Chapter III: Part 3

"Don't try to kid me. I saw her when she came home last night. She was so mad she wouldn't even talk to me--and she didn't smear her lipstick all by herself."

I began to recover from the stunning surprise of his outburst. The danger I had expected was so much more to be feared than the anger of a jealous boy that I had an hysterical impulse to laugh. But his anger seemed genuine. I think if the librarian hadn't been there in the stacks nearby he would have started a fight.

"She's my girl," Jenkins snapped. "Keep away from her!"

"That's for her to decide, isn't it?" I asked quietly. "But I don't think you have anything to worry about. I doubt that she'll want to see me again."

"Don't try to brush me off!" the boy said fiercely. "If you don't leave her alone, maybe the school would like to know about it. The authorities wouldn't like it!"

I felt a trace of answering anger. "If you're thinking of creating a scandal," I said coldly, "maybe you'd better think about Laurie's reputation too. If you try to damage me, you'll be hurting her as well."

The words shook him. He glared at me, fists clenched, breathing hard and quick as if he had been running, and I sensed the conflict in his mind, the rage made impotent.

"Damn you!" he choked. "I'm warning you. Next time I'll make you pay for it!"

He flung away down the aisle, vanishing from sight as he bolted along a connecting corridor. I could hear the harsh fall of his steps fading away from me. I took a deep breath and held it, let it out slowly, feeling some of the tension subside in my arms and legs and chest.

Chalk up another threat, I thought wearily. First vicious, powerful minds that toyed with me. Then suspicious police. Mysterious neighbors. And now a kid's jealousy so strong and blind that it could make him do something foolish. I could never get an insurance policy, I thought with a feeble attempt at humor. The odds were against my being around to pay next month's premium.

Jenkins' abrupt appearance and his jealous wrath had seemed honestly motivated. If he were one of the aliens would he have acted that way? What purpose would it serve? Then I remembered the librarian's timely interruption. Had she halted more than a threatened fist fight? Had Jenkins' plan for an accident been spoiled by the presence of someone else, forcing him to improvise a clever and plausible reason for stalking me?

No. It was probably true that he would have had to explain his purpose in order to gain access to the stacks. The librarians guarded the entrance as zealously as they undoubtedly guarded their bedroom doors. If he had planned any serious harm to me, he wouldn't have advertised his guilt. This was not the place he would have chosen.

My mind was tired of questions. Jenkins was still not removed from suspicion. No one was. I was no closer to getting any answers than I had ever been.

10

I found Mike Boyle on the practice football field at the west end of the campus. The first team was scrimmaging a group of substitutes who were running through the plays of one of the schools on the weekend's double-header. I saw Boyle roving wide to defend against an attempted end run, saw him follow the play, not moving fast, until suddenly he was charging forward, bouncing off the interference in such a way that he kept his feet and sliced through to the halfback who was caught open and hemmed in near the sidelines, a sitting duck for the tackle that slammed him to the ground. And then Boyle was on his feet, amazingly nimble and springy for such a big man, trotting away without glancing back at the runner, who rose slowly and stiffly.

The deceptive ease of the play showed why Boyle was an All-American candidate. It also revealed something I had heard about the big roving tackle--whose position was one added to football's original eleven-man team in order to give the defense some needed help in the increasingly wide-open style of the game. Boyle showed an uncanny ability to divine what the opponent was going to do. Somehow, wherever a play went, he was there in front of it, anticipating it almost as if he knew precisely where it was going. The fact was an innocent one, but now it made me wonder as I watched him in action. Everything was suspect now, I thought. Nothing was innocent.

The scrimmaging continued for twenty minutes while I watched. Then the first team was called off the field for a rest and the second unit went in against the same tired group of subs. Some of the first team limbered up after the bruising workout by running up and down the sidelines. Others flipped a football or just stood watching.

I walked toward Mike Boyle. As I neared him he gulped water from a ladle dipped into a pail and spewed it out in a great gusher. Then he drank, his throat working visibly, sweat pouring down his face to mix with the water that spilled around his mouth and ran down his throat. He seemed to do everything in a big, robust way. In the padded uniform, he appeared immense, twice as broad as I and towering over me. He had not seemed nearly as big in street clothes.

