a host, such as a man, and controlling the host. It is almost certainly extraterrestrial in origin and metabolism.”

The lab boss sniffed. “Extraterrestrial parasite on a terrestrial host? Ridiculous! The body chemistries would be incompatible.”

“When we captured it, it was living on a man. If that means it has to be a terrestrial organism, show me where it fits into terrestrial life-forms and where to look for its mates. And quit jumping to conclusions; I want facts.”

The biologist stiffened. “You’ll get them!”

“Get going. And don’t keep assuming that the thing is dead; The perfume may be a protective device. That thing, if alive, is fantastically dangerous. If it gets on one of your laboratory men, I’ll almost certainly have to kill him.”

The lab director left minus some of his cockiness.

The Old Man settled back in his chair, sighed, and closed his eyes. “How many mustard plasters the size of that thing can arrive in a spaceship as big as that fraud we looked at?”

“Was there a spaceship?” I asked. “The evidence seems slim.”

“There was a ship. There still is.”

“We should have examined the site.”

“That site would have been our last sight. The other six boys weren’t fools. Answer my question.”

“How big the ship was doesn’t tell me anything about its payload, when I don’t know its propulsion method, the jump it made, or what the passengers require. How long is a piece of rope? If you want a guess, I’d say maybe several thousand.”

“So there may be several thousand zombies in Iowa tonight. Or harem guards, as Mary puts it.” He thought for a moment. “But how am I to get past them to the harem? We can’t go shooting every round-shouldered man in Iowa; it would cause talk.” He smiled feebly.

“I’ll put you another question,” I said. “If one spaceship lands in Iowa yesterday, how many will land in North Dakota tomorrow? Or Brazil?”

“Yes.” He looked still more troubled. “You kids go enjoy yourselves; you may not have another chance. Don’t leave the offices.”


I WENT to Cosmetics, got my skin color back and resumed my normal appearance, had a soak and a massage, and then went to the staff lounge in search of a drink and company. I looked around, not knowing whether I was looking for a blonde, brunette, or redhead, but fairly sure that I could spot the chassis.

It was a redhead. Mary was in a booth, sipping a drink and looking much as she had looked at first.

“Hi, Sis,” I said, sliding in beside her.

She smiled and answered, “Hello, Bud, drag up a rock,” while moving to make room for me.

I dialed for bourbon and water and then said, “Is this your real appearance?”

She shook her head. “Not at all. Zebra stripes and two heads. What’s yours?”

“My mother smothered me with a pillow, so I never got a chance to find out.”

She looked at me as if I were a side of beef. “I can understand why, but I am more hardened than she was. You’ll do, Bud.”

“Thanks. Let’s drop this ‘Bud-and-Sis’ act. It gives me inhibitions.”

“I think you need every one you can develop.”

“Me? Never any violence with me; I’m the ‘Barkis-is-willing’ type.” I might have added that, if I laid a hand on her and she happened not to like it, I’d bet that I would draw back a bloody stump. The Old Man’s girls are never sissies.

She smiled. “Well, Miss Barkis is not willing.”

While we sat there, I got to thinking how well she would look on the other side of a fireplace. My job being what it was, I had never thought seriously about getting married—after all, a babe is just a babe; why get excited? But Mary was an agent herself. Talking to her would not be like shouting off Echo Mountain. I realized that I had been lonely for one hell of a long time.

“Mary—”

“Yes?”

“Are you married?”

“No. But what business—I mean, why does it matter?”

“Look me over. I’ve got both hands and feet, I’m fairly young, and I don’t track mud in the house. You could do worse.”

“Listen, wolf, your technique is down. Just because a woman turns you down is no reason to lose your head and offer her a contract. Some women would be mean enough to hold you to it.”

“I meant it,” I said peevishly.

“What salary do you offer?”

“Damn you! If you want that type of contract, I’ll go along. You can keep your pay and I’ll give half of mine to you—unless you want to retire.”

She shook her head. “I’d never insist on a settlement contract, not with a man I was willing to marry in the first place—”

“I didn’t think you would.”

“Agents should not marry,” she said flatly.

“Agents shouldn’t marry anyone but agents.”

She started to answer, but stopped suddenly. My phone was talking in my ear, the Old Man’s voice, and I knew she was hearing him with hers. “Come into my office,” he said.

We both got up without saying anything. Mary stopped me at the door and looked up into my eyes. “That is why it is silly to talk about marriage. All the time we’ve been talking, you’ve been thinking about the job and so have I.”

“I have not.”

“Sam, suppose you were married and you woke up to find one of those things on your wife’s shoulders, possessing her.” There was horror in her eyes. “Suppose I found one of them on your shoulders.”

“I’ll chance it. And I won’t let one get to you.”

She touched my cheek. “I don’t believe you would.”

We went on into the Old Man’s office.

He looked up to say, “Come along. We’re leaving.”

“Where?” I answered. “Or shouldn’t I ask?”

“White House. See the President. Shut up.”

I did.


AT the White House, the Secret Service guards gave us the works. An X-ray went beep and I surrendered my heater. Mary turned out to be a walking arsenal; the machine gave four beeps and hiccough, although you would have sworn she couldn’t hide a tax receipt. The Old Man surrendered his cane without waiting to be asked.

Our audio capsules showed up both by X-ray and by metal detector, but the head guard ruled that anything embedded in flesh need not be classed as a weapon. They printed us, photographed our retinas, and ushered us into a waiting room while the Old Man was allowed to see the President alone.

After quite a while we were ushered in. The Old Man introduced us. I stammered. Mary just bowed. The President said he was glad to see us and turned on that smile, the way you see it in the stereocasts, and he made us feel that he was glad to see us. I felt warm inside and no longer embarrassed.

The Old Man directed me to report all that I had done and seen and heard on this assignment. I tried to catch his eye when it came to the part about killing Barnes, but he wasn’t having any, so I left out the Old Man’s order to shoot and made it clear that I had shot to protect another agent—Mary—when I saw Barnes reach for his gun. The Old Man interrupted me. “Make your report complete.”

So I filled in the Old Man’s order to shoot. The President threw the Old Man a glance, the only expression he showed. I went on about the parasite thing and then up to that present moment.

It was Mary’s turn. She fumbled trying to explain to the President why she expected to get a response out of normal men—and had not gotten it out of the McLain boys, the state sergeant, and Barnes. The President helped her by smiling warmly and saying, “My dear young lady, I quite believe it.”

Mary blushed. The President listened gravely while she finished, then sat still for several minutes. Presently he said to the Old Man, “Andrew, your section has been invaluable. Your reports have sometimes tipped the balance in crucial occasions in history.”

The Old Man snorted. “So it’s no, is it?”

“I did not say so.”

“You were about to.”

The President shrugged. “Andrew, I can’t start what amounts to war on a woman’s intuition.”

Mary took a step forward. “Mr. President,” she said very earnestly, “I do know. Those were not normal male men.”

He answered, “You have not considered an obvious explanation—that they actually were, ah, ‘harem guards.’ There are always such unfortunates. You merely happened to run across four in one day.”

Mary shut up. The Old Man did not. “God damn it, Tom—” I shuddered; you don’t talk to the President that way—“I knew you when you were an investigating Senator and I was a key man in your investigations. You know I wouldn’t bring you this fairy tale if there were any reasonable way to explain it. How about that spaceship? What was in it? Why couldn’t I even reach the spot where it landed?” He hauled out the photograph taken by Space Station Beta and shoved it under the President’s nose.

The President seemed unperturbed. “Ah, yes, you and I have a passion for facts. But I have sources of information other than your section. Take this photo—you made a point of it when you phoned. The metes and bounds of the McLain farm as recorded in the local county courthouse check with the triangulated latitude and longitude of this object on this photograph.” The President looked up. “Once I got lost right in my own neighborhood. You weren’t even in your own neighborhood, Andrew.”

“Did you trot out to Des Moines and check those courthouse maps yourself, Tom?”

“Of course not.”

“Thank God, or you would be carrying three pounds of pulsing tapioca between your shoulders and God save the United States! Be sure of this—the courthouse clerk and whatever agent was sent both are hag-ridden this very moment. Yes, and the Des Moines chief of police, editors around there, despatchers, cops, all sorts of key people. Tom, I don’t know what we are up against, but they know what we are, and they are pinching off the nerve cells of our social organism before true messages can get back—or they cover up true reports with false ones, just as they did with Barnes. Mr. President, you must order an immediate, drastic quarantine of the area!”

“ ‘Barnes’,” the President repeated softly. “Andrew, I had hoped to spare you this, but—” He flipped a key at his desk. “Get me stereo station WDES, Des Moines, the manager’s office.”

A screen lighted on his desk; he touched another switch and a solid display in the wall lighted up. We were looking into the room we had been in a few hours before.

Looking into it past a man who filled most of the screen—Barnes.

Or his twin. When I kill a man, I expect him to stay dead. I was shaken, but I still believed in myself and my heater.

The man said, “You asked for me, Mr. President?” He sounded as if he were dazzled.

“Yes, Mr. Barnes. Do you recognize these people?”

He looked surprised. “I’m afraid not. Should I?”

“Tell him to call in his office force,” the Old Man said.

The President did so. They trooped in, girls mostly, and I recognized the secretary who sat outside the door. One of them squealed, “Ooh, it’s the President.”

None of them identified us, which wasn’t surprising with the Old Man and me, but Mary’s appearance was just as it had been, and I will bet that her looks would be burned into the mind of any woman who had ever seen her.

But I noticed one thing about them—every one of them was round-shouldered.


TEN minutes later we were standing in the wind on the Rock Creek platform.

The Old Man seemed shrunken and old.

“What now, Boss?” I asked.

“Eh? For you two, nothing. You are both on leave until recalled.”

“I’d like to take another look at Barnes’ office.”

“Stay out of Iowa. That’s an order.”

“What are you going to do, if I may ask?”

“I am going down to Florida and lie in the sun and wait for the world to go to hell. If you have any sense, you’ll do the same. There’s damned little time.”

He squared his shoulders and stumped away. I turned to speak to Mary, but she was gone. I trotted off and overtook the Old Man. “Excuse me, Boss. Where did Mary go?”

“On leave, no doubt. Don’t bother me.”

I considered trying to relay to her through the section circuit, only I remembered that I did not know her right name, nor her code, nor her I.D. number. I thought of trying to bull it through by describing her, but that was foolishness. Only Cosmetics Records knows the original appearance of an agent and they won’t talk.

All I knew was that she had twice appeared as a redhead and that, for my taste, she was “why men fight.” Try punching that into a phone!

Instead, I found a room for the night.


I WOKE up at dusk and looked out as the Capital came to life for the night. The river swept away in a wide band past the Memorial; they were adding fluorescine to the water above the District, so the river stood out in curving sweeps of glowing rose and amber and emerald and shining fire. Pleasure boats cut through the colors, each filled, I had no doubt, with couples up to no good and enjoying it.

On the land, here and there among older buildings, bubble domes were lighting up, giving the city a glowing fairyland look. To the east, where the Bomb had landed, there were no old buildings at all and the area was an Easter basket of color—giant eggs, lighted from within.

I’ve seen the Capital at night oftener than most and had never thought much about it, but tonight I had that “Last Ride Together” feeling. It was not its beauty that choked me up; it was knowing that down under those warm lights were people, alive and individual, making love or having spats, doing business or giving the business, whatever they damn well pleased, each under his own vine and fig tree with nobody to make him afraid, as it says.

I thought about all those people—each with a gray slug clinging to his back, twitching his legs and arms, making his voice say what the slug wished, going where the slug wanted to go.

I made myself a solemn promise: if the parasites won, I’d be dead before I would let one of those things ride me. For an agent it would be simple; just bite my nails—or, if your hands happen to be off there are other ways. The Old Man planned for all professional necessities.

Except that it was his business and mine to keep those people down there safe, not to run out when the going got tough.

I turned away. There was not a confounded thing I could do about it now; I decided that what I needed was company. The room contained the usual catalog of “escort bureaus” and “model agencies” that you’ll find in almost any big hotel. I thumbed through it, then slammed it shut. I didn’t want just any girl: I wanted one particular girl, who would as soon shoot as shake hands. And I did not know where she had gone.

I always carry a tube of “tempus fugit” pills, figuring you never know when giving your reflexes a jolt will get you through a tight spot. Despite the scare propaganda, tempus pills are not habit-forming, the way hashish is.

Nevertheless, a purist would say I was addicted, for I took them occasionally to make a twenty-four hour leave seem like a week. I enjoyed the mild euphoria the pills induced. Primarily, though, they just stretch your subjective time by a factor of ten or more—chop time into finer bits so that you live longer for the same amount of clock-and-calendar. Sure, I know the horrible example of the young man who died of old age in a month through taking the pills steadily, but I took them only once in a while.

Maybe he had the right idea. He lived a long and happy life—you can be sure it seemed to him both long and happy—and died happy at the end. What matter that the sun rose only thirty times? Who is keeping score and what are the rules?

I sat there, staring at my tube of pills and thinking that I had enough to keep me hopped up for what would be, to me, at least two “years.” I could crawl in my hole and pull it in after me.

I took out two pills and got a glass of water. Then I put the pills back in the tube, donned my gun, left the hotel and headed for the Library of Congress.

On the way I stopped in a bar and looked at a newscast. There was no news from Iowa, but when is there ever any?

At the Library I went to the catalog, put on blinkers and started scanning for references. “Flying Saucers” led to “Flying Discs,” then to “Project Saucer,” then “Lights in the Sky,” “Fireballs,” “Cosmic Diffusion Theory of Life Origins,” and two dozen blind alleys and screwball branches of literature. I needed a Geiger counter to tell me what was pay dirt, especially because what I wanted was sure to carry a semantic-content key classing it between Aesop’s fables and the Lost Continent myths.

In an hour, though, I had a handful of selector cards. I handed them to the vestal virgin at the desk and waited while she fed them into the hopper. Presently she said, “Most of the films you want are in use. The rest will be delivered to Study Room 9-A. Take the escalator, puhlease.”

Room 9-A had one occupant, who looked up and said, “Well, the wolf in person! How did you pick me up? I could swear I shook you.”

I said, “Hello, Mary.”

“Hello,” she answered, “and now good-bye. Miss Barkis still ain’t willin’ and she has work to do.”

I got annoyed. “Listen, you conceited twerp, odd as it may seem, I did not come here looking for your no-doubt beautiful body. I occasionally do some work myself. When my spools arrive, I’ll get the hell out and find another study room—a stag one!”

Instead of flaring back, she immediately softened. “I’m sorry, Sam. Really. A woman hears the same thing so many thousand times—Sit down.”

“Thanks, but I’ll leave. I’m here to work.”

“Stay,” she insisted. “Read that notice. If you remove spools from the room to which they are delivered, you will not only cause the sorter to blow a dozen tubes, but you’ll give the chief reference librarian a nervous breakdown.”

“I’ll bring them back when I’m through.”

She took my arm and warm tingles went up it. “Please, Sam. I said I’m sorry.”

I sat down and grinned. “Nothing could persuade me to leave. I don’t intend to let you out of sight until I know your phone code, your home address, and the true color of your hair.”

“Wolf,” she replied softly. “You’ll never know any of them.” She made a great business of fitting her head back into her study machine while ignoring me.

The delivery tube went thunk and my spools spilled into the basket. I stacked them on the table by the other machine. One rolled over against the spools Mary had stacked up and knocked them down. I picked up what I thought was mine and glanced at the end—the wrong end, as all it held was the serial number and that pattern of dots the selector reads. I turned it over, read the label, and placed it in my pile.

“Hey!” said Mary. “That’s mine.”

“In a pig’s eye,” I said politely.

“But it is. It’s the one I want next.”

Sooner or later, I can see the obvious. Mary wouldn’t be there to study the history of footgear. I picked up others of hers and read the labels. “So that’s why nothing I wanted was in,” I said. “But you didn’t do a thorough job.” I handed her my selection.

Mary looked them over, then pushed them all into a single pile. “Shall we split them, or both of us see them all?”

“Fifty-fifty to weed out the junk, then we’ll both go over the remainder,” I decided. “Let’s get busy.”

Even after having seen the parasite on poor Barnes’ back, even after being assured by the Old Man that a “Flying Saucer” had in fact landed, I was not prepared for the pile of evidence to be found buried in a public library. A pest on Digby and his evaluating formula! The evidence was unmistakable; earth had been visited by ships from outer space not once but many times.

The reports long antedated our own achievement of space travel; some ran back into the Seventeenth Century, or even earlier than that, but it was impossible to judge reports dating back to the time when “science” meant an appeal to Aristotle. The first systematic data came from the 1940s and 50s; the next flurry was in the 1980s. I noticed something and started taking down dates. Strange objects in the sky appeared to hit a cycle at thirty-year intervals, about. A statistical analyst might make something of it.

“Flying Saucers” were tied in with “mysterious disappearances” not only through being in the same category as sea serpents, bloody rain, and such like wild data, but also because in well-documented instances, pilots had chased “Saucers” and never come back, or down, anywhere, i.e., officially classed as crashed in wild country and not recovered—an easy-out explanation.

I got another wild hunch and tried to see whether or not there was a thirty-year cycle in mysterious disappearances and, if so, did it match the objects-in-the-sky cycle? I could not be sure—there are too many people disappearing every year for all kinds of reasons. But vital records have been kept for a long time and not all were lost in the bombings. I noted it down to farm out for professional analysis.

Mary and I did not exchange three words all night. Eventually we got up and stretched. Then I lent Mary change to pay the machine for the spools of notes she had taken (why don’t women carry change?) and got my wires out of hock, too.

“Well, what’s the verdict?” I asked.

“I feel like a sparrow who has built a nice nest in a rain spout.”

I recited the old jingle. “And we’ll do the same—refuse to learn and build again in the spout.”

“Oh, no! Sam, we’ve got to do something! It makes a full pattern; this time they are moving in to stay.”

“Could be. I think they are.”

“Well, what do we do?”

“Honey, you are about to learn that in the Country of the Blind, the one-eyed man is in for a hell of a rough ride.”

“Don’t be cynical. There isn’t time.”

“No, there isn’t. Let’s get out of here.”

Dawn was on us and the library was almost deserted. I said, “Tell you what. Let’s find a barrel of beer, take it to my hotel room, bust in the head, and talk this over.”

She shook her head. “Not to your room.”

“Damn it, this is business.”

“Let’s go to my apartment. It’s only a couple of hundred miles away; I’ll fix breakfast there.”

I recalled my purpose in life just in time to leer. “That’s the best offer I’ve had all night. Seriously, why not the hotel? We’d save a half hour’s travel.”

“You don’t want to come to my apartment? I won’t bite you.”

“I was hoping you would. No, I was wondering why the sudden switch.”

“Well, perhaps I wanted to show you the bear traps around my bed. Or perhaps I wanted to prove to you I could cook.”

I flagged a ’copter taxi and we went to her apartment.

When we got inside she made a careful search of the place, then came back and said, “Turn around. I want to feel your back.”

“Why—”

“Turn around!” I shut up. She gave it a good knuckling, then said, “Now you feel mine.”

“With pleasure!” Nevertheless I did a proper job, for I saw what she was driving at. There was nothing under her clothes but girl and assorted items of lethal hardware.

She turned around and gave a sigh. “That’s why I didn’t want to go to your hotel. Now I know we are safe for the first time since I saw that thing on the station manager’s back. This apartment is tight; I turn off the air and leave it sealed like a vault every time I leave it.”

“Say, how about the air conditioning ducts?”

“I didn’t turn on the conditioner system; I cracked one of the air raid reserve bottles instead. Never mind; what would you like to eat?”

“Any chance of a steak with just the chill taken off it?”

There was. While we chomped, we watched the newscast. Still no news from Iowa.


I DID not get to see the bear traps; she locked her bedroom door. Three hours later she woke me and we had a second breakfast. Presently we struck cigarettes and I switched off the newscast. It was principally a display of the entries for “Miss America.” Ordinarily I would have watched with interest, but none of the babes was round-shouldered.

I said, “Well?”

“We’ve got to arrange the facts and rub the President’s nose in them.”

“How?”

“We’ve got to see him again.”

I repeated, “How?”

She had no answer.

I said, “We’ve got only one route—through the Old Man.”

I put in the call, using both our codes so that Mary could hear. Presently I heard, “Chief Deputy Oldfield, for the Old Man. Shoot.”

“It’s got to be the Old Man.”

There was a pause. “Is this official or unofficial?”

“Uh, I guess you’d call it unofficial.”

“Well, I won’t put you through for anything unofficial. And anything official I am handling.”

I switched off before I used any bad language. Then I coded again. The Old Man has a special code which is guaranteed to raise him up out of his coffin, but God help the agent who uses it unnecessarily.

He answered with profanity.

“Boss,” I said, “on the Iowa matter—”

He broke off short.

“Yes?”

“Mary and I spent all night digging data out of the files. We want to talk it over.”

The profanity resumed. Presently he told me to turn it in for analysis and added that he intended to have my ears fried for a sandwich.

“If you can run out, so can we,” I said sharply. “Mary and I are resigning right now. That’s official!”

Mary’s eyebrows went up, but she said nothing. There was a long silence, then he said, in a tired voice, “Palmglade Hotel, North Miami Beach.”

“Right away.” I sent for a taxi and we went up on the roof. I had the hackie swing out over the ocean to avoid the Carolina speed traps, so we made good time.


THE Old Man lay there, looking sullen and letting sand dribble through his fingers, while we reported. I had brought along a buzz box so that he could get it directly off the wire.

He glanced up when we came to the point about thirty-year cycles, but he let it ride until my later query about possible similar cycles in disappearances, whereupon he called the Section. “Get me Analysis. Hello, Peter? This is the boss. I want a curve on unexplained disappearances, starting with 1800. Huh? Smooth out known factors and discount steady load—what I want is humps and valleys. When? Two hours ago; what are you waiting for?”

He struggled to his feet, let me hand him his cane and said, “Well, back to the jute mill.”

“To the White House?” Mary asked eagerly.

“Eh? Be your age. You two have picked up nothing that would change the President’s mind.”

“Oh. Then what?”

“I don’t know. Keep quiet, unless you have a bright idea.”

The Old Man had a car and I drove us back. After I turned it over to block control, I said, “Boss, I’ve got something that might convince the President.” He grunted. “Like this,” I went on. “Send two agents in, me and one other. The other agent carries a portable scanning rig and keeps it trained on me. You get the President to watch.”

“Suppose nothing happens.”

“I’ll make it happen. I am going where the spaceship landed and bull my way through. We’ll get closeup pix of the real ship, piped into the White House. Then I’ll go to Barnes’ office and investigate those round shoulders. I’ll tear shirts off right in front of the camera. There won’t be any finesse. I’ll just bust things wide open.”

“You realize you have the same chance as a mouse at a cat convention?”

“I’m not so sure. As I see it, these things haven’t superhuman powers. I’ll bet they are limited to whatever the human being they are riding can do. I don’t plan on being a martyr. In any case I’ll get pix.”

“It might work,” Mary put in. “I’ll be the other agent. I can—”

The Old Man and I said “No” together—and then I flushed; it was not my prerogative.

Mary went on, “I was going to say that I am the logical one because of the, uh, talent I have for spotting a man with a parasite.”

“No,” the Old Man repeated. “Where he’s going, they’ll all have riders—assumed so until proved otherwise. Besides, I am saving you for something.”

“For what? This is important.”

The Old Man said quietly, “So is the other job. I’m planning to make you a Presidential bodyguard.”

“Oh.” She thought and answered, “I’m not certain I could spot a woman who was possessed. I’m not, uh, equipped for it.”

“So we take his women secretaries away from him. And you’ll be watching him, too, Mary.”

“And what if I find that one has gotten to him, in spite of all our careful precautions?”

“You take necessary action, the Vice President succeeds to the chair, and you get shot for treason. Now about this mission. We’ll send Jarvis with the scanner and include Davidson as hatchet man. While Jarvis keeps the pickup on you, Sam, Davidson can keep his eyes on Jarvis—and you can try to keep one eye on him.”

“You think it will work, then?”

“No, but any plan is better than no plan. Maybe it will stir up something.”


WHILE we headed for Iowa—Jarvis, Davidson and I—the Old Man went to Washington. Mary cornered me as we were about to leave, grabbed me by the ears, kissed me firmly and said, “Sam, come back.”

I got all tingly and felt like a fifteen-year-old.

Davidson roaded the car beyond the place where I had found a bridge out. I was navigating, using a map on which had been pinpointed the landing site of the real spaceship. The bridge gave a precise reference point. We turned off the road two-tenths of a mile due east of the site and jeeped through the scrub to the spot.

Almost to the spot, I should say. We ran into burned-over ground and decided to walk. The site shown by the Space Station photograph was in the brush fire area—and there was no “Flying Saucer.” It would have taken a better detective than I to show that one had ever landed. The fire had destroyed all traces.

Jarvis scanned everything, anyhow, but I knew that the slugs had won another round. As we came out, we ran into an elderly farmer.

“Quite a fire,” I remarked, keeping a wary distance.

“Sure was,” he said dolefully. “Killed two of my best milch cows, the poor dumb brutes. You fellows reporters?”

“Yes, but we’ve been sent on a wild goose chase.” I wished Mary were along. Maybe this character was naturally round-shouldered, but assuming that the Old Man was right about the spaceship—and he had to be right—then this too-innocent bumpkin must know about it and was covering up. Ergo, he had to be hag-ridden.

I threw a glance at my teammates. They were alert and Jarvis was scanning.

As the farmer turned, I tripped him. He went down with me on his back, clawing at his shirt. Jarvis moved in and got a close-up. I had his back bare before he got his wind.

And it was bare—no parasite, no sign of one, nor any place on his body, which I made sure of.

I helped him up and brushed him off; his clothes were filthy with ashes. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“You young—” He couldn’t find a word bad enough for me. He looked at us and trembled with anger. “I’ll have the law on you. If I were twenty years younger, I’d lick all three of you.”

“Believe me, old-timer, it was a mistake.”

“Mistake!” I thought he was going to cry. “I come back from Omaha and find my place burned, half my stock gone, my son-in-law no place around, strangers snooping around my land, and I like to get torn to pieces. Mistake! What’s the world coming to?”

I thought I could answer that last one, but there was no point. I tried to pay him for the indignity, but he slapped my money to the ground. We tucked in our tails and got out.

When we were rolling again, Davidson said, “Are you sure you know what you are up to?”

“I can make a mistake,” I said savagely, “but have you ever known the Old Man to?”

“Mmm . . . no. Where next?”

“WDES, stereo station. This one won’t be a mistake.”


AT the toll gates into Des Moines, the gatekeeper hesitated. He glanced at my notebook and then at our plates. “Sheriff has a call out for this car,” he said. “Pull over to the right.”

“Right it is,” I agreed, backed up thirty feet and gunned her. The Section’s cars are beefed up and hopped up—a good thing, for the gate was stout. I did not slow down on the far side.

“This,” said Davidson, “is interesting. Do you still know what you are doing?”

“Cut the chatter,” I snapped. “Get this, both of you: we aren’t likely to get out. But we are going to get those pix.”

Ahead of any pursuit, I slammed to a stop in front of the station and we poured out. None of “Uncle Charlie’s” indirect methods—we swarmed into the first elevator and punched for Barnes’ floor. When we got there I left the door of the car open.

The receptionist tried to stop us, but we pushed by. The girls looked up, startled. I went straight to Barnes’ inner door and tried it; it was locked.

I turned to his secretary. “Where’s Barnes?”

“Who is calling, please?” she said, about as polite as a fish.

I looked down at her shoulders. Humped. By God, I said to myself, this one has to be. She was here when I killed Barnes.

I bent over and pulled up her sweater.

I was right. I had to be right. For the second time I stared at one of the parasites.

She struggled and clawed and tried to bite. I judo-cut her neck, almost getting my hand in the mess, and she went limp. I swung her around.

“Jarvis,” I yelled, “get a close-up.”

The idiot was fiddling with his gear, his big hind end between me and the pickup. He straightened. “School’s out,” he said. “Blew a tube.”

“Replace it. Hurry!”

A stenographer stood up on the other side of the room and fired at the scanner. Hit it, too, before Davidson burned her down. As if it had been a signal, about six of them jumped Davidson. They did not seem to have guns; they just swarmed over him.

I hung onto the secretary and shot from where I was. I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to find Barnes—“Barnes” number two—standing in his doorway. I shot him through the chest to get the slug I knew was on his back, then returned to the slaughter.

Davidson was up again. A girl crawled toward him; she seemed wounded. He shot her in the face and she stopped. His next bolt was just barely past my ear.

I said, “Thanks! Let’s get out of here.”

The elevator was open; we rushed in, me still burdened with Barnes’ secretary. I slammed the door and started it. Davidson was trembling and Jarvis was white.

“Buck up,” I said. “You weren’t shooting people, but things. Like this.” I held the girl up and looked down at her back.

Then I almost collapsed. My specimen, the one I had grabbed to take back alive, was gone. Sliped to the floor, probably, and oozed away during the ruckus.

“Jarvis,” I said, “did you get anything?”

He shook his head.

The girl’s back was covered with a rash like a million pinpricks, where the thing had ridden her. I settled her on the floor against the wall of the car. She was still unconscious, so we left her. There was no interference as we went through the lobby to the street.

A policeman had his foot on our car while making out a ticket. He handed it to me and said, “You can’t park in this area, Mac.”

I said, “Sorry,” and signed his copy. Then I gunned the car away, got as clear as I could of traffic—and blasted into the air right from a city street. I wondered whether he added that to the ticket. When I had her at altitude, I switched license plates and identification code. The Old Man thinks of everything.

Only he did not think much of me. I tried to report on the way in, but he cut me short and ordered us into the Section offices. Mary was there with him.

“How much did you see?” I asked when I had finished reporting.

“Transmission cut off when you hit the toll barrier,” he informed me. “The President was not impressed by what he saw.”

“I suppose not.”

“He told me to fire you.”

I stiffened. “I am perfectly will—”

“Pipe down!” the Old Man snapped. “I told him that he could fire me, but not my subordinates. You are a thumb-fingered dolt,” he went on quietly, “but you can’t be spared now.”

“Thanks.”

Mary had been wandering around the room. She stopped back of Jarvis’s chair—and gave the Old Man the sign she had given for Barnes.

I hit Jarvis in the head with my heater and he sagged out of his chair.

“Stand back, Davidson!” the Old Man rapped. His gun was out and pointed at Davidson’s chest. “Mary, how about him?”

“He’s all right.”

“And him?”

“Sam’s clean”

The Old Man’s eyes moved over us and I have never felt closer to death. “Peel off your shirts,” he said sourly. We did. Mary was right. I had begun to wonder whether I would know it if I did have a parasite on me. “Now him,” the Old Man ordered. “Gloves.”

We stretched Jarvis out and carefully cut his clothing away. We had our live specimen.


I FELT myself ready to retch. The thought of that thing right behind me all the way from Iowa was more than even my unsqueamish stomach could stand.

I swallowed and said, “Let’s work it off. Maybe we can still save Jarvis.” I did not really think so; I had a deep-down hunch that anyone who had been ridden by one of those things was spoiled, permanently.

The Old Man waved us back. “Forget Jarvis.”

“But—”

“Stow it! If he can be saved, a bit longer won’t matter. In any case—” He shut up and so did I. I knew what he meant. We were expendable; the people of the United States were not.

The Old Man, gun drawn and wary, continued to watch the thing on Jarvis’s back. He said to Mary, “Get the President. Special code zero zero zero seven.”

Mary went to his desk. I heard her talking into the muffler, but my own attention was on the parasite. It made no move to leave Jarvis.

Presently Mary reported, “I can’t get him, sir. One of his assistants is on the screen. Mr. McDonough.”

The Old Man winced. McDonough was an intelligent, likable man who hadn’t changed his mind on anything since he was housebroken. The President used him as a buffer.

No, the President was not available. No, he could not be reached with a message. No, Mr. McDonough was not exceeding his authority; the Old Man was not on the list of exceptions—if there was such a list. Yes, Mr. McDonough would be happy to make an appointment; that was a promise. Today? Out of the question. Tomorrow? Impossible. How would next Friday do?

The Old Man switched off and seemed about to have a stroke. Then he took two deep breaths, his features relaxed, and he said, “Dave, ask Doc Graves to step in. The rest of you keep your distance.”

The head of the biological lab came in shortly. “Doc,” said the Old Man, “there is one that isn’t dead.”

Graves looked closely at Jarvis’s back.	 “Interesting,” he said. He dropped to one knee.

“Stand back!”

Graves looked up. “But I must have an opportunity—”

“I want you to study it, yes, but, first, you’ve got to keep it alive. Second, you’ve got to keep it from escaping. Third, you’ve got to protect yourself.”

Graves smiled. “I’m not afraid of it.”

“Be afraid of it! That’s an order.”

“I must rig up an incubator to care for it after we remove it. These things obviously need oxygen—not free oxygen, but oxygen from its host. Perhaps a large dog would suffice.”

“No,” snapped the Old Man. “Leave it where it is.”

“What? Is this man a volunteer?” The Old Man did not answer. Graves pointed out, “Human laboratory subjects must be volunteers. Professional ethics, you know.”

“Doctor Graves, every single agent in this Section is a volunteer for whatever I find necessary. Please carry out my orders.”

After they had carted Jarvis away, Davidson and Mary and I went to the lounge for a drink or four. We needed them. Davidson had the shakes. When the first drink failed to fix him, I said, “Look, Dave, I feel as bad about those girls as you do, but it could not be helped. Get that through your head.”

“How bad was it?” asked Mary.

“Pretty bad. I don’t know how many we killed.” I turned to Davidson. “We weren’t shooting people; we were shooting parasites. Don’t you see that?”’

“That’s just it. They weren’t human. You shoot and they keep coming toward you.”

After a bit, he left. Mary and I talked a while, trying for answers and getting nowhere. Then she announced that she was sleepy and headed for the women’s dormitory. The Old Man had ordered all hands to sleep in that night, so I went to the boys’ wing and crawled in a sack.


THE air raid alarm woke me. I stumbled into clothes as blowers sighed off; then the intercom bawled in the Old Man’s voice, “Anti-gas and anti-radiation procedures! Seal everything! All hands gather in the conference hall. Move!”

Being a field agent, I had no local duties. I shuffled down the tunnel to the offices. The Old Man was in the big hall, looking grim. I wanted to ask what was up, but there were a dozen clerks, agents, stenos and such there before me.

The Old Man sent me out to get the door tally from the guard on watch. He called the roll and presently it was clear that every person listed on the door tally was now inside the hall, from old Miss Haines, the Old Man’s secretary, down to the steward of the lounge—except the door guard and Jarvis. The tally had to be right; we keep track of who goes in and out a bit more carefully than a bank keeps track of money.

I was sent out again for the door guard. It took a call back to the Old Man before he would leave his post; he then threw the bolt switch and followed me. When we got back, Jarvis was there, attended by Graves and a lab man. He was wrapped in a hospital robe, conscious, apparently, but dopy.

I began to have some notion of what it was all about. The Old Man was facing the assembled staff and keeping his distance; he had his gun out. “One of the invading parasites is loose among us,” he said. “To some of you, that means too much. To the rest of you, I will have to explain, as the safety of all of us—of our whole race—depends on complete cooperation and utter obedience.” He went on to explain briefly but with ugly exactness what a parasite was, what the situation was. “In short,” he concluded, “the parasite is almost certainly in this room. One of us looks human but is an automaton, moving at the will of our deadliest enemy.”

People stole glances at each other. Some tried to draw away. A moment before we had been a team; now we were a mob, each suspicious of the other. I found myself edging away from the man closest to me—Ronald, the lounge steward, whom I had known for years.

Graves cleared his throat. “Chief,” he started in, “I took every reasonable—”

“Stow it. Bring Jarvis out in front. Take his robe off.”

Graves shut up and he and his assistant complied. Jarvis seemed only partly aware of his surroundings. Graves must have drugged him.

