The world rocked.
A buzzing noise sounded behind me. It made my blood crawl, because it
was familiar. I jumped back from Alice just in time.
"No," I moaned. "_No--Alice!_"
But it happened.
I imagine that I'm the only man who ever kissed his bride on their
wedding night, then watched her turn into a monstrous bug before his
eyes....
* * * * *
Outside the owl hooted.
Max Field tossed aside his notebook and pounded his knee with his
fist. God! To have _seen_ that happen! To sweet little Alice!
His dream girl. But naturally. She had been too perfect, actually.
She was designed for him, perhaps only a clever illusion clothed in
flesh by his own imagination. At any rate she was the reason for him
filling out all those forms. To discover just what he liked in every
department. To give them a pattern for "Alice".
They were cute. Even to the point of having Starr pretend to dislike
her. When Starr pretended to poke carefully into her background, that
was enough to prevent Max from doing just that. Because actually she
had no background. It was phony.
That phone call he had made to Corky. The girl who answered. That could
have been Alice, using a heavy Brooklyn accent to cover her voice. She
had been so convincing he hadn't bothered to check back later.
Now, the two of them were in the kitchen planning his death. "Science
Fiction Editor Accidentally Killed in Mountain Retreat. Bride
Stricken." Then the grief-stricken bride would carry on in his place.
_Orion_ was going great guns now. It really didn't need Max Field.
And without him their propaganda machine could move forward all the
faster--forward to the day when the Kiriki cosmic crusade moved down
into this solar system. The Patterned Contentment boys would take over.
Whose pattern? Kiriki, of course....
The kitchen door opened slowly. Max tensed.
It was--_Alice_.
She wore that clinging black lace negligee he had bought in an
exclusive Fifth Avenue shop.
"Max."
He stood up stiffly, staring.
"Change, damn you! _Change!_"
"Why, Max," she pouted. "Don't you love me any more?"
It was intended to drive him nutty, maybe to suicide.
"You should have drunk the champagne," she said softly. "It would have
been easier for you. Would you like a drink now?" She held out a glass.
All of a sudden he wanted that glass more than he had ever wanted
anything in his life. Even Alice. It was the end of the line, the
dropping off point. He couldn't take it any more. Not Alice--like that.
He walked over to her and took the glass. He lifted it to his lips.
* * * * *
Something slapped the glass out of his hand as the window behind them
shattered inward. Alice flashed an angry glance at the face in the
window, then moved quickly back into the kitchen.
"Ric!"
Max's bewilderment changed to sudden hope.
"Hurry!" Planter cried. "Get through this window!"
Max dove through while the writer yanked him by the elbows. Max was
shivering and sweating at the same time. But the cool night breeze
helped a little.
"W-where in the billy-hell did you--"
"Come from?" Ric finished. "Been on Starr's trail for weeks. Had this
thing figured out for some time, even before you tipped me off on the
phone that day. I followed Starr here. Been watching and waiting."
He was wearing a fish-basket and, incongruously, it was filled with
bombs. He handed some to Max.
"Start heaving. Aim for the kitchen door before they close it."
He tossed a handful of the bombs into the room. Max followed suit.
Inside, the bombs broke, letting out a pungent gas.
"What is it?"
"Insecticide," Ric grinned. "More potent than DDT. Those outlines Starr
made out furnished the clews. It should do it."
"Won't they get out the kitchen door?"
"Uh-uh. I sealed it up proper. It and the window."
The door between the rooms slammed shut but not before half a dozen
bombs had got through. Ric slammed the shutters too. They waited.
"If it doesn't kill them it'll put them to sleep for hours. Basically,
from Starr's dossiers on the Kiriki, they have all the vulnerable
points of our grasshoppers. And fire will destroy them utterly. I'm
afraid we can't take chances, so this cabin will have to go. Match?"
* * * * *
They watched it burn down to the last slab of stilted-up planking. Max
stared down at the two small charred remainders of the Kiriki advance
guard and shuddered.
On the road back to New York, Max said: "Do you think they'll try it
again?"
"The Kiriki? Not for a while. Like you said, they dislike war. They
like it the easy way."
"Propaganda. Invasion of minds. Well, two can play at that. We'll keep
_Orion_ going--only we'll print the real story. We'll make men detest
and despise the Kiriki so that any feelers they send down will send
them hopping to the furthest end of space. Maybe we can get somebody
started on that telepathic wave interrupter of yours, too. So if they
do land we can cut them off from each other. We'll work on this reverse
propaganda hard."
Max jerked his eyes back on the road and put his foot on the gas hard.
Sure he would work, work to save his sanity, too.
It wasn't going to be easy to forget a lost dream--a dream that had
lived and breathed and promised a lifetime of patterned contentment. It
would take a lot of mental welding to hold back the horror of that kiss.
But he would try.