I stood waiting while he drank. I was sure that he had not noticed my approach but he spoke as he dropped the ladle into the pail.

"Hi, Prof. Been running into any more cars?"

"I manage to keep out of the way of most of them."

He grinned. His mouth was full lipped and wide, matching the proportions of a prominent nose that had once been broken and an unruly mass of black hair. Only the eyes were too small for the face, but that might have been due to the habitual squint against the sun of a young man who spent a great deal of his time outdoors.

"You professors kill me," Boyle said. "What was on your mind, Prof? A poem or something?"

"Something I heard."

"Yeah? It must have been good," he said offhandedly, "to make you walk in front of the only damn car on the street."

"It was," I said.

The small brown eyes regarded me curiously and I wondered if their glint held amusement or something deeper.

"Well, you better be careful," Boyle said. "Hearing things like that won't do you any good if you're dead."

I read menace into the words, but it was belied by the faintly contemptuous grin on his face. He had the habitual cockiness which I had often seen in the professional campus athlete to whom public adulation has come too soon, before the mind is mature enough to discount it. The attitude was always irritating.

"That's a nice looking girlfriend of yours," I said, perhaps too casually. "Isn't she a physics major?"

"Helen? Yeah, she's a brain," he agreed. "A cute kid, though," he added, as if the combination of cuteness and intelligence was cause for surprise. "We have a ball."

"Miss Hendricks said you were going steady."

"Yeah? You might say that, Prof. But I'm not the kind of guy that likes to be tied down. You know?"

I was groping, trying to find a way to ask him where he had been the night before without seeming to be probing. I found myself disliking the youthful arrogance and it was an effort to keep the amiably stupid smile on my lips. I stood for a moment in silence, watching the scrimmage. The subs executed an intricate play that caught the defense completely out of position for the pass. Boyle cursed vehemently.

"They should have smelled that one a mile off," he growled.

"Doesn't the coach object when you go out on dates during the week?" I asked suddenly. "Or do you have a curfew?"

He spat vigorously. "Nuts," he said. "I'm his bread and butter. I go out when I want to."

I hesitated. "I thought I saw you and Helen again last night," I said. "Pretty late, too. I was on my way home from a movie."

He swung around slowly and the small brown eyes caught mine in a fixed stare. The indefinable trace of contempt marked the expression of his eyes and mouth.

"Prof," he said softly, "you didn't see me and Helen out last night. You got something on your mind. Maybe you should tell me what it is."

"I guess I was mistaken," I said, glad at that moment that I had had the sense to pick this time and place to sound him out, with a hundred people in clear view and within shouting distance. I was not sure what the hint of ugliness in his voice and manner signified. The thickly-muscled chest and arms didn't frighten me. Rather it was the thought of this brutal strength directed by a supremely powerful intelligence.

"Yeah, you made a mistake, Prof. Helen was with me last night but you didn't see us. I tell you what. You want to know if Helen was with me last night, you just go ask her, huh? And don't bother me with your nosy questions."

"I can assure you I wasn't being nosy," I said in my best and huffiest imitation of professorial dignity. "I was merely making conversation."

"Sure you were. Well, you just go talk to yourself, Prof. Only watch out for those cars. We'd miss you around here."

He turned his back on me and began to do a series of leg exercises, squatting and jumping erect, thick thighs stretching the pants of his uniform each time he dropped into the crouch.

I walked away slowly. The momentary irritation I felt over the open contempt shown by a muscle-headed athlete was not important. But if his statement about being with Helen Darrow could be believed, it was highly significant. It meant that they could vouch for each other, providing that they were together at the time Lois Worthington was killed. Boyle was the one suspect I knew who could easily have broken the girl's neck without even breathing hard. But I was convinced that Lois' death was linked to the aliens and I knew there were not three of them. There was the man who had been in the back booth and one student. Not two. Helen Darrow could prove that both she and Mike Boyle were innocent. In one stroke the possible number of suspects would be cut in half.

11

I felt a compulsion to keep moving. Even the negative results I had garnered so far gave me a feeling of accomplishing something. In addition I was avoiding being a fixed target. The fact that the aliens had not already struck again surprised me. Almost two full days had passed since the first hastily improvised attempt on my life. It was not comforting to reflect that they would want to be absolutely sure of me the second time--and it was probably not easy to arrange a foolproof accident.