“Turn him around,” the Old Man ordered.

Jarvis let himself be turned; there was the mark of the slug, a red rash on shoulders and neck. There had been whispers and embarrassed giggles when Jarvis had been stripped; now there was a dead hush.

“We are going to get that slug!” said the Old Man. “Furthermore, we are going to capture it alive. You have all seen where a parasite rides a man. I’m warning you; if the parasite gets burned, I’ll burn the man who did it. If you have to shoot to catch it, shoot low. Come here!” He pointed his gun at me, halted me halfway between the crowd and himself. “Graves, sit Jarvis down behind me. No, leave his robe off.” The Old Man turned back to me. “Drop your gun on the floor.”

The Old Man’s gun was pointed at my belly; I was very careful how I drew mine. I slid it six feet away from me. “Take off all your clothes,” he said.

The Old Man’s gun overcame my inhibitions, though it did not help to have one of the girls whisper, “Not bad!” and another reply, “Knobby, I’d say.” I blushed.

After he looked me over, the Old Man told me to pick up my gun. “Back me up,” he ordered, “and keep an eye on the door. You, Dotty Something-or-other—you’re next.”

Dotty was a girl from the clerical pool. She had no gun, of course, and she was dressed in a floor-length negligee. She stepped forward, stopped.

“You really mean it?” she said incredulously.

“Move.”

She almost jumped. “Well! No need to take a person’s head off.” She bit her lip as she unfastened the clasp at her waist. “I ought to get a bonus for this,” she said defiantly, then threw the robe from her.

“Over against the wall,” the Old Man said savagely. “Now the rest of you.”

In twenty minutes there were more square yards of gooseflesh exposed than I had ever seen before, and the pile of guns looked like a small-arms arsenal.

When Mary’s turn came, she took her clothes off quickly and without a fuss. She made nothing of it, wearing her skin with quiet dignity. She added considerably to the pile of hardware. I decided she just plain liked guns.


WE were all evidently free of parasites, except the Old Man and his old-maid secretary. I think he was a bit in awe of Miss Haines. He looked distressed and poked about in the pile of clothing with his cane. Finally he looked up at her. “Miss Haines—if you please.”

I thought to myself, brother, this time you are going to have to use force.

She stood there, facing him down, a statue of offended modesty. I moved closer and said, out of the corner of my mouth, “Boss, how about yourself? Suppose you take ’em off.” He looked startled. “I mean it,” I said. “It’s you or she. Might be either. Out of those duds.”

The Old Man can recognize the inevitable. He said, “Have her stripped.” He began fumbling at his zippers, looking grim. I told Mary to take a couple of women and peel Miss Haines. When I turned back, the Old Man had his trousers at half mast—and then Miss Haines made a break for it.

The Old Man was between us and I couldn’t get in a clean shot and every other agent in the place was disarmed! I don’t think it was accident; the Old Man did not trust them not to shoot. He wanted that slug alive.

She was out the door and running down the passage by the time I got organized. I could have winged her in the passageway, but I was inhibited—first, I could not shift gears emotionally that fast. I mean to say she was still Old Lady Haines, secretary to the boss, the one who bawled me out for poor grammar in my reports. In the second place, if she was carrying a parasite, I did not want to risk burning it.

She ducked into a room. Again I hesitated—sheer habit; it was the ladies’ room.

But only a moment. I slammed the door open and looked around, gun ready.

Something hit me back of my right ear.


I CAN give no clear account of the next few moments. I was out cold, for a time at least. I remember a struggle and some shouts: “Look out!” “Damn her, she’s bitten me!” “Watch your hands!” Then somebody quietly, “By her hands and feet—careful.” Somebody said, “How about him?” and someone answered, “Later. He’s not hurt.”

I was still practically out as they left, but I began to feel a flood of life stirring back into me. I sat up, feeling extreme urgency about something. I got to my feet, staggering, and went to the door. I looked out cautiously; nobody was in sight. I trotted down the corridor, away from the conference hall.

At the outer door, I realized that I was naked and tore on down the hallway to the men’s wing. There I grabbed the first clothes I could find and pulled them on. The shoes were much too small for me; it did not seem to matter.

I ran back to the exit, found the switch. The door opened.

I thought I had made a clean escape, but somebody shouted, “Sam!” just as I was making my choice of six doors and then I plunged on out. At once I had three more beyond the one I picked. The warren we called the “offices” was served by a spaghettilike mess of tunnels. I came up finally inside a subway fruit-and-bookstall, nodded to the proprietor, swung the counter gate and mingled with the crowd.

I caught the up-river jet express and got off at the first station. I crossed over to the downriver, waited around the change window until a man came up who displayed quite a bit of money as he bought his counter. I got on the same train and got off when he did. At the first dark spot I rabbit-punched him. Now I had money and was ready to operate. I did not know why I had to have money, but I knew that I needed it for what I was about to do.


I SAW things around me with a curious double vision, as if I stared through rippling water—yet I felt no surprise and no curiosity. I moved like a sleepwalker, unaware of what I was going to do, and still I was wide awake, aware of who I was, where I was, what my job at the Section had been. And, although I did not know my objective, I was always conscious of what I was doing and sure that each act was the necessary act at that moment.

I felt no emotion most of the time, except the contentment that comes from work which needs to be done. That was on the conscious level. Someplace, more levels down than I understand about, I was excruciatingly unhappy, terrified, and filled with guilt, but that was down, way down, locked, suppressed. I was hardly aware of it and not affected by it.

I knew that I had been seen to leave. That shout of “Sam!” was for me; only two persons knew me by that name and the Old Man would have used my right name. So Mary had seen me leave. It was a good thing, I thought, that she had let me find out where her apartment was. It would be necessary to booby trap it against her using it. In the meantime I must get on with work and keep from being picked up.

I was moving through a warehouse district, all my training at work to avoid being noticed. Shortly I found a satisfactory building; there was a sign: LOFT FOR LEASE—SEE RENTAL AGENT ON GROUND FLOOR. I scouted it, noted the address, then doubled back to a Western Union booth. There I took a vacant machine and sent this message: EXPEDITE TWO CASES TINY TOTS TALK TALES SAME DISCOUNT CONSIGNED JOEL FREEMAN and added the address of the loft. I sent it to Roscoe & Dillard, Jobbers and Manufacturers Agents, Des Moines, Iowa.

As I left the booth, the sight of one of the Kwikfede restaurants reminded me that I was hungry, but the reflex abruptly cut off and I thought no more about it. I returned to the warehouse, found a dark corner in the rear, and settled back to wait for dawn and business hours.

I have a dim recollection of claustrophobic nightmares.

At nine o’clock I met the rental agent as he unlocked his office, and leased the loft, paying him a fat squeeze for immediate possession. I went up to the loft, unlocked it, and waited.

About ten-thirty my crates were delivered. After the expressmen were gone, I opened a crate, took out one cell, warmed it, and got it ready. Then I found the rental agent again and said, “Mr. Greenberg, could you come up for a moment? I want to see about making some changes in the lighting.”


HE fussed, but did so. When we entered the loft I closed the door and led him to the crate. “Here,” I said, “if you will lean over, you will see just what I mean.”

I got him with a grip that cut off his wind, ripped his jacket and shirt up, and, with my free hand, transferred a master from the cell to his bare back, then held him tight until he relaxed. I let him up, tucked his shirt in and dusted him off. When he caught his breath, I said, “What news from Des Moines?”

“What do you want to know?” he asked. “How long have you been out?”

I started to explain, but he interrupted with, “Let’s have direct conference and not waste time.” I skinned up my shirt, he did the same, and we sat down on the unopened crate, back to back, so that our masters could be in contact. My own mind was blank; I have no idea how long it went on. I watched a fly droning around a dusty cobweb.


THE building superintendent was our next recruit. He was a large Swede and it took both of us. After that Mr. Greenberg called up the owner and insisted that he had to come down and see some damage that had occurred to the structure—just what, I don’t know; I was busy working with the super, opening and warming more cells.

The owner of the building was a prize and we all felt pleased, including, of course, the man himself. He belonged to the Constitution Club, the membership of which read like Who’s Who in Finance, Government and Industry.

It was pushing noon; we had no time to lose. The super went out to buy clothes and a satchel for me, and he sent the owner’s chauffeur up to be recruited as he did so. At twelve-thirty we left, the owner and I, in his town car; the satchel contained twelve masters, in their cells but ready.

The owner signed J. Hardwick Potter & Guest. A flunky tried to take my bag, but I insisted that I needed it to change my, shirt before lunch. We stalled around in the washroom until we had it to ourselves, except for the attendant—whereupon we recruited him and sent him with a message to the manager that a guest was ill in the washroom.

After we took care of the manager, he obtained a white coat and I became another washroom attendant. I had only ten masters left, but the cases would be picked up from the loft and delivered to the club shortly. The regular attendant and I used up the rest of those I had before the lunch hour rush was over. One guest walked in on us while we were busy and I had to kill him. We stuffed him into the mop closet.

There was a lull after that, as the cases had not yet arrived. Hunger reflex nearly doubled me over; then it dropped off, but persisted. I told the manager, who had me served lunch in his office. The cases arrived as I was finishing.

During the drowsy period in the mid-afternoon, we secured the place. By four o’clock everyone in the building—members, staff, and guests—were with us. From then on, we processed them in the lobby as the doorman passed them in. Later in the day the manager phoned Des Moines for more cases. Our big prize came that evening—the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. We saw a real victory; the Treasury Department is charged with the safety of the President.


SOME days after I was recruited, I gave the club manager instructions about shipments of masters’ carrying cells. I was fleetingly aware, as I did so, that three more ships had landed, but my overt knowledge was limited to an address in New Orleans.

I thought nothing about it; I went on with my work. I was a new “special assistant to Mr. Potter” and spent the days in his office—and the nights, too. Actually, the relationship may have reversed; I frequently gave oral instructions to Potter. Or perhaps I understand the social organization of the parasites as little now as I did then.

Through me, my master knew as much as I did. It knew that I was one human known to the Old Man to have been recruited—and knew, I am sure, that the Old Man would not cease to search for me, to recapture me or kill me.

It seems odd that it did not change bodies and kill mine; we had vastly more recruits available than we had masters. It could not have felt anything parallel to human squeamishness, for masters newly delivered from their transit cells frequently damaged their hosts. We always destroyed the host and found a new one. On the other hand, would a skilled cowhand destroy a well-trained horse in favor of an untried, strange mount? That may have been why I was kept hidden and used.

After a time the city was “secured” and my master started taking me out on the streets. I do not mean that every inhabitant wore a hump—the humans were very numerous and the masters still very few—but the key positions in the city were held by our own recruits, from the cop on the corner to the mayor and the chief of police, not forgetting ward bosses, ministers, board members, and any and all in public communication and news. The majority continued their usual affairs, not only undisturbed by the masquerade but unaware of it.

Unless, of course, one of them happened to be in the way of some purpose of a master, in which case he was disposed of.

That was when I was allowed outside, walked to the uptown launching platform and made to order a cab. One was lifted to the loading ramp and I started to get in. But an old gentleman bustled up and climbed into it ahead of me.

I received an order to dispose of him. It was immediately countermanded by another telling me to go slow and be careful. I said, “Excuse me, sir, but this cab is taken.”

“Quite,” the elderly man replied. “I’ve taken it.”

“You will have to find another,” I said reasonably. “May I see your ticket?”

I had him; the cab carried the launching number shown by my ticket, but he did not stir. “Where are you going?” he demanded.

“New Orleans,” I answered, and learned for the first time my destination.

“Then you can drop me off in Memphis.”

I shook my head. “It’s out of my way.”

“All of fifteen minutes!” He seemed to have difficulty controlling his temper. “Driver, explain to this person the public Conveyance rules.”

The driver stopped picking his teeth. “It’s nothing to me. I pick ’em up, I take ’em, I drop ’em. Settle it yourselves or I’ll ask the despatcher for another fare.”

I hesitated, not yet having been instructed. Then I found myself climbing inside. “New Orleans,” I said, “with a stop at Memphis.”

The driver shrugged and signaled the control tower. The other passenger snorted and got in after me.

In the air, he opened his briefcase and spread papers across his knees. Watching him with disinterest, I found myself shifting position to let me get at my gun easily. The man shot out a hand, grabbed my wrist. “Not so fast, son,” he said, and his features broke into the Satanic grin of the Old Man himself.

My reflexes are fast, but I was at the disadvantage of having everything routed from me to my master, passed on by it, and action routed back to me! How much delay is that? I don’t know. As I was drawing, I felt a gun against my ribs. “Take it easy.”

With his other hand, he thrust something against my side. I felt a prick, and then through me spread the warm tingle of a jolt of “Morpheus” taking hold. I made one more attempt to pull my gun free and sank forward.


I WAS vaguely aware of voices. Someone was handling me roughly and someone else was saying, “Watch out for that ape!” Another voice replied, “It’s all right; his tendons are cut,” to which the first retorted, “He’s still got teeth, hasn’t he?”

Yes, I thought fretfully, and if you get close, I’ll bite you with them. The remark about cut tendons seemed to be true; none of my limbs would move, but that did not worry me as much as being called an ape. It was a shame to call a man names when he couldn’t protect himself.

I wept a little and then fell into a stupor, until I heard, “Feeling better, son?”

The Old Man was leaning over the end of my bed, staring thoughtfully. His chest was bare and grizzled.

“Unh,” I said, “pretty good, I guess.” I started to sit up and found I could not.

The Old Man came around to the side. “We can, take those restraints off,” he said, fiddling with clasps. “Didn’t want you hurting yourself. There!”

I sat up, rubbing myself.

“Now,” said the Old Man, “how much do you remember?”

“Remember?”

“They caught you. Do you remember anything after the parasite got to you?”

I felt a sudden wild fear and clutched at the bed. “Boss! They know where this place is! I told them.”

“No, they don’t,” he answered quietly, “because these aren’t the offices you remember. I had the old ones evacuated. They don’t know about this hangout—I think. So you remember?”

“Of course I remember. I got out of here—I mean out of the old offices and went up—” My thoughts raced ahead; I had a sudden image of holding a live master in my bare hand, ready to place it on the rental agent.

I threw up.

The Old Man said gently, “Go ahead.”

“Boss, they’re all around. They’ve got the city.”

“I know. Same as Des Moines. And Minneapolis, St. Paul, New Orleans, and Kansas City. Maybe more. I don’t know—I can’t be everywhere.” He scowled and added, “It’s like fighting with your feet in a sack. We’re losing fast. We can’t even clamp down on the cities we know about.”

“Good God! Why not?”

“You should know. Because ‘older and wiser heads’ are still unconvinced. Because when the parasites take over a city, everything goes on as before.”

I stared.

“Never mind,” he said gently. “You are the first break we’ve had, the first victim to be recaptured alive—and now we find you remember what happened. That’s important. And your parasite is the first one we’ve managed to capture and keep alive. We’ll have a chance to—”

My face must have been a mask of terror. The notion that my master was still alive and might get to me again was more than I could stand.

The Old Man shook me. “Take it easy. You are still pretty weak.”

“Where is it?”

“Eh? The parasite? Don’t worry about it. It’s living off your opposite number, a red orangutan, name of Napoleon. It’s safe.”

“Kill it!”

“Hardly. We need it alive for study.”

I must have gone to pieces, for he slapped me. “Take a brace,” he said. “I hate to bother you when you are sick, but I’ve got to. We have to get down on wire everything you remember.”

I pulled myself together and started making a careful report of all that I could remember. I described renting the loft and recruiting my first victim, then how we moved on to the Constitution Club. The Old Man nodded. “Logical. You were a good agent, even for them.”

“You don’t understand,” I objected. “I didn’t do any thinking. I knew what was going on, but that was all. It was as if—” I paused, stuck for words.

“Never mind. Get on.”

“After we recruited the club manager, the rest was easy. We took them as they came in and—”

“Names?”

“M.C. Greenberg, Thor Hansen, J. Hardwick Potter, his chauffeur Jim Wakeley, a little guy called ‘Jake’ who was washroom attendant, but he had to be disposed of later—his master would not let him take time out for necessities. Then there was the manager; I never did get his name.” I paused, letting my mind run back, trying to make sure of each recruit. “Oh, my God!”

“What is it?”

“The Assistant Secretary of the Treasury!”

“You got him?”

“Yes. The first day. How long ago was that? Chief, the Treasury Department protects the President!”

But there was just a hole in the air where the Old Man had been.


I WOKE up with my mouth foul, head buzzing, and a sense of impending disaster. Nevertheless I felt fine, by comparison. A cheerful voice said, “Feeling better?”

A small brunette creature was bending over me. She was a cute little bug and I was well enough to appreciate the fact, though faintly. She was dressed in an odd costume, white shorts, a wisp of stuff that covered her breasts, and a sort of metal carapace that covered the neck, shoulders and spine.

“Some,” I admitted.

“Mouth taste unpleasant?”

“Like a mailman’s sox.”

She gave me some stuff in a glass; it burned a little and washed away the bad taste.

“No,” she said, “don’t swallow it. ’Pit it out and I’ll get you water.” I obeyed. “I’m Doris Marsden,” she went on, “your day nurse.”

“Glad to know you, Doris,” I answered and stared at her. “Say, why the burlesque getup? Not that I don’t like it, but you look like a refugee from a comic book.”

She giggled. “You’ll get used to it. I did.”

“I like it. But why?”

“Old Man’s orders.” Then I knew why, and I started to feel worse again. Doris said, “Now for supper.” She got a tray.

“I don’t want anything to eat.”

“Open up,” she said firmly, “or you’ll get it through a tube.”

Between gulps, taken in self-defense, I managed to choke out, “I feel pretty good. One jolt of ‘gyro’ and I’ll be on my feet.”

“No stimulants,” she said flatly, still shoveling it in. “Special diet and lots of rest, with a sleepy pill later.”

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Exhaustion, starvation, and incipient scurvy. You also had scabies and lice, but we got those whipped. Now you know—and if you tell the doctor, I’ll call you a liar to your face. Turn over.”

I did so and she started changing dressings. I appeared to be spotted with sores. I thought about what she had told me and tried to remember how I had lived under my master.

“Stop trembling,” she said. “Having a bad one?”

“I’m all right,” I told her. As near as I could recall, I had not eaten oftener than every second or third day. Bathing? Let me see—I hadn’t bathed at all! I had shaved every day and put on a clean shirt, but only because that was necessary to the masquerade and the master knew it.

On the other hand, I had never taken off my shoes from the time I had stolen them until the Old Man had recaptured me, and they had been too tight to start with. I couldn’t even feel my feet.


I LIKE nurses; they are calm and earthy and tolerant. Miss Briggs, my night nurse, was not the cute job that Doris was; she had a face like a horse. She wore the same musical comedy rig that Doris sported, but she wore it with a no-nonsense air and strode like a grenadier. Doris, bless her heart, jiggled pleasantly when she walked.

Miss Briggs refused me a second sleeping pill when I woke up in the night and had the horrors, but she did play poker with me and skinned me out of half a month’s pay. I tried to find out from her about the President, but she wasn’t talking. She would not admit that she knew anything about parasites, Flying Saucers, or what not—and she herself dressed in a costume that could have only one purpose!

I asked her what the public news was, then. She maintained that she had been too busy to look at a ’cast. So I asked to have a stereo box moved into my room. She said I would have to ask the doctor; I was on the ‘quiet’ list. I asked when I was going to see this so-called doctor. About then her call bell sounded and she left.

I fixed her. While she was gone, I cold-decked the deal, so that she got a pat hand—and then I wouldn’t bet against her.


I GOT to sleep and was awakened by Miss Briggs slapping me in the face with a washcloth. She got me ready for breakfast. Then Doris relieved her and brought in the tray. While I was chomping I tackled her for news—with the same score I had made with Miss Briggs. Nurses run a hospital as if it were a nursery for backward children.

Davidson came to see me after breakfast. “Heard you were here,” he said. He was wearing shorts and nothing else, except that his left arm was covered by a dressing.

“More than I’ve heard,” I complained, “What happened to you?”

“Bee stung me.”

If he didn’t want to tell how he had gotten burned, that was his business. I said, “The Old Man was in here yesterday and left very suddenly. Seen him since?”

“Yep.”

“Well?”

“Have the psych boys cleared you for classified matters?”

“Is there any doubt about it?”

“You’re darn tootin’ there is. Poor old Jarvis never did pull out of it.”

I hadn’t thought about Jarvis. “How is he now?”

“He isn’t. Dropped into a coma and died—the day after you left. I mean the day after you were captured.” Davidson looked me over. “You must be tough.”

I did not feel tough. Tears of helplessness and frustration welled up again and I blinked them back. Davidson pretended not to notice and went on, “You should have seen the ruckus after you gave us the slip. The Old Man took out after you, wearing nothing but a gun and a look of grim determination. He would have caught you, but the police picked him up and we had to get him out of hock.”

I grinned feebly. There was something both gallant and silly about the Old Man charging out to save the world in his birthday suit. “Sorry I missed it. What else has happened—lately?”

Davidson looked me over. “Wait a minute.” He stepped out and was gone a short time. When he came back, he said, “The Old Man says okay. What do you want to know?”

“Everything! What happened yesterday?”

“That’s how I got this.” He waved his damaged wing at me. “I was lucky,” he added. “Three agents were killed. Quite a fracas.”

“But how about the President? Was he—”

Doris bustled in. “Oh, there you are!” she said to Davidson. “I told you to stay in bed. You’re due at Mercy Hospital right now. The ambulance has been waiting ten minutes.”

He stood up, grinned, and pinched her with his good hand. “The party can’t start until I get there.”

“Well, hurry!”

“Coming.”

I called out, “Hey! How about the President?”

Davidson looked back over his shoulder. “Oh, him? He’s all right. Not a single scratch.”

He went on.

Doris came back a few minutes later, fuming. “Patients!” she said, like a swear word. “I should have had twenty minutes for his injection to take hold. So instead I had to give it to him when he got into the ambulance.”

“Injection for what?”

“Didn’t he tell you?”

“No.”

“Amputation and graft, lower left arm.”

“Oh.” Well, I thought, I won’t hear the end of the story from Davidson. Grafting on a new limb is a shock. They keep the patient hopped up for at least ten days. So I tackled Doris again. “How about the Old Man? Was he wounded?”

“You talk too much,” she answered. “It’s time for morning nourishment and your nap.” She produced a glass of milky slop.

“Speak up, wench, or I’ll spill it on the floor.”

“The Old Man? You mean the Chief of Section?”

“Who else?”

“He’s not on the sick list.” She crossed her fingers on both hands, “I wouldn’t want him as a patient!”


FOR two or three more days I was kept in bed and treated like a child. I did not care; it was the first real rest I had had in years. The sores got better and presently I was encouraged—”required,” I should say—to take light exercise around the room.

The Old Man called on me. “Well,” he said, “still malingering.”

I flushed. “Damn your black, chilblained heart,” I told him. “Get me some pants and I’ll show you who is malingering.”

“Slow down.” He took my chart and looked it over. “Nurse,” he said, “get this man a pair of shorts. I’m restoring him to duty.”

Doris faced up to him like a banty hen. “You may be the big boss, but you can’t give orders here. The doctor will—”

“Stow it,” he said, “and get those drawers!”

She went out, sputtering, and came back with the doctor. The Old Man said mildly, “Doc, I sent for pants, not for you.”

The medico replied stiffly, “I’ll thank you not to interfere with my patients.”

“He’s not your patient. He’s going back on duty.”

“If you do not like the way I run my department, sir, you may have my resignation.”

The Old Man answered, “I beg your pardon, Doctor. Sometimes I become too preoccupied to follow correct procedure. Will you please do me the favor of examining this patient? If he can be restored to duty, it would help me to have his services at once.”

The doctor’s jaw muscles were jumping, but he said, “Certainly, sir.” He went through a show of studying my chart, then tested my reflexes. “He needs more recuperation, but you may have him. Nurse, fetch clothing for this man.”

Clothing consisted of shorts and shoes. Everybody else was dressed the same way, however, and it was comforting to see all those bare shoulders with no masters clinging to them. I told the Old Man so.

“Best defense we’ve got,” he growled, “even if it does make the city look like a beach. If we don’t win this set-to before winter weather, we’re licked.”

He stopped at a door with a sign: BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY—STAY OUT!

I hung back. “Where are we going?”

“To take a look at your twin, the ape with your parasite.”

“That’s what I thought. Not for me!” I could feel myself tremble.

“Now, look, son,” he said patiently. “Get over your panic. The best! way is to face up to it. I know it’s hard. I’ve spent hours getting used to the sight.”

“You don’t know—you can’t know!” I had the shakes so badly that I had to clutch the door frame.

“I suppose it’s different,” he said slowly, “when you’ve actually had it. Jarvis—” He broke off.

“You’re damn right it’s different! You’re not going to get me in there!”

“No, I guess not. Well, go on back, son, and check in at the infirmary.” He started into the laboratory.

He had gotten three or four steps away before I called out, “Boss!” He stopped and turned, his face expressionless. “Wait,” I added. “I’m coming.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I’ll do it. It—it just takes a while—to get your nerve back.”


AS I came alongside him, he grasped my arm, warmly and affectionately, and continued to hold it as we walked. We went through another locked door and into a room conditioned warm and moist. The ape was there, caged.

His torso was supported and restrained by a strap-metal framework. His arms and legs hung limply, as if he had no control over them. He looked up at us with eyes malevolent and intelligent; then the fire died out and they were merely the eyes of a dumb brute in pain.

“Around to the side,” the Old Man said.

I would have hung back, but he still had me by the arm. The ape followed us with his eyes, but his body was held by the frame. From the new position I could see—

The thing that had ridden my back for an endless time, spoken with my mouth, thought with my brain. My master.

“Steady,” the Old Man said softly.

I took a couple of deep breaths and managed to slow my heart down. I made myself stare at it.

It is not the appearance of a parasite which arouses horror, nor is it even from knowing what they can do—for I felt the horror the first time I saw one, before I knew what it was. I tried to tell the Old Man so.

He nodded, his eyes on the parasite. “It’s the same with everybody. Unreasoning fear, like a bird with a snake. Probably its prime weapon.” He looked away from it, as if too long a sight were too much for even his rawhide nerves.

I stuck with him, telling myself that it couldn’t harm me. I looked away and found the Old Man’s eyes on me.

“How about it?” he said. “Getting hardened?”

“A little. All I want is to kill it! I could spend my life killing them and killing them.” I began to shake again.

The Old Man studied me. “Here,” he said, and handed me his gun.

It startled me. I was unarmed, having come straight from bed. I took it, but looked at him questioningly.

“You want to kill it. If you have to, go ahead. Right now.”

“But—you told me you needed this one for study.”

“I do. But if you feel that you need to kill it, to make you a whole man again, go ahead.”

“To make me a whole man again—” The Old Man knew what medicine it would take to cure me. I was no longer trembling; the gun was cradled in my hand, ready to spit and kill. While this one was alive, I would still crouch and tremble in the dark. As for others—why, we could capture a dozen at the Constitution Club. With this one dead, I’d lead the raid myself.

Breathing rapidly, I raised the gun.

Then I turned and chucked it to the Old Man.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I don’t know. It was enough to know that I could.”

“I figured it would be.”

I felt warm and relaxed, not even angry with the Old Man for what he had done. “I know you did, damn you. How does it feel to be a puppet master?”

He answered soberly, “Not me. The most I ever do is lead a man on the path he wants to follow. There is the puppet master.”

“Yes,” I agreed softly, “ ‘the puppet master.’ You think you know what you mean, but you don’t. I hope you never do.”

“I hope so, too,” he answered.

I could look now without trembling. Still staring at it, I said, “Boss, when you are through with it, promise me that I can kill it.”

“It’s a promise.”


WE were interrupted by a man bustling in. He was dressed in shorts and a lab coat; it made him look silly. It was not Graves—I never saw him again. I imagine the Old Man ate him for lunch.

“Why are you wearing a coat?” The Old Man’s gun was out and menacing.

The man stared at the gun as if it were a bad joke. “Why, I was working. There is always a chance of splattering one’s self. Some of our solutions are rather—”

“Take it off!”

The man took his coat off. His shoulders didn’t have the telltale rash. “Take that damned coat and burn it,” the Old Man told him. “Then get back to work.”

The man hurried away, his face red, then stopped and said, “Chief, are you ready for that, uh, procedure?”

“Shortly. I’ll let you know.”

He left. The Old Man wearily put his gun away. “Post an order,” he muttered. “Read it aloud. Make them initial it. Tattoo it on their narrow little chests. And always some smart Aleck thinks it doesn’t mean him. Scientists!”

I turned back to my former master. It still revolted me, but there was a gusty feeling of danger, too, that was not totally unpleasant. “Boss,” I asked, “what are you going to do with this thing?”

“I plan to interview it.”

“To what? But how—”

“No, the ape can’t talk. We’ll have to have a volunteer—a human volunteer.”


WHEN I began to visualize what he meant, the horror struck me again full force. “You can’t mean that. You wouldn’t do that to anybody.”

“It needs to be done and it will be done.”

“You won’t get any volunteers!”

“I’ve got one.”

“You have? Who?”

“But I don’t want to use the one I’ve got. I’m still looking for the right person.”

I was disgusted and showed it. “If you’ve got one, you won’t find another; there can’t be two people that crazy.”

“Possibly,” he agreed. “But I still don’t want the one I’ve got. The interview is a ‘must,’ son; we are fighting with a total lack of military intelligence. We don’t know our enemy, we can’t negotiate with him, we don’t know where he comes from, nor what makes him tick. We’ve got to find out; our existence depends on it. The only way to talk to these things is through a human. So it will be done. But I’m still looking for a volunteer.”

“Don’t look at me!”

“I am looking at you.”

I managed to splutter, “You’re crazy! I should have killed it when I had your gun—I would have if I had known why you wanted it. But as for volunteering to let you put that thing—No!”

He ploughed on as if he had not heard me. “It has to be a man who can take it. Jarvis wasn’t stable enough, nor tough enough. We know you are.”

“Me? All you know is that I lived through it once. I . . . I couldn’t stand it again.”

“You are proved and salted. With anyone else, I run more risk of losing an agent.”

“Since when did you worry about risking an agent?” I said bitterly.

“Always. I am giving you one more chance, son. Are you going to do this, knowing that it has to be done and that you stand the best chance of anybody—and can be of most use to us, because you did live through it—or are you going to let some other agent risk his reason and his life in your place?”

I started to try to explain how I felt. I could not stand the thought of dying while possessed by a parasite. Even worse was the prospect of not dying once the slug touched me. But I could not find words for it.

I could feel my face set and twitch with tension. “There is a limit to what any man can go through. I won’t do it.”

He turned to the intercom on the wall. “Laboratory,” he called out. “We’ll start now. Hurry up!”

I recognized the voice of the man who had walked in on us. “Which subject?” he asked.

“The original volunteer.”

“The smaller rig?” the voice asked doubtfully.

“Right. Get it in here.”

I started for the door. The Old Man snapped, “Where are you going?”

“Out,” I snapped back. “I want no part of this.”

He grabbed me and spun me around. “No, you don’t. You know about these creatures; your advice could help.”

“Let go of me.”

“You’ll stay,” he said savagely, “strapped down or free to move! I made allowances for your illness, but I’ve had enough.”

I was too weary to buck him. “You’re the boss.”


THE lab people wheeled in a sort of chair, more like a Sing Sing special than anything else. There were clamps for ankles and knees, wrists and elbows. There was a canvas corselet to restrain the waist and chest, but the back was cut away so that the shoulders of the victim would be free.

They placed it beside the ape’s cage, then removed the side of the cage nearest the chair. The ape watched with intent, aware eyes, but his limbs still dangled helplessly. Nevertheless, I became still more disturbed at the cage being opened. Only the Old Man’s threat kept me there. The technicians stood back, apparently ready. The outer door opened and several people came in. Among them was Mary.

I was caught off balance; I had been wanting to see her and had tried several times to get word to her through the nurses—but they either could not identify her or had received instructions. Now I saw her under these circumstances. I cursed the Old Man to myself. It was no show to bring a woman to, even a woman agent. There ought to be decent limits somewhere.

Mary looked surprised and nodded. I let it go at that; it was no time for small talk. She was looking good, though very sober. She was dressed in the costume the nurses had worn, but she did not have the ludicrous helmet and back plate. The others present were men, loaded with recording and stereo equipment as well as other apparatus.

“Ready?” inquired the lab chief.

“Get going,” answered the Old Man.

Mary walked straight to the chair and sat down. Two technicians knelt and started fastening the clamps. I watched in a frozen daze. Then I grabbed the Old Man, literally threw him aside, and I was by the chair, kicking the technicians out of the way.

“Mary!” I screamed. “Get up from there!”

The Old Man had his gun on me. “Away from her,” he ordered. “You three—grab him and tie him.”

I looked at the gun, then down at Mary. She did not move: her feet were already bound. She simply looked at me with compassionate eyes.

“Get up, Mary,” I said dully. “I want to sit down.”

They removed the chair and brought in a larger one. I could not have used hers: both were tailored to size. When they finished clamping me, I might as well have been cast in concrete. My back began to itch unbearably, although nothing, as yet, had touched it.

Mary was no longer in the room; I had not seen her leave and it did not seem to matter. After I had been prepared, the Old Man laid a hand on my arm, and said quietly, “Thanks, son.” I did not answer.

I was not interested enough to watch them handle the parasite behind my back, even if I had been able to turn my head, which I couldn’t. Once the ape barked and screamed and someone shouted, “Watch it!”

There was silence, as if everyone was holding his breath. Then something moist touched my neck and I fainted.


WITH the same tingling energy I had experienced before, I came out of the faint, realizing I was in a tight spot, but warily determined to think my way out. I was not afraid: I was contemptuous and sure that I could outwit them.

The Old Man said sharply, “Can you hear me?”

I answered, “Quit shouting.”

“Do you remember what we are here for?”

“You want to ask questions. What are you waiting for?”

“What are you?”

“That’s a silly question. I’m six feet one, more muscle than brain, and I weigh—”

“Not you. You know to whom I am talking—you.”

“Guessing games?”

The Old Man waited before replying, “It’s no good to pretend I don’t know what you are.”

“Oh, go ahead and pretend.”

“You know that I have been studying you all the time you Slave been living on the body of that ape. I know things which give me an advantage. One—” the Old Man started ticking them off—“you can be killed. Two, you can be hurt. You don’t like electric shock and you can’t stand the heat that even a man. can stand. Three, you are helpless without your host. I could have you removed and you would die. Four, you have no powers except those you borrow from your host. He is helpless. Try your bonds. You must cooperate or die!”

I had already been trying my bonds, finding them, as I expected, impossible to escape. This did not worry me. I was oddly contented to be back with my master, to be free of troubles and tensions. My business was to serve; the future would take care of itself. One ankle strap seemed less tight than the other. Possibly I might drag my foot through it. I checked on the arm clamps. If I relaxed completely—

An instruction came at once or I made a decision; the words mean the same, for there was no conflict between my master and me; we were one. Instruction or decision, I knew it was not time to risk an escape. I ran my eyes around the room, trying to figure who was armed. It was my guess that only the Old Man was. That bettered the chances.

Somewhere, deep down, was that ache of guilt and despair never experienced by any but the servants of the masters. I was much too busy, though, to be troubled by it.

“Well?” the Old Man went on. “Do you answer questions or do I punish you?”

“What questions?” I asked. “Up to now, you’ve been talking nonsense.”

The Old Man turned to a technician. “Give me the tickler.”

I felt no apprehension, being still busy checking my bonds. If I could tempt him into placing his gun within reach, assuming that I could get one arm free, then I might—

He reached past my shoulders with a rod. I felt a shocking pain. The room blacked out as if a switch had been thrown. I was split apart. For the moment, I was masterless.

