Part 3

"Which reminds me," said Jerry, sternly. "I am going to ask you to edit both the tape and that typewritten translation of that conversation. It's just as well too many people don't get the inside story on my job, and its rather rugged drawback. And as for yourself.... Well, I can't order you to forget what you've read there."

"I won't talk about it, sir, if that's what you mean," said the tech. "It's not such a hard secret to keep. All the crewmen on the ship know there's _something_ pretty awful about your job. I just happen to know _what_. All I'd get for spilling the inside dope would be, 'Oh, is _that_ what it is!' Hardly worth it."

"That's hardly a noble reason to keep a secret," Jerry murmured, looking narrow-eyed at the tech.

The man grinned, then shrugged. "Makes my life easy, too. Now when you flare up at me, I'll know why, and skip it."

"Thanks a hell of a lot," Jerry muttered.

The tech laughed aloud.

"But," the zoologist added soberly, "we did learn one surprising lesson today. The forty-minute Contact period can be broken, under certain stresses."

The smile left the tech's face, and he looked earnestly puzzled. "I don't follow you, sir. There was nothing on the tape about--"

"Tape?" said Jerry. "You _saw_ how quickly I came out, didn't you? What's that got to do with the tape?"

"Sir," the tech said hesitantly, "you were under the helmet for the full forty."

Jerry flopped back upon the pillows, staring at the other man as if he'd suddenly gone berserk. "That can't _be_," he said slowly. "I was in a long-life host. The clouds weren't even moving. That baby was living many subjective days in the forty-minute period."

"Begging your pardon, sir," said the tech, "but you must be mistaken. You were gone the full forty."

"That's impossible," said Jerry.

Jana, who'd been standing back from the two men, stepped forward cautiously, apprehensive at butting into something that was not really her affair.

"Excuse me, Lieutenant Norcriss," she said softly, "but Bob's right. You were gone as long as he says."

"You don't understand, either of you!" Jerry snapped. "My time-awareness in a host is subject to the host's time-awareness. So far as this host was concerned, a day was a confoundedly long period. But I could tell the elapsed time by watching the clouds, the height of the sun. They didn't move, either of them, visibly...."

"How's that again, sir?" asked the tech. "How long did you _seem_ to spend?"

"Possibly an hour."

"Well, then." The tech shrugged.

"But this had nothing to do with the host's subjective sense of _time_, Ensign. It was my own knowledge of _objective_ time through watching the sun, the trees, the clouds. None of them moved during my subjective hour in the host-alien. So no time--or very little time; barely a few minutes--could have passed while I was enhosted, do you see?"

"Lieutenant Norcriss," said Jana, abruptly. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but did you say clouds?"

"Yes," said Jerry, puzzled by her intensity. "Why?"

"There hasn't been a cloud in the sky today," she said awkwardly. "I mean--Well, look for yourself!"

Jerry turned his gaze upward through the quartz ceiling of the solarium. The sky, a rich turquoise, was smooth and unbroken save for the glaring gold orb of the sun, Sirius. He sat up then, looking out through the likewise transparent walls. As far as he could see, over storetops, cottage roofs, and distant green glades, the sky was that same unbroken blue.

"But that's crazy!" he said, sinking back against the pillows. "It couldn't have been like that all the time I was in Contact. Could it?"

Jana and Bob exchanged an uncomfortable look.

"Well, sir," the tech said, "we weren't exactly _watching_ the sky, if you know what I mean. But it was clear when you went into Contact. And it's clear _now_."

His voice trailed off, uncertainly, but Jerry gave a slow thoughtful nod. "You're right, Ensign. It is, and it was. The likelihood of its clouding up for forty minutes, and then clearing again is so ridiculous I can't even consider it.... And yet, I _saw_--"

Jerry stopped speaking, and shook his head. Then he waved a hand at the tech, abstractedly. "Get me some coffee, Ensign. I have to think, hard."

* * * * *

When nightfall had cloaked the planet in dark purple folds, Jerry was still gazing intently at nothingness, racking his brain for an answer. Bob, meantime, had checked the card against the ship's files on dealing with alien menaces, and had found--much as both he and Jerry had suspected--that there was no recommendation available. The menace was new. It would have to be approached strictly _ad libidum_. Whatever method served to rid the planet of the menace would then, not before, be incorporated into the electronic memory of the brain on the ship, to serve future colonies who might meet a similar alien species.

"Any ideas, sir?" asked the tech, after a long silence from his superior.

"None," Jerry admitted, not turning his head. "It's pretty damned difficult to find a solution to a problem until you're sure what the problem _is_."

"Well," said the tech, "we played the radar all over the area where the tape said the thing was located. We got nothing. Maybe the kid's mother came back."

"Just a second--" said Jerry. "Ensign, could you rig the machine to give us, not a written transcript of that alien's description, but a drawing of it?"

"Jeepers, sir!" choked the tech, taken aback. "I don't know. I'd have to talk with the engineers."

