_He was expendable, this Web Hilton, this
young officer with the strange heritage. And
so it was that he was ordered out into space
where he saw the uncovered stars, and met
the naked alien, and became the first man
in history to die more than once._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The two girls stayed to see the picture a second time and when they got
out of the movie it was after midnight and raining and they couldn't
get a cab. Louise bought a paper and put it over her head and ran off,
laughing, in the direction of Albany Street. Ivy folded her kerchief
and turned up Livingstone. She did not run. There was nothing wrong
with rain, or with getting wet, and she enjoyed the coolness. She
plunged her hands deeply into her coat pockets and did not bother to
walk quickly at all.
The night was very dark, made darker by the rain, which was heavy and
full. But Ivy was unconcerned. She was a small-town girl, country bred,
with three huge brothers who knew every man in the county. She had
grown up with a strong belief in the natural goodness of things, of
people, and although she was young and slim and extremely pretty she
had no worry now of walking home in the dark. This was her home town.
She had lived here all her life. She passed by huge bushes and under
the great clutching branches of trees without thinking at all of the
things which could, and did, lurk behind them. She turned up Elmwood
Road with her mind at rest, filled with skirts and dances and taffy
pulls.
And her faith in people, as it turned out, was justified.
For the long arm that reached out of the bushes, the darkness, and
plucked her with a rush into a deep black silence, was an arm of flesh,
and an arm of bone, but it was very far from human.
* * * * *
The door opened at the top of the ramp and the colonel peered
cautiously inside.
"Nobody here but us chickens," he said, sputtering in the rain, and the
guard dropped the muzzle of the machine pistol and saluted.
The colonel stomped in onto the concrete floor, grumbling. He
was followed by an enormous lieutenant, an immense, looming,
cliff-shouldered man well over six feet tall. The lieutenant had to
duck coming through the door, cast a downward salute to the startled
guard. The colonel moved out from under the lieutenant's dripping
overhang, pointed a lean wet finger down the hall.
"He here?"
"Yessir," said the guard, eyeing the monstrous lieutenant with respect.
The colonel wiped his face with a dry handkerchief, took off his hat
and smoothed down his sparse white hair. Then he strode off down the
concrete hall, motioning for the lieutenant to follow. Together they
came to a bolted steel door. The colonel opened it without knocking,
ushered the lieutenant inside.
The room they entered was wide and rich, oak-panelled, in great
contrast to the white-washed concrete of the halls outside. In the
center of the room was a mahogany desk, at which a small, sad,
cigar-smoking man sat absorbedly drawing doughnuts on a white lined pad.
The colonel saluted. The man at the desk, whose name was Dundon, looked
up at the big lieutenant and chomped on his cigar.
"Is _this_ our man?"
"Yes sir. Lieutenant Hilton. He knows--"
"Sure is a big bugger," Dundon said, rising. The lieutenant regarded
him calmly.
"He knows every phase of the operation, sir," the colonel said.
"Of course. Sit down, boy," Dundon said briefly, waving his cigar. The
lieutenant sat. "What's a few extra pounds? May need 'em, by God." He
put the cigar in his mouth and clamped his hands behind him, walked
around to the front of the desk and sat down on the edge of it.
"When's take-off, sir?" the colonel asked.