The pain left, leaving only searing memory behind. Before I could think coherently, the splitting away had ended and I was again safely under the control of my master. But for the first and only time in my service to him, I was not myself free of worry; echoes of his own wild fear and pain were passed on to me.

“Well, how did you like the taste?” asked the Old Man.

The panic washed away; I was again filled with unworried wellbeing, however wary and watchful. My wrists and ankles, which had begun to pain me, stopped hurting. “Why did you do that?” I asked. “Certainly, you can hurt me—but why?”

“Answer my questions.”

“Ask them.”

“What are you?”

The answer did not come at once. As the Old Man reached for the rod, I heard myself hurriedly saying. “We are the people.”

“What people?”

“The only people. We have studied you and we know your ways. We—” I stopped suddenly.

“Keep talking,” the Old Man said grimly, and gestured with the rod.

“We come,” I went on, “to bring you—” I wanted to talk; the rod was terrifyingly close. But there was some difficulty with words. “To bring you peace,” I blurted out.

The Old Man snorted.

“Peace,” I went on, “and contentment—and the joy of—of surrender.” Surrender was not the right word. I struggled the way one struggles with a foreign language. “The joy,” I repeated, “of . . . nirvana.” The word fitted and the master was pleased. I felt like a dog being patted for fetching a stick.

“Let me get this,” the Old Man said. “You are promising the human race that if we will just surrender, you will take care of us and make us happy. Right?”

“Exactly!”

The Old Man thought about this while looking past my shoulders. He spat on the floor. “You know,” he said slowly, “humanity has often been offered that bargain. It never worked out worth a damn.”

“Try it yourself,” I suggested. “It can be done quickly. Then you will know.”

He stared this time in my face. “Maybe I owe it to somebody to try it personally. Maybe I will, some day. But right now,” he went on briskly, “you have questions to answer. Answer quick and proper and stay healthy. Be slow and I’ll step up the current.”

I shrank back, feeling dismay and defeat. For a moment, thinking he was going to accept, I had been planning the possibilities of escape.

“Now,” he went on, “where do you come from?”

No answer. I felt no urge to answer.

The rod came closer. “Far away!” I burst out.

“That’s no news. Where’s your home base, your own planet?” The Old Man waited, then said, “I’ll have to touch up your memory.” I watched dully, thinking nothing.

“There may be a semantic difficulty,” said an assistant. “Different astronomical concepts.”

“Why?” asked the Old Man. “That slug knows what his host knows; we’ve proved that.” But he turned back and started a different tack. “See here, you savvy the Solar System. Is your planet inside it or outside?”

I hesitated, then answered, “All planets are ours.”

The Old Man pulled at his lip. “I wonder,” he mused, “what you mean. Never mind. You can claim the whole damned universe, but, where do your ships come from?”

I sat silent, unable to tell him.

Suddenly he reached behind me. I felt one smashing blow. “Talk, damn you! What planet? Mars? Venus? Jupiter? Saturn? Uranus? Neptune? Pluto?”

As he mentioned them, I briefly law them—though I have never been as far off Earth as the Space Stations. When he came to the fight one, I knew—and the thought was instantly snatched from me.

I heard myself saying, “None of them. Our home is much farther away.”

He looked past my shoulders and then into my eyes. “I think you are lying. Maybe you need some juice to keep you honest.”

“No, no!”

“No harm to try.” Slowly he thrust the rod behind me. I knew the answer again and was about to give it, when something froze my throat. Then the pain started.

I was being torn apart. I tried to talk, anything to stop the pain—but I wasn’t allowed to.

Through a blur of pain I saw the Old Man’s face, shimmering and floating. “Had enough?” he asked. I started to answer, and choked and gagged helplessly, dumbly. I saw him reach out again with the rod.

There was, as I had told the Old Man, a limit to what a man could take, even under a master’s control. I reached that limit and burst into pieces.


THEY were leaning over me. Someone said, “He’s coming around.”

The Old Man’s face was over mine. “You all right, son?” he asked anxiously. I turned my face away.

“One side, please,” another voice said. “Let me give him the injection.” The speaker knelt by me and gave me a shot. He stood up, looked at his hands, then wiped them on his shorts.

Gyro, I thought absently, or something like it. Whatever it was, it was pulling me back together. Shortly I sat up, unassisted. I was still in the cage room, directly in front of that damnable chair.

I started to get to my feet.

The Old Man gave me a hand, but I shook him off.

“Sorry,” he answered, then snapped, “Jones! You and Ito get the litter. Take him to the infirmary. Doc, you go along.”

“Certainly.” The man who had given me the shot started to take my arm.

I drew back. “Keep your hands off me!”

The doctor looked at the Old Man, who shrugged, then motioned them all back. Alone, I went through the door and past the outer one into the corridor. I paused there, looked at my wrists and ankles, and decided that I might as well go to the infirmary. Doris would take care of me and then maybe I could sleep. I felt as if I had gone fifteen rounds and lost them all.

“Sam! Sam!”

I knew that voice. Mary hurried up and was standing before me, looking at me with great sorrowful eyes. “Oh, Sam! What have they done to you?” Her voice was so choked that I could hardly understand her.

“You should know,” I answered and had strength enough left to slap her. “Bitch!”


MY room was still unoccupied, but I did not find Doris. I closed the door, then lay face down on the bed and tried to stop thinking or feeling. Presently I heard a gasp, and opened one eye.

There was Doris. I felt her gentle hands on me. “Why, you poor, poor baby! Stay there, don’t move now. I’ll hurry right out and get the doctor.”

“No.”

“But you’ve got to have the doctor.”

“I won’t see him. You help me.”

She did not answer. I heard her go out. She came back shortly—I think it was shortly—and started to bathe my wounds. I wanted to scream when she touched my back. But she dressed it quickly and said, “Over easy, now.”

“I’ll stay face down.”

“No. I want you to drink something. That’s a good boy.”

I turned over, with her doing most of the work, and drank what she gave me. After a bit I went to sleep.

I seem to remember being awakened, seeing the Old Man and cursing him. The doctor was there, too. Or the whole thing could have been a dream.

Miss Briggs woke me and Doris brought me breakfast; it was as if I had never been off the sick list. I was not in too bad shape though I felt as if I had gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel. There were dressings on both arms and both legs where I had cut myself on the clamps, but no bones were broken. Where I was sick was in my soul.

Don’t misunderstand me. The Old Man could send me into a dangerous spot. That was what I had signed up for. But I had not signed up for what he had done to me. He knew what made me tick and he had used it to force me into something I would never have done willingly.

It was the Old Man that really hurt. Mary? There have always been female spies, and the young and pretty ones have always used the same tools. But she should not have agreed to use them against a fellow agent—at least, she should not have used them against me.

Not very logical, is it? It was to me. They could go ahead with Operation Parasite without me. I owned a cabin in the Adirondacks; I had stuff there in deep freeze to carry me a year, maybe more. I had plenty of tempus pills; I would go up there and use them—and the world could save itself, or go to hell, without me.

If anyone came within a hundred yards, he would either show a bare back or be burned down.


I HAD to tell somebody about the deal I’d gotten, and only Doris was handy. She was indignant. Indignant? She was as sore as a boiled owl. Being a nurse, she had dressed a lot worse than what they had done to me, but this had been done by our own people. I blurted out how I felt about Mary’s part in it.

“Do I understand that you had wanted to marry this girl?”

“Correct. Stupid, ain’t I?”

“Then she knew what she could do to you. It wasn’t fair.” She stopped massaging me, her eyes snapping. “I’ve never met your redhead, but if I do, I’ll scratch her face!”

I smiled wanly at her. “You’re a good kid, Doris. I believe you would play fair with a man.”

“Oh, I’ve pulled some fast ones. But if I did anything halfway like that. I’d have to break every mirror I own.”

Mary showed up. The first I knew was hearing Doris say angrily, “You can’t come in.”

Mary’s voice answered, “I’m going in.”

“Get back or I’ll pull that hennaed hair out by the roots!”

There were sounds of a scuffle and the smack of someone getting slapped. I yelled, “Hey! What goes on?”

They appeared in the doorway together. Doris was breathing hard and her hair was mussed. Mary managed to look dignified, but there was a bright red patch on her cheek just about the size of Doris’s hand.

Doris caught her breath and said, “You get out. He doesn’t want to see you.”

Mary said, “I’ll hear that from him.”

I looked at them both. “Oh, what the hell, she’s here and I’ve got some things to tell her. Thanks for trying, Doris.”

Doris said, “You’re a fool,” and flounced out.

Mary came over to the bed. “Sam,” she said. “Sam.”

“My name isn’t Sam.”

“I’ve never known your right name.”

It was no time to explain that my parents had burdened me with Elihu. I answered, “What of it? Sam will do.”

“Sam,” she repeated. “Oh, Sam, my dear.”

“I am not your dear.”

She inclined her head. “Yes, I know. I don’t know why. Sam, I came to find out why you hate me. Perhaps I can’t change it, but I must know.”

I made a sound of disgust. “After what you did, you don’t know why? Mary, you may be a cold fish, but you aren’t stupid.”

She shook her head. “Just the reverse, Sam. I’m not cold, but I’m frequently stupid. Look at me, please—I know what they did to you. I know that you let it be done to save me from it. I know and I’m deeply grateful. But I don’t know why you hate me. I did not ask you to do it and I did not want you to do it.”

I reared up on one elbow. “You sat down in that trick chair knowing that I would never let you go through with it. You knew that, whether your devious female mind admitted it or not. The Old Man could not have forced me to with a gun, not even with drugs. You could. You did.”

She grew steadily paler, until her face was almost green against her hair. “Sam, that is not the way it was. I didn’t know you were going to be there. I was terribly startled. But I had to go through with it; I had promised.”

“That covers everything. A schoolgirl promise.”

“No, Sam. Not a schoolgirl promise.”

“It doesn’t matter whether you are telling the truth about knowing that I would be. in there. The point is that you were there and I was there—and you could figure what would happen if you did what you did.”

“That’s the way it looks to you and I can’t dispute the facts.”

“Hardly.”

She stood very still for a long time. I let her. Finally she said, “Sam, once you said something about wanting to marry me.”

“That was another day.”

“I didn’t expect you to repeat the offer. But there was a sort of corollary. No matter what you think of me, I want to tell you that I am deeply grateful for what you did for me. Miss Barkis is willing, Sam. You understand me?”

I grinned at her. “So help me, the workings of the female mind delight and astound me. You always think you can cancel anything at all with that one trump play.” I continued to grin while she turned red. “I won’t inconvenience you by taking up your generous offer.”

She came back at me in a steady voice. “I let myself in for that. Nevertheless, I meant it. That or anything else I can ever do for you.”

I sank back and lay down. “Sure, you can do something for me.”

Her face lit up. “What?”

“Quit bothering me. Go away. I’m tired.”


THE Old Man put his head in late that afternoon. “I want to talk to you,” he started in.

“I don’t want to talk to you. Get out.”

He ignored it and came in. “Mind if I sit?”

“You seem to be doing so.”

He ignored that, too. “You know, son, you are one of my best boys, but sometimes you are hasty.”

“Don’t let that worry you,” I answered. “As soon as the doctor lets me up, I’m through.”

He was not hearing anything that he did not choose to hear. “You jump to conclusions. Now take this girl Mary—”

“You take her.”

“You jumped all over her without knowing the score. You’ve got her all upset. Why, you may have ruined a good agent for me.”

“Look, I’m weeping for both of you.”

“You think she let herself be used as bait. Well, you’ve got it slightly wrong. She was being used, but I was using her. I planned it that way.”

“I know you did.”

“Then why blame her?”

“Because you couldn’t have carried it out without her cooperation. It’s big of you, you no-good, heartless bastard, to take all the blame—but you can’t.”

He did not hear my profanity, either. “You understand everything but the key point, which is that the girl didn’t know!”

“Hell’s bells, she was there!”

“So she was. Son, did I ever lie to you?”

“No,” I admitted, “but I don’t think you would hesitate.”

He answered, “Maybe I deserve that. You’ll just have to test it for yourself and make up your mind whether or not I’m lying. That girl didn’t know you were going to be in that room. She didn’t have the faintest suspicion. that I didn’t mean for her to go through with it, or that I had already decided that you were the only party who would suit me, even if I had to have you tied down and forced—which I would have done, if I hadn’t had a double whammy up my sleeve to trick you into volunteering. Hell’s bells yourself, son; she didn’t even know you were off the sick list.”

I wanted to believe it, so I did my damnedest not to.

“Look at me!” he added. “There is something I want to rub into your scalp. First off, everybody—including me—appreciates what you did, regardless of motives. I’m putting in a letter and no doubt you’ll get a medal. That stands whether you stay with the Section or not. But don’t give yourself airs as a little tin hero—”

“I won’t!”

“—because that medal is going to the wrong person. Mary ought to get it. Now shut up. I’m not through. You had to be forced into it. No criticism; you had been through plenty. But Mary was a real, Simon-pure volunteer. When she sat down in that chair, she didn’t expect any last minute reprieve and she had every reason to believe that, if she got up alive, her mind would be gone, which is worse. What I’m trying to tell you is—this one is more of a man than you are and you’ve done her a serious wrong.”

I was so churned up that I could not judge whether he was telling the truth, or manipulating me again. I said, “Maybe I lashed out at the wrong person. But if what you say is true—”

“It is.”

“—it doesn’t make what you did any sweeter. It makes it worse.”

He took it without flinching. “Son, I’m sorry if I’ve lost your respect. But I can’t be choosy; any more than a commander can in battle. Less, because I fight with different weapons. I’ve always been able to shoot my own dog. Maybe that’s bad, but that is what my job takes. If you are ever in my shoes, you’ll have to do it, too.”

“I’m not likely to be.”

“Why don’t you rest up and think about it?”

“I’ll take leave—terminal leave.”

“Very well.” He started to leave.

I said, “You made me one promise and I’m holding you to it. About that parasite—you said I could kill it, personally. Are you through with it?”

“Yes, but—”

I started to get up. “No buts. Give me your gun; I’ll do it now.”

“You can’t. It’s already dead.”

“What! You promised me.”

“I know. But it died while we were trying to force you—force it—to talk.”

I started to shake with laughter and could not stop.

The Old Man shook me. “Snap out of it! I’m sorry about what I did, but there’s nothing to laugh at!”

“Sure there is,” I answered, sobbing and chuckling. “It’s the funniest thing that ever happened. All that for nothing. You dirtied yourself and you loused up me and Mary—and all for no use.”

“What gave you that idea?”

“You didn’t even get small change out of it—out of us. You didn’t learn anything you didn’t know before.”

“It was a bigger success than you’d ever guess, son. True, we didn’t squeeze anything out of it directly, before it died, but we got something out of you.”

“Me?”

“Last night. We put you through it last night. You were doped, psyched, brain-waved, analyzed, wrung out and hung out to dry. The parasite spilled things to you and they were still there for the hypno-analysts to pick up after you were free of it.”

“What, for instance?”

“We know where they come from and can fight back—Titan, sixth satellite of Saturn.”

When he said it, I felt a gagging constriction of my throat and I knew that he was right.

“You certainly fought before we could get it,” he went on reminiscently. “We had to hold you down to keep you from hurting yourself—more.”

He threw his game leg over the edge of the bed and struck a cigarette. He seemed anxious to be friendly. As for me, I did not want to fight with him; my head was spinning and I had things to get straight. Titan. That was a long way out in space. Mars was the farthest men had ever been, unless the Seagraves Expedition, the one that never came back, had reached the Jovian moons.

Still, we could get all the way to Saturn if we wanted to.

Finally he got up to go. He had limped to the door when I stopped him. “Dad—”

I had not called him that in years. He turned, his expression surprised and defenseless. “Yes, son?”

“Why did you and Mother name me Elihu?”

“Eh? Why, it was your maternal grandfather’s name.”

“Not enough reason, I’d say.”

“Perhaps not.” He turned and again I stopped him.

“Dad, what sort of a person was my mother?”

“Your mother? I don’t know exactly how to tell you. Well—she was pretty much like Mary. Yes, son, a great deal like her.” He stumped out without giving me further chance to talk.

XII

WHEN the doctor released me, I went looking for Mary. I still had only the Old Man’s word, but I had more than a suspicion that I had made a big hairy sap of myself.

You would think that a tall, handsome redhead would be as easy to find as flat ground in Kansas. Field agents come and go, though, and the resident staff are encouraged to mind their own business. The personnel office gave me the bland brushoff. They referred me to Operations, meaning the Old Man. It was Mary I wanted, not him.

I met with even more suspicion when I tried the door tally; I began to feel like a spy in my own section.

I went to the bio lab, could not find its chief, and talked to an assistant. He did not know anything about a girl in connection with Project Interview; he went back to scratching himself and shuffling reports. I left and went to the Old Man’s office. There seemed to be no choice.

A new face was at Miss Haines’ desk. I never saw Miss Haines again, nor did I ask what had become of her; I did not want to know. The new secretary passed in my I.D. code, and, for a wonder, the Old Man was in and would see me.

“What do you want?” he asked grumpily.

I said, “Thought you might have some work for me,” which was not at all what I had intended to say.

“Matter of fact, I was just fixing to send for you. You’ve loafed long enough.” He barked something at his desk phone, stood up and said, “Come!”

I felt suddenly relaxed. “Cosmetics?”

“Your own ugly face will do. We’re headed for Washington.” Nevertheless we did stop in Cosmetics, but only for street clothes, a gun, and to have my phone checked.

The door guard made us bare our backs before he would let us approach and check out. We went on up, coming out in the lower levels of New Philadelphia. “I take it this burg is clean?” I said to the Old Man.

“If you do, you are rusty in the head,” he answered. “Keep your eyes peeled.”

The presence of so many fully clothed humans bothered me; I found myself drawing away and watching for round shoulders. Getting into a crowded elevator to go up to the launching platform seemed downright reckless. When we were in our car and the controls set, I said, “I could swear one cop we passed was wearing a hump.”

“Possibly. Even probably.”

“I thought you had this job taped and were fighting back on all fronts.”

“What would you suggest?”

“Why, it’s obvious—even if it were freezing cold, we ought not to see a back covered up anywhere, not until we know the parasites are all dead.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, then—Look, the President knows the score, doesn’t he?”

“He knows it.”

“What’s he waiting for? He should declare martial law and get action.”

The Old Man stared down at the countryside. “It’s time you learned the political facts of life. Congresses have refused to act in the face of obvious dangers. This one isn’t obvious. The evidence is slim and hard to believe.”

“But how about the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury? They can’t ignore that.”

“Can’t they? The honorable gent is in Walter Reed with a nervous breakdown and can’t recall what happened. The Treasury Department gave out that an attempt to assassinate the President had been foiled—true, but not the way they meant it.”

“And the President held still for that?”

“There are men in both Houses who want his head on a platter. Party politics is a rough game.”

“Good Lord, partisanship doesn’t figure in a case like this!”

The Old Man cocked an eyebrow. “You think not, eh?”

I finally managed to ask him the question I had come into his office to ask: “Where is Mary?”

“Odd question from you,” he grunted. I let it ride; he went on, “Where she should be. Guarding the President.”

We went first to a closed session of a joint special committee. When we got there they were running stereos of my anthropoid friend, Napoleon—shots of him with the titan on his back, then closeups of the titan. One parasite looks like another, but I knew which one this was and I was deeply glad it was dead.

The ape gave way to me. I saw myself being clamped into the chair. I hate to admit how I looked; real funk is not pretty. I saw them lift the titan off the ape and onto my own bare back. Then I fainted in the picture—and almost fainted watching. I won’t describe it; I can’t.

But I saw the thing die. That was worth sitting through the rest.

The film ended and the chairman said, “Well, gentlemen?”

“Mr. Chairman!”

“The gentleman from Indiana is recognized.”

“Speaking without prejudice to the issue, I have seen better trick photography from Hollywood.”

The head of our bio lab testified, and then I found myself called to the stand. I gave my name, address, occupation, and perfunctorily was asked about my experiences under the titans. The questions were read from a sheet. From the floor, one Senator said to me, “Mr. Nivens—your name is Nivens?” I nodded. “You say that you are an investigator?”

“Yes.”

“F.B.I., no doubt?”

“No, my chief reports directly to the President.”

The Senator smiled. “Just as I thought. Now, Mr. Nivens, as a matter of fact you are an actor, are you not?”

I wanted to say that I had once acted one season of summer stock, but that I was, nevertheless, a real, live, sure-enough investigator. The next thing I knew the clerk was saying, “Stand down, Mr. Nivens.”

I sat tight. “Look here,” I said. “It’s evident that you think this is a put-up job. Well, for the love of heaven, bring in a lie detector! Or use the sleep test. This hearing is a joke.”

The chairman banged his gavel. “Stand down, Mr. Nivens.”

I stood.

The Old Man had told me that the purpose of the meeting was to report out a joint resolution declaring total emergency and vesting war powers in the President. We were ejected before the vote. I said to the Old Man, “It looks bad.”

“Forget it,” he said. “The President knew this gambit had failed when he heard the names of the committee.”

“Where does that leave us? Do we wait for the slugs to take over Congress, too?”

“The President goes right ahead with a message to Congress requesting full powers.”

“Will he get them?”

The Old Man simply scowled.


THE joint session was secret, but we were present—direct orders of the President. The Old Man and I were on that little balcony business back of the Speaker’s rostrum. They opened with full rigmarole and then went through the ceremony of notifying the President. He came in at once, escorted by the delegation. His guards were with him, but they were all our men.

Mary was with him, too. Somebody set up a folding chair for her, right by the President. She fiddled with a notebook and handed papers to him, pretending to be a secretary. But the disguise ended there; she looked like Cleopatra on a warm night.

I caught her eye and she gave me a long, sweet smile. I grinned like a collie pup until the Old Man dug me in the ribs. Then I settled back and tried to behave.

The President made a reasoned explanation of the situation. It was as straightforward and rational as an engineering report, and about as moving. He put aside his notes at the end. “This is such a strange and terrible emergency, so totally beyond any previous experience, that I must ask broad powers to cope with it. In some areas, martial law must be declared. Because any citizen, no matter how respected or loyal, may be the unwilling servant of these secret enemies, all citizens must face some loss of rights and personal dignities until this plague is killed.

“With utmost reluctance, I ask that you authorize these necessary steps.” With that he sat down.

You can feel a crowd. They were uneasy, but he did not carry them. The President of the Senate looked at the Senate majority leader; it had been programmed for him to propose the resolution.

I don’t know whether the floor leader shook his head or signaled, but he did not take the floor. Meanwhile the delay was awkward and there were cries of “Mister President!” and “Order!”

The Senate President passed over several others and gave the floor to a member of his party—Senator Gottlieb, a wheelhorse who would vote for his own lynching if it were on his party’s program. He started out by yielding to none in his respect for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and probably the Grand Canyon. He pointed modestly to his own long service and spoke well of America’s place in history. I thought he was stalling while the boys worked out a new shift, when I suddenly realized that his words were adding up to meaning: he was proposing to suspend the order of business and get on with the impeachment and trial of the President of the United States!

I tumbled to it as quickly as anyone; the Senator had his proposal so decked out in ritualistic verbiage that it was hard to tell what he was saying. I looked at the Old Man.

The Old Man was looking at Mary.

She was looking back at him with an expression of extreme urgency.

The Old Man snatched a pad from his pocket, scrawled something, wadded it up, and threw it down to Mary. She caught it, read it, and passed it to the President.

He was sitting, relaxed and easy, as if one of his oldest friends were not tearing his name to shreds and, with it, the safety of the Republic. He read the note, then glanced unhurriedly around at the Old Man. The Old Man nodded.

The President nudged the Senate President, who banged his gavel. “If the Senator please!”

Gottlieb looked startled and said, “I do not yield.”

“The Senator is not asked to yield. Because of the importance of what he is saying, the Senator is asked to come to the rostrum to speak.”

Gottlieb was puzzled, but he walked slowly toward the front of the House. Mary’s chair blocked the steps up to the rostrum. Instead of getting out of the way, she fumbled around, turning and picking up the chair, so that she got even more in the way. Gottlieb stopped and she brushed against him. He caught her arm, as much to steady himself as her. She spoke to him and he to her, but no one else could hear the words. Finally he went on to the front of the rostrum.

The Old Man was quivering like a dog in point. Mary looked up and nodded. The Old Man said, “Take him!”

I was over that rail in a flying leap and landed on Gottlieb’s shoulders. I heard the Old Man shout, “Gloves, son! Gloves!” I did not stop for them. I split the Senator’s jacket with my bare hands and I could see the slug pulsing under his shirt. I tore the shirt so anybody could see it.

Six stereo cameras could not have recorded what happened in the next few seconds. I slugged Gottlieb to stop his thrashing. Mary was sitting on his legs. The President was standing over me and shouting, “There! Now you can all see.” The Senate President was standing stupefied, waggling his gavel. Congress was a mob, men yelling and women screaming. Above me the Old Man was shouting orders to the Presidential guards.

Between the guns of the guards and pounding of the gavel, some order was restored. The President started to talk. He told them that fortune had given them a chance to file past and see for themselves one of the titans from Saturn’s largest moon. Without waiting for consent, he pointed to the front row and told them to come up.

Mary stayed on the platform. About twenty had filed by when I saw Mary signal the Old Man. This time I was a hair ahead of his order. I might have had quite a fight if two of the boys had not been close by, because this one was young and tough, an ex-marine. We laid him beside Gottlieb.

Then it was “inspection and search” whether they liked it or not. I patted the women on the back as they came by and caught one. I thought I had caught another, but it was an embarrassing mistake; it was just blubber fat. Mary spotted two more, and then there was a long stretch, three hundred or more, with no jackpots. It was evident that some were hanging back.

Eight men with guns were not enough—eleven, counting the Old Man, Mary and me. Most of the slugs would have gotten away if the Whip of the House had not organized help. With their assistance, we caught thirteen, ten alive. One of the hosts was badly wounded.

XIII

SO the President got the authority and the Old Man was his de facto chief of staff; at last we could move. The Old Man had a simple campaign in mind. It could not be the quarantine he had proposed when the infection was limited to the Des Moines area. Before we could fight, we had to locate the enemy. Government agents couldn’t search two hundred million people; the people had to do it themselves.

“Schedule Bareback” was to be the first phase of “Operation Parasite.” The idea was that everybody was to peel to the waist and stay peeled, until all titans were spotted and killed. Women could have halter strings; a parasite could not hide under one.

We whipped up a display to go with the stereocast speech the President would make to the nation. Fast work had saved seven of the parasites we had flushed in the sacred halls of Congress; they were alive on animal hosts. We could show them and the less grisly parts of the film taken of me. The President himself would appear in shorts, and models would demonstrate what the Well Undressed Citizen Would Wear This Season, including the metal head-and-spine armor which was intended to protect a person even when asleep.

We got it ready in one black-coffee night. The smash finish was to show Congress in session, discussing the emergency, and every man, woman, and pageboy showing a bare back.

With twenty-eight minutes left until stereocast time, the President got a call from up the street. I was present; the Old Man had been with the President all night and had kept me around for chores. We were all in shorts; “Schedule Bareback” had already started in the White House. The President did not bother to cut us out of his end of the conversation.

“Speaking,” he said. Presently he added, “You feel certain? Very well, John, what do you advise? . . . I see. No, I don’t think that would work . . . I had better come up the street. Have them ready.” He pushed back the phone and turned to an assistant. “Tell them to hold up the broadcast.” He turned to the Old Man. “Come, we must go to the Capitol.”

He sent for his valet and retired into a dressing room adjoining his office. When he came out, he was formally dressed for a state occasion. He offered no explanation. The rest of us stayed in our gooseflesh specials and so we went to the Capitol.

It was a joint session and I got that no-pants-in-church nightmare feeling, for the Congressmen and Senators were dressed as usual. Then I saw that the pageboys were in shorts without shirts and felt better.

Apparently some people would rather be dead than lose dignity, with Congress high on the list. They had given the President the authority he asked for; “Schedule Bareback” itself had been discussed and approved, but they did not see that it applied to them. After all, they had been searched and cleaned out. Maybe some saw holes in the argument, but not one wanted to be first in a public striptease. They sat tight, fully dressed.

When the President took the rostrum, he waited until he got dead silence. Then slowly, calmly, he started taking off clothes. He stopped when he was bare to the waist. He then turned around, lifting his arms. At last he spoke.

“I did that,” he said, “so that you might see that your Chief Executive is not a prisoner of the enemy.” He paused, punched a finger at the junior Whip. “Mark Cummings, are you a loyal citizen or are you a zombie spy? Get your shirt off!”

“Mister President—” It was Charity Evans, from the State of Maine, looking like a pretty schoolteacher. She stood and I saw that, while she was fully dressed, she was in evening dress. Her gown reached to the floor, but was cut as deep as could be above. She turned like a mannequin; in back the dress ended at the base of her spine. “Is this satisfactory attire, Mr. President?”

“Quite satisfactory, Madam.”

Cummings was fumbling at his jacket; his face was scarlet. Someone stood up in the middle of the hall—Senator Gottlieb. He looked as if he should have been in bed. His cheeks were gray and sunken, his lips showed cyanosis, but he held himself erect and, with incredible dignity, followed the President’s example. Then he, too, turned all the way around. On his back was the scarlet mark of the parasite.

He spoke. “Last night I stood here and said things I would rather have been flayed alive than utter. Last night I was not my own master. Today I am.” Suddenly he had a gun in his hand. “Up on your feet! Two minutes to show a bare back or I shoot!”

Men close to him tried to grab his arm, but he swung the gun around like a fly-swatter, smashing one of them in the face. I had my own out, ready to back his play, but it was not necessary. They could see that he was as dangerous as an old bull. They started shucking clothes like Doukhobors.

One man bolted for a door; he was tripped. No, he was not wearing a parasite. But we did catch three. After that the show went on the channels ten minutes late and Congress started the first of its “bareback” sessions.

XIV

“LOCK your doors!”

“Close the dampers on your fireplaces!”

“Never enter a dark place!”

“Be wary of crowds!”

“A man wearing a coat is an enemy—shoot him!”

In addition to a steady barrage of propaganda, the country was being quartered and sectioned from the air, searching for Flying Saucers on the ground. Our radar screen was on full alert for unidentified blips. Military units, from airborne troops to guided-rocket stations, were ready to smear any that landed.

In the uncontaminated areas people took off their shirts, willingly or reluctantly, looked around them and found no parasites. They watched their newscasts and wondered and waited for the government to tell them that the danger was over. But nothing happened, and both laymen and local officials began to doubt the necessity of running around in sunbathing costumes.

The contaminated areas? The reports from there were not materially different from the reports from other areas.

Back in the days of radio it could not have happened; the Washington station where the ’cast originated could have blanketed the country. But stereo-video rides wave-lengths so short that horizon-to-horizon relay is necessary and local channels must be squirted out of local stations. It’s the price we pay for plenty of channels and high-resolution pictures.

In the infected areas the slugs controlled the local stations; the people apparently never heard the warning.

But in Washington, we had every reason to believe that they had heard the warning. Reports came back from—well, Iowa, for example, just like those from California. The governor of Iowa was one of the first to send a message to the President, promising full cooperation. There was even a relayed stereo of him addressing his constituents, bare to the waist. He faced the camera and I wanted to tell him to turn around. Then they cut to another camera and we had a close up of a bare back, while the governor’s voice continued. We listened to it in a conference room off the President’s office. The President had kept the Old Man with him, I tagged along, and Mary was still on watch. Secretary of Security Martinez was there as well as the Supreme Chief of Staff, Air Marshal Rexton.

The President watched the ’cast and turned to the Old Man. “Well, Andrew? I thought Iowa was a place we would have to be sure to fence off.”

The Old Man grunted. “Can’t you folks see that the titans have won another round?”

“Eh?”

“You only heard the governor; they let us look at his back—or somebody’s back. Did you notice that he didn’t turn around in front of the camera?”

“But he did,” someone said. “I saw him.”

“I certainly had the impression that I saw him turn,” said the President slowly. “You are suggesting that Governor Packer is himself possessed?”

“Correct. You saw what you were meant to see. There was a camera cut just before he was fully turned; people hardly ever notice them. Depend on it, Mister President; every message out of Iowa is faked.”

The President looked thoughtful. Secretary Martinez said, “Impossible! Granted that the governor’s message could have been faked—a clever character actor could have faked it. But we’ve had our choice of dozens of ’casts from Iowa. How about that street scene in Des Moines? Don’t tell me that you can fake hundreds of people dashing around stripped to their waists. Or do your parasites practice mass hypnotis?”

“They can’t that I know of,” conceded the Old Man. “If they can, we might as well throw in the towel. But what made you think that ’cast came from Iowa?”

“Why, it came over the Iowa channel.”

“It looked like any typical street in a downtown retail district. Never mind what city the announcer told you it was; what city was it?”

I’ve got fairly close to the “camera eye” that detectives are supposed to have. I let that picture run through my mind—and I not only could not tell what city, I could not even place the part of the country. It could have been Memphis, Seattle, or Boston, or none of them. Most downtown districts in American cities are as standardized as barber shops.

“You don’t know,” the Old Man went on. “I couldn’t tell and I was looking for landmarks. The explanation is simple. The Des Moines station picked up a ‘Schedule Bareback’ street scene from some city not contaminated and rechanneled it under their own commentary. Gentlemen, the enemy knows us. This campaign has been planned in detail and they are ready to outwit us in almost any move we can make.”

“Aren’t you being an alarmist, Andrew?” said the President. “There is another possibility, that the titans have moved somewhere else.”

“They are still in Iowa,” the Old Man said flatly, “but you won’t prove it with that thing.” He gestured at the stereo tank.

Secretary Martinez squirmed. “This is ridiculous! You are saying that we can’t get a correct report out of Iowa, as if it were occupied territory.”

“That’s what it is. Control the communications of a country and you control the country. You had better move fast, Mister Secretary, or you won’t have any communications left.”

“But I was merely—”

The Old Man said rudely, “I’ve told you they are in Iowa and in New Orleans, and a dozen other spots. My job is finished.” He stood up and said, “Mister President, I’ve had a long pull for a man my age; when I lose sleep. I lose my temper. Could I be excused?”

“Certainly, Andrew.” He had not lost his temper and I think the President knew it. He doesn’t lose his temper; he makes other people lose theirs.

Secretary Martinez interrupted. “Wait a moment! You’ve made some flat statements. Let’s check up.” He turned to the Chief of Staff. “Rexton!”

“Yes, sir.”

“That new post near Des Moines, Fort something-or-other, named after what’s-his-name?”

“Fort Patton.”

“That’s it. Well, get them on the command circuit—”

“With visual,” put in the Old Man.

“With visual, of course, and we’ll show this—I mean we’ll get the true situation in Iowa.”

The Air Marshal handed a by-your-leave-sir to the President, went to the stereo tank and patched in with Security General Headquarters. He asked for the officer of the watch at Fort Patton, Iowa.

The tank showed the inside of a communications center. Filling the foreground was a young officer. His rank and corps showed on his cap, but his chest was bare. Martinez turned triumphantly to the Old Man.

“You see?”

“I see.”

“Now to make certain. Lieutenant!”

“Yes, sir!” The young fellow looked awestruck and kept glancing from one famous face to another. Reception and bi-angle were in sync; the eyes of the image looked where they seemed to look.

“Stand up and turn around,” Martinez continued.

“Uh? Why, certainly, sir.” He seemed puzzled, but did so, and it took him almost out of scan. We could see his bare back up to the short ribs—no higher.

“Confound it!” shouted Martinez. “Sit down and turn around.”

“Yes, sir!” The youth seemed flustered. He added, “Just a moment while I widen the view angle, sir.”

The picture melted and rippling rainbows chased across the tank. The young officer’s voice was still coming over the audio channel. “There, is that better, sir?”

“Damn it, we can’t see a thing!”

“You can’t? Just a moment, sir.”

Suddenly the tank came to life and I thought for a moment that we were back at Fort Patton. But it was a major in the screen this time and the place looked larger. “Supreme Headquarters,” the image announced. “Communications officer of the watch, Major Donovan.”

