Chapter III

Sometime during the night the door of the truck opened and another body was laid beside Ivy on the floor. Until then Ivy had believed that whatever was going to happen at the end of this ride would be reserved for her, and she thought she knew what that happening would be. With the addition of this new body, however, which was also a girl, Ivy was not so sure.

She was completely paralyzed and she could not move a finger. Beside her the other girl did not move either. But she, this other one, was also young and pretty, and Ivy began to think through her terror.

Rape, to Ivy's mind, was the most likely possibility. She fled from the thought. That she was being abducted for other, more permanent reasons was also possible, but she had no idea what they could be. Kidnapping for ransom money was out of the question. Her parents were not wealthy and she herself had only about thirty-three dollars in the bank. The only other thing she could think of was that she was being abducted into white slavery. She made a futile attempt to scream.

Two more bodies, both young girls, joined her in the truck before morning. White slavery began to look horribly believable.

At last the morning came and the truck stopped, and the doors at the rear were thrown open. Ivy was the first to be lifted out.

She found herself being carried up the side of a heavily wooded hill, toward a long low house half-hidden in the pines. She had a chance to look at the man who carried her, and at the other men who were gathered at the back of the truck, and one thing struck her immediately.

All of the men were old. And they all looked strangely alike. They were quite small and round-shouldered, every one of them, with large peculiar eyes and thickly lined faces. There was about them an almost brotherly resemblance, particularly about the nose, which was invariably tiny, thin and sharp, like a small beak. The eerie regularity of their faces was unnerving. She began to realize that there was something here which was more than just abduction.

She was carried into a long house, and once again she was laid on a floor in darkness. She could not see anyone else but she could feel the presence of bodies, row on row of other bodies. Back in the truck she had tried to cry, but it hadn't worked. She tried again now.

After a while she felt the paralysis beginning to wear off.

* * * * *

Web was now very tired and he sat down. He had gone through the whole station and there was nobody aboard. Forty-seven men, all gone. Dundon had said nothing had approached this station, or left it, but the forty-seven men had, and that was for sure. And he knew that if he bothered to check the other rocket, the lonesome rocket that had come up first, there would be nobody in it either.

"Web."

"Yep?"

"Did you check the space suits?"

"Yep," Web said wearily. "And I counted 'em. They're all here. All in the lockers, never been touched."

"How about the escape pod?"

"That's here too. But they couldn't have got away in that anyway. Radar would have seen it."

Dundon was silent. In the background Web could hear an argument going on. Some of the really high brass were with Dundon now, listening in. Well, Web said to himself gravely, but with a trace of cheer breaking through, the rest is their problem. I've done my job. I think right now I had better go home.

He called to Falk, to let him know that he was coming, and began to retrace his steps, reeling in his radio wire. Falk didn't acknowledge his call, so he called again.

"Joe," he said happily, "I'm a-comin'. Let's clear out o' here."

Falk didn't answer.

"Joe?" Web said.

Nothing.

"Joe?"

He stopped dead in his tracks.

"Dundon," he said thickly.

There was nothing from Dundon either.

He was completely alone.

* * * * *

In the face of emptiness, surrounded by nothing, as alone as any man will ever be, Web waited. He heard nothing, saw nothing. Within his suit the thumping of his heart was an endless chain of bombs. He decided that he had to get out. He was all the way up the turret before his mind cleared and the unrushing wave of claustrophobia fell away, and he realized what had happened.

Falk hadn't answered. But then, neither had Dundon.

"Well hell," he said aloud, sweating, "so the radio got disconnected." The whole thing had gone blank. Now, if it was just Falk who hadn't answered....

Weakly, he leaned against the airlock, breathing with huge gulps. A plug was out in the rocket, or down at the base, or a tube was blown, and for this reason he had very nearly made a fool of himself. For all he knew they could hear him. He began to talk anyway, questioning, liking the sound of his voice in the really absolute silence.

He stepped out of the turret looking for Falk. He had had a rough day, and it was time to go home. To his great relief he saw Falk standing a few feet away on the turret's side, his magnetized soles gripping the metal and his head looking out toward the stars. He was not hanging on to anything, he seemed to be totally unconcerned, and his arms were lifted strangely.

Web whistled. Now there, he said to himself, is a man with nerve. He slipped hand over hand down the turret to get to Falk and the taxi.

Falk didn't move as he approached. Falk just kept looking at the stars.

"Come on boy, Web said aloud, let's get moving." He came up and laid his helmet against Falk's, so they could talk to each other.

But he didn't say anything.

Directly in front of his eyes was the plate of Falk's helmet, and inside the helmet was nothing.

Web withdrew. The empty suit before him swayed slightly as he brushed it.

This is ridiculous, Web said. I'm going nuts.

Around him moved the whirling stars.

I'm screwy as a jaybird, Web said.