"It should be possible. Hell, it's got to be. When I was enhosted, my mind transmitted back every bit of info on that body. A man who only knew mechanical drawing could sketch that shape, simply by following the measurement specifications as my mind recorded them. Go on, Ensign, get with it. One way or the other, I want a look at what we're dealing with."

It was nearly midnight when Bob shook Jerry gently awake and handed him a small glossy rectangle of paper.

Jerry, blinking his eyes against the sudden onslaught of light in the room as the tech threw the wall switch, stared blearily at the paper for a moment, blank and disoriented.

"It's the picture, sir," Bob said, recognizing the bafflement on his superior's face for what it was. "I finally had the bright idea of turning the problem over to the brain, aboard the ship. It followed the specifications from the tape by drawing the picture in periods."

"In what periods?" Jerry mumbled, still trying to come awake.

"Not time-periods, sir. Punctuation. Then, when it had the thing done, on a ten-by-fourteen-inch sheet of feed-paper from its roller, I had the ship's photographer take a snapshot and reduce it in size, so it looks at least as good as the average newspaper half-tone job."

Jerry nodded, absorbing the information even as his eyes crept over the image in his hands. "Looks strangely familiar," he said, studying it closely.

"If you'll pardon what sounds like a gag, sir," began the tech, "I think that the picture--in fact, we all think--"

"Yes?" said Jerry, looking at the man.

"Well, the consensus among the crew was that this baby here looks a hell of a lot like _you_, sir."

Jerry sat where he was, his eyes on Bob's face, for a long moment, as fingers of ice took hold of his spine. Then, with unreasoning apprehension, he turned his gaze back upon the near-photographic likeness he held. "Ensign," he said, after a minute. "This _is_ a picture of me."

"But sir, it can't be," said the tech.

"You're wrong," said Jerry, letting the paper drop to the floor. "It can be, because it is. And all at once I think I know why."

Without warning, Jerry swung his legs over the side of the couch and jumped to his feet.

"Listen," he said urgently, "there's no time to lose. Get the hospital staff together, fast, and bring me back their best psyche-man. I need a hypnotist."

"A h-hyp--?" the tech blurted, confused, then gave an obedient nod and hurried out, shaking his head all the way to the switch-board.

* * * * *

"Never mind _why_, Doctor. Can you _do_ it? That's all I care to know," Jerry's voice crackled, his eyes flashing with authority.

"Y-Yes, I think so," quavered the other man. "If you _can_ be hypnotized, I mean."

"All Space Zoologists have the brainpower necessary to be perfect subjects," Jerry snapped. "Quickly, now, Doctor. I've wasted one Contact already."

"Very well, sir," said the man. "If you'll lie back, now, and make your mind blank--"

"I know, I know! Get _on_ with it, will you!"

Bob and Jana stood back in the shadows beside the towering metal control board, listening in silence as the hypnotist put Jerry under, deeper and deeper, until his mind was readily suggestible. Then he made the statements Jerry had told him to make, and with a snap of his fingers brought the zoologist out of hypnosis.

"You heard, Ensign?" asked Jerry. "Did he do exactly as I told him to?"

"Sir!" protested the doctor.

"I mean no offense," said Jerry. "But if your words left my mind too free, too human somehow, the alien would sense it. And a ruse like this one might not work on a second attempt, once the alien had been apprised of our intent."

"He did, sir," said Bob. "Word for word, as you told it to him."

"Good," Jerry said. "Thank you, Doctor. And good night."

"Uh--yes," said the man, finally realizing he was being peremptorily dismissed after coming all the way across the town from his warm bed in the black morning hours. "Good night to you, sir."

* * * * *

He fumbled his way out the door, and Jana, after a glance at Bob, shut it after him. Bob stood beside the control board, waiting as Jerry once more adjusted the helmet upon his head and lay back on the couch.

"All right?" he called to the tech, as Jana, now walking nervously on tiptoe, though there'd been no injunction against noise, hurried to Bob's side and took his arm.

"Ready, sir," Bob said, keeping his voice steady.

"You've set the stopwatch?" warned Jerry.

"I depress the starter the same instant I turn on the machine," said Bob.

"All right, then," said Jerry.

Bob's right hand threw a switch.

Even as it snapped home, his left thumb had jabbed down upon the stopwatch button. The long red sweephand began clicking with relentless eagerness about the dial.

On the couch Jerry stiffened, then relaxed.

"You'd better stay with him," Bob cautioned Jana. "The machine's on automatic. If I'm not back on time, it'll take care of itself."

"Back on time?" she gasped. "But you can't be, Bob. If what he said about the timing--"

Bob shut his eyes and gripped his forehead between thumb and fingers. "Yes, of course. I'm being an idiot. This maneuver is something new. But--" he withdrew his hand from his face and smiled at the girl--"you stay with him anyhow. I'd feel better--safer--if you weren't with me and the others."

