Chapter V

The food they gave her was thick red meat, half-cooked. They sat down beside her, three of the old men, together in a small bare hut. None of them ate. They watched her, grinning, speaking lowly and incoherently among themselves.

She felt like a blue-ribbon heifer. Best of breed. She found out that she couldn't eat very much.

"Food," an old man said with concern, pointing at her plate. He apparently knew less English than the rest. "Food," he repeated insistently, making the motions of eating.

"No," Ivy said. She rose up suddenly and shook her head. "I don't want any." If they wanted her to eat, maybe she'd better not eat.

Maybe there was something in the food--

They looked her over thoroughly as she stood before them, grinning horribly. They were not too concerned that she did not eat. Later, if necessary, they would come back with vials and needles.

The three men rose. One of them motioned the others to leave. They bowed and walked out, looking back over their shoulders to grin.

She faced the old man across the low wooden table.

"It is perhaps time that you learn why you are here," the old man said quietly. His English was perfect. His face was detached, unsmiling.

She waited.

"You are to be used for breeding," the old man said.

She stared, not understanding.

"I will be brief," he said, still quietly, his eyes white and steady. "The sooner you realize the nature of our purpose the sooner you will be content. There is no virtue in resistance. We can keep you under paralysis indefinitely"--he smiled slightly--"for the full nine months, if necessary. Do you understand?"

She began to back slowly away.

The old man continued to smile.

"It is possible that you have already guessed that we are not--human. If not I tell you so now. Our race has its origins in a system of which you have undoubtedly never heard. But that is no matter. Our races are compatible genetically. In the end you will breed."

He paused, watching her with a calm amusement. Ivy could not move.

"Our race is very old, much, much older than yours. It is also, in a sense, biologically old. In effect, the race is dying. It has been dying for quite some time. We have managed to keep ourselves--virile--by use of the obvious method. It is for this reason that we are here. We need new blood. Young blood. We must interbreed."

He walked slowly and calmly around the edge of the table.

"You have been chosen to bear our children. This is no particular honor, I know, but I will repeat that you cannot possibly succeed in resisting. Be practical, perform your function. If you are tractable, you will be given much. If you are stubborn, you will be paralyzed. You will not under any circumstances be killed or allowed to die. You will have company. We have--collected--many of your race, both male and female. You will not, of course, be allowed association with the males."

He turned and strode to the door. He paused with his hand on the knob, his smile grew wide and his teeth showed.

"I think it best that you be paralyzed now."

Ivy still could not move. There was in all this a dreamlike quality which she could not believe. Within her mind she slowly retreated.

The old man opened the door. Two men who had been waiting came quickly in, clutched her, injected her. In a moment she lay on the floor, the drug hanging heavily on her wildly pulsing heart.

The first old man stood over her, pulled out a small notebook.

"You are lucky," he said, with an ironic smile, "I think I will breed you myself."

He bent down and touched her. The white eyes grew dark at the edges.

"I think I will breed you tomorrow," he said.

* * * * *

The scout ship of the Galactics hung in a hole in space several feet in the air above Main Street. The bending mechanism was on, light rays were diverted around it. It was invisible, unapproachable, although it admitted enough light so that it itself could see. Kunklin and Prule, who were for a while similarly almost nonexistent, floated down from the ship and walked away curiously in the middle of the street. They adjusted themselves to solidity in the alley behind Web's hotel. The power necessary to maintain the bender was enormous, and had to come from portable power sources, and they decided that it would be best to save power for emergencies. Prule searched for a moment through a small, voluted lens. He found Web.

"What's he doing?"

"Nothing."

"Ingenious man. Is he armed?"

"No."

"Um. We cannot permit him to be killed."

"Well, he is apparently very strong."

"There are times when that helps."

"Still, we had better record him."

"Wait. He's coming down."

* * * * *

It was time to do something. Web did not know what, but he had to do something. There was a phone in the shabby little foyer, but he passed it by. It had occurred to him that Dundon would be no help at all. He stepped out into the street.

He had a strong fleeting impulse to tell somebody, anybody, just for the companionship of another human being. Immediately, the thought passed.

"I have just come down from a space satellite," he would say, "where I encountered forty-seven disappearing men and a naked man in open space--"

He looked around for the nearest drugstore. It was quite dark in the streets and he was not too conspicuous in the tight army clothes--a field jacket will fit an elephant--but he could not help feeling like a neon sign. But a gun. He needed a gun, and a quick way out of here.

Hell, where could you get a gun?

From the police.

He looked around seriously and purposefully, but no blue coat was near. He walked into the drugstore.

At the counter there were five people. All with their backs turned. The counter man was a young boy with a fat nose. Web slipped into the phone booth, deciding on an impulse to call Dundon anyway. It was possible that he would die soon, and there ought to be someone who knew about the naked man.