“Major,” Martinez said in controlled tones, “I was hooked in with Fort Patton. What happened?”

“Yes, sir; I was monitoring it. We’ve had a slight technical difficulty. We’ll put your call through again in a moment.”

“Well, hurry!”

The Old Man stood up. “Call me when you’ve cleared up that ‘slight technical difficulty.’ I’m going to bed.”

XV

IF I have given the impression that Secretary Martinez was stupid, I am sorry. Everyone had trouble at first believing what the slugs could do, including me. There were no flies on Marshal Rexton, either. The two worked all night, after convincing themselves by more calls to known danger spots that “technical interruptions” do not occur so conveniently. They called the Old Man about four A.M. and he called me.

They were in the same room, Martinez, Rexton, a couple of his brass, and the Old Man. The President came in, wearing a bathrobe and followed by Mary, as I arrived. Martinez started to speak but the Old Man cut in. “Let’s see your back, Tom!”

Mary signaled that everything was okay, but the Old Man chose not to see her. “I mean it,” he persisted.

The President said quietly, “Perfectly correct, Andrew,” and slipped his robe off his shoulders. His back was clean. “If I don’t set an example, how can I expect others to cooperate?”

Martinez and Rexton had been shoving pins into a map, red for bad, green for good, and a few amber ones for doubtful. Iowa looked like measles; New Orleans and the Teche country were no better. So was Kansas City. The upper end of the Missouri-Mississippi system, from Minneapolis and St. Paul down to St. Louis, was clearly enemy territory. There were fewer red pins from there down to New Orleans—but no green ones. There was a hot spot around El Paso and two on the East Coast.

The President looked it over. “We shall need the help of Canada and Mexico,” he said. “Any; reports?”

“None that mean anything, sir.”

“Canada and Mexico,” the Old Man said seriously, “will be just a start. You are going to need the whole world.”

The President drew a finger across the map. “Any trouble getting messages to the West Coast?”

“Apparently not, sir,” Rexton told him. “The parasites don’t seem to interfere with straight-through relay. But all military communications I have shifted to relay through the space stations.” He glanced at his watch finger. “Station Gamma, at the moment.”

“Hmmm—” said the President, worried. “Andrew, could these things storm a space station?”

“How would I know?” the Old Man answered testily. “I don’t know whether their ships are built for it or not. More probably they would do it by infiltration, through the supply rockets.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Rexton said. “The costume we are wearing is customary in a station. A man fully dressed would stand out like an overcoat on the beach. But we’ll see.” He gave orders to an assistant.

The President resumed studying the map. “So far as we know,” he said, pointing to Grinnell, Iowa, “all this derives from a single landing, here.”

The Old Man answered, “So far as we know.”

I said, “Oh, no!” They all looked at me. “There were at least three more landings—I know there were—before I was rescued.”

The Old Man looked dumbfounded. “Are you sure, son? We thought we had wrung you dry.”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Why didn’t you mention it?”

I tried to explain how it feels to be possessed, how you know what is going on, but everything seems dreamy, equally important and unimportant. I grew quite upset. I am not the jittery type, but being ridden by a master does something to you.

The Old Man said, “Steady down, son,” and the President gave me a reassuring smile.

Rexton said, “The point is: where did they land? We might still capture a ship.”

“I doubt it,” the Old Man answered. “They did a cover-up on the first one in a matter of hours. If it was the first,” he added thoughtfully.

I went to the map and tried to think. Sweating, I pointed to New Orleans. “I’m pretty sure one was about here. I don’t know where the others landed.”

“How about here?” Rexton asked, pointing to the East Coast.

“I don’t know.”

“Can’t you remember anything else?” Martinez demanded, annoyed. “Think, man!”

I thought until my skull ached, then pointed to Kansas City. “I sent several messages here, but I don’t know whether they were shipment orders or not.”

Rexton looked at the map. “We’ll assume a landing near Kansas City. The technical boys can do a problem on it. It may be subject to logistic analysis; we might derive the other landing.”

“Or landings,” added the Old Man.

XVI

HINDSIGHT is confoundedly futile. At the moment the first Saucer landed, the menace could have been stamped out by one bomb. At the time Mary, the Old Man and I reconnoitered around Grinnell, we three alone might have killed every slug, had we known where they all were. Had “Schedule Bareback” been ordered during the first week, it alone might have turned the trick.

But it was quickly clear that “Schedule Bareback” had failed as an offensive measure. As a defense it was useful. The uncontaminated areas could be kept so. Areas contaminated but not “scoured” were cleaned up—Washington itself, and New Philadelphia. New Brooklyn, too—there I had been able to give specific advice. The entire East Coast turned from speckled to solid green.

But as the middle of the country filled in on the map, it filled in red. The infected areas stood out in ruby light now, for the wall map studded with pins had been replaced by a huge electronic military map, ten miles to the inch, covering one wall of the conference room. It was a repeater map, the master being down in the New Pentagon.

The country was split in two, as if a giant had washed red pigment down the central valley. Two amber paths bordered the band held by the slugs; these were the only areas of real activity, places where line-of-sight reception was possible both from stations held by the enemy and from stations still in the hands of free men. One started near Minneapolis, swung west of Chicago and east of St. Louis, then meandered through Tennessee and Alabama to the Gulf. The other cut a path through the Great Plains and came out near Corpus Christi. El Paso was the center of a ruby area unconnected with the main body.

I wondered what was going on in those border strips. I was alone; the Cabinet was meeting and the President had taken the Old Man with him. Rexton and his brass had left earlier. I stayed because I hesitated to wander around in the White House, so I fretted and watched amber lights blink red and, much less frequently, red lights blink amber or green.

I wondered how a visitor with no status managed to get breakfast. I had been up since four and so far I had had one cup of coffee, served by the President’s valet. Even more urgently, I wanted to find a washroom. At last I got desperate enough to try doors. The first two were locked; the third was what I wanted. It was not marked “Sacred to the Chief” so I used it.

When I came back, Mary was in the map room.

I looked at her stupidly. “I thought you were with the President.”

She smiled. “I got chased out. The Old Man took over.”

“Mary, I’ve been wanting to talk with you and this is the first chance I’ve had. I guess—Well, anyway, I shouldn’t have—I mean, according to the Old Man—” I stopped, my carefully rehearsed speech in ruins. “I shouldn’t have said what I did,” I concluded miserably.

She put a hand on my arm. “What you said and what you did were fair enough on the basis of what you knew. The important thing, to me, is what you did for me. The rest does not matter—except that I am happy again to now that you don’t despise me.”

“Damn it, don’t be so noble!”

She gave me a merry smile, not at all like the gentle one with which she had greeted me. “Sam, I think you like your women to be a bit bitchy. I warn you, I can be.” She went on, “You are still worried about that slap, too. All right, I’ll pay it back.” She reached up and patted me gently on the cheek. “There, it’s paid and you can forget it.”

Her expression suddenly changed, she swung on me, and I thought my head had been taken off. “And that,” she said, “pays back the one I got from your girl friend!”

I raised a hand and she tensed—but I just wanted to touch my stinging cheek. “She’s not my girl friend,” I said lamely.

We eyed each other and simultaneously burst out laughing. She put her hands on my shoulders and let her head collapse on my right one, still laughing. “Sam,” she managed to say, “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have done it.

At least I shouldn’t have slapped you so hard.”

“The devil you’re sorry,” I growled, “but you didn’t have to have put english on it. You damn near took the hide off.”

“Poor Sam!” She touched it; it hurt. “She’s really not your girl friend?”

“No, but not because I didn’t try.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t. Who is your girl friend, Sam?”

“You are, you vixen!”

“Yes,” she said comfortably, “I am—if you’ll have me. I told you that before. Bought and paid for.”

She was waiting to be kissed; I pushed her away. “Go to hell. I don’t want you bought and paid for.”

“I put it badly. Paid for, but not bought. I’m here because I want to be. Now will you kiss me, please?”

I felt myself sinking into a warm golden haze and I did not ever want to come up. Finally I had to break and gasp, “I think I’ll sit down for a minute.”

She said, “Thank you, Sam,” and let me.


“MARY,” I said presently, “there is something I am hoping you possibly could do for me.”

“Yes?” she asked eagerly.

“Tell me how in the name of Ned a person gets breakfast around here. I’m starved.”

She looked startled, but she answered, “Why, certainly!”

I don’t know how she did it; she may have butted into the White House pantry and helped herself, but she returned in a few minutes with sandwiches and two bottles of beer. I was cleaning up my third corned beef on rye when I said, “Mary, how long do you figure that meeting will last?”

“Oh, I’d give it a minimum of two hours. Why?”

“In that case,” I said, swallowing the last bite, “we have time to duck out, find a registry office, get married and return before the Old Man misses us.”

She did not answer. Instead she stared at the bubbles in her beer. “Well?” I insisted.

She raised her eyes. “I’ll do it if you say so.”

“You don’t want to marry me?”

“Don’t be angry, darling. You don’t know me yet. Get acquainted with me; you might change your mind.”

“I’m not in the habit of changing my mind.”

She glanced up, then looked away sadly. I felt my face get hot. “That was a very special circumstance,” I protested. “It could not happen to us again in a hundred years. That wasn’t me talking; it was—”

She stopped me. “I know. Sam. But you don’t have to prove anything. I won’t run out on you and I didn’t mistrust you. Take me away on a weekend; better yet, move into my apartment. If I wear well, there’s always time to make me what great-grandmother called an ‘honest woman,’ heaven knows why.”

I must have looked sullen. She put a hand on mine and said seriously, “Look at the map, Sam.”

I turned my head. Red as ever, or more so—the danger zone around El Paso had increased. She went on, “Let’s get this cleaned up first, dear. Then, if you still want to, ask me again. In the meantime, you can have the privileges without the responsibilities.”

What could be fairer than that? The trouble was it was not the way I wanted it. Why will a man who has been avoiding marriage like the plague suddenly decide that nothing less will suit him?


WHEN the meeting was over, the Old Man collared me and took me for a walk. Yes, a walk, though we went only as far as the Baruch Memorial Bench. There he sat down, fiddled with his pipe, and scowled. The day was as muggy as only Washington can get; the park was almost deserted.

He said, “ ‘Schedule Counter Blast’ starts at midnight. We swoop down on every relay station, broadcast station, newspaper office, and Western Union office in ‘Zone Red’.”

“Sounds good,” I answered. “How many men?”

He did not answer. “I don’t like it.”

“Huh?”

“The President went on channels and told everybody to peel off their shirts. We find that the message did not reach infected territory. What’s the next development?”

I shrugged. “ ‘Schedule Counter Blast,’ I suppose.”

“That hasn’t happened yet. Think—it has been more than twenty-four hours. What should have happened and hasn’t?”

“Should I know?”

“You should, if you are ever going to amount to anything on your own. Here.” He handed me a combo key. “Scoot out to Kansas City and take a look-see. Stay away from comm stations, cops, and—stay away from them. Look at everything else. And don’t get caught. Be back here a half hour before midnight. Get going.”

“A lot of time you allow to case a whole city,” I complained. “It will take three hours just to drive to Kansas City.”

“More than three hours,” he answered. “Don’t attract attention by getting a ticket. Move.”

So I moved. The combo was to the car we had come, down in; I picked it up at Rock Creek Park platform. Traffic was light and I commented on it to the despatcher. “Freight and commercial carriers are grounded,” he answered. “The emergency. You got a military clearance?”

I could get one by phoning the Old Man, but bothering him about trivial things does not endear one to him. I said, “Check the combo.”

He shrugged and slipped it in his machine. My hunch had been right; his eyebrows shot up. “Boy, you rate!” he commented. “You must be the President’s caddy!”

Once launched, I set the controls for Kansas City at legal max and tried to think. The transponder beeped as radar beams hit it each time I slid from one control block into the next, but no faces appeared on the screen. Apparently the Old Man’s combo was good for the route, emergency or not. I began to wonder what would happen when I slipped over into the red areas—and then realized what he had meant by “the next development.”

One tends to think of communications as meaning line-of-sight channels and nothing else. But “communications” means all traffic, even dear old Aunt Mamie, headed for California and stuffed with gossip. The slugs had seized the channels, but news can’t be stopped that easily; such measures merely slow it down. Ergo, if the slugs expected to retain control where they were, seizing the channels would be just their first step.

What would they do next? They would do something and I, being a part of “communications” by definition, had better be prepared for evasive action if I wanted to save my pink skin. The Mississippi River and Zone Red were sliding closer by the minute. I wondered what would happen the first time my recognition signal was picked up by a station controlled by masters.

I judged that I was probably safe in the air, but that I had better not let them spot me landing. Elementary.

“Elementary” in the face of a traffic control net which was described as the No-Sparrow-Shall-Fall plan. The traffic men boasted that a butterfly could not make a forced landing anywhere in the United States without alerting the search & rescue system. Not quite true—but I was no butterfly.

On foot I will make a stab at penetrating any security screen, mechanical, manned, electronic, or mixed. But how can you use misdirection in a car making westing a full degree every seven minutes? Or hang a stupid, innocent look on the nose of a duo? If I went in on foot, the Old Man would get his report come next Michaelmas; he wanted it before midnight.

Once, in a rare mellow mood, the Old Man told me that he did not bother agents with detailed instructions. Give a man a mission; let him sink or swim. I said his method must use up a lot of agents.

“Some,” he had admitted, “but not as many as the other way. I believe in the individual and I try to pick those who are survivor types.”

“And how in hell,” I had asked, “do you pick a ‘survivor type’ ?”

He had grinned wickedly. “A survivor type is one who comes back.”

So I was about to find out which type I was—and damn his icy heart!


MY course would take me toward St. Louis, swing me around the city loop, and on to Kansas City. But St. Louis was in Zone Red. The map had shown Chicago as green; the amber line had zigzagged west somewhere above Hannibal, Missouri—and I wanted very badly to cross the Mississippi while still in Zone Green. A car crossing that milewide river would make a radar blip as sharp as a desert star.

I signaled block control for permission to descend to local-traffic level, then did so without waiting, resuming manual control and cutting my speed. I headed north.

Short of the Springfield loop I headed west, staying low. When I reached the river I crossed slowly, close to the water, with my transponder shut down. Sure, you can’t shut off your radar recognition signal in the air—but I had hopes, if local traffics were being monitored while I crossed, that my blip would be mistaken for a boat on the river.

I did not know certainly whether the next block control station across the river was Zone Red or Zone Green. I was about to cut in the transponder again, on the assumption that it would be safer to get back into the traffic system, when I noticed the shoreline opening up ahead. The map did not show a tributary; I judged it to be an inlet, or a new channel not yet mapped. I dropped almost to water level and headed into it. The stream was narrow, meandering, almost overhung by trees, and I had no more business taking a sky car into it than a bee has of flying down a trombone. But it afforded perfect radar “shadow;” I could get lost in it.

In a few minutes I was lost—lost myself, right off the map. The channel switched and turned and cut back and I was so busy bucking the car by hand that I lost all track of navigation. I swore and wished that the car were a triphib so that I could land on water. The trees suddenly broke; I saw a stretch of level land, kicked her over and squatted her in with a deceleration that nearly cut me in two against my safety belt. But I was down and no longer trying to play catfish in a muddy stream.

I wondered what to do. No doubt there was a highway close by. I had better find it and stay on the ground. That was silly—there was no time for ground travel; I must get back into the air. But I did not dare until I knew positively whether traffic here was being controlled by free men or by slugs.

I had not turned on the stereo since leaving Washington. Now I did so, hunting for a newscast, but not finding one. I got (a) a lecture by Myrtle Doolightly, Ph. D., on Why Husbands Grow Bored, sponsored by the Uth-a-gen Hormone Company; (b) a trio of girl hepsters singing If You Mean What I Think You Mean, What Are We Waiting For? (c) an episode in Lucretia Learns About Life.

Dear Doctor Myrtle was fully dressed. The trio were dressed the way one would expect, but they did not turn their backs to the camera. Lucretia alternated having her clothes torn off with taking them off willingly, but the camera always cut or the lights went out just before I could see if her back was bare—of slugs, that is.

And none of it meant anything. Those programs could have been taped months before the President announced “Schedule bareback.” I was still switching channels, trying to find a newscast, when I found myself staring into the unctuous smile of an announcer. He was fully dressed.

It was one of those giveaway shows. He was saying: “—and some very lucky little woman sitting by her screen right this minute is about to receive, absolutely free, a General Atomics Six-in-One Automatic Home Butler. Will it be you? You? Or lucky you?” He turned away from scan; I could see his shoulders. They were covered by a jacket and distinctly rounded, almost humped. I was inside Zone Red.


SWITCHING off, I realized that I was being watched by a male about nine years old. He was wearing only shorts—at his age that’s standard style. I threw back the wind screen. “Hey, bub, where’s the highway?”

He answered, “Road to Macon’s up yonder. Say, mister, that’s a Cadillac Zipper, ain’t it?”

“Sure thing. Where yonder?”

“Give me a ride, huh, will you?”

I shrugged. While he climbed in, I opened my kit, got out shirt, trousers, and jacket. I said, “Maybe I shouldn’t put these on. Do people around here wear shirts?”

He scowled. “Of course they do. Where do you think you are—in Arkansas?” I asked again about the road. He said, “Can I punch the button when we take off, huh?”

I explained that we were going to stay on the ground. He was annoyed but condescended to point a direction. I drove cautiously as the car was heavy for unpaved countryside. Presently he said to turn.

Quite a bit later, I stopped and said, “Are you going to show me that road, or am I going to wallop you?” He opened the door and slid out. “Hey!” I yelled.

He looked back. “Over that way,” he jeered. I turned the car, not expecting to find a highway, but it was only fifty yards away. The brat had caused me to drive around three sides of a square so he’d get a longer ride.

If you could call it a highway—there was not an ounce of rubber in the paving. Still, it was a road; I followed it to the west. All in all, I had wasted an hour.

Macon, Missouri, seemed too normal to be reassuring; “Schedule Bareback” obviously had not been heard of. I gave serious thought to checking this town, then beating back the way I had come, while I could. Pushing farther into country which I knew to be controlled by the masters made me jittery; I wanted to run.

But the Old Man had said Kansas City. I drove the belt around Macon and pulled into a landing flat on the west. There I queued up for local traffic launching and headed for Kansas City in a mess of farmers’ copters and local craft. I would have to hold local speeds across the state, but that was safer than getting into the hot pattern with my transponder identifying my car to every block control. The field was automatically serviced; it seemed probable that I had managed to enter the Missouri traffic pattern without arousing suspicion.

XVII

KANSAS City was not hurt in the bombings, except on the east, where Independence used to be. Consequently it never had” to be rebuilt. From the southeast you can drive as far as Swope Park before having to choose between parking or paying toll to enter the city proper. Or you can fly in and make another choice: land in the landing flats north of the river and take the tunnels into the city, or land on the downtown platforms south of Memorial Hill.

I decided not to fly in; I did not want to have to pick the car up through a checking system. I do not like tunnels in a pinch, nor launching platform elevators. A man can easily be trapped in them.

Frankly, I did not want to go into the city at all.

I roaded the car on Route 40 and drove into the Meyer Boulevard toll gate. The line waiting was quite long; I began to feel hemmed in as soon as another car filled in behind me. But the gatekeeper took my toll without glancing at me. I glanced at him, all right, but could not tell whether or not he was being ridden.

I drove through the gate—only to be stopped just beyond. A barrier dropped in front of me and I barely managed to stop the car, whereupon a cop stuck his head in.

“Safety check,” he said. “Climb out.” I protested. “The city is having a safety drive,” he explained. “Here’s your car check. Pick it up on the other side of the barrier. Get out and go in that door.”

He pointed to a building near the curb.

“What for?”

“Eyesight and reflexes. You’re holding up the line.”

In my mind’s eye I saw the map with Kansas City glowing red. That the city was “secured” I was sure; therefore this mild-mannered policeman was almost surely hag-ridden. But short of shooting him and making an emergency takeoff, there was nothing to do but comply. I got out grumbling and walked slowly toward the building. It was a temporary job with an old-style unpowered door. I pushed it open with a toe and glanced both sides and up before I entered. There was an empty anteroom with door beyond.

Someone inside called, “Come in.”

There were two men in white coats, one with a doctor’s reflector strapped to his head. He said briskly, “This won’t take a minute. Step over here.” He closed the door I had entered; I heard the lock click.

It was a sweeter setup than we had worked out for the Constitution Club. Spread out on a table were transit cells for masters, already opened and warmed. The second man had one ready—for me, I knew—and was holding it toward him, so that I could not see the slug. The transit cells would not arouse alarm in the victims; the medical men always have odd things at hand.

As for the test, I was being invited to place my eyes against the goggles of an ordinary visual acuity tester. The “doctor” would keep me there, blindfolded without knowing it and reading test figures, while his “assistant” fitted me with a master. No violence, no slips, no protests.

It was not necessary, as I had learned during my own “service,” to bare the victim’s back. Just touch the master to the neck, then let the recruit himself adjust his clothing to cover his master.

“Over here,” the “doctor” repeated. “Place your eyes against the eyepieces.”

I went to the bench on which was mounted the acuity tester. Then I turned suddenly around.

The assistant had moved in, the cell ready in his hands. As I turned he tilted it away from me.

“Doctor,” I said, “I wear contact lenses. Should I take them off first?”

“No, no,” he snapped. “Let’s not waste time.”

“But, Doctor,” I protested, “I want you to see how they fit. I’ve had a little trouble with the left one.” I lifted both hands and pulled back the lids of my left eye. “See?”

He said angrily, “This is not a clinic. Now, if you please—” They were both in reach; moving quickly, I snapped my arms out and grabbed at the spot between each set of shoulderblades. With each hand I struck something soft under the coats and felt revulsion clutch me.

Once I saw a cat struck by a ground car; the poor thing sprang straight up with its back arched the wrong way and all limbs flying. These two unlucky men did the same thing. They contorted every muscle in a grand spasm. I could not hold them; they jerked out of my arms and flopped to the floor. But there was no need to hang on. After that first convulsion they went limp.

Someone was knocking. I called out, “Just a moment. The doctor is busy.” It stopped. I made sure the door was locked, then bent over the “doctor” and pulled up his coat to see what I had done to his master.

The thing was a ruptured mess. So was the one on the other man, which pleased me heartily. I had determined to burn the slugs with my gun if they were not already dead, and I was not sure that I could do so without killing the hosts. I left the men to live or die—or be seized again by titans. I had no way to help them.

The masters waiting in their cells were another matter. With a fan beam and max charge, I burned them all. There were two large crates against the wall; I beamed them also until the wood charred.

The knocking resumed. I looked around hastily for somewhere to hide the two men, but there was nowhere, so I decided to run for it. As I was about to go out the exit, I felt that something was missing. I looked around again.

There seemed to be nothing suited to my purpose. I could use clothing from the “doctor” or his helper, but I did not want to. Then I noticed the dust cover for the acuity tester. I loosened my jacket, snatched up the cover, wadded it and stuffed it under my shirt between my shoulders. With my jacket zipped, it made a bulge of about the proper size.

Then I went out, feeling pretty cocky.

Another cop took my car check. He glanced sharply at me, then motioned me to climb in. I did and he said, “Go to police headquarters, under the City Hall.”

“Police headquarters, City Hall,” I repeated and gunned her ahead. I started in that direction and turned onto Nichols Freeway. I came to a stretch where traffic thinned out, and punched the button to shift license plates. It seemed possible that there was already a call out for the plates I had been showing at the gate. I wished that I had been able to change the car’s colors as well.

Before the Freeway reached Mcgee Traffic Way, I turned down a ramp and stuck thereafter to sidestreets. It was eighteen hundred, Zone Six time, and I was due in Washington in four and one-half hours.

XVIII

THE city did not have the right flavor, as if it were a clumsily directed play. I tried to put my finger on the fault; it slipped away.

Kansas City has many neighborhoods made up of family units a century old or more. Kids roll on lawns and householders sit on their front porches, just as their great-grandparents did. If there are bomb shelters around, they do not show. The queer, old, bulky houses, put together by guildsmen long since dead, make those neighborhoods feel like enclaves of security. I cruised through along streets, dodging dogs, rubber balls and toddlers, and tried to get the feel of the place. It was the slack of the day, time for a drink, for watering lawns, for neighborly chatting. I saw a woman bending over a flower bed. She was wearing a sunsuit and her back was bare; clearly she was not wearing a master, nor were the two kids with her. What could be wrong?

It was a very hot day; I began to look for sunsuited women and men in shorts. Kansas City is in the Bible Belt, so I found people dressed both ways—but the proportions were wrong. Sure, there were plenty of kids dressed for the weather, but in several miles of driving I saw the bare backs of only five women and two men.

I should have seen more like five hundred.

Cipher it out. While some jackets undoubtedly did not cover masters, by simple proportion well over ninety per cent of the population must be possessed.

The masters did not simply hold key points and key officials; the masters were the city.

I felt a blind urge to blast off and streak out of Zone Red at emergency maximum. Knowing that I had escaped the gate trap, they would be looking for me. I might be the only free man driving a car in the entire city—and they were all around me!

I fought it down. An agent who turns panicky is not likely to get out of a tight spot. But it was hard to be calm.

I must be wrong; there could not possibly be enough masters to saturate a city with a million population. I remembered my own experiences, recalling how we picked our recruits and made each new host count. Of course that had been a secondary invasion depending on shipments, whereas Kansas City almost certainly had had a Saucer land nearby. Still it did not make sense; it would take a dozen or more to carry enough masters to saturate Kansas City, If there had been that many, surely the space stations would have radar-tracked their landing orbits.

Could it be that they had no trajectories to track? We did not know what the masters were capable of in engineering and it was not safe to judge their limitations by our own.

But the data I had led to a conclusion which contradicted common logic; therefore I must check before I reported. One thing seemed sure: even if the masters had almost saturated this city, they were still keeping up the masquerade, permitting the city to look like a city of free human beings. Perhaps I was not as conspicuous as I feared.

I moseyed along another mile or so, going nowhere. Finding myself heading into the retail district around the Plaza, I swung away. Where there are crowds, there are cops, and the masters make a special point of possessing police forces. I passed a public swimming pool, noticed it, and was several blocks away before I realized it had carried a sign—CLOSED FOR THE SEASON.

Item: a trap at the city’s toll gates; item: too few sunsuits; item: a swimming pool closed in the hottest part of the summer.

Conclusion: the slugs were incredibly more numerous than anyone had dreamed.

Corollary: “Schedule Counterblast” was based on a mistaken estimate; it would work as well as hunting rhinoceri with a slingshot.

Counter argument: I could hear Secretary Martinez’ polite sarcasm tearing my report to shreds. I needed proof strong enough to convince the President over the reasonable objections of his official advisors—and I had to have it now. Breaking all traffic laws, I could not clip much off two and a half hours running time back to Washington.

What should I do? Go downtown, mingle with crowds, and then tell Martinez that I was sure that almost every man I passed was possessed? How could I prove it? For that matter, how could I myself be certain? As long as the titans kept up the farce of “business as usual,” the telltales would be subtle, a super-abundance of round shoulders, not enough bare ones.

I had some notion of how the city had been saturated, granting a large enough supply of slugs. I felt sure that I would encounter another toll gate trap on the way out and that there would be others on launching platforms and at every entrance and exit to the city proper. Every person leaving would be a new agent; every person entering would be a new slave.

I had noticed a vendo-printer for the Kansas City Star on the last corner I had passed. Now I swung around the block, pulled up to it and got out. I shoved a dime in the slot and waited nervously for my paper to be printed.

The Star’s format had its usual dull respectability—no excitement, no mention of an emergency, no reference to “Schedule Bareback.” The lead story was headed PHONE SERVICE DISRUPTED BY SUNSPOT STORM, with a subhead City Semi-Isolated by Solar Static. There was a 3-col, semistereo, tru-kolor of the sun, its face disfigured by cosmic acne. It was a convincing and unexciting explanation of why Mamie Schultz, herself free of parasites, could not get her call through to Grandma in Pittsburgh.

I tucked the paper under my arms to study later and turned back to my car . . . just as a police car glided silently up and cramped in across the nose of it. A moment before the corner was deserted. Suddenly there were people all around and the cop was coming toward me. My hand crept toward my gun; I would have dropped him had I not been sure that most of those around me were equally dangerous.

He stopped in front of me. “Let me see your license,” he said pleasantly.

“Certainly, officer. It’s clipped to the instrument board.” I stepped past him, letting it be assumed that he would follow. I could feel him hesitate, then take the bait. I led him around between my car and his. This let me see that he did not have a mate in his car, a most welcome variation from human practice. More important, it placed my car between me and the too-innocent bystanders.

“There,” I said, pointing inside, “it’s fastened down.” Again he hesitated, then looked—long enough for my left hand to slap his shoulders and clutch with all its strength.

His body seemed to explode, so violent was the spasm. I was in the car and gunning it almost before he hit the pavement.

The masquerade broke as abruptly as it had in Barnes’ outer office; the crowd closed in. One woman clung by her nails to the outside of the car for fifty feet or more before she fell off. By then I was making speed, cutting in and out of traffic, ready to take to the air but lacking space.

A street showed up on the left. I slammed into it. It was a mistake; trees arched over it and I could not take off. The next turn was even worse. Of necessity I slowed down. Now I was cruising at conservative city speed, still watching for some boulevard wide enough for an illegal takeoff. My thoughts began to catch up and I realized that there was no sign of pursuit.

My knowledge of the masters came to my aid. Except for “direct conference” a titan lives in and through his host; he sees what the host sees, receives and passes on information through whatever organs and by whatever means are available to the host. It was unlikely that any of the slugs at that corner had been looking for that particular car other than the one inhabiting the body of a policeman—and I had settled with it! Now, of course, the other parasites present would be on the lookout for me, too, but they had only the abilities and facilities of their hosts. I decided that I need treat them with no more respect than I would give to any casual crowd of witnesses, i.e., ignore them; change neighborhoods and forget it.

For I had barely thirty minutes left and I had decided on what I needed as proof—a prisoner, a man who had been possessed and could tell what had happened to the city. I must act now.

Even as I decided, I saw a man walking in the block ahead, stepping along like a man who sees home and supper. I pulled alongside him and said, “Hey!”

He stopped. “Yes?”

“I’ve just come from City Hall. No time to explain—slide in and we’ll have a direct conference.”

“City Hall? What are you talking about?”

I said, “Change in plans. Don’t waste time. Get in!”

He backed away. I jumped out and grabbed at his hunched shoulders. My hand struck human flesh, and the man began to yell.

I jumped into the car and got out of there fast. When I was blocks away I slowed and thought it over. Could it be that my nerves were so overwrought that I saw signs of titans where there were none?

No! The toll gate, the sunsuits, the swimming pool, the cop at the vendo-printer—those facts I knew—and this last fact simply meant that I had picked the one man in ten, or whatever the odds were, who was not yet recruited.

I speeded up, looking for a new victim.

He was a middle-aged man watering his lawn, so normal in appearance that I was half a mind to pass him by. But I had no time left—and he wore a sweater which bulged suspiciously-

He looked up as I stopped. “I’ve just come from City Hall,” I told him. “You and I need a direct conference right away.”

He said quietly, “Come in the house. That car is too public.”

I wanted to refuse, but he was already heading for the house. As I came up he whispered, “Careful. The woman is not of us.”

Had I seen her on the veranda, I would have passed him by, for she was dressed in bra and skirt and so could not have been possessed.

“Your wife?”

“Yes.”

We stopped on the porch and he said, “My dear, this is Mr. O’Keefe. We have business to discuss. We’ll be in the study.”

She smiled and answered, “Certainly, my love. Good evening, Mr. O’Keefe. Sultry, isn’t it?”

I agreed and she went back to her knitting. We went inside, where the man ushered me into his study. Since we were keeping the masquerade I went in first, as befitted an escorted visitor. I did not like turning my back on him. For that reason I was half expecting it; he hit me near the base of the neck. I rolled with it and went down almost unhurt. I continued to roll and fetched up on my back.

In training school they used to slap us with sandbags for trying to get up, once down. So I stayed down and was threatening him with my heels as soon as I hit. He shuffled out of range. Apparently he did not have a gun and I could not get at mine. But there was a real fireplace in the room, complete with poker, shovel, and tongs; he circled toward it. A small table was just out of my reach. I lunged, grabbed a leg and threw it.

It caught him in the face as he grabbed the poker. Then I was on him.

His master was dying in my fingers and he himself was convulsing under its last, terrible command when I became aware of his wife, screaming in the doorway. I bounced up and let her have one. She went down in mid-scream and I returned to her husband.

A limp man is amazingly hard to lift and he was heavy. Fortunately I am a big husky; I managed a lumbering dog trot toward the car. I doubt if our fight disturbed anyone but his wife, but her screams must have aroused half that end of town. There were people popping out of doors on both sides of the street. So far, none of them was near, but I was glad that I had left the car door open.

Then I was sorry; a brat like the one who had given me trouble earlier was inside, fiddling with the controls. Cursing, I dumped my prisoner in the lounge circle and grabbed the kid. He struggled, but I tore him loose and threw him out—into the arms of the first of my pursuers. He was still untangling himself when I slammed into the seat and shot forward without bothering with door or safety belt.

As I took the first corner, the door swung shut and I almost went out of my seat. I held a straight course long enough to fasten the belt, cut sharp another corner, nearly ran down a ground car, and went on.

I found a wide boulevard—the Paseo, I think—and jabbed the takeoff key. Possibly I caused several wrecks; I had no time to look. Without waiting to reach altitude, I wrestled her to course east. I kept her on manual across Missouri and expended every launching unit in her racks to give more speed. That reckless, illegal trick may have saved my neck; somewhere over Columbia, just as I fired the last one, I felt the car shake to concussion. Someone had launched an interceptor and the pesky thing had fused where I had just been.

There were no more shots, which was good; I would have been a duck on water from then on. My starboard impeller began to run hot, either from the near miss or simply from abuse. I let it heat, praying that it would not fly apart for another ten minutes. Then, with the Mississippi behind me and the indicator ’way up into “danger,” I cut it out and let the car limp along on the port unit. Three hundred was the best she would do—but I was out of Zone Red.


I HAD not had time to give my passenger more than a glance. He lay sprawled on the floor pads, unconscious or dead. Now that I was back among men and no longer had power for illegal speeds, there was no reason not to go automatic. I flipped the transponder, signaled a request for a block assignment, and put the controls on automatic without waiting for permission. I then swung around into the lounge and looked my man over.

He was still breathing. There was a welt on his face, but no bones seemed broken. I slapped his face and dug thumbnails into his earlobes, but I could not rouse him. The dead slug was beginning to stink and I had no way to dispose of it. I left him and went back to the control seat.

The chronometer read twenty-one thirty-seven. Washington time—and I still had better than six hundred miles to go. Allowing nothing for landing, for tearing over to the White House and finding the Old Man, I would reach Washington a few minutes after midnight. So I was already late and the Old Man was sure as the devil going to make me stay in after school for it.

I tried to start the starboard impeller. No dice. It was probably frozen solid. Just as well. Anything that goes that fast can be explosively dangerous if it gets out of balance. So I desisted and tried to raise the Old Man by phone.

The phone would not work. Perhaps I had jiggered it in one of the spots of exercise I had been forced to take. I put it back, feeling that this was one of those days when it had not been worthwhile to get out of bed. I turned to the car’s communicator and punched the emergency tab.

“Control,” I called out. “Control!”

The screen lighted up and I was looking at a young man. He was, I saw with relief, bare to the waist. “Control answering—Block Fox Eleven. What are you doing in the air? I’ve been trying to raise you ever since you entered my block.”

“Never mind! Patch me into the nearest military circuit. This is crash priority!”