Besides--came the chilling thought--they had been busy the night before with Lois Worthington.

I needed greater mobility. That meant a car. I rented a small closed aluminum model from a lot near the university. While the cost was high, I seemed to have acquired a new indifference to economics. Whether I ate next week or paid next month's rent didn't seem to matter any more. My entire perspective had gradually been changing. Even the conditioned obedience to academic rules of propriety was disappearing. Twenty-four hours before I had been reluctant to seek Lois' address from the registrar's office, afraid that my motive might be questioned. That had cost the girl her life. Now I had no hesitation about going to the office for the two addresses I wanted. Ironically, the girl behind the counter didn't even appear curious. I wouldn't have cared if she had.

Was this the schizophrenic's apathy, his progressive lack of orientation? There were gaps in the days when I had done habitual things like shaving and changing clothes. I couldn't remember doing them. The car's mirror reflected an image that could have been someone else, a young man whose face showed little evidence of strain and fatigue. In fact, despite my lack of sleep, I didn't feel tired. I felt as if I had been wound up tight and any minute I would be released and would begin to spin madly.

Madly. The word stuck. It kept coming back, the awful fear. My stumbling investigations had a double-edged motive: to find the aliens--and to prove that I was not mad. And I was slowly, inexorably, trapping myself in a narrowing circle. If I sat back, if I did nothing, I wouldn't know for sure. I could believe in mysterious beings from outer space, in sinister plots against me, in the hallucination of bodiless voices. I wouldn't have to confront unpleasant implications about morbid attempts at self-destruction or a disintegrating personality.

Even during the twenty-seven years of my life, society had come a long way in its attitude toward insanity. No longer was it viewed with a sense of shame or revulsion, something to be ignored or swept into a corner of society where you didn't have to look at it. But it was still the nation's number one disease, it still inspired the terror of the unknown. We had had many scientific breakthroughs--the famous virus break in 1971 which meant the end of cancer, the virtual elimination of the common cold; the successful "heart patch" of 1975 which changed heart disease from a leading killer to a rarely fatal disease; the total elimination of polio and multiple sclerosis and many other vicious enemies of the human organism. But the mind remained impregnable.

There had been gigantic strides in treatment, but mental hospitals were still jammed far beyond capacity. One American in five had some form of mental illness. Some, the luckier ones, found quick cures in the K7U drugs available under prescription, the laboratory narcotic that had proved startlingly effective, enabling you to induce exaggerated symptoms of psychoses under their influence, thus making possible an accurate diagnosis that could lead to prompt treatment. But there had been many cases of alarming toxic side effects from K7U. And in one area of mental illness the miracle drug had quite a different result. It accelerated the advanced stages of paranoid schizophrenia and its rarer, more logically organized cousin, paranoia.

There was a small bottle of K7U pills in the top drawer of the built-in chest in my trailer bedroom, a supply I had surreptitiously borrowed from the psychology laboratory when I first became aware of what seemed hallucinatory voices. I had been afraid to use them. If mine were a minor illness, the pills would expose it to accurate treatment. There was the risk of side effects but that did not deter me. My symptoms did.

The hallucination of voices where no one was present was a common one. It was frequently allied to a fairly well organized delusional system in which the person held the bizarre conviction that supra-human beings were trying to possess or destroy him--and often was convinced that he himself had some extraordinary powers that accounted for the persecution. He might seem quite normal in other phases of his life, well-oriented to his surroundings except for a tendency to withdraw socially, avoiding close personal relationships, and an increasing emotional apathy sometimes alternating with moments of exaggerated feeling.

This symptomatic pattern was common in paranoid schizophrenia.

Grimly I thrust aside the conclusion to which my thoughts had led me, ignoring the tight stomach cramp of fear, pretending that the reason for panic did not exist.

I was heading south through the Culver basin, the west end of the city's sprawling complex of trailer courts that ranged from the utilitarian government projects for low income dwellings to luxurious resort-like courts. I stayed off the automatic drive freeways, preferring to control the car manually even though it meant a slower trip. I needed contact with busy, noisy, normal humanity.