In his pockets were a half dollar and three pennies. No other change. He swore.

At that moment he looked up out of the booth, saw a small, dry man walk stiffly into the store.

He froze.

There was something--

The man looked around, saw him.

The man was old, his face was expressionless. His eyes were all right, were dark and usual, but his nose was alien.

There was no doubt about that. To any other human it would look merely odd, but to Web it was alien. Knifelike and alien.

They stood facing each other across the few feet of store. Web reached again for the gun he did not have. Quickly--but with a gliding smoothness, in no hurry at all--the alien turned away. He sat down on a stool at the fountain.

Web stood for several seconds in the booth, watching.

He tried to think, but there was no time. Others would be gathering outside. He fought the impulse to run. After a long moment he opened the door of the booth and walked out into the store. The alien did not turn. The huge glass window of the store was unblocked. Web could see dozens of shoppers pass by in the night. In the crowd there would be old men. To go out now was foolish.

He walked over to the fountain and sat down two seats away from the alien. There was a fat, soda-eating woman between them. He ordered coffee.

No way out. They were not likely to come in, but there was no way out. Through the back door would be useless. Darker, less people. He looked down toward the alien. The little man was sitting quietly, the glass untouched before him. The nose was sharp in profile.

Web made up his mind quickly, in the only way possible. His strength, his size was his only asset. He would have to use it.

He paid for his coffee, picked up his change, then stood up and looked for the light switch. There were four long fluorescent tubes above him, no chance to break them all. He saw the light switch against the back wall, then took a deep breath.

He walked up quickly behind the alien.

The little man did not move.

"You," Web said.

The alien face swung toward him.

"Get up," Web said.

The dry face whitened, but the expression did not change and the old man did not say anything.

"I asked you to get up," Web said gently. His right hand hung low, Web clamped down on the alien's frail shoulder and jerked him to his feet. When the alien opened his mouth, Web hit him low. The man doubled. Web picked him up and heaved him the full length of the store, in the direction of the light switch. He leaped after the hurtling body, threw the switch.

In the sudden blessed blackness he found the alien's head on the floor, crashed it down twice with a great, nerveless strength. Frantically, savagely, while the fat lady screamed and the few other people bellowed toward the door, he searched the alien's pockets. There was nothing resembling a gun. What he found he jammed quickly into his own pocket, then whirled and waited, crouching.

Outside were shouts, and a crowd was forming. When there were enough people outside he stood up and ran for the door.

He weighed two hundred and forty pounds. He came through the door like a freight express, ripped into the crowd with all the power of his enormous body. He went through and over, came out the other side, let out his speed and began to run.

A light orange flame touched a brick wall near him, glowed briefly on a car, on a post, on a sign above him. He swerved. There was an alley, dark and open.

He ran into it, over the fence at the other end, and through a back yard. The flame followed in soft bursting balls. He was in another alley with open light in front of him, when the flame caught up with him.

It took him just under the right shoulder blade, burned a hole clean through him in the space of a second. He died on his feet, still running.

* * * * *

The recording was made in the drugstore, from an alley a few feet away. It was made just in time for the Galactics to turn their talents to other things. Altogether they had observed seven Faktors in the crowd that gathered in front of the store. Kunklin had already obliterated the four who lay in wait in the darkness at the rear, and the three at the hotel.

It was not difficult. There is no single being in the entire galaxy with the massed, polarized power of a Galactic repairman.

They found Web's body in the alley. It was of no use anymore, to anybody, and was inconvenient. So they dissolved it.

* * * * *

When Web awoke there was a light gentle clicking in his mind that he did not follow at all. He lay listening to it for a long while, gathering himself, creeping out of a thick numbness.

And then he sat bolt upright.

He was on a train.

The clicking was the sound of wheels against rails. He stared at the room around him, at the open window and the flat green fields rolling by beyond it. For a moment he was extremely dizzy. He lowered his head and waited.

After a while his head cleared and he could stand up. He walked unsteadily to the window and looked out, saw nothing but fields and quick-swishing poles. He turned back to the bunk on which he had been lying. He was alone in the compartment.

A train?

How in God's name did he get on a train?

The last thing he remembered was a numbing crouch, a heart-bursting need for action. Slowly at first, then with great clarity, he remembered being on the floor of the drugstore, waiting for the crowd to gather so he could make a dash for the door.

But he could not remember moving. He could not remember anything but crouching. And then--nothing. His memory ended like a burned-out match.

And there were no bruises or lumps on his head. He felt it carefully to make sure. The only pain he felt anywhere in his body was a dull, left-over aching in his side--that had come from the landing in the pod.

Well somehow, obviously, he had been knocked out.

But--the train.

Dammit, hadn't they been trying to kill him?

