"Keep walking!" The blue uniformed guard tugged in panic at Joel's
elbow.
"One of our men'll contact you at the Experimental Station. Don't
mention this to anyone!" He gulped slightly. "This is going to hurt
some. Don't be startled; it's necessary."
As he talked, he jabbed a needle through Joel's sleeve into his arm.
Joel jumped. "Damn! What are you up to?" He yanked free, swung angrily
on the guard.
"Only a tattoo mark. Isn't visible except under black light. Then it
fluoresces green."
"But why?"
"Identification. Shows you're a legitimate maladjustment case and not a
government spy."
"But what...."
"No time now. Wait until our man contacts you. Explain everything.
Remember, not a word when we reach the cell block!"
He pushed aside the panel at the far end of the hall. The opening
revealed a second corridor lined with small iron-barred cubicles. None
of them were tenanted.
Joel Hakkyt moved into his own familiar cell where he had been lodged
during his trial. The gate clanged shut.
The guard removed his glasses, polished them nervously as he gave Joel
a warning look.
For the first time Joel could see the guard's eyes.
They had no pupils, no color, only a weird flickering light in their
depths that glimmered like candle flame!
Joel could feel his stomach contract like a fist. The alien smell
filled his nostrils. He took an involuntary backwards step, his heart
hammering against his ribs.
The guard wasn't human!
Before Joel could question him the guard retreated through the door,
hastily shutting it with a click. Joel sank to the edge of his bunk.
Where did the guard come from?
A mutation? The Eugenics Board would never have allowed a mutation to
survive. Joel himself had escaped their vigilance only because it had
been impossible to detect his abnormally heightened vision and sense of
smell at birth.
Then what was the creature?
It wasn't a native to Mars or Venus. Their dominant life forms had
been exterminated centuries ago. Perhaps it hailed from the Centaurian
planetary system. He sat up abruptly at the thought.
A Centaurian?
The Republic had established a colony on Asgard, the second planet of
Alpha Centauri A. Joel had seen the three-dimensional reels of its
weirdly lovely jungles and grotesque species of plant life.
But so far Asgard's dominant life form had escaped detection!
The Republic's exploring parties had stumbled across strange empty
little villages with fires smouldering on clay hearths and the food
still hot in clay vessels. Yet not a glimpse of the inhabitants had
they ever been able to catch.
By some uncanny means, the natives always eluded them like wraiths.
Anthropologists had been able to reconstruct a theoretical Centaurian
though from the evidence that he left behind--artifacts, huts,
footprints. He was man-like, they said, and walked upright. He weighed
between a hundred and a hundred and twenty pounds, this theoretical
creature. He was in a primitive stage of development possessing neither
writing nor art.
There was only one thing they couldn't explain. That was why nobody had
ever seen one!
Joel grinned sourly. He was letting his imagination run away with him.
* * * * *
At nineteen hours a green panel glowed on the rear wall and letters
formed on the glass.