Moving on the ground level streets through the trailer basin gave me a viewpoint I had not had in two years. I had lived in the basin with my mother up to the time of her death. Afterwards I had obeyed the inclination to cut myself off from everything and everyone I had known. I had been fortunate in finding the vacancy in the court off Mulholland Drive. In a city of sixteen million people forever bursting out of their housing, that had been an even luckier chance than I had realized. There was already a public clamor to re-zone Beverly Hills for apartments and middle-income trailer courts. It was the city's last remaining area of private homes and only the vast wealth and influence of the rich and politically powerful who lived there had kept it from being overwhelmed by the creeping mass of trailers and great apartment cities.

Now, viewing the basin after a long absence, I could see the smothering effects of overcrowding. The sidewalks were so jammed that people had to move in funereal procession. At those rare cross streets where there was not a pedestrian underpass there were three minute intervals while cars waited for the surging wave of pedestrians to flow across the street. Automobile traffic was heavy in spite of the great numbers who no longer drove, preferring to take the speedy elevated trains which thundered overhead at frequent intervals. And over the whole area there was an unending murmur of sound, of feet and horns and voices and loudspeakers of public telescreens and taped music, the whole orchestra of sound like the unending drone that would exist in the center of a giant beehive. And the city smelled. It smelled of sweat and oil and seared meat and smoke and French perfumes. It smelled of humanity penned into a seemingly airless enclosure. I had the feeling of being imprisoned within solid walls of sound and smell and motion.

The world was fast becoming much too small. Over twenty-five years of uninterrupted peace had combined with the achievements of science against sickness and disease and accident to produce a vast population explosion with all of its attendant overcrowding and unemployment and food shortages. The world needed space. Already the crime rate was climbing alarmingly. Traditional food resources were being exhausted.

We needed the universe to grow in. But what enemies lay waiting for us on those distant planets circling through the void? Was it conceivable that I, alone in all the world, had met the first of those enemies? That I held the fate of mankind in my hands? Would anyone believe me if I could warn those who might save us?

No. They wouldn't listen. An overcrowded world had produced a surplus of fanatic prophets of doom. They would be sympathetic, the leaders who might hear my cry of warning. If I got violent, they would forcibly confine me for treatment. But if what I believed was not madness but reality, and if I failed to stop the aliens, humanity would perish.

Absorbed in thought I missed the intersection I was searching for. In no time, I was lost in the maze. The street pattern was so chaotic that, even with a map, it took me an hour to find what I sought, the Lucky Galaxy Trailer Court. By then it was dusk and I realized I would probably be arriving just at dinner time.

I wondered what the Darrows would be like.

The trailer was quite old, slightly larger than my own, set on its own small plot of ground with a tiny cement patio and several square yards of grass and garden, carefully tended. In spite of its age, the trailer had a look of well-scrubbed cleanliness and perfect repair, an air of privacy and pride. I remembered my mother's attempts to keep our trailer clean and comfortable and homelike, and how restless and ill at ease she had felt in the newer trailer we had bought after my father's legacy to her, a modern trailer made of materials that shone without cleaning, full of gadgets that made cooking effortlessly impersonal and housework obsolete.

The blinds were not drawn in the Darrow trailer. I could see a man of middle age standing in the living room before a three-dimensional TV screen. He had his arm cocked in the pose of a football player about to throw a pass. In the kitchen a plump little woman moved back and forth busily, her back toward me. I saw no sign of Helen Darrow as I went up the short walk to the door.

The man answered my knock. He had a short, spare figure and defeated eyes surrounded by wrinkles that suggested he had once laughed a great deal. He carried his shoulders erect and square with a suggestion of defiant pride. At the moment the corners of his mouth were pulled down in an expression of irritation. "What is it?" he snapped.

"Is Helen in?" I asked.

Curiosity stirred in the dull eyes. "Nope. But she'll be back in a few minutes. We're just about to eat," he added pointedly.

"Ask the young man in," a voice called from within the trailer.

"Well, I don't want to interrupt your dinner," I said. "I just wanted to talk to your daughter for a few minutes."

"Nonsense," the woman said, appearing suddenly beside the man. "Come right in."

I hesitated. The man turned his back on me and trotted back to the TV screen. The woman beamed cheerfully at me. I stepped inside, feeling uncomfortable about my mission.

"My name is Cameron," I said awkwardly. "I--I'm an instructor at the university."

"Well, isn't that nice, George? He's one of Helen's teachers."

