"I'm going to call a doctor for you, Mr. Cameron. I hope what you say
about killing a girl is not true. But I'm afraid I shall also have to
call the police."
For the first time I felt a twinge of doubt. His reactions were not
what I had expected. But he had to be the other alien. It couldn't be
anyone else.
He took a step away from me. "Don't move!" I snapped.
He froze. I pushed the muzzle of the gun hard against the back of his
neck.
"If you do that again, I'll kill you!" I said savagely.
For a moment he was silent. Then he spoke quietly, his voice soothing
like that of a parent talking to an offended child. "That will
accomplish nothing except my pointless murder, Mr. Cameron. I will
do all I can to help you. And I assure you that you will not be held
responsible for the killing of this--this girl you say is dead. You are
not of sound mind. I can testify to that and I'll be believed. My word
carries a lot of weight."
"I'm sure it does. But you're not going to testify to anything. I'll
think no more of destroying you than the other one. It will give me
pleasure."
"You keep saying you killed one of these--these aliens of yours. Tell
me, how did you succeed in doing it? Didn't you tell me they were able
to control your mind? Surely the creature would have been able to stop
you."
"She did stop me, Doctor--but I'd figured on that. I took precautions.
I had someone else there with me--a girl. She had a gun. While the
alien tried to make me drown myself, the girl got behind her unnoticed
and shot her."
The scientist was silent for a moment. When he spoke his voice seemed
harder, colder. "Clever, if true," he said. "But it surprises me that a
bullet would destroy the hold this creature had on its body. If it was
as powerful as you say it was, I would think--"
"Hope, you mean, don't you, Doctor? Are you still wondering whether a
bullet would disturb your body? I think it will. I gambled on that and
won. You'll lose control. There really isn't much of that body left, is
there?"
"You should write fiction, Mr. Cameron. This is all very interesting,
but since I'm not one of your aliens will you please remove that gun
from my neck? It is not a pleasant feeling."
I hesitated. He hadn't introduced one false note. If he were not
the alien I would be destroying one of the world's greatest men, an
irreplaceable mind. But there was only one way of finding out. I had to
make him act.
"I'm sorry, Doctor," I said. "I can't take any chances. And I've
delayed too long. I have to kill you."
"You'll never get away--the shot will be heard."
"I'll have to run that risk."
My finger started to tighten on the trigger. My hand was shaking and my
mouth was dry.
"Stop!"
The unleashed force of his mind was beyond any power I had yet
experienced, crushing and terrible. My right hand was a thing of
petrified wood, without nerve or feeling, incapable of the fractional
pressure that would have sent a bullet smashing into the alien's brain.
"You force me to do this," he said harshly. "You are a stupid man."
I fought to open the constricted muscles of my throat. "You--you didn't
think I'd come alone, did--did you?" I choked out.
He smiled. "That's a very old trick, Mr. Cameron. I am in full
possession of Dr. Temple's memory so I cannot be fooled by your
childish ruses. I'm perfectly aware that there is no one behind me.
Coming alone was very foolish. You might have won."
He had to believe me. I had to break for an instant the unbearable
pressure of the force that froze my hand. Then I realized that my
burned hand could move. I controlled the first leap of excitement. He
wouldn't believe I had an ally--unless he read my mind! If he felt the
wild rush of my relief and excitement he would believe. And it wouldn't
have to be relief--it could be any emotion! Any feeling at all! He
wouldn't immediately know the difference!
And suddenly I looked past him. My eyes brightened with delight and
a smile leaped to my lips. In that same instant, I scraped the raw,
burned flesh of my left hand across the sharp-edged buckle of my
belt. Pain stormed through my body and exploded in my brain--searing,
hideous, heart-stopping pain. And the alien turned in frantic haste.
For a split-second I felt relief from the pressure of his mind. My
finger jabbed the trigger and the gun spat. A raw, black hole opened in
his skull.
As he fell, I was already jamming the gun into my pocket and fumbling
for the lighter. The sound of the shot had been loud in my ears, but
I felt sure that it would have been only a muffled retort in the
corridor. It might be another minute before anyone came to investigate.
Or it might be seconds.
His face started to decompose. The coverall he wore began to sag as his
body disintegrated before my eyes, no longer held together by the power
of the alien mind, pulsating now in shrill, meaningless waves. I saw
behind the powdery tissue a withdrawing tentacle of cells. Feet sounded
in the corridor outside and there was a murmur of voices. Someone tried
the door.
The alien shrank, the fingers folding inward, wrapped in the hardening
membraneous tissue. I waited a moment longer. An urgent knock rattled
the glass panel of the door. The singing vibrations dimmed in my mind
like the fading wail of a siren.
And the glittering crystal lay still on the floor among the dust and
the soft white bones and the crumpled coverall. I turned on the blue
jet of flame and held it on the bright surface of the crystal chunk,
held it while the coverall's smoking stench filled my nostrils, held it
until the blackened face of death had seeped deep into the heart of the
thing on the floor.
I heard voices through the haze in my brain. "Something's burning!"
"Open up in there!" "Dr. Temple? Are you there?"
I scooped up the crystal chunk. It was still hot, but there was no
life in it. I grabbed the other from the desk and jammed both into my
pocket. Then I bundled the pile of soft, pulpy bones and decayed tissue
in the folds of the coverall and threw the bundle into a wastebasket
beside the desk. I grabbed a pile of papers and crammed them into the
basket.
When the door was smashed inward I was heroically trying to put out
the fire which had somehow started in the wastebasket. I had burned my
left hand badly in the process. There was nothing left of the man who
had been Dr. Jonas Temple but a pile of smoking ash.
25
Morning sunlight had dissipated the early mist. I walked slowly along
the road from the elevated station toward my trailer. Behind me the
night's nightmare, the hour of suspicious questioning about the fire.
Someone had remembered my visit to Dr. Temple on Saturday, so my
appearance there this morning had seemed plausible. There would be more
questions, I knew, when Dr. Temple did not appear. I didn't care. There
would be questions but no answers.
The two small crystal clusters felt heavy in my pocket. I stopped and
took them out, weighing them in my hand like marbles. I had an impulse
to throw them into the dust at the side of the road. Instead I pushed
them back into my pocket.
Souvenirs, I thought. One needed to remember.
I looked up. A tall slim figure stood at the edge of the highway, her
blonde hair shimmering in the sunlight. She began to run toward me. I
couldn't move. I felt an elation I had never known before, a strange
whispering excitement. And suddenly I knew what I must subconsciously
have divined at the very beginning, knew the incredible truth. Here was
more than a woman's suppliant beauty, so marvelously warm and human.
Here now the reason for the shy withdrawal, the trembling eagerness,
the intimate knowledge. Here was--
"Erika!"
The cry arrested her. She stopped not ten feet away from me,
breathless. I felt the quivering of her unvoiced fear for me, the surge
of joy that leaped into her mind.
Her mind!