He looked uncertain, but the screen flickered and another picture built up, showing a military message center. That did my heart good; everyone in sight was stripped to the waist. In the foreground was a young watch officer. I could have kissed him. Instead I said, “Military emergency. Patch me through the Pentagon and there to the White House.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m a civil agent and you wouldn’t recognize my I.D. Hurry!”

I might have talked him into it, but he was shouldered out of scan by a wing commander, “Land at once!” was all he said.

“Look, skipper,” I said, “this is a military emergency. You’ve got to put me through. I—”

“This is a military emergency,” he interrupted. “Civil craft have been grounded the past three hours. Land at once.”

“But I’ve got to—”

“Land or be shot down. We are tracking; I am about to launch an interceptor to burst a half mile ahead of you. Make any maneuver but landing, and the next will burst on.”

“Will you listen, please? I’ll land, but I’ve got to get—” He switched off.

The first burst seemed short of a half mile ahead. I landed and cracked up, but without hurting myself or my passenger.

I did not have long to wait. They had me flare-lighted and Were Swooping down before I had satisfied myself that the boat wouldn’t move. They took me in and I met the wing commander personally. He even put my message through after his psych squad got through giving me the antidote for the sleep test. By then it was one-thirteen, zone five—and “Schedule Counter Blast” had been under way one hour and thirteen minutes.

The Old Man listened to a summary, grunted, then told me to see him in the morning.

XIX

“SCHEDULE Counter Blast” was something tremendous. The parachute drops were made just at midnight, Zone Five, on over ninety-six hundred communication points—newspaper offices, block controls, relay stations, and so forth. The raiding squads were the cream of our skyborne forces, plus technicians to put each communication point back into service.

Whereupon the President’s speech was to go out from each local station. “Schedule Bareback” would take effect all through the infected territory. The war would soon be over.

By twenty-five minutes after midnight, reports started coming in that such-and-such points were secured. A little later there were calls for help from other points. By one in the morning most of the reserves had been committed, but the operation seemed to be going well—so well that unit commanders were landing and reporting from the ground.

That was the last anybody ever heard of them.

Zone Red swallowed up the task force as if it had never existed—over eleven thousand craft, more than a hundred and sixty thousand fighting men and technicians, seventy-one group commanders and—why go on? The United States had received its worst military setback since Black Sunday. I am not criticizing Martinez, Rexton, and the General Staff, nor those poor devils who made the drop. The program was based on what appeared to be a true picture, and the situation called for fast action with the best we had.

It was nearly daylight, so I understand, before Martinez and Rexton got it through their heads that the messages they had gotten back about successes were actually fakes sent by their own men—our own men—but hag-ridden, possessed, inducted by the enemy. After my report, more than an hour too late to stop the raids, the Old Man had tried to get them not to send in any more men, but they were flushed with success and anxious to make a clean sweep.

The Old Man asked the President to insist on visual checks, but the operation was being controlled by relay through Space Station Alpha and there just aren’t enough channels to parallel audio with video through a space station. Rexton had said, “Quit worrying. As fast as we get local stations back in our hands, our boys will patch into the ground relay net and you will have all the visual evidence you want.”

The Old Man had pointed out that by then it would be too late. Rexton had burst out, “Confound it, man! Do you want a thousand men to be killed just to quiet your jitters?”

The President backed up Rexton.

By morning they had their visual evidence. Stations in the central valley were giving out with the same old Rise and Shine with Mary Sunshine, Breakfast with the Browns, and such junk. There was not a station with the President’s stereocast, not one that conceded that anything had happened. The military despatches tapered off around four o’clock and Rexton’s frantic calls were not answered.

Task Force Redemption ceased to exist—spurlos versenkt.


I DID not get to see the Old Man until nearly eleven the next morning. He let me report without comment, and without bawling me out, which was worse.

He was about to dismiss me when I put in, “How about my prisoner? Didn’t he confirm my conclusions?”

“Oh, him? Still unconscious. They don’t expect him to live.”

“I’d like to see him.”

“You stick to things you understand.”

“Well, have you got something for me to do?”

“I think you had better—No, trot down to the Zoo. You’ll see things that put a different light on what you picked up in Kansas City.”

“Huh?”

“Look up Doctor Morris, the assistant director. Tell him I sent you.”

Morris was a nice little guy who looked like one of his own baboons; he turned me over to a Doctor Vargas who was a specialist in exotic biologies—the same Vargas who was on the Second Venus Expedition. He showed me what had happened. If the Old Man and I had gone to the National Zoological Gardens instead of sitting around in the park, it would not have been necessary for me to go to Kansas City. The ten titans we had captured in Congress, plus two the next day, had been sent to the Zoo to be placed on anthropoids—chimps and orangutans, mostly. None were on gorillas.

The Director had had the apes locked up in the Zoo’s hospital. Two chimpanzees, Abelard and Heloise, were caged together; they had always been mates and there seemed no reason to separate them. That sums up our psychological difficulty in dealing with the titans. Even the men who transplanted the slugs still thought of the result as apes, rather than as titans.

The next treatment cage held a family of tuberculous gibbons. They were not used as hosts, since they were sick, and there was no communication between cages. They were shut one from another by sliding panels and each cage had its own air-conditioning. The next morning the panel had been slid back and the gibbons and the chimps were together. Abelard or Heloise had found some way to pick the lock. The lock was supposed to be monkey proof, but it was not ape-cum-titan proof.

Five gibbons, plus two chimps, plus two titans—but the next morning there were seven apes ridden by seven titans.

This was discovered while I was leaving for Kansas City, not enough time for the Old Man to have been notified. Had there been, he would have known that Kansas City was saturated and “Schedule Counter Blast” would not have taken place.

“I saw the President’s broadcast.” Dr. Vargas said to me. “Weren’t you the man who—I mean, weren’t you the—”

“Yes, I was the man who,” I agreed shortly.

“Then you can tell us a great deal about these phenomena.”

“Perhaps I should be able to,” I admitted, “but I can’t.”

“Do you mean that no cases of fission reproduction took place while you were—uh—their prisoner?”

“That’s right.” I thought about it. “At least I think that’s right.”

“I was given to understand that victims have full memory of their experiences.”

“Well, they do and they don’t.” I tried to explain the odd detached frame of mind of a servant of the masters.

“I suppose it could happen while you sleep,” he said.

“Maybe. Besides sleep, there is another time, or rather times, which are difficult to remember. During conference.”

“Conference?” When I explained, his eyes lit up. “Oh, you mean conjugation.”

“No. I mean conference.”

“We mean the same thing. Don’t you see? Conjugation and fission—they reproduce at will, whenever the supply of hosts permits. Probably one contact for each fission: then, when opportunity exists, fission. Two adult daughter parasites in a matter of hours. Less, possibly.”

If that were true—and, looking at the gibbons, I could not doubt it—then why had we depended on shipments at the Constitution Club? Or had we? I did not know; I did what my master wanted done and saw only what came under my eyes. But it was clear how Kansas City had been saturated. With plenty of “live stock” at hand and a spaceship loaded with transit cells to draw from, the titans had reproduced to match the human population.

Assume a thousand slugs in that spaceship, the one we believed to have landed near Kansas City ; suppose that they could reproduce every twenty-four hours, when given opportunity.

First day, one thousand slugs.

Second day, two thousand.

Third day, four thousand.

At the end of the first week—the eighth day that is—a hundred and twenty-eight thousand slugs!

After two weeks, more than sixteen million slugs!

But we did not know that they were limited to spawning once a day. Nor did we know that a Flying Saucer could lift only a thousand transit cells. It might be ten thousand or more or less. Assume ten thousand as breeding stock with fission every twelve hours. In two weeks the answer comes out—

MORE THAN TWO AND A HALF TRILLION!

The figure did not mean anything; it was cosmic.

I felt worse than I had in Kansas City.


DR. Vargas introduced me to a Dr. McIlvaine of the Smithsonian Institution. McIlvaine was a comparative psychologist, the author, so Vargas told me, of Mars, Venus, and Earth: A Study in Motivating Purposes. Vargas seemed to expect me to be impressed, but I had not read it. Anyhow, how can anyone study the motives of Martians when they were all dead before we climbed down out of trees?

McIlvaine asked me, “Mr. Nivens, how long does a conference last?”

“Conjugation,” Vargas corrected him.

“Conference,” McIlvaine repeated. “It’s the more important aspect.”

“But, Doctor,” Vargas insisted, “conjugation is the means of gene exchange whereby mutation is spread through—”

“Anthropocentricism, Doctor! You do not know that this life form has genes.”

Vargas turned red. “You will allow me gene equivalents?” he said stiffly.

“Why should I? You are reasoning by uncertain analogy. There is only one characteristic common to all life forms and that is the drive to survive.”

“And to reproduce,” insisted Vargas.

“Suppose the organism is immortal and has no need to reproduce?”

Vargas shrugged. “We know that they reproduce.” He gestured at the apes.

“And I am suggesting,” McIlvaine came back, “that this is not reproduction, but a single organism availing itself of more space. No, Doctor, it is possible to get so immersed in the idea of the zygote-gamete cycle that one forgets there may be other patterns.”

“But throughout the Solar System—”

McIlvaine cut him short. “Anthropocentric, terrocentric, solocentric—it is a provincial approach. These creatures may be from outside the Solar System entirely.”

I said, “Oh, no!” I had a sudden flash picture of the planet Titan and with it a choking sensation.

Neither one noticed. McIlvaine continued, “Take the ameba—a more basic and much more successful life form than ours. The motivational psychology of the ameba—”

I switched off my ears; free speech gives a man the right to talk about the “psychology” of an ameba, but I don’t have to listen.

They did some direct experimentation which restored my interest. Vargas had a baboon wearing a slug placed in the cage with the gibbons and chimps. As soon as the newcomer was dumped in, they gathered in a ring facing outward and went into direct conference, slug to slug.

McIlvaine jabbed his finger at them. “You see? Conference is not for reproduction, but for exchange of memory. The organism, temporarily divided, has now reidentified itself.”

I could have told him the same thing without the double talk. A master who has been out of touch always gets into direct conference as soon as possible.

“Hypothecation!” Vargas snorted. “They have no opportunity to reproduce just now.” He ordered the boss of the handling crew to bring in another ape.

“Little Abe?” asked the crew boss.

“No, I want one without a parasite. Let me see—make it Old Red.”

The crew boss said, “Cripes, Doc, don’t pick on Old Red.”

“This won’t hurt him.”

“How about Satan? He’s a mean bastard anyway.”

“All right, but hurry it up.”

So they brought in Satan, a coal-black chimp. He may have been aggressive elsewhere; he was not so here. When they dumped him inside, he shrank back against the door and began to whine. It was like watching an execution. I had had my nerves under control—a man can get used to anything—but the ape’s hysteria was contagious. I wanted to run.

At first the hag-ridden apes simply stared at him like a jury. This went on for a long while. Satan’s whines changed to low moans and he covered his face. Presently Vargas said, “Doctor! Look!”

“Where?”

“Lucy, the old female. There.” He pointed.

It was the matriarch of consumptive gibbons. Her back was toward us; the slug thereon had humped itself together. An iridescent line ran down the center of it.

It began to split as an egg splits. In a few minutes only, the division was complete. One new slug centered itself over her spine; the other flowed down her back as she squatted almost to the floor. It slithered off, plopped gently on the concrete and crept slowly toward Satan. The ape screamed hoarsely and swarmed up into the top of the cage.

So help me, the slugs sent a squad to arrest him—two gibbons, a chimp, and the baboon. They tore him loose and held him face-down on the floor.

The slug slithered closer.

It was a good two feet away when it grew a pseudopod—slowly, at first, a stalk that weaved around like a cobra. Then it lashed out and struck the ape on a foot. The others promptly let go, but Satan did not move.

The titan seemed to pull itself in by the extension it had formed and attached itself to Satan’s foot. From there it crawled up. When it reached the base of his spine, Satan sat erect. He shook himself and joined the others.

Vargas and McIlvaine started talking excitedly, apparently unmoved. I wanted to smash something—for me, for Satan.

McIlvaine maintained that we were seeing something new to our concepts, an intelligent creature so organized as to be immortal and continuous in its personal identity—or its group identity.

He theorized that it would have continuous memory back to its racial beginning. He described the slugs as a four-dimensional worm in space-time, inter-twined as a single organism, and the talk grew too technical for me to follow.

I did not follow and did not care. The only way I cared about slugs was to kill them.

XX

FOR a wonder, when I got back the Old Man was available—the President had left to address a secret session of the United Nations. I told the Old Man what I had seen and added my opinion of Vargas and McIlvaine. “Boy Scouts,” I complained, “comparing stamp collections. They don’t realize it’s serious.”

The Old Man shook his head. “Don’t sell them short, son,” he advised me. “They are more likely to come up with the answer than are you and I.”

“They’re more likely to let those slugs escape.”

“Did they tell you about the elephant?”

“What elephant? They damn near didn’t tell me anything; they got interested in each other and ignored me.”

“You don’t understand scientific detachment. About the elephant: an ape with a rider got out, somehow. Its body was found trampled to death in the elephant house. And one of the elephants was gone.”

“You mean there is an elephant loose with a slug on him?” I had a horrid vision, something like a tank on the loose with a cybernetic brain.

“Her,” the Old Man corrected me. “They found her over in Maryland, quietly pulling up cabbages. No parasite.”

“Where did the slug get to?” Involuntarily I glanced around.

“A duo was stolen in the adjoining village. I’d say the slug is somewhere west of the Mississippi by now.”

“Anybody missing?”

He shrugged again. “How can you tell in a free country? At least, the titan can’t hide on a human host anywhere short of Zone Red.”

His comment made me think of something I had seen at the zoo and had not reasoned out. Whatever it was, it eluded me. The Old Man went on, “It’s taken drastic action to make the bare-shoulders order stick, though. The President has had protests on moral grounds, not to mention the National Association of Haberdashers.”

“Huh?”

“You would think we were trying to sell their daughters down to Rio. There was a delegation in, called themselves the Mothers of the Republic, or some such nonsense.”

“The President’s time is being wasted like that, at a time like this?”

“McDonough handled them. But he roped me in on it.” The Old Man looked pained. “We told them that they could not see the President unless they stripped. That stopped ’em.”

The thought that had been bothering me came to the surface. “Say, boss, you might have to.”

“Have to what?”

“Make people strip.”

He chewed his lip. “What are you driving at?”

“Do we know, as a certainty, that a slug can attach itself only near the base of the brain?”

“You should know.”

“I thought I did, but now I’m not sure. That’s the way we always did it, when I was, uh, with them.” I recounted in more detail what I had seen when Vargas had had poor old Satan exposed to a slug. “That ape moved as soon as the thing reached the base of his spine. I’m sure they prefer to ride up near the brain. But maybe they could ride down inside pants or dresses and just put out an extension to the end of the spinal cord.”

“Hmm . . . you’ll remember, son, the first time I had a crowd searched, I made everybody peel to the buff.”

“I think you were justified. They might be able to conceal themselves anywhere on the body. Take those droopy drawers you’ve got on. One could hide in them and it would just make you look a bit satchel-fannied.”

“Want me to take ’em off?”

“I can do better than that; I’ll give you the Kansas City Clutch.” My words were joking but I was not; I grabbed at the bunchiness of his pants. He submitted with good grace; then gave me the same treatment.

“But we can’t,” he complained as he sat down, “go around clutching women by the rump.”

“You may have to,” I pointed out, “or make everybody strip.”

“We’ll run some experiments.”

“How?” I asked.

“You know that head-and-spine armor? It’s not worth much, except to give the wearer a feeling of security. I’ll tell Doctor Morris to take an ape, fit such an armor so that a slug can’t reach anything but his legs, say, and see what happens. We’ll vary the areas, too.”

“Uh, yes. But don’t use an ape.”

“Why not?”

“Well, they’re too human.”

“Damn it, bub, you can’t make an omelet—”

“—without breaking eggs. Okay, but I don’t have to like it.”

XXI

I SPENT the next several days lecturing to brass, answering fool questions about what titans ate for lunch, explaining how to tackle a man who was possessed. I was billed as an “expert,” but half the time my pupils seemed sure they knew more than I did.

The titans continued to hold Zone Red, but they could not break out without being spotted—we hoped. And we did not try to break in again because every slug held one of our own people as hostage. The United Nations was no help. The President wanted a “Schedule Bareback” on a global scale, but they hemmed and hawed and sent the matter to committee for investigation. The truth was they did not believe us; that was the enemy’s great advantage—only the burned believed in the fire.

Some nations were safe because of their own customs. A Finn who did not climb into a steam bath in company every day or so would have been conspicuous. The Japanese, too, were casual about mixed bathing. The South Seas were relatively safe, as were large parts of Africa. France had gone enthusiastically nudist, on weekends at least, right after World War III—a slug would have a tough time hiding. But in countries where the body-modesty taboo meant something, a slug could stay hidden until his host dropped dead. The United States itself, Canada, England—particularly England.

They flew three slugs, with apes, to London. I understand the King wanted to set an example as the President had, but the Prime Minister, egged on by the Archbishop of Canterbury, would not let him. Nothing about this appeared in the news and the story may not be true, but English skin was not exposed to the cold stares of neighbors.

The Russian propaganda system began to blast us as soon as they had worked out a new line. The whole thing was an “American imperialist fantasy.” I wondered why the titans had not attacked Russia first; the place seemed tailor-made for them. On second thought, I wondered if they had. On third thought, I wondered what difference it would make.

I did not see the Old Man during this period; I got my assignments from Oldfield, his deputy. Consequently I did not know it when Mary was relieved from special duty with the President. I ran into her in the lounge of the Section offices. “Mary!” I yelped.

She gave me that slow, sweet smile and moved over. “Hello, darling!” she whispered. She did not ask what I had been doing, nor scold me that I had not been in touch with her, nor even comment on how long it had been. Mary let water over the dam take care of itself.

Not me—I babbled. “This is great! I thought you were still tucking the President into his beddy-bye. How long have you been here? When do you have to go back? Say, can I dial you a drink—no, you’ve got one.” I started to dial one for myself; it popped out into my hand. “Huh? How’d this get here?”

“I ordered it when you came in the door.”

“Mary, did I tell you that you are wonderful?”

“No.”

“I will. You’re wonderful.”

“Thank you,”

I went on, “Couldn’t you get some leave? They can’t expect you to be on duty twenty-four hours a day, week after week, with no time off. I’m going straight to the Old Man and tell him—”

“I’m on leave, Sam.”

“—just what I think of—You are? For how long?”

“Subject to call. All leaves read that way now.”

“How long have you been on leave?”

“Since yesterday. I’ve been sitting here, waiting for you.”

“Yesterday!” I had spent yesterday giving kindergarten lectures to brasshats who did not want them. I stood up. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

I rushed over to the operations office. Oldfield looked up when I came in and said in a surly tone, “What do you want?”

“Chief, that series of bedtime stories I’m scheduled to tell—better cancel them.”

“Why?”

“I’m a sick man; I’ve rated sick leave for a long time. Now I’ve got to take it.”

“You’re sick in the head.”

“That’s right, I’m sick in the head. I hear voices. People have been following me around. I keep dreaming I’m back with the titans.” That last point was true.

“But since when has being crazy been any handicap in this section?” He waited for me to argue the point.

“Look, do I get leave or don’t I?”

He fumbled through papers, found one and tore it up. “Okay. Keep your phone handy; you’re subject to recall. Get out.”

I got. Mary looked up when I came in and gave me the soft warm treatment again. I said, “Grab your things. We’re leaving.”

She did not ask where; she simply stood up. I snatched my drink, gulped some and spilled the rest. We were up on the pedestrian level of the city before we spoke. Then I asked, “Where do you want to get married?”’

“Sam, we discussed that before.”

“Sure we did and now we are going to do it. Where?”

“Sam, my very dear, I will do what you say. But I am still opposed to it.”

“Why?”

“Let’s go to my apartment. I’d like to cook dinner for you.”

“Okay, you can cook dinner—but not there. And we get married first.”

“Please, Sam!”

Somebody said, “Keep pitching, kid. She’s weakening.” I looked around and found that we were playing to a gallery.

I swept an arm wide and shouted irritably, “Haven’t you people got anything to do? Go get drunk!”

Somebody else said, “I’d say he ought to take her offer.”

I grabbed Mary’s arm and did not say another word until I had gotten her into a cab. “All right,” I said gruffly, “let’s have your reasons.”

“I’m yours; you don’t need a contract, so why get married, Sam?”

“Why? Because I love you, damn it!”

She did not answer for quite a while. I thought I had offended her. When she did, I could hardly hear her. “You hadn’t mentioned that before, Sam.”

“Hadn’t I? Oh, I must have.”

“No, I’m quite sure you haven’t. Why didn’t you?”

“An oversight, I guess. I’m not sure I know what the word ‘love’ means.”

“Neither am I,” she said softly, “but I love to hear you say it. Say it again, please.”

“Huh? Okay. I love you. I love you, Mary.”

“Oh, Sam!”

She snuggled against me and began to tremble. I shook her a little. “How about you?”

“Me? Oh, I do love you, Sam. I’ve loved you ever since—”

“Ever since what?”

I expected her to say that she had loved me ever since I took her place in “Project Interview.” What she said was, “I’ve loved you ever since you slapped me.”

Now, is that logic?

The driver was cruising slowly along the Connecticut coast; I had to wake him before I could get him to land in Westport. We went to the city hall. I stepped up to a counter in the bureau of sanctions and licenses and said to a clerk, “Is this where we get married?”

“That’s up to you,” he answered. “Hunting licenses on the left, dog licenses on the right, this is the happy medium.”

“Good,” I said stiffly. “Will you oblige by issuing a license?”

“Sure. Everybody ought to get married at least once; that’s what I tell my old lady.” He got out a form. “Let’s have your serial numbers.” We gave them to him. “Either of you married in any other state?” We said we weren’t. “You’re sure? If you don’t tell me, so I can put on a rider showing other contracts, this contract ain’t valid.”

We told him again that we weren’t married anywhere. He went on, “Term, renewable, or lifetime? If it’s over ten years, the fee is the same as for lifetime. If it’s under six months, you get the short form from that vendo machine over there.”

Mary said in a small voice, “Lifetime.”

The clerk looked surprised. “The renewable contract, with the automatic option clause, is just as permanent, and you don’t have to go through the courts if you change your mind.”

I said, “You heard the lady!”

“Okay, okay. Either party, mutual consent, or binding?”

“Binding,” I answered, and Mary nodded.

“Binding it is,” he agreed, bending over the typer. “Now the meat of the matter: who pays and how much? Salary or endowment?”

I said, “Salary.” I didn’t own enough to set up a fund.

“Neither,” Mary stated. “This is not a financial contract.”

The clerk stopped completely. “Lady, don’t be foolish,” he said reasonably. “You heard the gentleman say he was willing to do the right thing.”

“No.”

“Hadn’t you better talk with your lawyer before you go ahead? There’s a public communicator in the hall.”

“No!”

“Well, I’m darned if I see what you need a license for.”

“Neither do I,” Mary told him.

“You mean you don’t want this?”

“No! Put it down the way I told you to. No salary.”

The clerk looked helpless but bent over the typer. “I guess that’s all,” he said finally. “You’ve kept it simple, I’ll say that. ‘Do-you-both-solemnly-swear-that-the-above-facts-are-true-to-the-best-of-your-knowledge-and-belief-that-you-are-entering-into-this-agreement-uninfluenced-by-drugs-or-other-illegal-inducements-and-that-there-exists-no-undisclosed-covenants-nor-other-legal-impediments-to-the-execution-and-registration-of-the-above-contract?’ ”

We both said that we did and we were and it was and there weren’t. He pulled it out of the typer. “Let’s have your thumb prints. Okay, that’ll be ten dollars, including federal tax.” I paid him and he shoved the form into the copier and threw the switch. “Copies will be mailed to you,” he announced, “at your serial-number addresses. Now, what type of ceremony are you looking for? Maybe I can help.”

“As quick, plain and cheap as it can be,” Mary told him.

“Then I’ve got just what you want. Old Doctor Chamleigh. Non-sectarian, best stereo accompaniment in town, all four walls and full orchestra. He gives you the works, fertility rites and everything, but dignified. And he tops it off with a fatherly straight-from-the-shoulder word of advice. Makes you feel married.”

“No.” This time I said it.

“Come on!” the clerk said to me. “Think of the little lady. If she sticks by what she just swore to, she’ll never have another chance. Every girl is entitled to a formal wedding. Honest, I don’t get much of a commission.”

I said, “You can marry us, can’t you? Go ahead. Get it over with!”

He blinked at me. “Didn’t you know? In this state you marry yourself. You’ve been married, ever since you thumbprinted the license.”

I said, “Oh.” Mary didn’t say anything. We left.

I hired a duo at the landing flat north of town; the heap was ten years old, but it had full-automatic and that was all that mattered. I looped around the City, cut across Manhattan Crater, and set the controls. I was happy though nervous—and then Mary put her arms around me. After a long time I heard the BEEEEP! beep-beep BEEEEP! of the beacon at my shack, whereupon I unwound myself and landed. Mary said sleepily, “Where are we?”

“At my cabin in the mountains,” I told her.

“I didn’t know you had a cabin in the mountains. I thought you were headed for my apartment.”

“What, and risk those bear traps? Anyhow, it’s not mine; it’s ours.”

She kissed me again, which made me kind of louse up the landing. She slid out ahead of me while I was securing the board; I found her staring at the shack. “Sweetheart, it’s beautiful!”

“You can’t beat the Adirondacks,” I agreed. There was a slight haze with the sun low in the west, giving that wonderful depth-upon-depth stereo look.

She glanced at it and said, “Yes, but I didn’t mean that. I meant your—our—cabin. Let’s go inside right now.”

“Suits,” I agreed, “but it’s really just a simple shack.” Which it was. Not even an indoor pool. When I came up here, I didn’t want to feel that I had brought the city with me. The shell was conventional steel and fiberglass, but I had had it veneered in duro-slabs which looked like real logs. The inside was just as simple—a big living room with a real fireplace, deep rugs and plenty of low chairs. The services were in a Kompacto special, buried under the foundation—air-conditioner, power pack, cleansing system, sound equipment, plumbing, radiation alarm, servos—everything but deep-freeze and the other kitchen equipment, out of sight and mind. Even the stereo screens would not be noticed unless in use. It was about as near as a man could get to a real log cabin and still have a little comfort.

“I think it’s lovely,” Mary said seriously. “I wouldn’t want an ostentatious place.”

“You and me both.” I worked the combo and the door dilated; Mary was inside at once. “Hey! Come back!” I yelled.

She did, looking puzzled. “What’s the matter, Sam? Did I do something wrong.?”

“You sure did.” I swung her up in my arms and carried her across the threshold, kissing her as I put her down. “There. Now you are in your own house, properly.”

The lights, of course, came on automatically as we entered. She looked around, then turned and threw her arms around my neck. “Oh, darling, darling!”

We took time out. Then she started wandering around, touching things. “Sam, if I had planned it myself, it would have been just this way.”

“It has only one bathroom,” I apologized. “We’ll have to rough it.”

“I don’t mind. I’m glad; now I know you didn’t bring any of those women of yours up here.”

“What women?”

“You know darn well. If you had been planning this as a nest, you would have included a powder room.”

“You know too much.”

She did not answer but wandered out into the kitchen. I heard her squeal.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I never expected to find a real kitchen in a bachelor’s lodge.”

“I’m not a bad cook. I wanted a kitchen, so I bought one.”

“I’m glad. Now I will cook you dinner.”

“It’s your kitchen; suit yourself. But don’t you want to wash up? You can have first crack at the shower. Tomorrow we’ll get a catalog and you can pick out a bathroom of your own. We’ll have it flown in.”

“You take first shower,” she said. “I want to start dinner.”


MARY and I slipped into domesticity as if we had been married for years. Oh, not that our honeymoon was humdrum, or that there weren’t a thousand things we still had to learn about each other—the point was that we already seemed to know the necessary things about each other that made us married. Especially Mary.

I don’t remember those days too clearly. I was happy; I had forgotten what it was like, had not known that I was not happy. Interested, I used to be—diverted, entertained, amused—but not happy.

We did not turn on a stereo or read a book, we saw no one and spoke to no one, except that on the second day we walked down to the village; I wanted to show Mary off. On the way back we passed the shack of John the Goat, our local hermit. John did what little caretaking I required.

Seeing him, I waved. He waved back. He was dressed as usual, stocking cap, an old army blouse, shorts, and sandals. I thought of warning him about the bare-to-the-waist order, but decided against it. Instead I cupped my hands and shouted, “Send up the Pirate!”

“Who’s the Pirate, darling?”

“You’ll see.”

As soon as we got back, the Pirate came in, for I had his little door keyed to his own meeow—the Pirate being a large and rakish tomcat. He strutted in, told me what he thought of people who stayed away so long, then head-bumped my ankle in forgiveness. After I roughed him up, he inspected Mary. She dropped to her knees and made the sounds used by people who understand cat protocol, but the Pirate looked her over suspiciously. Suddenly he jumped into her arms and commenced to buzz, while bumping her under the chin.

“That’s a relief,” I announced. “For a moment I didn’t think I was going to be allowed to keep you.”

Mary looked up and smiled. “You need not have worried. I’m two-thirds cat myself.”

“What’s the other third?”

“You’ll find out.”

From then on the cat was with us—or with Mary—almost all the time, except when I shut him out of our bedroom. That I would not stand for, though both Mary and the Pirate thought it small of me.


MARY never borrowed trouble. She did not like digging into the past. She would let me talk about mine, but not about her own. Once when I started quizzing her, she changed the subject saying, “Let’s look at the sunset.”

“Sunset?” I repeated. “Can’t be. We just finished breakfast.” The mixup about the time of day jerked me back to reality. “Mary, how long have we been up here?”

“Does it matter?”

“You bet it matters. It’s been more than a week, I’m sure. One of these days our phones will start screaming and then it’s back to the treadmill.”

“In the meantime, what difference does it make?”

I still wanted to know what day it was. I could have found out by switching on a stereo, but I would probably have bumped into a newscast and I did not want that. I was still pretending that Mary and I were away in a different world, where titans did not exist.

“Mary,” I said fretfully, “how many tempus pills have you?”

“None.”

“Well, I’ve got enough for us both, I suppose. Suppose we have just twenty-four more hours; we could stretch it out to a month, subjective time.”

“No.”

“Why not? Let’s carpe that old diem.”

She put a hand on my arm and looked up into my eyes. “No, darling, it’s not for me. I must live each moment and not let it be spoiled by worrying about the moment ahead.” I looked stubborn. She went on, “If you want to take them, I won’t mind, but please don’t ask me to.”

“Confound it, I’m not going on a joy ride alone.” She did not answer, which is the damnedest way of winning an argument.

Not that we argued. If I tried to start one, Mary would give in and somehow it would work out that I was mistaken. I did try several times to find out more about her; it seemed to me that I ought to know something about the woman I was married to. To one question she looked thoughtful and answered, “I sometimes wonder whether I ever did have a childhood—or was it something I dreamed last night?”

I asked her pointblank what her name was. “Mary,” she said tranquilly.

“Mary really is your name?” I had long since told her my right name, but we went on using Sam.

“Certainly it’s my name, dear. I’ve been Mary since you first called me that.”

“Oh. All right, you are my beloved Mary. But what was your name before?”

Her eyes held an odd, hurt look, but she answered steadily, “I was once known Allucquere.”

“Allucquere,” I repeated, savoring it. “What a strange and beautiful name. My darling Allucquere.”

“My name is Mary now.” And that was that.

Somewhere, somewhen, I was convinced, Mary had been hurt, badly hurt. But it seemed unlikely that I was ever going to know about it. Presently I ceased to worry about it. She was what she was, and I was content to bask in the warm light of her presence.


I WENT on calling her Mary, but the name that she had once kept running through my mind. I wondered how it was spelled.

Then suddenly I knew. My pesky packrat memory was pawing away at the shelves in the back of my mind where I keep the useless junk that I am unable to get rid of. There had been a community, a colony that used an artificial language, even to given names—

The Whitmanites, that was it. The anarchist-pacifist cult that got kicked out of Canada, then failed to make a go of it in Little America. There was a book written by their prophet, The Entropy of Joy; it was full of pseudo-mathematical formulas for achieving happiness.

Everybody is for “happiness,” just as they are against “sin,” but the cult’s practices got them in hot water. They had a curious and very ancient solution to their sexual problems, a solution which produced explosive results when the Whitmanite culture touched any other pattern of behavior. Even Little America had not been far enough away. I had heard somewhere that the remnants had emigrated to Venus—in which case they must all be dead by this time.

I put it out of my mind. If Mary were a Whitmanite, or had been reared that way, that was her business. I certainly was not going to let the cult’s philosophy cause us a crisis now or ever; marriage is not ownership and wives are not property.

XXII

THE next time I mentioned tempus pills, she did not argue but suggested that we hold it down to a minimum dose. It was a fair compromise—we could always take more.

I prepared it as injections so that it would take hold faster. Ordinarily I watch a clock after I’ve taken tempus; when the second hand slows to a stop, I know I’m loaded. But my shack has no clocks and neither of us was bothering with ringwatches. It was sunrise and we had been awake all night, cuddled up on a big low couch by the fireplace.

We continued to lie there, feeling good and dreamy, and I was considering the idea that the drug had not worked. Then I realized that the sun had stopped rising. I watched a bird fluttering past the window. If I stared at him long enough, I could see his wings move.

I looked back from it to my wife. The Pirate was curled up on her stomach, his paws tucked in as a muff. They seemed asleep. “How about breakfast?” I said. “I’m starved.”

“You get it,” she answered. “If I move, I’ll disturb Pirate.”

“You promised to love, honor, and fix me breakfast,” I replied and tickled her feet. She gasped and drew up her legs; the cat squawked and landed on the floor.

“Oh, dear!” she said. “You made me move too fast.”

“Never mind the cat, woman; you’re married to me.” Even I knew that I had made a mistake. In the presence of people not under the drug, one should move with great care. I simply hadn’t thought about the cat; no doubt he thought we were behaving like drunken jumping jacks. I intentionally slowed down and tried to woo him.

No use—he was streaking toward his door. I could have stopped him, for to me his movement was a molasses crawl, but had I done so I would have frightened him more. I let him go.

Do you know, Mary was right? Tempus-fugit drug is no good for honeymoons. The ecstatic happiness I had felt before was masked by the euphoria of the drug. I had substituted a chemical fake for the true magic. Nevertheless it was a good day—or month. But I wished that I had stuck to the real thing.

Late that evening we came out of it. I felt the slight irritability which marks the loosening hold of the drug, found my ringwatch and timed my reflexes. When they were back to normal I timed Mary’s, whereupon she informed me that she had been out of it for twenty minutes or so—pretty accurate matching of dosage.

“Do you want to go under again?” she asked.

I kissed her. “No. Frankly, I’m glad to be back.”

“I’m so glad.”

I had the usual ravenous appetite that one has afterward; I mentioned it. “In a minute,” she said. “I want to call Pirate.”

I had not missed him; the euphoria is like that. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “He often stays out all day.”

“He never has before.”

“He has with me,” I answered.

“I think I offended him. I know I did.”

“He’s probably down at Old John’s. That’s his usual way of punishing me. He’ll be all right.”

“But it’s late at night—I’m afraid a fox might get him. Do you mind, darling? I’ll just step out and call him.” She headed for the door.

“Put something on,” I suggested. “It will be nippy out.”

She went back to the bedroom and got a negligee I had bought for her the day we had gone to the village. She went out. I put wood on the fire and ambled into the kitchen. While I was trying to make up my mind about a menu, I heard her saying, “Bad, bad cat, you worried mama,” in that cooing voice suitable for babies and house animals.

I called out, “Fetch him in and close the door—and mind the penguins!” She did not answer and I did not hear the door relax, so I went back into the living room. She was just coming in and did not have the cat with her. I started to speak and then caught sight of her eyes. They were staring, filled with unspeakable horror.