"No, I'm not," I said quickly. "But I know her and--"

"Won't you stay for dinner? Have you eaten?"

"I couldn't do that."

"Rubbish," Mrs. Darrow said brightly. "There's plenty, and it's always nice to have a guest when you're a good cook. And I am," she added with unaffected pleasure.

I smiled. The odors of fresh vegetables cooking filled the small room. "I'll bet you are," I said. "But I can't stay. I have another call to make."

"You have to stop to eat sometime," she said placidly, ignoring my protests and getting another plate from the built-in rack.

There was an unexpected thump from the living area. I turned to see George Darrow rising from the couch and going through the motions of dusting himself off. His eyes glittered with pleasure. I heard the announcer's voice from the TV set talking excitedly about someone just getting a pass away before being dumped. The pass was complete for a fifteen yard gain. With a faint smile, I realized that Darrow was one of those millions of sports addicts who lived for the synthetic participation games so popular now on television.

"You can eat while you're talking to Helen," Mrs. Darrow said behind me. "Unless it's private, of course...."

"No," I said quickly. "I really shouldn't be bothering her but I thought she might be able to help me."

"You just go into the living room with father. Helen'll be here any minute. George, isn't that game over yet?"

"We're in the last quarter," George Darrow said excitedly. "Watch that safety man!"

I was in time to see a pass skip off the outstretched fingers of a defensive halfback. Darrow sighed with heart-felt relief.

"That was close," he muttered. "We're playing the New York Bruins," he added. "I'm with the Toronto Titans tonight."

I took a seat at the side of the room so as not to get in the little man's way. It was remarkable how his eyes had lost their lifelessness. They were avid, greedy with interest. He bent forward eagerly, calling imaginary signals under his breath. The ball was snapped and it seemed to spiral directly toward us in the startling illusion of the dimensional screen. George Darrow reached to gather it in and faded back a couple of steps to pass, looking for a receiver. The announcer's voice rose in an animated description of the action.

I thought of the billions of men and sports-crazy youngsters throughout the world who would be duplicating his actions, just as he imitated the movements of the passer on the screen now, taking the passer's place through the trickery of the television cameras. The participation sports events provided a year round diet of baseball and football, hockey and jai alai, and various other games and contests in which the viewer could have the vicarious thrill of taking part. I had never enjoyed them. I could only contrast the closed, air-conditioned, private sports arenas, where the professional athletes played before the eyes of the cameras alone, with the noisy confusion of the stadiums I remembered from my childhood, where teams battled before live audiences, where you saw the action itself and not an illusion of it.

But George Darrow's sports enthusiasm might prove useful to me. He would probably not be at all reluctant to talk about Mike Boyle. I waited impatiently for the game to end. Except for the announcer's voice with its false excitement and George Darrow's quick breathing and occasional grunts, the trailer's peace was disturbed only by the small, familiar kitchen sounds of a woman preparing a family meal, happy in the surprise addition of a guest. The place was full of her warmly sentimental touches--frilly draperies, hand-crafted artifacts, an elaborately framed telephone screen in rare genuine maple. My own trailer in comparison was bare and cold and impersonal. I began to feel more keenly the absurdity of any suspicion that this warm and modest home, so typically human, could house an unearthly creature.

George Darrow pressed a chair button to turn off the TV set. The game was over. The room was abruptly silent. He sank into a chair, staring at me. After a moment he coughed, seemed about to speak, thought better of it.

"You must know Mike Boyle pretty well," I said casually.

The man's eyes brightened again. "Mike? Sure do. Best roving tackle in the country, that boy."

I had struck the chord. "Yes. I saw Mike this afternoon scrimmaging. A couple of tough games coming up this weekend."

"We'll take 'em," Darrow said. "Mike should make All-American in a walk, the kind of season he's having. He's the difference in our team." He paused, then looked up happily. "Mike and Helen are going steady, you know."

"Yes, I knew. That reminds me, did Helen see him last night? I heard the coach talked to him about being out late, again, breaking training."

Darrow laughed. "They may talk to Mike but he don't listen. He does just what he wants, that boy. Yeah, he and Helen had a date last night. Like most nights. But they weren't out late, were they, mother?"

