"It was all over school today."
I relaxed. Of course it would have been a sensational topic of
conversation on the campus. I could imagine the speculations, the
arguments, the macabre jokes.
"A terrible thing," I said automatically. I turned to leave. "Thanks
for your trouble. And thank your parents for me again."
I went out into the cool night. The girl stood watching me, a small
slim figure outlined against the warm light within the trailer.
Once again my search had been fruitless. And now I had talked to all
four of the students who were in the booth of the Dugout that fateful
night.
I couldn't believe that any one of them was capable of inhuman powers.
Or of murder.
12
When I dialed Laurie Hendricks' number a male servant answered. The
number was a Beverly Hills exchange. The man informed me politely
that Miss Hendricks was not at home but that she might be reached at
the beach trailer. This was the first I knew of a place at the beach,
but its existence was in keeping with the expensive luxury of space I
could glimpse on the telephone screen as I talked to the servant. At
that moment, I made a mental connection I had failed to reach before,
coupling the name Hendricks with the economy two-passenger helicopter
that had brought flying within the reach of the average family's
budget. The Hendricks helicopter! The name was so familiar that I had
not thought to link it with Laurie Hendricks, but the wealth evident in
the existence of a private home in Beverly Hills plus a beach trailer
suggested that she might indeed be the daughter of Ben Hendricks, air
pioneer extraordinary.
The servant gave me the address and phone number of the beach trailer.
Laurie answered on the fourth ring.
"Hello?"
Her image leaped onto the screen. She was dripping wet, her red hair
clinging to her head in dark, heavy strands. I glimpsed behind her a
damp bathing suit tossed carelessly over the arm of a chair. She held
a huge beach towel in front of her chest with one hand pressed between
her breasts, the towel draping itself tantalizingly over the fullness
on either side of her hand.
"Laurie? This is Paul Cameron."
I flicked the two-way switch so that she could view me on her screen.
There was a moment's pause while her eyes stared steadily at me from
the lifelike image. I wondered if she was aware that the picture was
turned on at her end of the line, or if she was always so careless
about dress when she answered the phone.
"What do you want?" Her voice was cool, distant.
"We were interrupted the other night."
"Were we?"
"I've got to talk to you."
"I don't think we have anything to talk about."
"I'm coming out there. Will you be waiting?"
"You needn't bother. I have a date tonight--with Bob. I have to get
ready now so you must excuse me."
"You're going to listen to me whether you want to or not," I said,
suddenly angry. "There was nothing for you to worry about between me
and Lo--"
"Why should I worry?"
She broke the connection. In the instant before the image faded she
turned away. There was nothing to conceal the sculptured beauty of
her back. I stared at the screen long after it had turned blank,
wondering if this brief provocative display had been another moment of
absent-minded indifference or a deliberate taunt.
It had destroyed the effect of her cold rejection.
* * * * *
I took the automatic freeway to the beach, setting the controls for the
fast inner lane. I sat back while the electronic fingers automatically
steered the car safely and smoothly into the lane and carried it
forward at the set speed of a hundred and fifty miles an hour.
Thinking of Laurie's image on the screen, remembering the feel of her
body and her soft lips pressing against mine, I felt a slow uncurling
of desire. When I had obtained her address that afternoon, I had
been methodically determined to follow up every possible avenue of
suspicion. She had been too quick to throw herself at me in my trailer
the night before, I had argued, too ready to provide me with an alibi
when the police came. Now I knew that I had simply been deceiving
myself. I had eliminated her from suspicion even before I tasted the
human passion of her lips. I was going to her now because I needed
her. I wanted to hold her and to lose myself in her, to forget fear
and threats and self-tormenting doubts of my own sanity in the intense
oblivion of love.
The westbound freeway reached the intersection of the automatic ocean
causeway. I made the necessary instrument adjustments and shot out over
the water onto the broad cement lanes that followed the coastline to
the north, a modern eight lane platform suspended on pilings a quarter
mile from the shore. There was a manual drive highway just inland from
the beach for slow and local traffic, but if you wanted to make speed
you took the causeway out over the--
It struck me like a blow below the belt. Water! The dream! A senseless,
terrorized animal, I found myself scrabbling at the door, trying to
force it open. The same automatic controls which guided the car along
the road also froze the doors while the car was in motion. I came out
of that first blind moment of panic and sat rigid in the seat, my eyes
fixed on the white ribbon of pavement directly in front of me, refusing
to look to either side at the black, pounding surf. Headlights rushed
at me on the inbound lanes and hurtled past. The engine whined and wind
buffeted the speeding car, but I imagined that I could hear above these
sounds the crash of waves below me.
Revulsion came, bitter self-recrimination, contemptuous denunciations
of my own animal fears. You're going to see Laurie, I told myself.
There's nothing to be afraid of. You won't have to go near the water.
You won't be alone. The nightmare of drowning is a phantom of the
night, symbolical only, a graphic representation of your subconscious
fear of sanity. Face it. Recognize it. Accept it.
But the voice, I thought. The voice of command. The alien mind. That is
real. I have heard it while I was awake and fully rational. That was no
dream symbol. That was real.
But was it? Hadn't I investigated every one of the suspects, the
four ordinary young people who were supposed to be possessed by some
incredible thing from Mars? Hadn't I convinced myself that each one
was innocent? Wasn't it about time that I began facing the irrefutable
facts, admitting that the weird plot against me was a fantastic
concoction of a sick imagination, revealing a not very unusual hidden
desire for self-destruction?
I grew calmer. In that moment the terror of insanity seemed less
horrifying than the spectre of a vicious alien force that could possess
and destroy me. At last I looked toward the shoreline at the familiar
sight of waves rising to a white crest and toppling over to wash upon
the beach. I had seen this a thousand times. It was nothing to be
afraid of. It couldn't touch me.
I was nearing the stretch of beach where Laurie's trailer should be.
Numbers flashed by at each of the ramps connecting the causeway with
the shoreline road. I pushed the lane change button that would shift
the car into the slower outer line of traffic. At the next ramp I
turned off. The automatic controls cut off as soon as the car sped onto
the ramp. My hands were sticky on the wheel and my arms quivered with
tension, but seconds later I was turning onto the beach highway. I
began to feel safer now that there was no longer any water under me.
The road rose and dipped with the curvature of the land. Crowding the
hills to the right, on the inland side of the road, were luxurious
beach apartments and nests of trailer courts, their lights creating a
rich pattern in the darkness. Most of the choice land along the beach
itself had been usurped by beach clubs and expensive resort hotels,
except for an occasional luxury group of trailers. It was in one of
these, the Beachcomber Trailer Lodge, that Laurie's trailer had a
uniquely desirable front row site.
I parked off the road on a bluff overlooking the trailer village and
the beach. Walking down, I could hear the rolling thunder of the surf,
and each reverberating crash caused my body to flinch in the way that,
watching a fight, you will seem to feel the thud of a telling blow. I
tried not to think about the limitless black plain of water stretching
beyond the narrow strip of beach.
Laurie's was a crisply modern mobile home with a large window facing
the shoreline. Most of the surrounding trailers were dark and there
was the stillness of the empty and unused about them. There were few
cars about and only a couple of helicopters on the landing strip near
the road. This was mostly a weekend resort, I concluded, for those
who could afford the extreme luxury of a home in town and a summer or
weekend hideout at the beach. At this season of the year, many of them
were undoubtedly deserted.
I knocked. There was no sound from within the trailer. I raised my hand
to knock again at the moment the door was pulled open.