It made no sense. Never in his life had his mind just up and gone blank. But he had not been hit. He had been paralyzed somehow, and taken out of the drugstore and--

He put his hand in his pocket. For the first time it occurred to him that he was wearing different clothes.

He sat down abruptly, looked down at himself with increasing amazement. The army clothes were gone. In their place was a stiff white shirt and brown tweed pants, and a loosely knotted red plaid tie. His eyes leaped to the door of the compartment. A matching tweed coat, obviously new, hung from a wire coat hanger.

Am I me? he asked himself. He was utterly lost.

Across from the bunk there was a small wash room and a mirror. He went over and looked at himself. He had not seen himself in a white shirt for a long time and for a moment it was odd, but then, it was his own face. There was no change. And he needed a shave.

He went back and sat down on the bed.

The minutes ticked by and when he had sat long enough without thinking of anything at all he caught a firm grip on himself and tried to go back over the whole thing. It was none of it real, and he immediately rejected it. He had not gone up in a satellite at all, or driven a halftrack out of a desert, and there was no naked man--

Yes he had. He damn well had.

He was Lieutenant Augustus Webster Hilton, and all of this had happened. He focused again on where he was.

A train. Alone.

Bound for where?

He moved suddenly, with a baffled, growing anger. One thing at least he could find out. He stood up and put on the jacket. He was on his way out to find a porter when he felt the bulge in his pocket.

Instantly, he remembered the things he had taken from the dead alien. They had been transferred to the pocket of his new clothes. The courtesy of it struck him as incredible. He spread the things out on the bed.

There was a set of keys, ordinary keys. There was a metallic disc about the size of a quarter, engraved with meaningless figures. A coin? A lucky piece? Probably a coin. There was a handkerchief, soiled, and a small box of pasty white tablets. He put them down immediately. The important thing was a card. A calling card, on the face of which, simply printed, were the words:

Albert Bosco, M.D.
213 Wingate Rd.
Chicago, Ill.

The card was white paper, nothing unusual, but he stared at it with mixed amazement and disbelief. It occurred to him for a rather horrible second that the man he had killed might conceivably not have been an alien.

But no. He recalled the nose clearly. The nose was alien, the man was alien. And where he had gotten the card, and what use he had for it, had probably died with him.

And then, of course, there was no reason why an alien named Albert Bosco could not be a doctor.

But that was all he had gotten from the alien's pockets. It was a curiously ordinary and unexciting mess of nothing, there was no trace here of anything not human. But it did give him one thing: his destination.

And whoever had put him on the train knew that too.

The first porter he found let slip, luckily, that his name had been given as Mr. Pringle. Where they got that one, or how they got him on the train, Web was never to know. And yessir, why sutinly, sir, said the porter, looking at him oddly, as he had every right to look, this here now train sho' does stop at Chicago.

When he left the train at Chicago it was after midnight.

Dammit, he said to himself bitterly, I got to do everything at night.

He had planned to dodge around the station a bit before leaving, but there was no crowd. The place was wide and bare, stony, with a few night travelers dozing on benches. None of them he could see had sharp noses.

But now he was not sure whether they were after him or not, because--

--who in God's name had put him on the train?

He brooded for a while in a small coffee shop, but it got more and more complicated. Since the aliens had not killed him, and in fact obviously meant for him to go to Chicago and look up this man Bosco, there was no way to understand the bombing of the pod, or the empty trucks, or anything. Were there two kinds of aliens, the good guys and the bad guys? That was possible. His mind opened up. If you accept the presence of one alien, you might just as well accept dozens.

And that was quite a thought. As a matter of fact, how many aliens were there, really? The whole darn world could be shot through with aliens, skinny ones, fat ones, straight ones, bent ones, maybe all the odd-looking people he knew were aliens. Maybe even, maybe Dundon was an alien.

He looked around furtively. In a coffee shop, late at night and not a very clean coffee shop, it is remarkable how thoroughly inhuman people can look.

He left the shop.

Well, he had no way of knowing what was up, who was good or who was bad. But a lot of men had died, and until he knew why, and who did it, and how, and could protect himself, he was going to trust nobody. He was not going to walk deserted streets in the middle of the night looking for Bosco. He hailed a cab for the Statler Hotel. To his relief, he found that there was a Statler in Chicago.

He was given a room for which he could not possibly pay if he stayed here for any length of time, and he thought once more of Dundon.

He would have to call Dundon. He would explain the last few hours as some kind of amnesia, during which he had gotten out of the drugstore safely, bought some new clothes, read the alien's card, and boarded a train for Chicago, all without knowing it.

Although that was the most logical explanation, there was an odd feeling in his mind and he did not believe it. But he decided to tell Dundon that anyway.

It was while he was making the call that the Faktors found him again.