Mrs. Darrow carried a steaming bowl over to the table at one end of the kitchen. "I'd say about eleven," she said. "Mike's a good boy, Mr. Cameron. I never worry when Helen is out with him."

"I'm glad to hear that," a voice broke in.

We all turned toward the door. The slender brunette I had seen with Boyle stood in the doorway watching me, her face unsmiling.

I rose. "We were just talking about you."

"I heard."

She took a couple of steps into the room, her eyes still sharply observant, and I wondered whether there was anything of wariness in them--or just a girl's natural suspicion of a stranger who comes around asking questions.

"Mr. Cameron stopped by to see you," her mother said cheerfully, "so I asked him to stay for dinner. It's all ready."

"Maybe he doesn't have time," the girl suggested.

"He has to eat," the woman said, briskly appraising my tall, angular frame. "And he looks like he could use a good, home-cooked meal."

I smelled the heaping bowl of vegetables and the thick slices of real bread. Sharp teeth of hunger gnawed at me.

"I guess I am hungry at that."

Although it was obvious that she did not welcome my presence, Helen Darrow did not object, nor did she press immediately to find out what I wanted to see her about. The four of us sat around the small table and ate. The girl and her father were silent. Mrs. Darrow talked with unaffected garrulousness about Helen and her aspirations in physics, her childhood successes in school, the happiness she had brought her parents. Pride bloomed in the mother's voice. The girl would sometimes smile slightly and make a mild protest which her mother brushed aside. I began to realize that the girl was not actively unfriendly, simply reserved and rather serious by disposition. Soon I was feeling quite comfortable with the intimate family group. I liked them and even envied them a little. Any suspicions I might have had evaporated. When the girl's question came at last, near the end of the meal, voiced casually as if it were not important, I felt guilty about persisting in a pointless investigation. At the same time, I had to come up with a plausible excuse for my visit.

"What was it you wanted to see me about, Mr. Cameron?"

I hesitated. "You remember that accident I had the other night?"

"Of course."

"You were in an accident?" Mrs. Darrow asked with quick concern.

"Nothing serious," I said. "But I wanted to get in touch with the man who was driving the car and I seem to have lost his address. I wondered if by any chance you remember it."

Helen Darrow frowned. "Harrison, I think his name was." She seemed to accept my explanation without question. "Albert or Alfred or something like that."

"Do you remember the address?"

"Noooo. No, I can't help you there, I'm afraid."

I smiled appreciatively. "Well, it was worth a try. Maybe one of the others will remember it. I tried to phone you last night," I added with a studied lack of emphasis. "Around eight. But you must have been out."

"I was with Mike. We went out to dinner."

"That's funny," her mother said. "Father and I were in all evening."

There was an awkward silence.

"No, we weren't," George Darrow said abruptly. "We went over to the Wallaces for a few minutes. Just about eight o'clock it was."

"That must have been when I called," I said with relief. I rose from the table. "I hate to eat and run, and I do appreciate your hospitality, Mrs. Darrow, but--"

"Won't you stay and have some coffee?"

"No, I have some other calls to make. I wish I could."

"Well, you must come again."

"I'll try to do that. It isn't often I get a chance to eat a meal like this."

The girl followed me to the door. "I hope you can find the man," she said, more openly friendly now than she had been in the beginning. More at ease, I thought, liking her, liking the serious, intent face and the quiet, intelligent eyes.

"I thought you were going to ask me about that girl who was killed," she said.

I felt an involuntary tension. "No. You heard about that?"

"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.

Laurie stiffened. "You! I told you not to come."

"And I said I had to talk to you."

She started to close the door but I shoved through. The door slammed behind me.

She held herself stiff with anger, her small fists clenched, but even the rigidity of her body could not change the curving softness of breast and hip and thigh to which the pale green tissue of her dress clung. Confronting her in the small room, I felt the same quick surge of desire, the same overpowering response to her beauty that had swept over me the night before when her physical presence had seemed to dominate the confined space of my own trailer. I had never reacted to a woman so immediately and so forcefully.

How much of my reaction showed in the way I stared at her I don't know, but it seemed to me that the bright spark of anger in her green eyes subtly altered.

"I'm not sure what you're trying to prove," she said, less sharply than I had expected, "but this isn't the way. You can leave right now."

"No. I'm here and you're going to listen to me."

