He compared the relative size of his arm with her hand and said
wonderingly, "You shrank."
"I know, Max. I know."
He turned his head and looked at his arms and legs, pale blond arms
and legs with a down of red hair. He touched the thick left arm,
squeezed a pinch of hard flesh. "It isn't mine," he said, surprised.
"But I can feel it."
Watching his face was like watching a stranger mimicking and distorting
Max's expressions. Max in fear. Max trying to understand what had
happened to him, looking around at the other men sitting up in their
tanks. Max feeling the terror that was in herself and all the men as
they stared at themselves and their friends and saw what they had
become.
"We're all Pat Mead," he said harshly. "All the Meads are Pat Mead.
That's why he was surprised to see people who didn't look like himself."
"Yes, Max."
"Max," he repeated. "It's me, all right. The nervous system didn't
change." His new blue eyes held hers. "My love didn't, either. Did
yours? Did it, June?"
"No, Max." But she couldn't know yet. She had loved Max with the thin,
ironic face, the rumpled black hair and the twisted smile that never
really hid his quick sympathy. Now he was Pat Mead. Could he also be
Max? "Of course I still love you, darling."
He grinned. It was still the wry smile of Max, though fitting strangely
on the handsome new blond face. "Then it isn't so bad. It might even be
pretty good. I envied him this big, muscular body. If Pat or any of
these Meads so much as looks at you, I'm going to knock his block off.
Understand?"
* * * * *
She laughed and couldn't stop. It wasn't that funny. But it was still
Max, trying to be unafraid, drawing on humor. Maybe the rest of the men
would also be their old selves, enough so the women would not feel that
their men were strangers.
Behind her, male voices spoke characteristically. She did not have
to turn to know which was which: "This is one way to keep a guy from
stealing your girl," that was Len Marlow; "I've got to write down all
my reactions," Hal Barton; "Now I can really work that hillside vein of
metal," St. Clair. Then others complaining, swearing, laughing bitterly
at the trick that had been played on them and their flirting, tempted
women. She knew who they were. Their women would know them apart, too.
"We'll go outside," Max said. "You and I. Maybe the shock won't be so
bad to the women after they see me." He paused. "You didn't tell them,
did you?"
"I couldn't. I wasn't sure. I--was hoping I was wrong."
She opened the door and closed it quickly. There was a small crowd on
the other side.
"Hello, Pat," Elsie said uncertainly, trying to look past them into the
tank room before the door shut.
"I'm not Pat, I'm Max," said the tall man with the blue eyes and the
fuzz-reddened skull. "Listen--"
"Good heavens, Pat, what happened to your hair?" Shelia asked.
"I'm Max," insisted the man with the handsome face and the sharp blue
eyes. "Don't you get it? I'm Max Stark. The melting sickness is Mead
cells. We caught them from Pat. They adapted us to Minos. They also
changed us all into Pat Mead."
The women stared at him, at each other. They shook their heads.
"They don't understand," June said. "I couldn't have if I hadn't seen
it happening, Max."
"It's Pat," said Shelia, dazedly stubborn. "He shaved off his hair.
It's some kind of joke."
Max shook her shoulders, glaring down at her face. "I'm Max. Max Stark.
They all look like me. Do you hear? It's funny, but it's not a joke.
Laugh for us, for God's sake!"
"It's too much," said June. "They'll have to see."
She opened the door and let them in. They hurried past her to the
tanks, looking at forty-six identical blond faces, beginning to call in
frightened voices:
"Jerry!"
"Harry!"
"Lee, where are you, sweetheart--"
June shut the door on the voices that were growing hysterical, the
women terrified and helpless, the men shouting to let the women know
who they were.
"It isn't easy," said Max, looking down at his own thick muscles. "But
you aren't changed and the other girls aren't. That helps."
Through the muffled noise and hysteria, a bell was ringing.
"It's the airlock," June said.
Peering in the viewplate were nine Meads from Alexandria. To all
appearances, eight of them were Pat Mead at various ages, from fifteen
to fifty, and the other was a handsome, leggy, red-headed girl who
could have been his sister.
Regretfully, they explained through the voice tube that they had walked
over from Alexandria to bring news that the plane pilot had contracted
melting sickness there and had died.
They wanted to come in.
* * * * *
June and Max told them to wait and returned to the tank room. The
men were enjoying their new height and strength, and the women were
bewilderedly learning that they could tell one Pat Mead from another,
by voice, by gesture of face or hand. The panic was gone. In its place
was a dull acceptance of the fantastic situation.
Max called for attention. "There are nine Meads outside who want to
come in. They have different names, but they're all Pat Mead."
They frowned or looked blank, and George Barton asked, "Why didn't you
let them in? I don't see any problem."
"One of them," said Max soberly, "is a girl. _Patricia_ Mead. The girl
wants to come in."
There was a long silence while the implication settled to the fear
center of the women's minds. Shelia the beautiful felt it first. She
cried, "No! Please don't let her in!" There was real fright in her tone
and the women caught it quickly.
Elsie clung to Jerry, begging, "You don't want me to change, do you,
Jerry? You like me the way I am! Tell me you do!"
* * * * *
The other girls backed away. It was illogical, but it was human. June
felt terror rising in herself. She held up her hand for quiet, and
presented the necessity to the group.
"Only half of us can leave Minos," she said. "The men cannot eat
ship food; they've been conditioned to this planet. We women can go,
but we would have to go without our men. We can't go outside without
contagion, and we can't spend the rest of our lives in quarantine
inside the ship. George Barton is right--there is no problem."
"But we'd be changed!" Shelia shrilled. "I don't want to become a Mead!
I don't want to be somebody else!"
She ran to the inner wall of the corridor. There was a brief
hesitation, and then, one by one, the women fled to that side, until
there were only Bess, June and four others left.
"See!" cried Shelia. "A vote! We can't let the girl in!"
No one spoke. To change, to be someone else--the idea was strange
and horrifying. The men stood uneasily glancing at each other, as if
looking into mirrors, and against the wall of the corridor the women
watched in fear and huddled together, staring at the men. One man in
forty-seven poses. One of them made a beseeching move toward Elsie and
she shrank away.
"No, Jerry! I won't let you change me!"
Max stirred restlessly, the ironic smile that made his new face his own
unconsciously twisting into a grimace of pity. "We men can't leave, and
you women can't stay," he said bluntly. "Why not let Patricia Mead in.
Get it over with!"
June took a small mirror from her belt pouch and studied her own face,
aware of Max talking forcefully, the men standing silent, the women
pleading. Her face ... her own face with its dark blue eyes, small
nose, long mobile lips ... the mind and the body are inseparable; the
shape of a face is part of the mind. She put the mirror back.
"I'd kill myself!" Shelia was sobbing. "I'd rather die!"
"You won't die," Max was saying. "Can't you see there's only one
solution--"
They were looking at Max. June stepped silently out of the tank room,
and then turned and went to the airlock. She opened the valves that
would let in Pat Mead's sister.