Chapter IX

"It was handled beautifully," Faircloth was saying. "The timing was perfect, and there's no question but that it will go across." He looked up at Jean. "You're sure you got everything across to him when he contacted you again?"

She nodded. Her face was still pale. "He turned me inside out. Cleaned out everything I knew. I didn't resist. And then when we'd heard from you he contacted me again, and I knew that we were right. He's been in touch with me ever since. He'll be here soon."

Faircloth nodded to Roberts. "And you've arranged for the raids to start up through New England?"

Roberts nodded. He looked slightly high. "Everything's under control. Marino has a ship ready for takeoff, and we have guns up near Eagle Rock to blast it down. Ain't many people around in northern Ontario. The pictures will be rather bad, probably, but after all--field conditions, you know.

"It will certainly look like the same sort of ship that landed out in Iowa, and there won't be enough left when the blasting is over to tell for sure whether the mangled mess that they drag out of it later is man, Alien or oily rags. Those guns do a good job."

Something touched Faircloth's mind, lightly, like a quiet knock. He swung around, his eyes wide. "He's here," he said, and then he saw that Jean already knew. "Tell him to come up."

She nodded, and closed her eyes. Moments later they heard the footsteps on the stairs, hesitant footsteps. Then the door swung open. They stared at him for a moment, and then both men were wringing the man's hand, offering him a glass, and he sank down on the cot they had prepared for him, exhausted. "You must be dead," Paul said quietly.

"I am, I am," said the man. "Mind if I lie down?"

He was an ordinary looking man. He was slender, about thirty, and very pale. A single-factor Psi-High had no distinguishing physical characteristics; there really was no reason to expect a double-factor psi-positive to look any different. But somehow they had half expected a god-like creature, and he just looked like a frightened young man.

His face was mild and rather sad. But his eyes were clear and sharp, and the mouth was in a grim line, as he sank back on the couch. "I was afraid you'd never spot it," he said. "For a while it looked as though the whole thing would backfire. I mean when Towne was planning the shift in the Council and trying to force an election. I was afraid--and in the midst of that, you started your cat-and-mouse game--"

Faircloth nodded. "We had no choice. We didn't know, and you didn't dare reveal what you were doing at that point."

The man shook his head. "It was better this way, much better. I planned to kill Towne and then let you capture me. Counting on you to work the propaganda right. Then nobody would have known that the Alien was killed before he even got started."

Faircloth smiled. "The computer even listed that as a possibility. Low probability, but that was on the basis of what we knew. We hadn't even considered it--yet every living Psi-High has known for a long time that someday two Psi-Highs would have a child. We could only guess what the child might be like."

The man looked up at them sadly. "The child would be lonely beyond words," he said. "He would be able to hide, yes. He would be able to slow down his psi-powers in order to appear like an ordinary Psi-High. He could never have revealed it. Not even to his closest friends."

"And you knew that the real Alien had been killed?"

"Almost as soon as it happened. He died in agony. He had a powerful mind. He broadcast so wildly that every Psi-High within a hundred miles must have gotten a shower. I was in Des Moines, and got the whole picture clear as a bell. Went down and picked the details out of the farmer's brain. He was too frightened to tell what he had done, and nobody paid too much attention to him anyway." He shifted wearily on the cot. "The Alien must have been working so hard to maintain his disguise that the farmer caught him short. I knew it, and I knew what I had to do. I went ahead and did it."

"Of course Towne will fight," said Roberts later, when the man had drifted off into a deep sleep. "He's clever, and resourceful. When we 'rescue' him from Eagle Rock, he's going to know exactly what has happened."

Jean Sanders laughed happily. "I'd like to see him," she said. "I'd like to see him helpless just once."

Paul grinned. "You will. Things will be too far ahead of him by then. And of course, there will be a physical and mental examination. It will be a pity that the Alien left his mind in such a state of shock and delusion but maybe after a few months of psychiatric treatment we can find out the real reason why he hates Psi-Highs so much. And then, perhaps, we'll have a powerful fighter on our side instead of against us."

He looked around at the others, his face grave. "We can't afford to have the world against us again, not ever. _That_ part of the news broadcast was perfectly true. There _was_ an Alien. He _was_ telepathic. And there will be others coming--maybe in a year, maybe in five, or ten, or a hundred--" He leaned back wearily in the relaxer. "We cashed in on it, this time, but we mustn't forget the parts that are true."

Jean smiled and put her arm around him. "They'll come, sometime--yes. But when they come they'll find the Earth well guarded." Her eyes drifted to the sleeping figure on the cot, and then came back to Paul's and held them. "When they do come, there'll be others--like him--to stop them."