Abruptly she turned away, scooping up a light coat from the back of a chair. She started toward the door.

"If you want to talk, there's a restaurant not far up the road. Maybe the waitress will listen."

I caught her arm. "I had to talk to Lois," I said, my fingers digging into the soft flesh of her arm. "It was important and I can't explain why. But I never saw her except in the Dugout, I never went out with her, I never made a pass at her."

Laurie's face was still aloof, indifferent. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

"Yes!"

"What do I do now--start to melt?"

"Are you trying to tell me that what happened last night meant nothing to you? Just another lark?"

She wrenched free. "What did you expect? You didn't really believe that bit about the student having a crush on teacher, did you? I was having some fun, Professor. And tonight I'm having it with someone else!"

I almost hit her. Rage rocketed through me with an explosiveness that was so shockingly violent I barely held the arm drawn back for the blow. And in the next instant I had pinned her against the wall and my arms were tightening around her, my mouth imprisoning hers in a brutal, angry kiss that brought the taste of blood to my lips. I wasn't even aware whether or not she was struggling. I knew only that she was intensely, excitingly desirable and that the full warm length of her was pressed against me.

I stepped back, breathing hard and quick. There was a frozen moment of time suspended while I waited for her to explode.

Laurie laughed. "My God, Professor, you certainly do keep surprising me!"

She tossed the coat she had been holding in the direction of the chair. It missed and tumbled onto the floor. Ignoring it, she was already moving back into my arms.

"Let's try that again," she murmured. "But this time don't bite."

The kiss was long and deeply disturbing. When it ended I felt shaky. I wanted her--but for the first time I wondered if my emotional attraction to her went beyond that need, if I wasn't already completely in love with her. I stared at the puffed redness of her bruised lips, at the delicate bone structure beneath the smooth skin of her cheeks, at the vivid coloring of her eyes, and the painful knowledge came to me that I was not free to love, not until I knew--

"I--I think I'm a little afraid of you, Paul Cameron," she said in a voice that was younger, more subdued, less self-assured than I had ever heard it. "I think you'd better leave now."

"But--"

"Please! It was true what I said about Bob--I do have a date with him. He should have been here by now." Her eyes were pleading. "I was mad at you. Besides--" she hesitated, her gaze searching my face as if she wanted to remember every line. "I think I need a little while to mull this over. This little girl isn't used to being swept off her feet. Not like this."

I reached for her but she backed away quickly. "No! Let's--let's see how we feel tomorrow when we're both a day older and wiser and--calmer. I'll be here--waiting for you."

At last I nodded. "You're right, Laurie. But if you let that blond kid--"

She smiled. "I can handle Bob."

She didn't move as I went to the door. Before I opened it her words came softly and with a surprising note of tenderness. "Goodnight--darling."

13

The trailer was in a slight hollow. From inside, you could see the white froth along the shore, but when you stepped down to the sand outside, a smooth ridge cut off the view of the water. I could hear the smash of a breaker coming in, the receding rattle as it washed back over a bed of stones. The sound didn't frighten me now. For the moment the dream had been forgotten. Laurie's last words drifted on the cool night air, bringing their own tingling warmth.

He struck out of darkness.

I had a split-second of warning, time enough to flinch against the whiplash of command. It didn't come. The shadow that had moved around the corner of the trailer closed in on me swiftly, but the blow was not a sickening mental force. It was a clumsily swinging fist that skidded painfully off my shoulder as I dodged. I heard a choking sob.

"Damn you!"

The white blob of a fist arched toward me and smashed against my jaw. I was caught off balance. Falling, I had a strange floating sensation. My cheek was numb. Even on the soft sand, the fall was jolting, and for a second I couldn't move. The figure stood panting over me and I saw blond hair caught in the slanting light from Laurie's window.

"Get up!" he raged. "Damn you, get up and fight!"

I laughed. Fear fell away from me and the reaction of relief was so intense that there was no room for anger or pain or even surprise. Jenkins! The jealous youth who had warned me to keep away from his girl.

The laughter enraged him even more. He dove on top of me. I rolled as his lean hard body slammed against me. His fingers tore at my chest, reaching for my throat. I fought back automatically, not really wanting to fight, desiring merely to stop this foolishness, yet instinctively defending myself. My flailing arm banged against the side of his head. He grunted. For an instant the pressure of his hold weakened. I wrenched free and tumbled away from him.