I said, “Mary!” and started toward her. She seemed to see me and turned back toward the door; her movements were jerky, spasmodic. Then I saw her shoulders.

Under the negligee was a hump.

I don’t know how long I stood there. Probably a split second, but it is burned into me as endless. I jumped and grabbed her by the arms. She looked at me and her eyes were no longer wells of horror but merely dead.

She gave me the knee.

I squeezed and managed to avoid the worst of it. Look, you don’t tackle a dangerous opponent by grabbing his arms, but this was my wife. I couldn’t come at Mary with a feint-shift-and-kill.

But the slug had no compunctions about me. Mary—or it—was giving me everything she had, and I had all I could do to keep from killing her. I had to keep her from killing me—and I had to kill the slug—and I had to keep the slug from getting at me or I would not be able to save her.

I let go with one hand and jabbed her chin. The blow did not even slow her down. I grabbed again, with both arms and legs, trying to encase her in a bear hug to immobilize her without injuring her. We went down, Mary on top. I shoved my head under her chin to stop her from biting me.

Curbing her strong body by sheer muscle, I tried to paralyze her with nerve pressure, but she knew the key spots as well as I did. I was lucky that I was not myself paralyzed.

There was one thing left that I could do: clutch the slug. But I knew the shattering effect that had on the host. It might kill her; it was sure to hurt her horribly. I wanted to make her unconscious, then remove the slug gently before I killed it . . . drive it off with heat or force it to turn loose with mild shocks.

Drive it off with heat—

I was given no time to develop the idea; she got her teeth in my ear. I shifted my right arm and grabbed at the slug.


NOTHING happened. Instead of my fingers sinking into it, I found that this slug had a leathery covering. It was as if I had clutched a football! Mary jerked when I touched it and took away part of my ear, but there was no bone-crushing spasm; the slug was still alive and in control.

I tried to get my fingers under it It clung like a suction cup. My fingers would not go under.

In the meantime I was suffering damages in other places. I rolled over and got to my knees, still hugging her. I had to let her legs free and that was bad, but I bent her across a hip and struggled to my feet.

I dragged and carried her to the fireplace.

She almost got away from me; it was like wrestling a mountain lion. But I got her there, grabbed her mop of hair and slowly forced her shoulders over the fire.

I meant only to singe the slug, force it to drop off to escape that heat. But she struggled so hard that I slipped, banging my own head against the arch of the opening and dropping her shoulders against the coals.

She screamed and bounded out of the fire, carrying me with her. I struggled to my feet, still dazed by the wallop, and saw her collapsed on the floor. Her beautiful hair and her negligee were burning!

I slapped at them both with my hands. The slug was no longer on her. Still crushing the flames with my hands, I glanced around and saw it lying on the floor by the fireplace—and the Pirate was sniffing at it.

“Get away from there!” I yelled. “Pirate! Stop that!”

The cat looked up inquiringly. I went on making certain that the fire was out. When I was sure, I left her; there was not even time to see if she was still alive. What I wanted was the fireplace shovel; I did not dare risk touching the thing with my hands. I turned to get it.

But the slug was no longer on the floor; it had gotten Pirate. The cat was standing rigid, feet wide apart, and the slug was settling into place. I dived at Pirate and got him by his hind legs just as he made his first possessed movement.

Handling a frenzied cat with bare hands is reckless at best; controlling one which is already controlled by a titan is impossible. Hands and arms being slashed by claws and teeth at every step, I hurried to the fireplace again. Despite Pirate’s wails and struggles, I forced the slug against the coals and held it there, cat fur and my hands alike burning, until the slug dropped off directly into the flames. Then I took Pirate out and laid him on the floor. He was no longer struggling. I made sure that he was no longer burning anywhere, and went back to Mary.

She was still unconscious. I squatted down beside her and sobbed.


AN hour later I had done what I could for Mary. Her hair was gone from the left side of her head and there were burns on shoulders and neck. But her pulse was strong, her respiration steady, though fast and light, and I did not judge that she would lose much body fluid. I dressed her burns—I keep a full stock of medical stuff out there in the country—and gave her an injection to make her sleep. Then I had time for Pirate.

He was still where I had left him and he did not look good. He had gotten it much worse than Mary and probably flame in his lungs as well. He was lying so still, I thought he was dead, but he lifted his head when I touched him.

“I’m sorry, old fellow,” I whispered. I think I heard him mew.

I did for him what I had done for Mary, except that I was afraid to give him a soporific. After that I went into the bathroom and looked myself over carefully.

The ear had stopped bleeding; I decided to ignore it. My hands were what bothered me. I stuck them under hot water and yelped, then dried them in the air blast and that hurt, too. I could not figure out how I could dress them, and, besides, I needed to use them.

Finally I dumped about an ounce of the jelly for burns into each of a pair of plastic gloves and put them on. The stuff included a local anesthetic; that would help me get by. Then I went to the stereophone and called the village medical man. I explained what had happened and what I had done about it and asked him to please come up at once.

“At night?” he said. “You must be joking.”

I said that the hell I was.

He answered, “Don’t ask the impossible, man. Yours makes the fourth alarm in this county; nobody goes out at night. I’ll stop in and see your wife first thing in the morning, when it’s safe.”

I told him where to go first thing in the morning and switched off.

Pirate died a little after midnight. I buried him at once so that Mary would not see him. Digging hurt my hands, but he did not need a very big hole. I said good-by to him and came back in. Mary was resting quietly; I brought a chair to the bed and watched over her. Probably I dozed from time to time; I can’t be sure.

XXIII

About dawn Mary began to struggle and moan. I put a hand on her. “There, baby, it’s all right. Sam’s here.”

Her eyes opened and for a moment held the same horror. Then she saw me and relaxed. “Sam! Oh, darling, I’ve had the most terrible dream.”

“It’s all right,” I repeated.

“Why are you wearing gloves?” She became aware of her own dressings; she looked dismayed and said, “It wasn’t a dream!”

“No, dearest, it wasn’t a dream. But it’s all right; I killed it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“Come here, Sam. Hold me tight.”

I did, while trying to be careful of her burns. Presently her trembling stopped. “Forgive me, darling—I’m weak and womanish.”

“You should have seen the shape I was in after I was possessed.”

“I did see. Now tell me what happened. The last I remember, you were trying to force me into the fireplace.”

“Look, Mary, I couldn’t help it. I had to. There was no other way to get it off.”

“I know, darling, and thank you for doing it! Again I owe you everything.”

She then cried and I blew my nose and went on, “You didn’t answer when I called, so I went into the living room and there you were.”

“I remember. Oh, darling, I tried so hard!”

I stared at her. “I know you did. You tried to leave. But how? Once a slug gets you, there’s no way to fight it.”

“Well, I lost—but I tried.” Somehow, Mary had forced her will against that of a parasite and that can’t be done. I know. I had a sneaking hunch that had Mary not been able to resist the slug to some extent, however slight, I would have lost the struggle, handicapped as I was by fear of killing her, too.

“I should have used a light, Sam,” she added, “but it never occurred to me to be afraid here.” I nodded; this was the safe place, like crawling into bed or into sheltering arms. “Pirate came at once. I didn’t see the slug until I had touched him. Then it was too late.” She sat up. “Where is he, Sam? Is he all right? Call him.”

So I had to tell her about Pirate. She listened without expression, nodded and never referred to him again. I changed the subject by saying, “Now that you are awake, I had better fix you some breakfast.”

“Don’t go!” I stopped. “Don’t go out of my sight at all,” she begged, “not for any reason. I’ll get breakfast.”

“The hell you will. You’ll stay in bed like a good girl.”

“Come here and take off those gloves. I want to see your hands.” I did not take them off—could not bear to think about it; the anesthesia had worn off. She said grimly, “Just as I thought. You were burned worse than I was.”

So she got breakfast. Furthermore, she ate. I wanted nothing but coffee. I did insist that she drink a lot, too; large area burns dehydrate the body. Presently she pushed aside her plate and said, “Darling, I’m not sorry it happened. Now we’ve both been there.” I nodded dumbly. Sharing happiness is not enough. She stood up and told me, “We must go.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “I want to get you to a doctor as soon as possible.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“I know you didn’t.” There was no need to discuss it; we both knew the music had stopped and it was time to go back to work. The heap we had arrived in was still sitting on my landing flat, piling up rental charges. It took about three minutes to burn the dishes, switch off everything, and get ready.

Mary drove, because of my hands. Once in the air she said, “Let’s go straight to the Section offices. We’ll get treatment there and find out what has been going on—or are your hands hurting too badly?”

“Suits,” I said. I wanted to learn the situation and I wanted to get back to work. I asked Mary to switch on the squawk screen to catch a newscast. But the car’s communication equipment was as junky as the rest of it; we could not even pick up audio. Fortunately the remote control circuits were okay, or Mary would have had to buck traffic on manual.

A thought had been fretting me; I mentioned it to Mary. “A slug wouldn’t mount a cat just for the hell of it, would it?”

“I suppose not.”

“But why? It has to make sense; everything they do makes sense, from their viewpoint.”

“But it did make sense. They caught a human that way.”

“Yes, I know. But how could they plan it? Surely there aren’t so many of them that they can afford to gamble like that. Or are there?” I remembered Kansas City, saturated, and shivered. “Where did the slug come from? It had to get to the Pirate on the back of another host. What host? I’d say it was Old John—John the Goat. Pirate wouldn’t let any other human get close to him.”

“Old John?” Mary closed her eyes, thought hard, then opened them. “I can’t get any feeling about it. I was never close to him.”

“By elimination I think it must be true. Old John wore a coat when everyone else was complying with the bareback order. Ergo, he was hag-ridden before Schedule Bareback. But why would a slug single out a hermit way up in the mountains?”

“To capture you.”

“Me?”

“To recapture you.”

It made some sense. Possibly any host that ever escaped them was a marked man. In that case, the dozen-odd Congressmen we had rescued were in special danger. I’d mark that down to turn in for analysis.

On the other hand, the slugs might want me in particular. What was special about me? I was a secret agent. More important, the slug that had ridden me knew what I knew about the Old Man, and was aware that I had access to him. I felt emotionally certain that the Old Man was their principal antagonist; the slug must have known that I thought so, for he had had full use of my mind.

That slug had even met the Old Man, talked with him. Wait a minute—that slug was dead. My theory came tumbling down.

And built up again at once. “Mary,” I asked, “have you used your apartment since the morning you and I had breakfast there?”

“No. Why?”

“Don’t go back there for any purpose. I recall thinking, while I was with them, that I would have to booby trap it.”

“Well, you didn’t, did you?”

“No, but it may have been boobytrapped since then. There may be the equivalent of Old John waiting, spider fashion, for you—or me—to return there.” I explained to her McIlvaine’s “group memory” idea. “I thought at the time he was spinning the dream stuff scientists are so fond of. But now it’s the only hypothesis I can think of that covers everything . . . unless we assume that the titans are so stupid that they would as soon fish in a bathtub as in a brook. Which they aren’t.”

“Just a moment, dear. By Dr. McIlvaine’s theory, each slug is really every other slug; is that it? In other words, that thing that caught me last night was just as much the one that rode you when you were with them as was the one that actually did ride you—Oh, dear, I’m getting confused. I mean—”

“You’ve got the general idea. Apart, they are individuals. In direct conference, they merge memories and Tweedledum becomes exactly like Tweedledee. If that is true, this one last night remembers everything learned from me, provided it has had direct conference with the slug that rode me, or a slug that had been linked through any number of slugs by direct conference to the slug that had ridden me, after the time it did—which you can bet it did, from what I know of their habits. It would have—the first one, I mean. Wait a minute. Take three slugs; Joe, Moe and, uh, Herbert. Herbert is the one last night; Moe is the one which—”

“Why give them names if they are not individuals?” Mary asked.

“Just to keep them—no reason; we’ll just assume that if McIlvaine is right, there may be millions of slugs who know exactly who we are, by name and sight and everything, know where your apartment is, where mine is, and where our cabin is. They’ve got us on a list.”

She frowned. “That’s a horrid thought, Sam. How would they know when to find us at the cabin? We didn’t tell anybody. Would they simply stake it out and wait?”

“They must have. We don’t know that waiting matters to a slug; time may mean something different to them.”

“Like Venerians,” she suggested. I nodded; a Venerian is likely as not to “marry” his own great-great-granddaughter—and be younger than she is. It depends on how they estivate, of course.

“In any case,” I went on, “I’ve got to report this, including our guesses, for the boys in the analytical group to play with.”

I was about to go on to say that the Old Man would have to be especially careful, that it was probably he they were really after. But my secret phone embedded under my scalp sounded for the first time since leave had started. I answered and the Old Man’s voice cut in ahead of the talker’s: “Report in person.”

“On our way,” I acknowledged. “About thirty minutes.”

“Make it sooner. You use Kay Five; tell Mary to come in by Ell One. Move!” He switched off before I could ask him how he had known that Mary was with me.

“Did you get it?” I asked Mary.

“Yes, I was in the circuit.”

“Sounds as if the party was about to start.”


NOT until we had landed did I begin to realize how wildly the situation had changed. We were complying with Schedule Bareback; we had not heard of Schedule Suntan. Two cops stopped us as we got out. “Stand still!” one of them ordered. “Don’t make any sudden moves.”

You would not have known they were cops, except for the manner and the drawn guns. They were dressed in gun belts, shoes, and skimpy breech clouts. A second glance showed their shields clipped to their belts. “Now,” the same one went on, “off with those pants, buddy.”

I did not move quickly enough. He barked, “Make it snappy! Two have been shot trying to escape today; you may be the third.”

“Do it, Sam,” Mary said quietly. I did it. It left me dressed in shoes and gloves, feeling like a fool—but I managed to keep my gun covered as I took off my shorts.

The cop made me turn around. His mate said, “He’s clean. Now the other one.” I started to put on my shorts; the first cop stopped me.

“Looking for trouble? Leave ’em off.”

I said reasonably, “I don’t want to get picked up for indecent exposure.”

He looked surprised, then guffawed and turned to his mate. “You hear that, Ski?”

The second one said patiently, “Listen, you got to cooperate. You know the rules. You can wear a fur coat for all of me—but you’ll get picked up D.O.A. The vigilantes are a lot quicker to shoot than we are.” He turned to Mary. “Now, lady, if you please.”

Without argument Mary started to remove her shorts. The second cop said kindly, “That isn’t necessary, lady, not the way those things are built. Just turn around slowly.”

“Thank you,” Mary said and complied. The policeman’s point was well taken; Mary’s briefies and halter appeared to have been sprayed on.

“How about those bandages?” the first one commented.

I answered, “She’s been badly burned. Can’t you see that?”

He looked doubtfully at the sloppy, bulky job I had done on the dressings. “Mmmm,” he said, “if she was burned.”

“Of course she was burned!” I felt my judgment slipping; I was the perfect heavy husband, unreasonable where my wife was concerned. “Damn it, look at her hair! Would she ruin a head of hair like that just to fool you?”

The first cop said darkly, “One of them would.”

The more patient one said, “Carl is right. I’m sorry, lady; we’ll have to disturb those bandages.”

I said excitedly, “You can’t do that! We’re on our way to a doctor. You’ll just—”

Mary said, “Help me unroll the bandages, Sam.”

I shut up and started to peel up one corner of the dressing, my hands trembling with rage. Presently the older one whistled and said, “I’m satisfied. How about you, Carl?”

“Me, too, Ski. Cripes, girlie, what happened?”

“Tell them, Sam.”

So I did. The older cop finally commented, “So it’s cats now. Dogs I knew about. Horses, yes. But you wouldn’t think the ordinary cat could carry one.” His face clouded. “We got a cat and now we’ll have to get rid of it. My kids won’t like that.”

“I’m sorry,” Mary told him.

“It’s a bad time for everybody. Okay, folks, you can go.”

“Wait a minute,” the first one said. “Ski, if she goes through the streets with that thing on her back, somebody is likely to burn her.”

The older one scratched his chin. “That’s true. We’ll just have to dig up a prowl car.”

Which they did. I had to pay the charges on the rented wreck, then went along as far as Mary’s entrance. It was in a hotel through a private elevator; I got in with her to avoid explanations, then went back up after she got out at a level lower than the obvious controls of the car provided for. I was tempted to go in with her, but the Old Man had ordered me to come in by Kay Five.

I was tempted, too, to put my shorts on. In the prowl car and during a quick march through a side door of the hotel, with police around us to keep Mary from being shot, I had not minded much—but it took nerve to face the world without pants.

I need not have worried. The short distance I had to go was enough to show me that a basic custom had gone with last year’s frost. Most men were wearing clouts, but I was not the only man naked to his shoes. One in particular I remember; he was leaning against a street roof stanchion and searching with cold eyes every passerby. He was wearing nothing but slippers and a brassard lettered “VIG” and he was cradling an Owens mob gun. I saw three more like him; I was glad that I was carrying my shorts.

Few women were naked, but the rest might as well have been—string brassieres, translucent trunks, nothing that could hide a slug. Most of the women would have looked better in togas. That was my first impression, but before long even that had worn off. Ugly bodies weren’t any more noticeable than ugly taxicabs; the eye ignored them. Skin was skin and what of it?

I was let in to see the Old Man at once. He looked up and growled, “You’re late.”

I answered, “Where’s Mary?”

“In the infirmary, getting treated and dictating her report. Let’s see your hands.”

“I’ll show them to the doctor, thanks. What’s up?”

“If you would ever bother to listen to a newscast,” he grumbled, “you would know what was up.”

XXIV

HAD Mary and I watched the stereo, our honeymoon would never have gotten to first base. My suspicion that the slugs could hide themselves on any part of the body and still control hosts had been correct; it had been proved by experiment before Mary and I had holed up on the mountain, although I had not seen the report. I suppose the Old Man knew it. Certainly the President and the high brass did.

So Schedule Suntan replaced Schedule Bareback and everybody skinned down to the buff—

Like hell they did! The matter was still “Top Secret” at the time of the Scranton Riot. Don’t ask me why; our government has gotten the habit of classifying information, practically all information, a Mother-Knows-Best-Dear policy. The Scranton Riot should have convinced anybody that the slugs were loose in Zone Green, but even that did not bring on Schedule Suntan.

The fake air raid alarm on the East Coast took place, as I figure it, the third day of our honeymoon; afterward it took a while to figure out what had happened, even though it was obvious that lighting could not fail by accident in so many different shelters. It gives me horrors to think about it—all those people crouching in the darkness, waiting for the all-clear, while zombies moved among them, slapping slugs on them. Apparently in some air raid bunkers the recruitment was one hundred per cent.

So there were more riots the next day and we were well into the Terror. Technically, the start of vigilantism came the first time a desperate citizen pulled a gun on a cop—Maurice T. Kaufman of Albany was the citizen, and the cop was Sergeant Malcolm MacDonald. Kaufman was dead a half second later and MacDonald followed him, torn to pieces by the mob, along with his titan master. But the vigilantes did not really get going until the air raid wardens put organization into the movement.

The wardens, being stationed above ground during raids, largely escaped, but they felt responsible. Not that all vigilantes were wardens, but a stark naked, armed man on the street was as likely to be wearing a warden’s armband as the VIG brassard. Either way, you could count on him shooting at any unexplained excrescence on a human body—shoot and investigate afterward.


WHILE my hands were dressed, I was brought up to date. The doctor gave me a short shot of tempus and I spent the time—subjective, about three days; objective, less than an hour—studying stereo tapes through an overspeed scanner. This gadget has never been released to the public, though it is bootlegged at some of the colleges around examination week. You adjust the speed to match your subjective rate and use an audio frequency stepdown to let you hear what is being said. It is hard on the eyes, but it is a big help in cramming.

It was hard to believe that so much could have happened. Take dogs. A vigilante would kill a dog on sight, even though it was not wearing a slug—because it was even money that it would be wearing one before sunrise, that it would attack a man and that the titan would change riders in the dark.

A hell of a world where you could not trust dogs!

Apparently cats were hardly ever used; poor old Pirate was an exception. But in Zone Green dogs were rarely seen now by day. They filtered out of Zone Red at night, traveled in the dark and hid out at dawn. They kept showing up even on the coasts. It made one think of werewolf legends.

I scanned dozens of tapes which had been monitored from Zone Red. They fell into three time groups: the masquerade period, when the slugs had been continuing the “normal” broadcasts; a short period of counter-propaganda, during which the slugs had tried to convince citizens in Zone Green that the government had gone crazy; and the current period in which pretense had dropped.

According to Dr. McIlvaine, the titans have no true culture; they are parasitic even in that and merely adapt the culture they find. Maybe he assumes too much, but that is what they did in Zone Red. The slugs would have to maintain the basic economic activity of their victims, since the slugs would starve if the hosts did. They continued that economy with variations that we would not use—that business of processing damaged and excess people in fertilizer plants, for example—but in general farmers stayed farmers, mechanics went on being mechanics, and bankers were still bankers. That last seems odd, but experts claim that any “division-of-labor” economy requires an accounting system.

But why did they continue human recreations? Is the desire to be amused a universal need? What they picked from human ideas of fun to keep and “improve on” does not speak well for us, although some of their variations may have merit. That stunt they pulled in Mexico, for example, of giving the bull an even break with the matador.

But most of it just makes one sick and I won’t elaborate. I am one of the few who saw even transcriptions on such things; I saw them professionally. I hoped that Mary, in her briefing, did not have to look at them, but Mary would never say so if she had.

There was one thing I saw in the tapes so outrageous, so damnably disgusting that I hesitate to mention it, though I feel I must. There were men and women here and there among the slaves, humans—if you could call them that—without slugs.

I hate slugs, but I would turn from killing a slug to kill a renegade.


WE were losing ground everywhere; our methods were effective only in stopping their spread, and not fully effective in that. To fight them directly we would have to bomb our own cities, with no certainty of killing the titans. What we needed was a weapon that would kill slugs but not men, or something that would disable humans or render unconscious without killing and thereby permit us to rescue our compatriots. No such weapon was available, though the scientists were all busy on the problem. A “sleep” gas would have been perfect, but it is lucky that no such gas was known before the invasion, or the slugs could have used it against us. It must be remembered that the slugs then had as much, or more, of the military potential of the United States at their disposal as had the free men.

Stalemate—with time on their side. There were fools who wanted to H-bomb the cities of the Mississippi Valley out of existence, like curing a lip cancer by cutting off the head, but they were offset by their twins who had not seen slugs, and felt that the whole matter was a tyrannical Washington plot. The second sort grew fewer each day, not because they changed their minds but because the vigilantes were awfully eager.

Then there was the tertium quid, the flexible mind, the “reasonable” man—he favored negotiation, claiming we could “do business” with the titans. One such committee, a delegation from the caucus of the opposition party in Congress, actually tried it. Bypassing the State Department, they got in touch with the Governor of Missouri via a linkage rigged across Zone Amber, and were assured of safe conduct and diplomatic immunity—“guarantees” from a titan, but they accepted them. They went to St. Louis and never came back. They sent messages, though. I saw one, a rousing speech adding up to, “Come on in, the water is fine!”

Do steers sign treaties with meat packers?


NORTH America was still the one known center of infection. The only action by the United Nations, other than placing the space stations at our disposal, was to move to Geneva. It was voted, with twenty-three nations abstaining, to define our plight as “civil disorder” and to urge each member nation to give such aid as it saw fit to the legitimate governments of the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

It remained a creeping war, silent, with battles lost before we even knew they were joined. Conventional weapons were hardly useful except in policing Zone Amber, now a double no-man’s-land from the Canadian forests to the Mexican deserts. It was deserted in the daytime, save for our own patrols.

At night our scouts drew back and the dogs came through—and other things.

Only one atom bomb had been used in the entire war, and that against a Saucer which landed near San Francisco south of Burlingame. Its destruction was according to doctrine, but the doctrine was under criticism; it should have been captured for study. I found my sympathies with those who wanted to shoot first and study later.

By the time the dose of tempus was wearing off, I had a picture of the United States in a shape that I had not imagined even when I was in Kansas City . . . a country undergoing Terror. Friend might shoot friend, wife denounce husband. Rumor of a titan could drum up a mob on any street, with Judge Lynch baying in the van. To rap on a door at night was to invite a blast through the pane. Honest folk stayed home; at night the dogs were out.

The fact that most of the rumored discoveries of slugs were baseless made them no less dangerous. It was not exhibitionism which caused many people to prefer outright nudity to the tight and scanty clothing permitted under Schedule Suntan; even the skimpiest clothing invited a suspicion that might be decided too abruptly. The head-and-spine armor was never worn now; the slugs had faked it and used it almost at once.

And there had been the case of a girl in Seattle. She had been dressed in sandals and a big purse, nothing else. But a vigilante who apparently had developed a nose for the enemy followed her, and noticed that she never moved the purse from her right hand, even when she opened it to make change. She lived, for he burned her arm off at the wrist, and I suppose that she had a new one grafted on; the supply of such spare parts was a glut. The slug was alive, too, when the vigilante opened the purse—but not for long.

The drug had worn off by the time I scanned this incident and I mentioned the matter to the nurse. “Mustn’t worry,” she told me. “It does no good. Now flex the fingers of your right hand, please.”

I flexed them, while she helped the doctor spray on surrogate skin. “Wear gloves for rough work,” the doctor cautioned, “and come back next week.” I thanked, them and went to the operations office. I looked for Mary first, but she was busy in Cosmetics.

XXV

“HANDS all right?” the Old Man asked.

“They’ll do. False skin for a week. They do a graft job on my ear tomorrow.”

He looked vexed. “There’s no time for a graft to heal; Cosmetics will have to fake one.”

“The ear doesn’t matter,” I told him, “but why bother to fake it? Impersonation job?”

“Not exactly. Now that you’ve been briefed, what do you think of the situation?”

I wondered what answer he was fishing for. “Not good,” I conceded. “Everybody watching everybody else. Might as well be in Russia.”

“Speaking of Russia, would you say that it was easier to penetrate and maintain surveillance in Russia or in Zone Red? Which would you rather tackle?”

I eyed him suspiciously, “What’s the catch? You don’t let a man pick his assignment.”

“I asked your professional opinion.”

“I don’t have enough data. Have the slugs infested Russia?”

“That,” he answered, “is what I must find out.”

I realized suddenly that Mary had been right; agents should not marry. “This time of year,” I said, “I think I’d want to enter through Canton. Unless you were figuring on a drop.”

“What makes you think I want you to go there?” he asked. “We might find out quicker and easier in Zone Red.”

“What? How?”

“Certainly. If there is infection anywhere but in this continent, the titans in Zone Red must know it. Why go half around the globe to find out?”

I put aside the plans I had been forming to be a Hindu merchant, traveling with his wife, and thought about what he was saying.

“How in the devil can Zone Red be penetrated now?” I asked. “Do I wear a plastic imitation slug on my shoulders? They’d catch me the first time I was called on for direct conference.”

“Don’t be a defeatist. Four agents have gone in already.”

“And come back?”

“Well, not exactly.”

“Have you decided that I’ve cluttered up the payroll long enough?”

“I think the others used the wrong tactics—”

“Yeah, I’d say so.”

“The trick is to convince them that you are a renegade. Got any ideas?”

The idea was so overwhelming that I did not answer at once. Finally I burst out, “Why not start me easy? Can’t I impersonate a Panama pimp for a while? Or practice being an axe murderer? I have to get in the mood for this.”

“You’ve had more experience with their ways than any agent I’ve got. You must be rested up, aside from that little singe on your fingers. Or maybe we should drop you near Moscow and let you take a direct look. Think it over. Don’t get into a fret about it for a day or so.”

“Thank you too much.” I changed the subject. “What have you got planned for Mary?”

“Why don’t you stick to your own business?”

“I’m married to her.”

“I know.”

“Well, for the love of Pete, don’t you even want to wish me luck?”

“It strikes me,” he said slowly, “that you have had all the luck one man could ask for. You have my blessing, for whatever it’s worth.”

“Oh.” Up to that moment, it had not occurred to me that the Old Man might have had something to do with Mary’s leave and mine falling together so conveniently. I said, “Look here, Dad—”

“Huh?” It was the second time I had called him that in a month; it put him on the defensive.

“You meant for Mary and me to marry all along. You planned it that way.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I believe in free will, son—and free choices. Both of you were entitled to leave. The rest was accidental.”

“Accidents don’t happen; not around you. Never mind, I’m satisfied with the outcome. Now about the job—give me a bit longer to size up the possibilities. Meantime, I’ll see Cosmetics about a rubber ear.”

XXVI

WE finally decided not to attempt to penetrate Zone Red. The evaluation group had advised there was no chance of impersonating a renegade; the question hinged on, “How does a man get to be a renegade? Why do the titans trust him?” It answers itself; a slug knows its host’s mind. If a titan, through possessing a man’s mind, knows that he is a natural renegade, a man who can be had, then it may suit the slug’s purposes to let him be renegade rather than host. But first the slug had to plumb the vileness in the man’s mind and be sure of its quality.

We concluded this from logical necessity. Human logic, but it had to be slug logic, too, since it fitted what the slugs could and could not do. As for me, it was not possible even under deep hypnotic instruction to pass myself off as a candidate for renegade, or so the psycho lads decided, and to which I said, “Amen!”

It may seem illogical that titans would “free” a host even though they knew that the host was the sort who could be owned. But in the renegades the slugs had a supply of “trustworthy” fifth columnists—“trustworthy” is not the right word, but no language has a word for this form of treachery. That Zone Green was being penetrated by renegades was certain, but it is often hard to tell a fifth columnist from a custard head, which made them hard to catch.

So I got ready. I took under hypnosis a refresher in the languages I would need, with emphasis on the latest shibboleth phrases; I was provided with a personality and given a load of money. The reporting equipment was a new model and a joy to have, ultra-microwave stuff hardly larger than a loaf of bread, and the power pack so well shielded that it would not make a Geiger counter even nervous.

I had to drop through their screen, but it would be under a blanket of anti-radar “window” to give their search technicians fits. Once inside I had to make up my mind whether or not the Russian axis was slug-infested, then dictate a report to whatever space station was in sight. In line-of-sight, that is; I can’t pick out a space station by eye, and I doubt those who say they can. Report made, I was free to walk, ride, crawl, sneak and/or bribe my way out if I could.

But I never had a chance to use these preparations; the Pass Christian Saucer landed.


IT was only the third to be seen after landing. The Grinnell Saucer had been concealed by the slugs and the Burlingame Saucer was a radioactive memory. But the Pass Christian one was both tracked and seen on the ground.

It was tracked by Space Station Alpha and recorded as an “extremely large meteorite.” The mistake was caused by its great speed. The primitive radar of sixty-odd years ago had picked up Saucers many times, especially cruising at atmospheric speeds while scouting this planet. But our modern radar has been “improved” to the point where Saucers could not be seen; our instruments are too specialized. Traffic block control sees atmospheric traffic only. The defense screen and fire control radars see only what they are supposed to see. The fine screen “sees” a range from atmospheric speeds up to orbiting missiles at five miles a second. The coarse screen overlaps the fine screen, starting down at the lowest missile speed and carrying on up to about ten miles per second.

There are other selectivities, but none of them sees objects at speeds over ten miles per second—with the single exception of space station meteor-count radars, which are not military. Consequently the “giant meteor” was not associated with Flying Saucers until later.

But the Pass Christian Saucer was seen to land. The submersible cruiser U.N.S. Robert Fulton on patrol of Zone Red out of Mobile was seven miles off Gulfport with only her receptors showing when the Saucer landed. The spaceship popped up on the screens of the cruiser as it dropped from outer space speed—around fifty-three miles per second, by the space station record—to a speed the cruiser’s radars would accept.

It came out of nothing, slowed to zero, and disappeared—but the operator had a fix on the last blip, a few miles away on the Mississippi coast. The cruiser’s skipper was puzzled. The track surely could not be a ship; ships don’t decelerate at fifty gravities! It did not occur to him that that might not matter to a slug. He swung his ship over and took a look.

His first despatch read: SPACESHIP LANDED BEACH WEST OF PASS CHRISTIAN MISSISSIPPI. His second was: LANDING FORCE BEACHING TO CAPTURE.

If I had not been in the Section offices preparing for my drop, I might have been left out of the party. As it was, my phone shrilled: I bumped my head on the study machine and swore. The Old Man said, “Come at once. Move!”

It was the same party we had started with so many weeks—or years?—before, the Old Man, Mary and myself. We were heading south at emergency maximum before the Old Man told us the reason.

When he did, I said, “Why the family group? You need a full-scale air task force.”

“It will be there,” he answered grimly. Then he grinned his old wicked grin. “What do you care? The ‘Cavanaughs’ are riding again. Eh, Mary?”

I snorted. “If you want that sister-and-brother routine, you had better get another boy.”

“Just the part where you protect her from dogs and strange men,” he answered soberly. “And I do mean dogs and I do mean very strange men. This may be the payoff, son.”

He went into the operator’s compartment, closed the panel, and got busy at the communicator. I turned to Mary. She snuggled up and said, “Howdy, Bud.”

I grabbed her. “Don’t give me that ‘Bud’ stuff or somebody’s going to get a paddling.”


WE were almost shot down by our own boys. Then we picked up an escort of two Black Angels who turned us over to the command ship from which Air Marshal Rexton was watching the action. The command ship took us inboard with an anchor loop. I found the maneuver disconcerting.

Rexton wanted to spank us and send us home, but spanking the Old Man is a chore. They finally unloaded us and I squatted our car down on the seawall roadway west of Pass Christian—scared silly, I should add; we were buffeted by A. A. on the way down. There was fighting all around and above us, but there was a curious calm near the Saucer itself.

The outlander ship loomed up almost over us, not fifty yards away. It was as convincing and as ominous as the plastic-board fake in Iowa had been phony. It was a discus of great size, tilted slightly toward us; it had grounded partly on one of the high-stilted old mansions which line that coast. The Saucer was partly supported by the wreckage and by the thick trunk of a tree that had shaded the house.

Its canted attitude let us see the upper surface and what was surely its airlock—a metal hemisphere, a dozen feet across, at its center. This hemisphere was lifted out or up from the body of the ship some six or eight feet. I could not see what held it out, but I assumed that there must be a central shaft or piston; it came out like a poppet valve. It was easy to see why the Saucer had not closed up again and taken off. The airlock was fouled, held open by a “mud turtle,” one of those little amphibious tanks that were part of the landing force of the Fulton.

Let me place this on record. The tank had been commanded by Ensign Gilbert Calhoun of Knoxville. With him was Powerman 2/c Florence Berzowski and a gunner named Booker T. W. Johnson. They were all dead, of course, before we got there.

The car, as soon as I roaded it, was surrounded by a landing force squad commanded by a pink-cheeked lad who seemed anxious to shoot somebody, anybody. He was less anxious when he got a look at Mary, but he still refused to let us approach the Saucer until he had checked with his tactical commander, who in turn consulted the skipper of the Fulton. We got an answer back in short time, considering that it was probably referred clear to Washington.

While waiting, I watched the battle and was pleased to have no part of it. Somebody was going to get hurt. A good many had already. There was a male body just behind the car—a boy not more than fourteen. He was still clutching a rocket launcher and across his shoulders was the mark of the beast. I wondered whether the slug had crawled away and was dying, or whether, perhaps, it had managed to transfer to the person who had killed the boy.

Mary had walked west on the highway with the downy young naval officer while I was examining the corpse. The notion of a slug, possibly still alive, being around caused me to hurry to her. “Get back into the car,” I said.

She continued to look west along the road. “I thought I might get in a shot or two,” she answered, her eyes bright.

“She’s safe here,” the youngster assured me. “We’re holding them, well down the road.”

I ignored him. “Listen, you bloodthirsty little hellion,” I snapped, “get back in that car before I break every bone in your body!”

“Yes, Sam.” She turned and did so.

I looked back at the young salt. “What are you staring at?” I demanded. The place smelled of slugs and the wait was making me nervous.

“Nothing much,” he said, looking me over. “In my part of the country we don’t speak to ladies that way.”

