She swung off the couch and moved toward me, her walk unconsciously
sensuous, "I really had you figured wrong, didn't I?" she said, her
voice strangely sharp.
"Laurie, you don't think I had anything to do with--"
"No. No, I don't think you killed her. But you fooled me once,
Professor, so I could be wrong again. I had you typed as the lonely
professor. I bet you really got a hoot out of that behind that smug
face of yours, didn't you?"
"You're wrong, Laurie."
"I'll say! What were you going to do, anyway? Have a little roll on the
couch with the eager student, send her on her way, and then trot along
to meet your little waitress? You must be quite a guy, Professor. I
should have known from the way you kissed me, shouldn't I? You didn't
learn that in a book."
She was clearly hurt, a stung pride firing the bitterness of her words,
and I knew she wasn't going to listen to me.
"Laurie, I had to talk to her, believe me--"
"Sure you did! About the accident, wasn't that it? You needed a
witness."
"I had to ask her a question--"
"Does she always say yes? You don't have to tell me the question,
Professor. I can guess. I've seen the girl!"
"I can't explain but you've got to understand that there was nothing
between me and Lois."
"Tell that to the cops, Mr. Cameron. But next time don't expect me to
provide your alibi!"
She stalked past me, jerked open the door, and bolted down the steps. I
started after her.
"Laurie!"
But she was gone down the walk, the pattern of red-and-white diamonds
twitching with the angry vehemence of her stride. And all at once
it seemed too vehement to me, her anger and refusal to listen too
unreasonable, a convenient way to get away quickly, just as she had
been too smooth and ready to lie for me.
She had not only provided my alibi. She had created one for herself.
I heard the rumble of a voice. Looking up I saw the chunky figure of
Sgt. Bullock coming down the steps of the trailer next door. Behind him
light outlined the blonde hair and slim figure of the shy girl who was
my neighbor. The momentary sense of safety shattered around me like a
glass shell breaking. Bullock had been checking on the alibi. It had
been that easy!
The sergeant was lumbering toward me. His partner stood on the walk,
not moving. I waited, unable to stir. I hadn't done it, I had had
nothing to do with Lois' death, but they wouldn't believe me now after
the lie. I should have told them the truth.
"What's the matter, Professor? Your girl friend decide to go home
early?"
"She was--upset," I said tightly.
He looked almost genial. He's enjoying this, I thought. He's going to
get a big kick out of letting me have it right between the eyes.
"We checked out your alibi, Cameron," the sergeant said. "Your neighbor
backs you up on the time you got here and she saw the girl arrive just
after eight, so I guess we had it wrong. No hard feelings?"
"No," I said woodenly, stunned. "No, of course not."
"We'll find out who did it," the sergeant said matter-of-factly. "But
now we're going to have to dig."
They left. I watched them until they had climbed into the
yellow-and-black helicopter parked on the strip across the street and
the ship rose slowly with a deep chugging rhythm of engine and whirring
blade into the night sky. At last I turned to stare at the trailer next
to mine. The door was closed. The blinds were tightly drawn. The girl
had shut herself inside.
Everyone was giving me an alibi, I thought. Nobody wanted me in jail. I
wondered why. The bewildering sequence of events, the jolting pile-up
of shocks, had left me confused, unable to think clearly. But after a
while, still standing in the open doorway looking at the blind walls of
the trailer just a few yards away, I thought of a reason why.
Jails were safe.
9
I had another night of fitful sleep that left me bone weary in the
morning. I fought against the deep sleep that might bring a recurrence
of the terrifying dream in which I was sucked down into cold black
waters, and as a result I dozed and woke in momentary panic and lay
sweating in bed and finally dozed again and woke again, on and on
through the night. Images of dreams and reality kept getting mixed
up in a disorganized montage. I would be holding Laurie in my arms,
feeling the firm and vital strength of her young body warm against
me, and suddenly the face which tilted up to meet mine, the lips that
parted, were not hers but those of a shy and timid girl with soft
blonde hair whose name I didn't know. Or I would dream fragmentarily of
being trapped in a corner with the meaty face of Sgt. Bullock shoving
aggressively at me and snarling, "Why did you kill her?" And, waking,
I would think of Lois and ask myself why she had died, knowing in my
heart that she had had to die, that I had marked her for death. Because
she knew. She had seen the alien. When I had tried to find her I had
become the unwitting instrument of her death. Guilt hung over me like
a heavy, airless blanket, smothering me, clogging my lungs like the
thick black waters of the dream. At last the gray dawn came abruptly to
the crest of the mountains and found me leaden-eyed and exhausted.
It was a Friday. I had two classes that morning, including the eleven
o'clock sophomore survey. Laurie Hendricks was absent. Somehow I
managed to stumble through the lectures, not sure afterwards what I had
said, surprised at times to find myself talking fluently with apparent
coherence and logic, asking questions and answering them, functioning
like a robot, well-trained to impersonate an English instructor.
And somehow it was afternoon and the last class of the day was over. I
was free to return to the library. Dully, I began to read the articles
and papers I had set aside the previous day. I read without hope,
almost without interest, convinced that I would find nothing to explain
the puzzle of the invading minds--yet believing more firmly now that
they were real, not a product of my own sickness, because a woman had
died who might have named them. And at length I shoved the pile of
magazines and papers aside with sudden impatience.
I would find no answers here. I had to go out to find them. I could
neither hide from the aliens nor attempt to outwit them, but I could
force them into the open. I could attack even if I had no chance to
win. One of the four students had already been tested--and I could not
bring myself to believe that Laurie was still suspect. Her conduct
the night before, in retrospect, seemed too clearly the actions of a
lovely, spoiled young girl used to having what she wanted--and at the
moment wanting me. But she was only one of four.
A sound broke the wandering circle of my thought. A footstep on a metal
staircase. The library stacks were a network of crowded aisles with
two levels packed into each story of the building and short connecting
flights of metal stairway linking the many levels. Yet why had this
footstep struck my ear? There had been movement all afternoon through
the stacks as the librarians came and went.
This step was furtive, I thought. I rose slowly from the little
desk under the window. The other sounds had had a normal sequence
unconsciously recorded by the mind. This step had been a single
isolated sound, one that was not supposed to be heard, made by a person
moving stealthily and silently.
I peered along the narrow aisle which ended at the window. I was
conscious of the afternoon light at my back, framing me against the
window. No one was in sight, but I knew someone was there, approaching
me, and I felt a now familiar flinching as fear tightened its grip.
He stepped out of a side aisle, confronting me so suddenly that it was
as if he had materialized before my eyes.
"What do you want?" I asked sharply.
"I want to talk to you, Mr. Cameron," Bob Jenkins said in a low, tight
voice.
"You're not supposed to be back here in the stacks."
"I told them I had to see you."
Of course, I thought. The librarians were reasonable people. How could
they know why Jenkins had to see me? Why should they be suspicious?
_If_ he had talked to them.
Jenkins stepped forward and I saw the hard crease of his mouth, the
snap of anger in narrow blue eyes. At that moment, we both heard the
rapid tattoo of a woman's steps on a ladder nearby. Jenkins spun
around. Bustling movement went along a nearby aisle, going away from
us. When Jenkins swung back, he seemed to have relaxed slightly, though
his face was still coldly unfriendly.
"Leave her alone!" he said harshly.