He came to his feet more quickly than I did. I was still in a crouch when he stepped in and brought up his knee in a short, vicious piston stroke. It exploded against my chin. My head snapped back and I toppled backwards like a limber doll.

"I'll kill you!" he snarled.

Still I felt neither anger nor fright. There was a fleeting sense of alarm, of recognition that here was a real threat, something that had to be stopped, not just a laughable mistake. And there was pain. Blood filled my mouth and my jaw was bruised and throbbing. But everything was clear and rational and without emotion.

Somehow I got to my feet again. Absurdly the thought crossed my mind that he wasn't playing the game according to the rules. You weren't supposed to kick a man when he was down, you shouldn't use your knee at all. Then there was no more time for reflection. He rushed at me, fists pumping, and I managed to sidestep. He whirled and came at me again. His fist grazed the top of my head. I punched back, hitting for the vulnerable stomach, hoping only to slow him down. I wasn't breathing very well and I was aware of blood streaming from my nose.

We fought standing up now, without speaking, the thud of a blow echoed by a grunt or a gasp, our breathing loud and wheezing. My arms began to feel leaden where they had caught the heavy impact of his fists.

"Don't be a damned fool!" I gasped.

"I warned you!"

I was wearing down, like a mechanical doll wound up and now nearing the end of its dance, beginning to slow, each jerky movement more labored, more artificial. He was younger, in better condition, harder, stronger, more rested. I saw the end coming. His blows broke through my barriers of elbow and shoulder more frequently. He must have sensed that I was weakening and he pressed his attack more savagely.

I went down again, not so much from one blow as from an accumulation of them. The thought came dimly to me that I had no hope of winning because my heart wasn't in it. I didn't care. I had no sense of being a warrior battling for my love against the evil knight. I was apathetic. I fought only because I had to defend myself. It had nothing to do with Laurie, nothing to do with courage or honor.

Without knowing how or why, I was on my feet again, aiming for the flat hard stomach, oblivious of the knotted fist that slashed across my cheek as I drove in, not knowing why I persisted in this futile form of resistance.

A scream ripped across the darkness. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Laurie standing in a pool of light at the front of the trailer. The cry must have stopped Jenkins. I was already driving in, smashing my fist into the only target I knew, the unguarded stomach. He gave a short, emphatic grunt.

Laurie cried out again and rushed toward us. Jenkins sagged backwards and sat down hard. I stood over him, swaying, and spat blood onto the sand.

"My God! What are you doing, Paul? Why?"

"He started it," I mumbled childishly.

Jenkins said nothing. He sat where he had dropped, doubled over, his fists pressed into his stomach. I heard a strangled sound as he tried to suck air into his lungs.

Laurie began to cry. I stared at her stupidly. It seemed to be too much trouble to speak again.

"You--you bully!" she choked through tears. "Why did you have to fight him? You didn't have to!"

It would take too long to explain. She really ought to understand that I hadn't wanted to fight. I couldn't explain it all to her now.

She sank to her knees beside Jenkins. "Oh, Bob," she said soothingly. "You're hurt." She glared up at me. "Why do you always have to spoil things? Just when everything was so perfect, why--oh, go away! I never want to see you again!"

She held him gently, pressing his bent head against her bosom like a mother cradling her child. I wanted to tell her that he wasn't really hurt. I was the one who was hurt. Every bone in my body was broken. He'd only had the breath knocked out of him.

But I knew she wouldn't listen, and the effort of trying to convince her didn't seem worthwhile. Nothing mattered. I was dead tired and aching and very old.

Turning, I staggered away across the sand.

14

I sat in the little aluminum car for a long time. I don't know how long. The numbness slowly left my chest and arms and face, clearing the way for a thousand jabbing needles of pain. But the emotional numbness, the dull apathy, remained.

A fight shouldn't wreck you like this, I thought. At twenty-seven you aren't exactly an old man. Weren't you supposed to reach your physical peak at that age?

Why had I felt no real anger? The unemotional, automatic resistance during the fight was abnormal. My feeling now of being drained and empty was disproportionate. A reaction to the weeks of strain, perhaps, with the physical beating I had taken providing the finishing blows.