“Then why in hell don’t you go back where you come from?” I answered and stalked away. The Old Man was missing, too: I did not like it.

An ambulance, coming back from the west, ground to a halt beside me. “Has the road to Pascagoula been opened?” the driver called out.

The Pascagoula River, thirty miles east of where the Saucer had landed, was roughly “Zone Amber” for that area. The town of that name was east of the river’s mouth and in Zone Green, while sixty or seventy miles west of us on the same road was New Orleans, the heaviest concentration of titans south of St. Louis. Our opposition came from New Orleans. Our nearest base was in Mobile.

“I haven’t heard,” I told the driver.

He chewed a knuckle. “Well, I made it through. Maybe I’ll make it back.” His turbines whined and he was away. I continued to look for the Old Man.

Although the ground fighting had moved from the site, the air fighting was all around us. I was watching vapor trails and trying to figure out who was what and how they could tell, when a big transport streaked into the area, put on the brakes with a burst of rato units, and spilled a platoon of sky boys. Again I wondered; it was too far away to tell whether they wore slugs or not. At least it came in from the east.

I spotted the Old Man talking with the landing force commander. I went up and interrupted. “We ought to get out of here, boss. This place is due to be atom-bombed ten minutes ago.”

The commander answered. “Relax. The concentration does not merit even a pony bomb.”

I was about to ask him sharply how he knew that the slugs would figure it that way, when the Old Man interrupted. “He’s right, son.” He took my arm and walked me back toward the car. “He’s right, but for the wrong reasons.”

“Huh?”

“Why haven’t we bombed the cities they hold? They don’t want to damage that ship; they want it back. Get on back to Mary. Dogs and strange men—remember?”

I shut up, unconvinced. I expected us all to be clicks in a Geiger counter any second. Slugs fought with gamecock recklessness, perhaps because they were really not individuals. Why should they be more cautious about one of their ships? They might be more anxious to keep it out of our hands than to save it.

We had just reached the car and spoken to Mary when the still-damp youngster came trotting up. He saluted the Old Man. “The Commander says that you are to have anything you want, sir—anything at all!”

From his manner I gathered that the answering despatch had been spelled out in flaming letters, accompanied by ruffles and flourishes. “Thank you, sir,” the Old Man said mildly. “We merely want to inspect the captured ship.”

“Yes, sir. Come with me, sir.” He came with us instead, having difficulty deciding whether to escort the Old Man or Mary. Mary won. I followed, keeping my mind on watching out and ignoring the presence of the youngster. The country on that coast, unless gardened, is practically jungle; the Saucer lapped over into a brake of that sort and the Old Man took a shortcut through it. The kid said, “Watch out, sir. Mind where you step.”

I said, “Slugs?”

He shook his head. “Coral snakes.”

At that point a poisonous snake would have seemed as pleasant as a honey bee, but I must have been paying some attention to his warning for I was looking down when I first heard a shout. Then, so help me, a Bengal tiger was charging us!

Probably Mary got in the first shot. Mine was not behind that of the young officer; it might even have been ahead. The Old Man shot last. Between us we cut that beast so many ways that it would never make a rug. And yet the slug on it was untouched; I fried it with my second bolt.

The young fellow looked at it without surprise. “Well,” he said, “I thought we had cleaned up that load.”

“What do you mean?”

“One of the first transport tanks they sent out. Regular Noah’s Ark. We were shooting everything from gorillas to polar bears. Say, did you ever have a water buffalo come at you?”

“No, and I don’t want to.”

“Not as bad as the dogs, really. If you ask me, those things don’t have much sense.” He looked at the slug, quite unmoved.

We got out of there fast and onto the titan ship—which did not make me less nervous, but more. Not that there was anything frightening in the appearance of the ship itself, but its appearance wasn’t right. While it was artificial, one knew without being told that it was not made by men. Why? I don’t know. Its surface was dull mirror, not a mark on it—not any sort of mark; there was no way to tell how it had been put together. It was as smooth as a Jo block.

I could not figure what it was made of. Metal? Of course, it had to be metal. But was it? You would expect it to be either bitterly cold or possibly intensely hot from its landing. I touched it and it was not anything at all, neither cold nor hot. I noticed another thing presently. A ship that size, landing at high speed, should have blasted a couple of acres. There was no blast area at all; the brake around it was green and rank.

We went up to the parasol business, the airlock, if that is what it was. The edge was jammed down on the little mud turtle; the armor of the tank was crushed in, as one might crush a pasteboard box with the hand. Those mud turtles are built to launch five hundred feet deep in water; they are strong.

Well, I suppose this one was strong. The parasol arrangement had damaged it, but the airlock had not closed. On the other hand the metal, or whatever the spaceship’s door was made of, was unmarked by the exchange.

The Old Man turned to me. “Wait here with Mary.”

“You’re going in there by yourself?”

“Yes. There may be very little time.”

The kid spoke up. “I’m to stay with you, sir. That’s what the Commander said.”

“Very well, sir,” the Old Man agreed. “Come along.” He peered over the edge, then knelt and lowered himself by his hands. The kid followed him. I felt burned up, but had no desire to argue the arrangements.

Mary turned to me and said, “Sam, I don’t like this. I’m afraid.”

She startled me. I was afraid myself, but I had not expected her to be. “I’ll take care of you.”

“Do we have to stay? He didn’t actually say so.”

I considered it. “If you want to go back to the car, I’ll take you there.”

“Well . . . no, Sam, I guess we have to stay. Come closer to me.” She was trembling.


I DON’T know how long it was before they stuck their heads over the rim. The youngster climbed out and the Old Man told him to stand guard. “Come on,” he said to us. “It’s safe—I think.”

“The hell it is,” I told him, but I went because Mary was already starting. The Old Man helped her down.

“Mind your head,” he said. “Low bridge all the way.”

It is a platitude that unhuman races produce unhuman works, but very few humans have ever been inside a Venerian labyrinth and still fewer have seen the Martian ruins—and I was not one of the few. I don’t know what I expected.

Superficially, the inside of the Saucer was not, I suppose, too startling, but it was strange. It had been thought out by unhuman brains, ones which had never heard of the right angle and the straight line, or regarded them as unnecessary or undesirable.

We found ourselves in a small oblate chamber, and from there we crawled through a tube about four feet thick, which seemed to wind down into the ship, and glowed from all its surface with a reddish light.

The tube held an odd and somewhat distressing odor, as if of marsh gas, and mixed with it faintly was the reek of dead slugs. That and the reddish glow and the total lack of heat response from the wall of the tube, as my palms pressed against it, gave me the unpleasant fancy that I was crawling through the gut of some unearthly behemoth, rather than exploring a strange machine.

The tube branched like an artery and there we came across our first Titanian androgyne. He—let me call it “he”—was sprawled on his back, like a child sleeping, his head pillowed on his slug. There was a suggestion of a smile on the little rosebud mouth. I did not realize that he was dead.

At first sight, the similarities between the Titanian people and ourselves are more noticeable than the differences; we impress what we expect to see on what we do see. Take the pretty little “mouth” for example—how was I to know that it was an organ for breathing solely?

But despite the casual similarities of four limbs and a headlike protuberance, we are less alike than a bullfrog and bullpup. Nevertheless the general effect is pleasing and faintly human. “Elfin,” I should say—the elves of Saturn’s moons.

When I saw the little fellow, I managed to draw my gun. The Old Man turned and said, “Take it easy. It’s dead. They are all dead, smothered in oxygen when the tank ruined their air seal.”

I still had my gun out. “I want to burn the slug,” I insisted. “It may still be alive.” It was not covered by the shell we had lately come to expect, but was naked and ugly. Very naked and ugly.

He shrugged. “Suit yourself. It can’t possibly hurt you. That slug can’t live on an oxygen breather.” He crawled across the little body, giving me no chance to shoot had I decided to. Mary had not drawn, but had shrunk against my side and was breathing in sharp, sobbing gasps. The Old Man stopped and said patiently, “Coming, Mary?”

She choked, “Let’s get out of here!”

I said, “She’s right. This is no job for three people. This is something for a research team and proper equipment.”

He paid no attention to me. “It has to be done, Mary. You know that. And you have to be the one to do it.”

“Why does she have to do it?” I demanded angrily.

Again he ignored me. “Well, Mary?”

From somewhere inside she called on reserves. Her breathing became normal, her features relaxed, and she crawled across the slug-ridden elfin body with the serenity of a queen going to the gallows. I lumbered after, still hampered by my gun and trying not to touch the corpse.

We came at last to a large chamber which may have been the control room; there were many of the dead little elfin creatures in it. Its inner surface was cavitated and picked out with lights much brighter than the reddish illumination, and the space was festooned with processes as meaningless to me as the convolutions of a brain. I was troubled again with the thought—completely wrong—that the ship itself was a living organism.

The Old Man paid no mind but crawled through and into another ruddy-glowing tube. We followed its contortions to where it widened out to ten feet or more with a “ceiling” almost tall enough to let us stand erect. But that was not what caught our eyes; the walls were no longer opaque.

On each side of us, beyond transparent membranes, were thousands on thousands of slugs, swimming, floating, writhing in some fluid which sustained them. Each tank had an inner diffuse light of its own that let me see back into the palpitating mass—and I wanted to scream.

I still had my gun out. The Old Man placed his hand over the bell of it. “You don’t want to let that loose in here,” he warned me. “Those are for us.”

Mary looked at them with a face too calm. I doubt that she was fully conscious in the ordinary sense. I looked at her, glanced back at the walls of that ghoulish aquarium, and said urgently, “Let’s get out of here if we can, then just bomb it out of existence. Before it’s too late!”

“No,” he said quietly, “there is more. Come.” The tube narrowed in again, then enlarged, and we were in a somewhat smaller chamber. Again there were transparent walls; again there were things floating beyond them.

I had to look twice before I could believe what I saw.

Floating just beyond the wall, face down, was the body of a man—a human, Earth-born man—about forty to fifty years old. His arms were curved across his chest and his knees were drawn up, as if he were sleeping.

He was not alone; there were more beyond him, male and female, young and old. but he got my attention. I was sure that he was dead; it did not occur to me to think otherwise—then I saw his mouth working—and then I wished he were dead.


MARY was wandering around as if she were drunk. No, not drunk, but preoccupied and dazed. She went from one wall to the other, peering into the crowded, half-seen depths. The Old Man looked only at her. “Well, Mary?” he asked softly.

“I can’t find them!” she said piteously in a voice like a little girl’s. She ran back to the other side.

The Old Man grasped her arm. “You’re not looking for them in the right place. Go back where they are. Remember?”

Her voice was a wail. “I can’t remember!”

“You must remember. This is what you can do for them. You must return to where they are and look for them.”

Her eyes closed and tears started leaking from them. I pushed myself between them and said, “Stop this! What are you doing to her?”

He pushed me away. “No, son,” he whispered fiercely. “Keep out of this—you must keep out!”

“But—”

“No!” He let go of Mary and led me to the entrance. “Stay there. And as you love your wife, as you hate the titans, do not interfere. I shan’t hurt her. I promise.”

“What are you going to do?” But he had turned away. I stayed, unwilling, yet afraid to tamper with what I did not understand.

Mary had sunk to the floor like a child, face covered with hands. The Old Man knelt down and touched her arm. “Go back,” I heard him say. “Back to where it started.”

I could barely hear her answer. “No . . . no.”

“How old were you? You seemed to be about seven or eight when you were found. It was before that?”

“Yes—yes, it was before that.” She sobbed, “Mama! Mama!”

“What is your mama saying?” he asked gently.

“She doesn’t say anything. She’s looking at me so queerly. There’s something on her back. I’m afraid!”

I hurried toward them, crouching to keep from hitting the low ceiling. Without taking his eyes off Mary, the Old Man motioned me back. I stopped, hesitated. “Go back,” he ordered. “Way back.”

The words were directed at me and I obeyed them—but so did Mary.

“There was a ship,” she muttered, “a big, shiny ship—” He said something; if she answered, I could not hear it. I stayed back this time. Despite my vastly disturbed emotions, I realized that something important was going on, something big enough to absorb the Old Man’s full attention in the presence of the enemy.

He continued to talk soothingly but insistently. Mary quieted, seemed to sink into lethargy. After a while she was talking in the monotonous logorrhea of emotional release. Only occasionally did he prompt her.

I heard something crawling along the passage behind me, turned and drew my gun, with a wild feeling that we were trapped. I almost shot him before I recognized the ubiquitous young officer we had left outside. “Come out!” he said urgently. He pushed past me into the chamber and repeated the demand to the Old Man.

The Old Man looked exasperated beyond endurance. “Shut up and don’t bother me,” he said.

“You’ve got to, sir,” the youngster insisted. “The Commander says that you must come out at once. We’re falling back; he says he may have to use demolition at any moment. If we are still inside—blooie!”

“Very well,” the Old Man agreed calmly. “Go tell your commander that he must hold off until we get out; I have vitally important information. Son, help me with Mary.”

“Aye aye, sir!” the youngster acknowledged. “But hurry!” He scrambled away. I picked up Mary and carried her to where the chamber narrowed into a tube; she seemed almost unconscious. I put her down.

“Mary,” I shouted. “Mary! Can you hear me?”

Her eyes opened. “Yes, Sam?”

“Darling, we’ve got to get out of here, fast! Can you crawl?”

“Yes, Sam.” She closed her eyes.

I shook her again. “Mary!”

“Yes, darling? What is it? I’m so tired.”

“Listen, Mary, you’ve got to crawl out of here. If you don’t, the slugs will get us. Do you understand?”

“All right, darling.” Her eyes stayed open, but were vacant. I got her headed up the tube and came after her. I lifted and dragged her through the chamber of slugs and again through the control room, if that’s what it was. When we came to where the tube was partly blocked by the dead elfin creature, she stopped; I wormed past her and stuffed it into the branching tube. There was no doubt, this time, that its slug was dead.

After an endless nightmare of leaden-limbed striving, we reached the outer door. The young officer was there and helped us lift her out, him pulling and the Old Man and me lifting and pushing. I gave the Old Man a leg up, jumped out myself, and took her away from the youngster.

It was quite dark as we went back past the crushed house, avoiding the brake, and thence down to the road. Our car was no longer there. We were hurried into a “mud turtle” tank—none too soon, for the fighting was almost on top of us. The tank commander buttoned up and the craft lumbered into the water.

Fifteen minutes later we were inside the Fulton, and an hour later we disembarked at the Mobile base.

The Old Man and I had had coffee and sandwiches in the wardroom of the Fulton. Some of the Wave officers had cared for Mary in the women’s quarters. She joined us as we left and seemed normal.

I said, “Mary, are you all right?”

She smiled. “Of course, darling. Why shouldn’t I be?”

A command ship and escort took us out of there. I had supposed that we were headed back to the Section offices, or to Washington. The pilot put us into a mountainside hangar in one of those egg-on-a-plate maneuvers that no civilian craft can accomplish—in the sky at high speed, then in a cave and stationary.

“Where are we?” I asked.

The Old Man did not answer. He got out; Mary and I followed. The hangar was small, just parking space for a dozen craft, an arresting platform, and a single launching rack. Guards directed us on back to a door set in living rock; we went through and found ourselves in an anteroom. A loudspeaker told us to strip. I hated to part with my gun and phone.

We went in and were met by a young fellow whose clothing was an armband showing three chevrons and crossed retorts. He turned us over to a girl who was wearing less—only two chevrons. Both of them noticed Mary, each with typical response. I think the corporal was glad to pass us on to the female captain who received us.

“We got your message,” the captain said. “Dr. Steelton is waiting.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” the Old Man answered. “Where?”

“Just a moment,” she said, went to Mary and felt through her hair. “We have to be sure,” she said apologetically. If she was aware of the falseness of much of Mary’s hair, she did not mention it. “All right,” she decided, “let’s go.” Her own hair was cut mannishly short.

“Right,” agreed the Old Man. “No, son, this is as far as you go.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you damn near loused up the first try.”

The captain said, “The officers’ mess is down the first passageway to the left. Why not wait there?”

So I did. I passed a door decorated primly in red skull and crossbones and stenciled with:

WARNING

LIVE PARASITES BEYOND THIS DOOR

Qualified Personnel Only

Use Procedure A

I gave it a wide berth.

The officers’ mess had three or four men and two women lounging in it. I found an unoccupied chair, sat down and wondered who you had to be to get a drink around there. After a time I was joined by a large male extrovert wearing a colonel’s insignia on a neck chain.

“Newcomer?” he asked. I admitted it. “Civilian expert?” he went on.

“I don’t know about ‘expert’,” I replied. “I’m a field operative.”

“Name? Sorry to be officious,” he apologized, “but I’m the security officer around here. My name’s Kelly.”

I told him mine. He nodded. “Matter of fact I saw you coming in. Now, Mr. Nivens, how about a drink?”

I stood up. “Whom do I have to kill to get it?”


“AS far as I can see,” Kelly went on later, “this place needs a security officer the way a horse needs rollerskates. We should publish our results as fast as we get them.”

I commented that he did not sound like a brass hat. He laughed. “Believe me, son, not all brass hats are as they are pictured. They just seem to be.”

I remarked that Air Marshal Rexton struck me as a pretty sharp citizen.

“You know him?” the colonel asked.

“Not exactly, but my work has thrown me in his company a bit. I last saw him earlier today.”

“Hmm,” said the colonel. “I’ve never met the gentleman. You move in more rarefied strata than I do, sir.”

I explained that it was mere happenstance, but from then on he showed me more respect. Presently he was telling me about the work the laboratory did.

“By now we know more about those foul creatures than does Old Nick himself. But do we know how to kill them without killing their hosts? We do not. I’m no scientist—just a cop under a different tag—but I’ve talked to the scientists here. This is a biological war. We need a bug, one that will bite the slug and not the host. Doesn’t sound too hard, does it? We know a hundred things that will kill the slug—smallpox, typhus, syphilis, encephalitis lethargica, Obermayer’s virus, plague, yellow fever, and so on. But they all kill the host, too.”

“Couldn’t we use something that everyone is immune to?” I asked. “Everybody has typhoid shots. And almost everybody is vaccinated for smallpox.”

“No good. If the host is immune, the parasite doesn’t get exposed to it. Now that the slugs have developed this outer cuticle, the parasite’s environment is the host. No, we need something the host will catch and that will kill the slug, but won’t give the host more than a mild fever.”

I started to answer when I saw the Old Man in the doorway. I excused myself and went to him. “What was Kelly grilling you about?” he asked.

“He wasn’t grilling me,” I answered.

“That’s what you think. You know which Kelly that is? B.J. Kelly, the greatest scientific criminologist of our generation.”

“That Kelly! But he’s not in the army.”

“Reserve, probably. But you can guess how important this lab is. Come on.”

“Where’s Mary?”

“You can’t see her now. She’s recuperating.”

“Is she—hurt?”

“I promised you she would not be. Steelton is the best in his line. But we had to go down deep, against great resistance. That’s always rough on the subject.”

“Did you get what you were after?”

“Yes and no. We aren’t through.”

“What were you after?”

We had been walking along one of the place’s endless underground passageways. Now he turned us into a small office, sat down, touched the desk communicator and said, “Private conference.”

“Yes, sir,” a voice answered. “We will not record.” A green light came on in the ceiling.

“Not that I believe them,” the Old Man complained, “but it may keep anyone but Kelly from playing it back. Well, I’ll tell you a bit and answer your questions—some of them—in exchange for a solemn promise never to bother your wife with it. You don’t have the skill to keep her from going into a wingding.”

“Very well, sir. I promise.”

“There were a group of people, a cult you might call them, that got into disrepute.”

“I know. The Whitmanites.”

“Eh? How did you know? From Mary? No, she couldn’t have: she didn’t know herself.”

“Not from Mary. I figured it out.”

He looked at me with odd respect. “Maybe I’ve underestimated you, son. As you say, the Whitmanites. Mary was one, as a kid in Antarctica.”

“Wait a minute!” I said. “They left Antarctica in 1974.”

“Right.”

“But that would make Mary around forty years old!”

“Do you care?”

“Of course not, only she can’t be.”

“She is and she isn’t. Chronologically, her age is about forty. Biologically, she is in her middle twenties. Subjectively, she is even younger, because she doesn’t consciously remember anything earlier than about 1990.”

“What do you mean? That she doesn’t remember, I can understand—she never wants to remember. But what do you mean by the rest?”

“What I said. She is no older than she is because—You know that room where she started to remember? She spent ten years or more in suspended animation in just such a tank as that.”

XXVIII

AS I get older, I don’t get tougher; I get softer. The thought of my beloved Mary swimming in that artificial womb, neither dead nor alive, preserved like a pickled grasshopper, was too much for me.

I heard the Old Man saying, “Take it easy, son. She’s all right.”

I said, “Go ahead.”

Mary’s overt history was simple, though mystifying. She had been found in the swamps near Kaiserville at the north pole of Venus—a little girl who could give no account of herself and who knew only her name, Allucquere. Nobody spotted the significance of the name, and a child of her apparent age could not be associated with the Whitmanite debacle in any case; the 1980 supply ship had not been able to find any survivor of their “New Zion” colony. Ten years of time and more than two hundred miles of jungle separated the little waif of Kaiserville from the God-struck colonists of New Zion.

In 1990 an unaccounted-for Earth child on Venus was incredible, but there was no one around with the intellectual curiosity to push the matter. Kaiserville was made up of miners, doxies, company representatives of Two Planets Corporation, and nothing else. Shoveling radioactive mud in the swamps would not leave much energy for wonder.

She grew up using poker chips for toys and calling every woman in crib row “mother” or “auntie.” They shortened her name to “Lucky.” The Old Man did not say who paid her way back to Earth; the real questions were where she had been from the time New Zion was eaten up by the jungle, and just what had happened to the colony.

But the only record was buried in Mary’s mind, locked tight in terror and despair.


SOMETIME before 1980—about the time of the Flying Saucer reports from Russo-Siberia—the titans had discovered New Zion colony. If you place it one Saturn year earlier than the invasion of Earth, the chronology fits fairly well. The titans probably were not looking for Earthmen on Venus; more likely they were scouting Venus as they had long scouted Earth. Or they may have known where to look. We know that they kidnapped Earthmen over the course of two or more centuries; they may have captured someone whose brain could tell them where to find New Zion. Mary’s dark memories could contain no clue to that.

Mary saw the colony captured, saw her parents turned into zombies who no longer cared for her. Apparently she herself was not possessed, or she may have been possessed and turned loose, the titans finding a weak and ignorant young girl an unsuitable slave. In any case, for what was to her baby mind an endless time, she hung around, unwanted, uncared for, but unmolested, scavenging like a mouse.

The slugs were moving in to stay; their principal slaves were Venerians and the colonists were only incidental. It is sure that Mary saw her parents being placed in suspended animation. For later use in the invasion of Earth? Possible.

In due course she herself was placed in the tanks. Inside a titan ship? At a base on Venus? More probably the latter, for when she woke, she was still on Venus, There are many gaps. Were the slugs that rode the Venerians identical with the slugs which rode the colonists? The slugs seem endlessly adaptable, but they have to adapt themselves to the biochemistry of their hosts. Had Venus an oxy-silicon economy like Mars, or a fluorine economy, the same parasite type could not have fed on both Venerians and Earthmen.

But the gist of the matter lay in the situation as it was when Mary was removed from the artificial incubator. The titan invasion of Venus had failed, or was failing. She was possessed as soon as they removed her from the tank—but Mary had outlived the slug that possessed her.

Why had the slugs died? Why had the invasion of Venus failed? It was for clues to these that the Old Man and Dr. Steelton had gone fishing in Mary’s brain.


I SAID, “Is that all?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“But it raises as many questions as it answers,” I complained.

“There is a great deal more,” he told me, “only you aren’t a Venerian expert or a psychologist. I’ve told you what I have so that you will know why we have to work on Mary and won’t question her about it. Be good to her, boy. She’s had more than her share of grief.”

I ignored the advice; I can get along or not get along with my own wife without help. “What I can’t see is why you had Mary linked up with Flying Saucers in the first place. I realize now that you took her along, on that first trip on purpose. You were right—but why? And don’t give me any malarkey.”

The Old Man looked puzzled. “Son, what is a ‘hunch’ ?”

“A belief that something is so, or isn’t so, without evidence.”

“I’d call a hunch the result of unconscious reasoning on data you did not know you possessed.”

“Don’t tell me your unconscious mind works on data you are going to get, but don’t have.”

“Ah, but I did have data. What’s the last thing that happens to a candidate before he is certified as an agent?”

“The personal interview with you.”

“No, no!”

“Oh, the trance analysis.” I had forgotten hypnoanalysis for the simple reason that the subject never remembers it. “You mean you had this data on Mary then. It wasn’t a hunch at all.”

“No again. I had a very little of it—Mary’s defenses are strong. But I knew that Mary was the agent for this job. Later I played back her hypno interview; then I knew that there must be more. We tried for it and did not get it. But I knew that there had to be more.”

I thought it over. “You sure put her over the bumps to get it.”

“I had to. I’m sorry.”

“Okay, okay.” I waited a moment, then said, “Look, what was there in my hypno record?”

“I had my deputy play it. He said there wasn’t anything I needed to know, so I never played it.”

“Well—thanks.”

He merely grunted.

XXIX

THE slugs had died from something they contracted on Venus; that much we thought we knew. We weren’t likely to get another chance in a hurry to collect direct information, for a despatch came in while the Old Man and I were talking, saying that the Pass Christian Saucer had been bombed to keep it from being recaptured. The Old Man had hoped to get at those human prisoners in that ship, revive and question them.

That chance was gone. What they could dig out of Mary had better be the answer. If some infection peculiar to Venus was fatal to slugs but not fatal to humans—at least, Mary had lived through it—then the next step was to test them all and determine which one. Just dandy! The list of diseases native to Venus which are not fatal but merely nastily annoying is very long—from the standpoint of a Venerian bug, we must be too strange a diet.

The problem was made harder by the fact that diseases native to Venus which were represented by cultures on Earth were strictly limited in number. Such an omission could be repaired—in a century or so of exploration and research on a strange planet.

In the meantime, there was a breath of frost in the air; Schedule Suntan could not go on forever.

The psych boys had to go back where they hoped the answer was, in Mary’s brain. I did not like it, but I could not stop it. She did not appear to know why she was being asked to submit, over and over again, to hypnotics. Though she seemed serene, the strain showed—circles under her eyes, tremor, inattentiveness. Finally I told the Old Man that it had to stop.

“You know better than that, son,” he said.

“The hell I do! If you haven’t gotten what you want by now, you’ll never get it.”

“If we don’t succeed,” he answered gently, “you’ll wish to heaven that she had. Or do you want to raise kids to be hosts to titans?”

I chewed my lip. “Why didn’t you send me to Russia, instead of keeping me here?”

“Oh, that—I want you here, with Mary, keeping her morale up, instead of acting like a spoiled brat. In the second place, it isn’t necessary.”

“Huh? What happened? Some other agent report in?”

“If you would ever show a grown-up interest in the news, you would know.”

I hurried out and brought myself up to date. This time I had managed to miss the first news of the only continentwide epidemic of Black Death since the 17th Century.

I could not understand it. Russian public health measures were fairly good; they were carried out “by the numbers” and no nonsense tolerated. A country has to be literally lousy to spread plagues—rats, lice, and fleas, the historical vectors. The Russian bureaucrats had even cleaned up China to the point where bubonic plague and typhus were localized.

Now both plagues were spreading across the whole Sino-Russo-Siberian axis, to the point where the government had broken down and pleas were being sent out for U.N. help. What had happened?

I put the pieces together and looked up the Old Man again. “Boss, there were slugs in Russia.”

“Yes.”

“You know? Well, for cripes sake, we’d better move fast, or the whole Mississippi Valley will be in the shape that Asia is in. Just one little rat-‘-” The titans did not bother about human sanitation. I doubted if there had been a bath taken between the Canadian border and New Orleans since the slugs dropped the masquerade. Lice, fleas—

The Old Man sighed. “Maybe that’s the solution.”

“You might as well bomb them, if that’s the best we have to offer. It’s a cleaner way to die.”

“So it is. But you know we won’t. As long as there is a chance we’ll keep on trying.”

I mulled it over at length. We were in still another race against time. Fundamentally, the slugs must be too stupid to keep slaves; perhaps that was why they moved from planet to planet—they spoiled what they touched. After a while their hosts would die and then they needed new hosts.

Theory, just theory. One thing was sure: Zone Red would be plague-ridden unless we found a way to kill the slugs, and that mighty soon! I made up my mind to do something I had considered before—force myself into the mind-searching sessions. If there were something in Mary’s hidden memories which could be used to kill slugs, I might see it where others had failed. In any case I was going in, whether Steelton and the Old Man liked it or not. I was tired of being treated like a cross between a prince consort and an unwelcome child.

XXX

MARY and I had been living in a cubicle intended for one officer; we were as crowded as a plate of smorgasbord, but we did not care. I woke up first the next morning and made my usual quick check to be sure that a slug had not gotten to her. While I was doing so, she opened her eyes and smiled drowsily.

“Go back to sleep,” I said.

“I’m awake now.”

“Mary, do you know the incubation period for bubonic plague?”

She answered, “Should I know? Why, one of your eyes is slightly darker than the other. I never noticed before.”

I shook her. “Pay attention, wench. I was in the lab library last night, doing some figuring. As I get it, the slugs must have moved in on the Russians at least three months before they invaded us.”

“Yes, of course.”

“You know? Why didn’t you say so?”

“Nobody asked me.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Let’s get up; I’m hungry.” Before we left, I said, “Guessing games at the usual time?”

“Yes.”

“Mary, you never talk about what they ask you.”

She looked surprised. “But I never know.”

“That’s what I gathered. Deep trance with a ‘forgetter’ order, eh?”

“I suppose so.”

“Hmm. Well, there’ll be some changes made. Today I am going with you.”

All she said was, “Yes, dear.”

They were gathered as usual in Dr. Steelton’s office, the Old Man, Steelton himself, a Colonel Gibsy who was chief of staff, a lieutenant colonel, and an odd lot of sergeant-technicians, J.O.s and flunkies. In the army it takes an eight-man working party to help a brasshat blow his nose. The Old Man’s eyebrows shot up when he saw me, but he said nothing.

A sergeant tried to stop me. “Good morning, Mrs. Nivens,” he said to Mary, then told me, “I don’t have you on the list.”

“I’m putting myself on the list,” I announced, and pushed or past him.

Colonel Gibsy glared and turned to the Old Man with a “Hrrumph-what’s-all-this?’ noise. The rest looked frozen-faced, except one Wac sergeant who could not keep from grinning.

The Old Man said to Gibsy. “Just a moment, Colonel,” and limped over to me. In a voice that reached me alone, he said. “Son, you promised me.”

“And I withdraw it. You had no business exacting a promise like that.”

“You’ve no business here, son. You are not skilled in these matters. For Mary’s sake, get out.”

“You are the one with no business here. You are not an analyst. You get out.”

The Old Man glanced at Mary. Nothing showed in her face. The Old Man said slowly, “You been eating raw meat, son?”

I answered, “It’s my wife who is being experimented on. From here on, I make the rules.”

Colonel Gibsy butted in. “Young man, are you out of your mind?”

I glanced at his hands. “That’s a V.M.I. ring, isn’t it? Have you any other qualifications? Are you an M.D.? A psychologist?”

He drew himself up. “You seem to forget that this is a military reservation.”

“You forget that my wife and I aren’t military personnel!” I added, “Come, Mary. We’re leaving.”

“Yes, Sam.”

I said to the Old Man, “I’ll tell the offices where to send our mail.” I started for the door with Mary following.

The Old Man said, “Just a moment.” I stopped and he asked Gibsy, “Colonel, will you step outside with me? I’d like a word in private.”

Colonel Gibsy gave me a general-court-martial look, but he went. We all waited. The juniors continued to be poker-faced, the lieutenant colonel looked perturbed, and the Wac sergeant seemed about to burst. Steelton was the only one who appeared unconcerned. He took papers out of his “incoming” basket and went quietly to work.

Ten or fifteen minutes later a sergeant came in. “Dr. Steelton, the Commanding Officer says to go ahead.”

“Very well, Sergeant,” he acknowledged, then looked at me and said, “Let’s go into the operating room.”

I said, “Not so fast. Who are these others? How about him?” I indicated the lieutenant colonel.

“Eh? He’s Dr. Hazelhurst. Two years on Venus.”

“Okay, he stays.” I caught the eye of the sergeant with the grin and said, “What’s your job, sister?”

“I’m sort of chaperone.”

“I’m taking over the chaperone business. Now, Doctor, suppose you sort out the spare wheels from the people you actually need.”

“Certainly, sir.” It turned out that he really wanted no one but Colonel Hazelhurst. We went inside—Mary, myself, and the two specialists.

The operating room contained a psychiatrist’s couch surrounded by chairs. The double snout of a tri-dimensional camera poked out of the overhead. Mary went to the couch and lay down.

Dr. Steelton got out an injector. “We’ll try to pick up where we left off, Mrs. Nivens.”

I said, “Just a moment. You have records of the earlier attempts?”

“Of course.”

“Let’s play them over first. I want to come up to date.”

He hesitated, then answered, “If you wish. Mrs. Nivens, I suggest that you wait in my office.”

It was probably the contrary mood that I was in; bucking the Old Man had gotten me hiked up.

“Let’s find out first if she wants to leave.”

Steelton looked surprised. “You don’t know what you are suggesting. These records would be emotionally disturbing to your wife.”

“Very questionable therapy,” Hazelhurst put in.

I said, “This isn’t therapy and you know it. If therapy had been your object, you would have used eidetic recall techniques instead of drugs.”

“There was no time. We had to use rough methods for quick results. I’m not sure that I can authorize the subject to see the records.”

I exploded. “Damn it, nobody asked you and you haven’t got any authority in the matter. Those records were snitched out of my wife’s head and they belong to her. She’ll make up her own mind. Now ask her!”

Steelton said, “Mrs. Nivens, do you wish to see your records?”

Mary answered, “Yes, Doctor, I’d like to very much.”

He seemed astonished. “Do you wish to see them by yourself?”

“With my husband. You and Dr. Hazelhurst are welcome to remain.”

They did. A stack of tape spools were brought in, each labeled with attributed dates and ages. It would have taken hours to go through them all, so I discarded those which concerned Mary’s life after 1991; they could hardly affect the problem.

We began with her very early life. Each record started with the subject, Mary, choking and groaning and struggling the way people always do when they are being forced back on a memory track which they would rather not follow. Then would come the reconstruction, both in her voice and in others. What surprised me most was Mary’s face—in the tank, I mean. We had the magnification stepped up so that the stereo image was practically in our laps and one could follow every expression.

First her face became that of a little girl—oh, her features were the same grown-up ones, but I knew that I was seeing my darling as she must have been when she was very small. It made me hope that we would have a little girl ourselves.

Then her expression would change to match when other actors out of her memory took over. It was like watching an incredibly able monologist playing many parts.

Mary took it calmly, but her hand stole into mine. When we came to the terrible part where her parents changed, became slaves of slugs, she clamped down hard on my fingers. But she controlled herself.

I skipped over the spools marked “period of suspended animation” and proceeded to the group concerned with the time from her resuscitation to the group concerned with her rescue from the swamps.

One thing was certain: she had been possessed by a slug as soon as she was revived. The dead expression was that of a slug not bothering to keep up a masquerade; the stereocasts from Zone Red were full of that look. The barrenness of her memories from that period confirmed it.

Then, rather suddenly, she was no longer hag-ridden, but was again a little girl, very sick and frightened. There was a delirious quality to her remembered thoughts, until, at the last, a new voice came out loud and clear; “Well, skin me alive! Look, Pete, it’s a little girl!”

That tape carried on into Kaiserville, her recovery from starvation and exposure, and many new voices and memories; presently it ended.

“I suggest,” Dr. Steelton said as he took the tape out of the projector, “that we play another of the same period. They are all slightly different and this period is the key to the whole matter.”