* * * * *

The arrival of Kunklin and Prule was neither coincidental nor particularly fortunate. There is an indescribable something which a spaceship traveling at speeds beyond light does to the fabric of space, warping, shredding, leaving a trail which lasts for many days. Kunklin did not need a great deal of luck to pick it up, as he did, just a short way in from Alpha Centauri. He was equipped with a ship of the Central Repair Command, one of the most diversely powerful mechanisms ever produced by a living mind. Thus Kunklin and Prule arrived with great haste, but with no great luck. They were too late to prevent the deaths of the forty-seven men--for death it was--or the death of Joe Falk.

And so it was that while Web was sitting numbly on a projection of the turret, making a mortal effort to control himself, he became watched, in turn, by two separate sets of alien eyes.

The first set of eyes--which were more or less human in structure, differing only in their purple color--belonged to Kunklin and Prule. They had swept in a wide arc around the crescent-lit limb of the Moon, and halted at a discreet distance to survey the terrain before going in. Telescopes of an impossible resolving power picked out first the station, then the rockets, and eventually Web Hilton. Because they had a knowledge of the aliens, and of the type of crime that the aliens would commit, they knew at a glance what had happened aboard the satellite.

But, at the sight of it, Kunklin was startled.

"A space station!" he cried. "Well I'll be jetted." And not yet having noticed the empty suit of Falk--the arms of which had begun to float out helplessly, like a beggar--Kunklin regarded the doughnut with a delighted interest.

Prule, a square, gloomy man who was always the more sober of the two, grunted darkly.

"They put up a space station right in the midst of being plundered, poor devils. They must have walked right into it."

It was Kunklin's turn to be sombre.

"There's been killing."

"Undoubtedly," Prule growled with disgust. "The Faktors could not allow these people to be in space. They would see too much. Note the empty suit...."

It was at this point that Web stepped out of the turret and saw Falk.

Kunklin watched curiously.

"A Faktor?"

"No. One of the people of this planet. Note the primitive equippage." Pause. "This is extraordinary."

"You mean because he's alive?"

"Of course. The others are dead. Why is this one still alive?"

Kunklin was the younger one, cocky and in many ways indolent, but he had by far the quicker mind.

"He is alive," Kunklin said swiftly, "because he is a Galactic. Let us go down."

The second set of eyes that was observing the satellite did not see Web come out of the turret. The brain behind those eyes was rejoicing as it approached the satellite. The plundering was very nearly done. All that remained now was a brief investigation, and then destruction of this station, and the bone and blood and magnificent flesh of these people would remain in free supply below, unwarned and unaware.

The alien landed on the skin of the doughnut, switched off his gravity pack, and walked cheerfully around toward the turret.

And at the turret, of course, Web Hilton was still sitting, slowly regaining his mind. It was at that moment occurring to Web that if there was a logical explanation for all this it would not be found up here, or by him, and he was just then considering the quickest way down to Earth--via rocket or escape pod in the station. He had not quite made up his mind when he saw the alien.

It is difficult to say which of them was the most surprised.

The alien had been under the impression that anything human that had been on the satellite no longer existed. Indeed, there was no possible way that anything human could exist on the satellite. So therefore, Web Hilton was not human. The alien was shocked.

But for Web, who had recently undergone some extraordinary events, this was by far the most fantastic of all. For the alien was an adaptation. An artificial oxygen-producing mechanism in his chest, together with silicone-adapted skin and a number of similarly ingenious devices, enabled the alien to walk freely in space, which he did clad only in a short white cloth and a gravity pack. And what Web saw come walking toward him over the surface of the station, in open space, with the moon and the stars for a background, was a naked man. The alien wore no space suit.

The door behind him was open, Web fell back into the turret.

When a great many impossible things have happened to a man within a very short time there comes a jumping-off place. The man jumps outside himself and continues to survive by examining the whole thing from outside, with a sort of awed detachment. It was this way with Web.

"I am nuts," he kept saying to himself, insistently, as he rolled down the landing net and came up with a thump against the door below. But he did not feel nuts. His mind had been numbed and dulled at the edges, but for some reason now outside it he was thinking very clearly. For the disappearance of everybody there was no explanation, but for the appearance of the naked man there had to be. The suspicion which he had first heard back at the base, over many a beer, was truth to him now, because he had to believe his eyes or go mad. And there was only one thing the naked man could be. An alien. A thing from another world, as the movies put it. A thing with cunning and science. A thing that had destroyed Falk.

Now think, he said to himself carefully, bolting the door behind him. You are no match for them. You don't know how many of them are out there or what they have. Maybe this is the first time they know you are alive and somehow they missed you when they got Falk. So get out.

GET OUT.

He raced through the station, heading for the escape pod. He had to get down to Earth. With what coherence he could muster, he had to tell somebody about this, although it did not yet make any sense. But it would, it would, it would have to. The naked man had been a man, yes, but he had white round marble eyes and a knifelike, inhuman nose. If they were on Earth, his kind could be found.

Web lowered himself into the escape pod, strapped himself down and pressed the button. The pod shot down from the station, down and away, and a great orange flame spread out from its bow. It lost speed quickly, steadily, as the rockets pushed it back. After a while the flames died out. The pod began to fall.