“Why, Doctor?” Mary asked.

“If we could tell what killed the titan which, uh, possessed you before you were found—what killed it and left you alive—we might have the weapon we need.”

“But don’t you know?” Mary asked wonderingly.

“Not yet, but we’ll get it. The human memory is an amazingly complete record.”

“I thought you knew. It was nine-day fever.”

“What?” Hazelhurst bounced out of his chair.

“Couldn’t you tell from my face? It was characteristic—the mask, I mean. I used to nurse it back ho—back in Kaiserville, because I had had it once and was immune.”

Steelton said, “How about it, Doctor? Have you ever seen a case of it?”

“By the time of the second expedition, they had the vaccine. I’m acquainted with its clinical characteristics, however.”

“But can’t you tell from this record?”

“Well,” Hazelhurst answered carefully, “I would say that what we have seen is consistent with it, but not conclusive.”

“What’s not conclusive?” Mary said sharply. “I told you it was nine-day fever.”

“We must be sure,” Steelton said apologetically.

“How sure can you get? There is no question about it. I was told that I had been sick with it when Pete and Frisco found me. I nursed other cases later and I never caught it. I remember their faces when they were ready to die—just like my own face in the record. Anyone who has ever seen a case could not possibly mistake it for anything else. What more do you want?”

I have never seen Mary so close to losing her temper—except once. I said to myself: look out, gentlemen, better duck!

Steelton said, “I think you have proved your point, but tell me: You were believed to have no conscious memory of this period and my own examination of you confirmed it. Now you speak as if you had.”

Mary looked puzzled. “I remember it now, quite clearly. I haven’t thought about it in many years.”

“I think I understand.” He turned to Hazelhurst. “Well, Doctor, do we have a culture of the disease? Have your boys done any work on it?”

Hazelhurst seemed stunned. “Work on it? Of course not! It’s out of the question—nine-day fever! We might as well use polio or typhus. I’d rather treat a hangnail with an ax!”

I touched Mary’s arm. “Let’s go, darling. I think we have done all the damage we can.” She was trembling and her eyes were full of tears. I took her into the mess-room for systemic treatment-distilled.


AFTER bedding Mary down for a nap, I looked up my father in the office they had assigned him.

He looked at me speculatively. “Well, Elihu, I hear you hit the jackpot.”

“I prefer to be called Sam,” I answered.

“Very well, Sam. Success is its own excuse; nevertheless, the jackpot appears to be disappointingly small. Nine-day fever—no wonder the colony died out and the slugs as well. I don’t see how we can use it. We can’t expect everyone to have Mary’s remarkable resistance.”

He was right, of course. The fever carried a 98%-plus death rate among unprotected Earthmen. With those who had taken the shots, the rate was an effective zero—but that would be true of the slugs, too.

“I can’t see that it matters,” I pointed out. “It’s odds-on that you will have typhus or plague—or both—throughout the Mississippi Valley in the next six weeks.”

“Or the slugs may have learned a lesson in Asia and will start taking drastic sanitary measures.” The idea startled me so that I almost missed the next thing he said, which was: “No, Sam, you’ll have to devise a better plan.”

“I’ll have to? I just work here.”

“You did once. Now you’ve taken charge of this job.”

“What the devil are you talking about? I’m not in charge of anything and don’t want to be. You are the boss.”

He shook his head. “A boss is the man who does the bossing. Titles and insignia come later. Tell me, do you think Oldfield could ever replace me?”

I shook my head; Dad’s chief deputy was the executive officer type, a “carry-outer,” not a “think-upper.” “I’ve never promoted you,” he went on, “because I knew that when the time came you would promote yourself. Now you’ve done it—by bucking my judgment, forcing your own on me, and by being right.”

“Rats! I got bull-headed and forced one issue. It never occurred to you big brains that you weren’t consulting the one real Venus expert you had on tap—Mary. But I didn’t expect to find out anything; I had a lucky break.”

He shook his head. “Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to excuse for their mediocrity.”

I placed my hands on the desk and leaned toward him. “Okay, so I’m a genius—but you are not going to make me hold the sack. When this is over, Mary and I are going up in the mountains and raise kittens and kids. I don’t intend to boss screwball agents.”

He smiled gently and didn’t answer.

“I don’t want your job. Understand me?”

“Don’t take it so hard, Sam, I’ll keep the title for the present. In the meantime, what are your plans—sir?”

XXXI

THE worst of it was that he meant it. I tried to go limp on him, but it didn’t work. A top-level conference was called that afternoon; I was notified, but stayed away. Shortly a polite little Wac came to tell me that the commanding officer was waiting and would I please come at once?

So I went—and tried to stay out of the discussion. But my father has a way of conducting a meeting, even if he is not in the chair, by looking expectantly at the one he wants to hear from. It’s a subtle trick; the group does not know that it is being led.

But I knew. With every eye in the room on you, it is easier to voice an opinion than to keep quiet. Particularly when I found that I had opinions.

There was much moaning and groaning about the impossibility of using nine-day fever. Admitted that it would kill slugs, but it would even kill Venerians who can be chopped in two and survive, and it was sure death to almost any human. Seven to ten days after exposure—curtains.

“Yes, Mr. Nivens?” It was the commanding general, addressing me. I hadn’t said anything, but Dad’s eyes were on me, waiting.

“I think there has been a lot of despair voiced at this session,” I said, “and a lot of opinions given that were based on assumptions. The assumptions may not be correct.”

“How so?”

I did not have an instance in mind; I had been shooting from the hip. “Well, I hear constant reference to nine-day fever as if the nine-day part were an absolute fact. It’s not.”

The boss brass shrugged impatiently. “It’s a convenient tag. It averages nine days.”

“Yes, but how do you know it lasts nine days—for a slug?”

By the murmur with which it was received, I knew that I had hit the jackpot again.

I was invited to explain why I thought the fever might run a different time in slugs and why it mattered. I bulled on ahead.

“In the only case we knew about, the slug did die in less than nine days—a lot less. Those of you who have seen the records on my wife—and I gather that entirely too many of you have—are aware that her parasite left her, presumably dropped off and died, long before the eighth-day crisis. If experiments confirm this, then the problem is different. A man infected with the fever might be rid of his slug in—oh, call it four days. That gives you five days to catch and cure him.”

The general whistled silently. “That’s a pretty heroic solution, Mr. Nivens. How do you propose to cure him? Or even catch him? I mean to say, suppose we plant an epidemic in Zone Red, it would take incredibly fast footwork—in the face of stubborn resistance, remember—to locate and treat more than fifty million people before they died.”

I slung the hot potato right back, wondering how many “experts” had made their names by passing the buck. “The second question is a logistical and tactical problem—your problem. As to the first, there is your expert.” I pointed to Dr. Hazelhurst.

Hazelhurst huffed and puffed and I knew how he felt. More research needed . . . experiments would be required . . . work had been done toward an antitoxin, but the vaccine for immunizing had proven so successful that he was not sure the antitoxin had ever been perfected. He concluded lamely by saying that the study of the exotic diseases of Venus was still in its infancy.

The general interrupted him. “This antitoxin business—how soon can you find out about it?”

Hazelhurst said that there was a man at the Sorbonne he wanted to phone.

“Do so,” his commanding officer said. “You are excused.”


HAZELHURST came buzzing at our door before breakfast the next morning. I stepped out into the passage to see him. “Sorry to wake you,” he said, “but you were right about that antitoxin matter.”

“I was?”

“They are sending me some from Paris; it should arrive any minute. I do hope it’s still potent.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“Well, we have the means to make it. We’ll have to, of course, if this wild scheme is used—millions of units of it.”

“Thanks for telling me,” I said. I started to turn away; he stopped me.

“Uh, Mr. Nivens, about the matter of vectors—”

“Vectors?”

“Disease vectors. We can’t use rats or mice or anything like that. Do you know how the fever is transmitted on Venus? By a little flying rotifer, the Venerian equivalent, of an insect. But we don’t have any and that is the only way it can be carried.”

“Do you mean to say you couldn’t give it to me if you tried?”

“Oh, yes, I could inject you. But I can’t picture a million paratroopers dropping into Zone Red and asking the parasite-ridden population to hold still while they gave them injections.”

Something started turning over slowly in my brain . . . a million men in a single drop. “Why ask me?” I said. “It’s a medical problem.”

“Of course. I just thought—Well, you seemed to have a ready grasp—” He paused.

“Thanks.” My mind was struggling with two problems at once and having traffic trouble. How many people were there in Zone Red? “Let me get this straight. Suppose you had the fever. I couldn’t catch it from you?” The drop could not be medical men; there weren’t that many.

“Not easily. From a smear or a trace transfusion from my veins to yours.”

“Direct contact, eh?” How many people could one paratrooper service? Twenty? Thirty? More? “If that is what it takes, you don’t have any problem.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t—”

“What’s the first thing a slug does when he runs across another he hasn’t seen lately”

“Conjugation!”

“Direct conference, I’ve always called it, but I use the sloppy old slug language for it. Do you think that would pass on the disease?”

“Think so? I’m sure of it! We have demonstrated, right in this laboratory, that there is exchange of living protein during conjugation. They could not possibly escape transmission; we can infect the whole colony as if it were one body. Now why didn’t I think of that?”

“Don’t go off half-cocked,” I warned. “But I suspect it will work.”

“It will! It will!” He started to go, then stopped. “Oh, Mr. Nivens, would you mind very much—I know it’s a lot to ask—”

“What is? Speak up.” I was anxious to work out the rest of the other problem.

“Well, would you permit me to announce this method of vectoring? I’ll give you full credit, but the general expects a lot and this is just what I need to make my report complete.” He looked so anxious that I almost laughed.

“Go ahead,” I said. “It’s your department.”

“That’s decent of you. I’ll try to return the favor.” He went away happy and so was I; I was beginning to like being a “genius.”

I stopped to straighten out in my mind the main features of the big drop. Then I went in. Mary opened her eyes and gave me that long heavenly smile.

I reached down and smoothed her hair. “Howdy, flame top. Did you know that your husband is a genius?”

“Of course.”

“You did? You never said so”

“You never asked me.”


HAZELHURST referred to it as the “Nivens Vector.” Then I was asked to comment, though Dad looked my way first.

“I agree with Dr. Hazelhurst,” I started out, “subject to experimental confirmation. However, he has left for discussion aspects which are tactical rather than medical. Important considerations of timing—crucial, I should say—” I had worked out my opening speech, even to the hesitations, while eating breakfast—“require vectoring from many focal points. If we are to save a nominal hundred per cent of the population of Zone Red, it is necessary that all parasites be infected at nearly the same time in order that rescue squads may enter after the slugs are no longer dangerous and before any host has passed the point where antitoxin can save him.

“The problem is susceptible to mathematical analysis—” Sam, boy, I said to myself, you old phony, you could not solve it with an electronic integrator and twenty years of sweat—“and should be turned over to your analytical section. However, let me sketch out the factors. Call the number of vector origins X; call the number of rescue workers Y. There will be an indefinitely large number of simultaneous solutions, with optimum solution depending on logistic factors.

“Speaking in advance of rigorous mathematical treatment—” I had done my damnedest with a slipstick, but I did not mention that—“and basing my opinions on my own unfortunately too-intimate knowledge of their habits, I would estimate—”

You could have heard a pin drop, if anybody in that bare-skinned crew had had a pin. The general interrupted once when I placed a low estimate on X, “Mr. Nivens, I think we can assure you of any number of volunteers for vectoring.”

I shook my head.

“You can’t accept volunteers, General.”

“I think I see your objection. The disease would have to be given time to establish in the volunteer and the timing might be dangerously close. But I think we could get around that—a gelatine capsule of antitoxin embedded in tissue, or something of the sort. I’m sure the staff could work it out.”

I thought they could, too, but my real objection was a deep-rooted aversion to any human soul having to be possessed by a slug. “You must not use human volunteers, General. The slug will know everything that his host knows and he simply will not go into direct conference; he’ll warn the others by word of mouth instead. No, sir, we will use animals—apes, dogs, anything large enough to carry a slug, but incapable of speech, and in quantities large enough to infect the whole group before any slug knows that it is sick.”

I gave a fast sketch of the final drop, “Schedule Mercy,” as I saw it. “The first drop—‘Schedule Fever’—can start as soon as we have enough antitoxin for the second drop. Less than a week after, there should be no slug left alive on this continent.”

They did not applaud, but it felt that way. The General hurried away to call Air Marshal Rexton, then sent his aide back to invite me to lunch. I sent word that I would be pleased provided the invitation included my wife.

Dad waited for me outside the conference room. “Well, how did I do?” I asked him, more anxiously than I tried to sound.

He shook his head. “Sam, you wowed ’em. I think I’ll sign you up for twenty-six weeks of stereo.”

I tried not to show how much I was pleased. I had gotten through the whole performance without once stammering, I felt like a genius.

XXXII

THAT ape Satan which had wrung my heart at the National Zoo turned out to be as mean as he was billed, once he was free of his slug. Dad had volunteered to be the test case for the Nivens-Hazelhurst theories, but I put my foot down and Satan drew the short straw. It was neither filial affection nor its neo-Freudian antithesis that caused me to balk him; I did not want him on their side even under laboratory conditions. Not with his shifty, tricky mind! People who have never experienced possession cannot appreciate that the host is utterly against us—with all his abilities intact.

So we used apes for the experiments. We had on hand not only apes from the National Zoological Gardens, but simian citizens from half a dozen zoos and circuses.

Satan was injected with nine-day fever on Wednesday, the 12th. By Friday the fever had established. Another chimp-cum-slug was put in with him. The slugs immediately went into direct conference, after which the second ape was removed.

On Sunday, the 16th, Satan’s master shriveled up and fell off. Satan was immediately injected with antitoxin. Late Monday the other slug died and its host was dosed.

By Wednesday, the 19th, Satan was well, though a bit thin, and the second ape, Lord Fauntleroy, was recovering. I gave Satan a banana to celebrate with and he took off the first joint of my left index finger and me with no time for a repair job.

But a minor injury could not depress me. After I had it dressed, I looked for Mary, failed to find her and ended up in the mess-room, wanting someone with whom to share a toast.

The place was empty. Everyone in the labs was working, mounting “Schedule Mercy.” By order of the President, all possible preparations were confined to this one lab in the Smoky Mountains. The apes for vectoring, some two hundred of them, were here. The culture and antitoxin were being “cooked” here. The horses for serum were stalled in an underground handball court.

The million-plus men for “Schedule Mercy” could not be here, but they would know nothing until alerted just before the drop, at which time each would be issued a hand gun and bandoliers of individual antitoxin injectors. Those who were unwilling would be pushed, if necessary, by some sergeant with a large foot. Everything was being done to keep the secret close. The only way I could see that we could lose would be for the titans to find out our plans, through a renegade or some fool telling his wife.

If we failed to keep this secret, our ape vectors would be shot on sight wherever they appeared in the titan nation. Nevertheless I relaxed over my drink, happy and reasonably sure that the secret would not leak. Traffic was “incoming only” until after Drop Day and Colonel Kelly censored or monitored all communication outward.

As for a leak outside, the chances were slight. The General, Dad, Colonel Gibsy, and myself had gone to the White House the week before. There Dad put on an exhibition of belligerence and exasperation that got us what we wanted; in the end, even Secretary Martinez was kept in the dark. If the President and Rexton could keep from talking in their sleep for another week, I did not see how we could miss.

A week would be none too soon: Zone Red was spreading. After the battle of Pass Christian, the slugs had pushed on and now held the Gulf Coast past Pensacola. There were signs of more to come. Perhaps the slugs were growing tired of our resistance and might decide to waste raw material by A-bombing the cities we still held. If so—well, a radar screen can alert your defenses, but it won’t stop a determined attack.

I refused to worry. One more week—


COLONEL Kelly came in and sat down beside me. “How about a drink?” I suggested. “I feel like celebrating.”

He examined the paunch bulging in front of him and said, “I suppose one more beer wouldn’t put me in any worse shape.”

“Have two beers. Have a dozen.” I dialed for him, and told him about the success of the experiments with the apes.

He nodded. “Yes, I had heard. Sounds good.”

“Good, the man says! Colonel, we are on the one-yard line and goal to go. A week from now we’ll have won.”

“Well?”

“Then you’ll be able to put your clothes back on and lead a normal life,” I answered, irritated. “Or don’t you think our plans will work?”

“Yes, I think they will.”

“Then why the crepe-hanging?”

He said, “Mr. Nivens, you don’t think that a man with my pot belly enjoys running around without his clothes, do you?”

“I suppose not. As for myself, I may hate to give it up—saves time and it’s a hell of a lot more comfortable.”

“Don’t worry about it. This is a permanent change.”

“Huh? I don’t get you. You said our plans would work and now you talk as if Schedule Suntan would go on forever.”

“In a modified way, it definitely will.”

I said, “Pardon me, I’m stupid today.”

He dialed for another beer. “Mr. Nivens, I never expected to see a military reservation turned into a ruddy nudist camp. Having seen it, I never expect to see us change back, because we can’t. Pandora’s box has a one-way lid. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men—”

“Conceded,” I said. “Things never go back quite to what they were before. But you are exaggerating. The day the President rescinds Schedule Suntan, the blue laws will go back into effect and a man without pants will be liable to arrest.”

“I hope not.”

“What? Make up your mind.”

“It’s made up for me. Mr. Nivens, as long as there exists a possibility that a slug is alive, the polite man must be willing to bare his body on request, or risk getting shot. Not just this week and next, but twenty years from now, or a hundred. No, no!” he added, “I am not disparaging your plans, but you have been too busy to notice that they are strictly local and temporary. For example, have you made any provision for combing the Amazonian jungles, tree by tree? This globe has nearly sixty million square miles of land; we can’t begin to search it for slugs. Hell, haven’t even made a dent in rats and we’ve been at that a long time.”

“Are you trying to tell me it’s hopeless?” I demanded.

“Not at all. Have another drink. I’m trying to say that we are going to have to learn to live with this horror, the way we had to learn to live with the atom bomb.”

XXXIII

WE were gathered in the same room in the White House; it put me in mind of the night after the President’s message, many weeks before. Dad and Mary, Rexton and Martinez were there, as well as our own lab general, Dr. Hazelhurst, and Colonel Gibsy. Our eyes were on the big map still mounted across one wall. It had been four and a half days since the drop of “Schedule Fever,” but the Mississippi Valley still glowed with ruby lights.

I was getting jittery, even though the drop had been an apparent success and we had lost only three craft. According to the equations, every slug within reach of direct conference should have been infected three days ago, with an estimated twenty-three per cent overlap. The operation had been computed to contact about eighty per cent in the first twelve hours, mostly in cities.

Soon, slugs should start dying a damn sight faster than flies ever did—if we were right.

I tried to sit still while I wondered whether those ruby lights covered a few million very sick slugs, or merely two hundred dead apes. Had somebody skipped a decimal point? Or blabbed? Or had there been an error in our reasoning so colossal that we could not see it?

Suddenly a light blinked green; everybody sat up. A voice began to come out of the stereo gear, though no picture built up. “This is Station Dixie, Little Rock,” a very tired Southern voice said. “We need help very badly. Anyone who is listening, please pass on this message: Little Rock, Arkansas, is in the grip of a terrible epidemic. Notify the Red Cross. We have been in the hands of—” The voice trailed off, either from weakness or transmission failure.

I remembered to breathe. Mary patted my hand and I sat back, relaxing consciously. It was joy too great to be pleasure. I saw now that the green light had not been Little Rock, but farther west in Oklahoma. Two more lights blinked green, one in Nebraska and one north of the Canadian line. Another voice came over, a twangy New England one. I wondered how he had gotten into Zone Red.

“A little like election night, eh, Chief?” Martinez said heartily.

“A little,” the President agreed, “but we do not usually get returns from Old Mexico.” He pointed to the board; green lights were showing in Chihuahua.

“By George, you’re right. Well, I guess State will have some incidents to straighten out when this is over, eh?”

The President did not answer and he shut up, to my relief. The President seemed to be talking to himself. He noticed me, smiled and spoke out loud:

“ ’Tis said that fleas have little fleas,

Upon their backs to bite ’em,

And little fleas have lesser fleas,

And so, ad infinitum.’ ”

I smiled to be polite, though I thought the notion was gruesome, under the circumstances. The President looked away and said, “Would anyone like supper? I find that I am hungry for the first time in days.”


BY late next afternoon, the board was more green than red. Rexton had had two annunciators keyed into the command center in the New Pentagon. One showed percentage of completion of the complicated score deemed necessary before the big drop; the other showed projected time of drop. The figures on it changed from time to time. For the past two hours they had been hovering around 17.43 East Coast time.

Rexton got up. “I’m going to freeze it at seventeen-forty-five,” he announced. “Mr. President, will you excuse me?”

“Certainly, Marshal.”

Rexton turned to Dad and myself. “If you Don Quixotes want to drop in on Zone Red, now is the time.”

I stood up. “Mary, you wait for me.”

She asked, “Where?” It had been settled—and not peacefully!—that she was not to go along.

The President interrupted. “I suggest that Mrs. Nivens stay here. After all, she is a member of the family.”

I said, “Thank you, sir.” Colonel Gibsy got a very odd look.

Two hours later we were coming in on our target and the jump door was open. Dad and I were last in line, after the kids who would do the real work. My hands were sweaty with the old curtain-going-up tension. I was scared as hell—I never did like to jump.

XXXIV

GUN in my left hand, antitoxin hypo ready in my right, I went from door to door in my assigned block. It was an older section of Jefferson City, slums almost, consisting of apartment houses built fifty years ago. I had given two dozen injections and had three dozen to go before it would be time for me to rendezvous at the State House. I was getting sick of it.

I knew why I had come—it was not just curiosity; I had to see the slugs die! But now I had seen them dead and I had had enough of it.

I wanted to go home, take a bath, and forget it.

It was not hard work, just monotonous and nauseating. So far I had not seen one live slug, though I had seen many dead ones. I had burned down one skulking dog that appeared to have a hump; I was not sure because the light had been bad. We had hit shortly before sundown and now it was almost dark.

I finished checking the apartment building I was in and went out into the street. It was almost deserted; with the whole population sick with the fever, we found few on the streets. The lone exception was a man who came weaving toward me, eyes vacant. I yelled, “Hey!”

He stopped. I said, “I’ve got what you need to get well. Hold out your arm.”

He struck at me feebly. I hit him carefully and he went face down. Across his back was the red rash of the slug. I picked a reasonably clean and healthy patch over his kidney and stuck in the injector, bending it to break the point after it was in. The units were gas-loaded; nothing more was needed.

The first floor of the next house held seven people, most of them so far gone that I did not speak but simply gave them their shots and hurried on. I had no trouble. The second floor was like the first.

The top floor had three empty apartments, at one of which I had to burn out the lock to enter. The fourth flat was occupied, in a manner of speaking. There was a dead woman on the floor of the kitchen, her head bashed in. Her slug was still on her shoulders, but it was dead, too. I left them quickly and looked around.

In the bathroom, sitting in an old-fashioned tub, was a middle-aged man. His head slumped on his chest and his wrist veins were open. I thought he was dead, but he looked up as I bent over him, “You’re too late,” he said dully. “I killed my wife.”

—or too soon, I thought. From the appearance of the bottom of the tub and his gray face, five minutes later would have been better. I looked at him, wondering whether or not to waste an injection.

He spoke again. “My little girl—”

His head slumped forward again. I felt his jaw line and dug my thumb into his neck, but could find no pulse.

The child was in bed in one of the rooms, a girl of eight or so who would have been pretty had she been well. She roused and cried somewhat deliriously and called me Daddy. “Yes, yes,” I said soothingly, “Daddy’s going to take care of you.” I gave her the injection in her leg; I don’t think she noticed it.

I turned to go, but she called out again. “I’m thirsty. Want a drink of water.” So I had to go back into that bathroom again.

As I was giving it to her, my phone shrilled and I spilled some of the water. “Son! Can you hear me?”

I reached for my belt and switched on my phone. “Yes. What’s up?”

“I’m in that little park just north of you. I’m in trouble.”

“Coming!” I put down the glass and started to leave—then, caught by indecision, I turned back. I could not leave the child to wake up with a parent dead in each room. I gathered her up and stumbled down to the second floor. I entered the first door I came to and laid her on a sofa. There were people in the flat, too sick to bother with her, but it was all I could do.

“Hurry, son!”

“On my way!” I dashed out and wasted no more breath talking, but made speed. Dad’s assignment was directly north of mine, paralleling it and fronting on one of those pint-sized downtown parks.

“Here, son, over here—at the car!” I could hear him both through the phone and by ear. I swung around and spotted the car, a big Cadillac duo much like those the Section often used. There was someone inside, but it was too dark for me to see. I approached cautiously until I heard him say, “Thank God! I thought you would never come,” and knew that it was he.

I had to duck to get in through the door. It was then that he clipped me.


I CAME to, to find my hands and ankles tied. I was in the second driver’s seat of the car and the Old Man was in the other at the controls. The wheel on my side was latched up out of the way. The realization that the car was in the air brought me fully awake.

He turned and said cheerfully, “Feeling better?” I could see his slug, riding high on his shoulders.

“Some,” I admitted.

“Sorry I had to hit you,” he went on, “but there was no other way.”

“I suppose not.”

“I’ll have to leave you tied up for the present. Later on we can make better arrangements.” He grinned, his old wicked grin. Most amazingly, his own personality came through with every word the slug said.

I did not ask what “better arrangements” were possible; I did not want to know. I concentrated on checking my bonds—but the Old Man had given them his personal attention.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“South.” He fiddled with the controls. “Way south. Give me a moment to lay this heap in the groove and I will explain what’s in store for us.” He was busy for a few seconds, then said, “There, that will hold her until she levels off at thirty thousand.”

The mention of that much altitude caused me to look at the control board. The duo did not merely look like one of the Section’s cars; it actually was one of our souped-up jobs.

“Where did you get this car?” I asked.

“The Section had it cached in Jefferson City. I looked and, sure enough, nobody had found it. Fortunate, wasn’t it?”

There could be a second opinion, I thought, but I did not argue. I was still checking the possibilities and finding them between slim and hopeless. My own gun was gone. He was probably carrying his on the side away from me; it was not in sight.

“But that was not the best of it,” he went on. “I had the good luck to be captured by what was almost certainly the only healthy master in the whole of Jefferson City—not that I believe in luck. So we win, after all.” He chuckled. “It’s like playing both sides of a very difficult chess game.”

“You didn’t tell me where we are going,” I persisted. I was getting nowhere fast and talking was the only action open to me.

He considered. “Out of the United States, certainly. My master may be the only one free of nine-day fever in the whole continent and I don’t dare take a chance. I think the Yucatan Peninsula would suit us. That’s where I’ve got her pointed. We can hole up there and increase our numbers and work farther south. When we do come back—and we will!—we won’t make the same mistakes.”

I said, “Dad, can’t you take these ropes off me? They cut my circulation. You know you can trust me.”

“Wait until we go full automatic.” The car was still climbing. Souped up or not, thirty thousand was a long pull for a car that had started out as a family model.

I said, “You seem to forget that I was with the masters a long time. I know the score and I give you my word of honor.”

He grinned. “Don’t teach grandma how to steal sheep. If I let you loose now, you’ll kill me or I’ll have to kill you. And I want you alive. We’re going places, son—you and me. We’re fast and we’re smart and we are just what the doctor ordered.”

I did not have an answer. He went on, “Just the same—about you knowing the score, why didn’t you tell me, son? Why did you hold out on me?”

“How?”

“I had no idea that a man could feel such peace and contentment and well-being. This is the happiest I’ve been in years, the happiest since—” He looked puzzled—“since your mother died. But never mind that; this is better. You should have told me.”

Disgust suddenly poured over me. I forgot the cautious game I was playing. “Maybe I didn’t see it that way. And neither would you, you old fool, if you didn’t have a slug riding you, talking through your mouth, thinking with your brain!”

“Take it easy, son,” he said gently—and so help me, his voice did quiet me. “You’ll know better soon. Believe me, this is what we were intended for. This is our destiny. Mankind has been divided, warring with himself. The masters will make him whole.”

I thought to myself that that was exactly what the slugs wanted humanity to do—surrender their souls willingly for a phony promise of security and peace. But I did not say so.

“You need not wait much longer,” he said suddenly, glancing at the board. “I’ll nail her down in the groove.” He adjusted his dead-reckoner bug, checked his board, and set his controls. “Next stop: Yucatan. Now to work.” He got out of the chair and knelt beside me in the crowded space. “Got to be safe,” he added, as he strapped the safety belt across my middle.

I brought my knees up in his face.

He reared up and looked at me without anger. “Naughty, naughty. I could resent that, but the masters don’t go in for resentment. Now be good.” He went ahead, checking my wrists and feet. His nose was bleeding, but he did not bother to wipe it. “You’ll do,” he said. “Be patient; it won’t be long.”

He went back to the other control seat, sat down and leaned forward, elbows on knees. It brought his master directly into my view.

Nothing happened for some minutes, nor could I think of anything to do but strain at my bonds. By his appearance, the Old Man was asleep, only he wasn’t. I knew what was about to happen.

A line formed straight down the middle of the horny brown covering of the slug.

As I watched it, it widened. Presently I could see the opalescent horror underneath. The space between the two halves of the shell widened—the slug was fissioning, sucking life and nourishment out of the body of my father to make two of itself.

I had no more than five minutes of independent life left to me.


HAD it been possible for flesh and bone to break the ties on me, I would have broken them. I did not succeed. The Old Man paid no attention to my struggles. I doubt if he was conscious; the slugs must simply immobilize the slave while occupied with splitting.

By the time I had given up, worn out and sure that I could not break loose, I could see the silvery line down the center of the slug proper which means that fission is about to be complete. That was what changed my line of reasoning, if there were reason left in my churning skull.

My hands were tied behind me, my ankles were tied, and I was belted tight across the middle to the chair. But my legs, even though fastened together, were free from my waist down. I slumped down to get even more reach and swung my legs up high. I brought them down smashingly across the board—and set off every launching unit in her racks.

The Old Man and I were both slammed back against the seats, he much harder than I, since I was strapped down. He was thrown so hard that his slug, open and helpless, was crushed.

It splashed.

Dad was caught in that terrible, total reflex, that spasm of every muscle that I had seen three times before. He bounced forward against the wheel, face contorted, fingers writhing.

The car dived.

I sat there and watched it dive, if you call it sitting when you are held in place only by the belt. Dad’s body had hopelessly fouled the controls; otherwise I might have been able to do something—gotten her headed up again, perhaps—with my bound feet. I tried, but with no success at all. The controls were probably jammed as well as fouled.

The altimeter was clicking away busily. We had dropped to eleven thousand feet before I found time to glance at it. Then it was nine . . . seven . . . six. . . and we entered our last mile.

At fifteen hundred, the radar interlock cut in and the nose units fired one at a time. The belt buffeted me across the stomach each time. I was thinking that I was saved, that now the ship would level off—

And I was still thinking so when we crashed.


I CAME to by becoming slowly aware of a gently rocking motion. I was annoyed by it. I wanted it to stop; even a slight motion seemed to cause more pain than I could bear. I managed to get one eye open—the other would not open at all—and looked dully around for the source of my annoyance.

Above me was the floor of the car, but I stared at it for a long time before I could identify it. By then I was somewhat aware of where I was and what had happened. I remembered the dive and the crash, and realized that we must have crashed not into the ground, but into some body of water. The Gulf of Mexico? I did not really care.

My broken seat belt was flapping above me. My hands were still tied and so were my ankles, and one arm seemed to be broken. An eye was stuck shut and it hurt me to breathe.

I quit taking stock of my injuries.

Dad was no longer plastered against the wheel and that puzzled me. With painful effort. I rolled my head over to see the rest of the car with my one good eye. He was lying not far from me, three feet or so from my head to his. He was bloody and cold and I was sure that he was dead. I think it took me about a half hour to cross that short distance.

I lay face to face with him, almost cheek to cheek. So far as I could tell, there was no trace of life, nor, from the odd and twisted way in which he lay, did it seem possible.

“Dad,” I said hoarsely. Then I screamed it. “Dad!”

His eyes flickered but did not open. “Hello, son,” he whispered. “Thanks, boy, thanks—” His voice died out.

I wanted to shake him, but all I could do was shout. “Dad! Wake up—are you all right?’”

He spoke again, every word a painful task. “Your mother—said to tell you—she was—proud of you.” His voice died out again and his breathing was labored in that ominous dry-stick sound.

“Dad,” I sobbed, “don’t die. I can’t get along without you.”

His eyes opened. “Yes, you can, son.” He paused, then added, “I’m hurt, boy.” His eyes closed again.

I could not get any more out of him, though I shouted and screamed. Presently I put my face against his and let my tears mix with the dirt and blood.

Then I passed out again, and awoke in a hospital bed. Mary was kissing my face, bandages and all.

“Dad!” I said, feeling that awful grief again. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

A wicked muffled voice answered. “Not a chance, son. I’m just as tough as you are.” He grinned weakly at me through the window of an oxygen tent.

I grinned and fell asleep, holding Mary’s hand.


WE who are going to clean up Titan are all writing these reports. If we do not come back, this is our legacy to free human beings—all that we know of how the titan parasites operate and what must be guarded against. For Kelly was right; there is no getting Humpty-Dumpty together again. In spite of the success of Schedule Mercy, there is no way to be sure that the slugs are all gone. Only last week a Kodiak bear was shot, up Yukon way, wearing a hump.

The human race will have to be always on guard, especially about twenty-five years from now, if we don’t come back—and the Flying Saucers do. We don’t know why the titan monsters follow the twenty-nine-year cycle of Saturn’s year, but they do. The reason may be simple; we ourselves have many cycles which match the Earth year. We hope that they are active only at one period of their year; if they are, Operation Vengeance may have easy pickings. Not that we are counting on it.

I am going out, heaven help us, as an “applied psychologist (exotic)” but I am also a combat trooper, as is every one of us, from chaplain to cook. This is for keeps and we intend to show those slugs that they made the mistake of tangling with the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting—and ablest—form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can’t be tamed.

(I have a private hope that we will find some way to save the little elf creatures, the androgynes. I think we could get along with them.)

Whether we make it or not, the human race has got to keep up its well-earned reputation for ferocity. The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle, anywhere, anytime, and with utter selflessness. If we did not learn that from the slugs, well—“Dinosaurs, move over! We are ready to become extinct!”

For who knows what dirty tricks may be lurking around this Universe? The slugs may be simple and open and friendly compared with, let us say, the natives of the planets of Sirius. If this is just the opener, we had better learn from it for the main event. We thought space was empty and that we were automatically the lords of creation. Even after we “conquered” space, we thought so, for Mars was already dead and Venus had not really gotten started. Well, if Man wants to be top dog—or even a respected neighbor—he’ll have to fight for it.

Every one of us who is going has been possessed at least once. Only those who have been hagridden can know how tricky the slugs are, how constantly one must be on guard—or how deeply one must hate. The trip, they tell me, will take about twelve years, which will give Mary and me time to finish our honeymoon. Oh, yes, Mary is going; most of us are married couples and the single men are balanced by single women. Twelve years isn’t a trip; it’s a way of living.

When I told Mary that we were going to Saturn’s moons, her single comment was, “Yes, dear.”

We’ll have time to have two or three kids. As Dad says, “The race must go on, even if it doesn’t know where.”

I am now finishing this report in Space Station Beta, from which we will transship to U.N.S. Avenger. We said good-bye to Dad last night at Pikes Peak Port. He corrected me. “So long, you mean. You’ll be back and I intend to hang on, getting crankier every year, until you do.”

I said I hoped so. He nodded. “You’ll make it and so will I. We’re both too tough and mean to die. I’ve got a lot of confidence in you and the likes of you, son.”

We are about to transship. I feel exhilarated. Puppet masters—the free men are coming to kill you!