"Yes, Bob," she said, in a faint shadow of her normal voice. "Be careful."

Bob grinned with more confidence than he felt, turned and hurried from the room.

Jana moved slowly across the floor to the couch where Jerry Norcriss lay in unnatural slumber, and stood staring down at his strange, young-old face, and her eyes were bright with quiet wonder....

V

"What's this, what's this?" rasped Jerry's mind. "Where have I gotten to, now?"

"It's all right," said a soothing voice. "You're with _me_, now."

"Oh? Oh?" Jerry's mind said, snickering. "And who might _you_ be?"

It was dark as he looked out through the alien eyes, but a quick patting of his paw across his face reassured him that his sharp white incisors, muzzle and stiff gray whiskers were intact and healthy.

"How can I be you?" asked Jerry. "If I'm a gray rat and you're a gray rat, what am I doing here?"

"You've come to spy on me, I know," said the soothing voice. "But see? You have nothing to fear, nothing at all. I'm not going to hurt you. You find no menace in me. Do you?"

"No. No menace. No danger. I'm safe, I'm secure, I'm warm and loved...."

"Relax," said the alien. "Relax, and let me have full control again. You can sleep if you do. You can rest. _I'll_ take care of you, trust in that."

"Yes. Sleep. Rest. No more running, hiding, fearing...." said Jerry Norcriss, the gray rat-mind in the invisible body of another rat much like himself....

* * * * *

"Come on with that flashlight, damn it!" Bob raged, leading the other three crewmen through the woods. Two of them carried rifles, one had a flamethrower, and Bob himself carried one of the new bazookas with a potent short-range atomic warhead. Ollie, the man with the light, hurried up to him with a quick apology.

"Okay, okay," Bob said. "But I've got to see this dial--Ah, yes. This is the way, all right. Come on. Ollie, keep that beam so it spills on the tracking-cone dial as well as on the earth. We don't dare risk losing our way. There are only seven minutes left until Contact is broken."

"Yes, sir. I'll keep it right on there," Ollie said. "But about the lieutenant--are you _sure_ he won't--"

"That's what the stopwatch is for. We _must_ strike just as Contact is being broken. Any sooner, and we kill Lieutenant Norcriss with the alien. Any later, and the alien kills us. The same way it did the others who came upon it."

"But what does it do? What does it look like?" Ollie persisted.

"Damn it, there's no time to talk now! Just keep that light steady, and hurry!"

The men plunged onward through the woods, the white circle of light from the arc-torch splashing the cold leaves and damp, colorless grass with sickly, stark illumination.

* * * * *

"If you would only release your hold," the alien was saying. Then its mind-voice stopped.

Jerry, too, had seen the dancing white freckles that spattered the boles and branches of the nearby trees. The darkness of the woods was rent by streamers of ruler-straight light beams. They began to radiate like luminous wheel-spokes through the tangled leaves of the woods.

"Men!" cried the alien mind. "Men are coming here. Men, our enemies!"

Jerry, still in partial control of the invisible rat-body, fought the flight-impulse that began to stir beneath the unseen skin.

"Run!" shrieked the alien mind. "You fool, can't you see that we must flee this place? Quickly, or we are done for!"

"Run--Flee--" Jerry said dully, within the alien mind. "Yes. Run from men ... the eternal enemy, men. Run, hide, a dark corner, under a bush, behind a tree...."

He felt his own mind joining that of the alien in the preliminary tension that comes before flight.... Then the glaring beam of the arc-torch was full in his eyes, and the hypnotic illusion, at this, the trigger of his psyche, was shattered. And Jerry once again knew himself to be a man.

A man in the body of a rat--the animal which Jerry Norcriss loathed most of all creatures!

"Run!" screamed the alien. "Why don't you--!" Its commands ceased as it realized the difference within the mind that had invaded its body. "You again!" it cried, trying wildly to reassume the placid plump image of that unseen baby once more.

"You're too late," said Jerry, fighting its will with his own as the crewmen broke from the underbrush into the clearing, and the tech, pointing straight at him, yelled a caution to the man with the flame thrower. The man bringing up the terrible gaping mouth of that weapon halted, waiting, as the tech stared at the stopwatch in his hand.

"Five seconds!" cried the tech. "Four ... three ... two ... one.... _Get_ it, quick!"

Jerry, still within the mind and watching with the same horrified fascination as his host, saw the puff of flame within the flame-tube of the weapon, then saw the insane red flower blossoming with its smoking yellow tendrils toward his face--

And the silent white lightning flared--

And he sat up on the couch, back in the solarium.

* * * * *

Jana hurried over to him.

"Did it work? Did it work, sir?" she cried. "Is Bob--"

Jerry patted her hand. "Bob's all right. He was on time. _Just_ on time."

"I still don't understand, sir," said the nurse, sinking onto the couch beside him without waiting for an invitation. "I don't understand _any_ of this!"

For an instant, Jerry resented this familiarity, then felt slightly overstuffed, and slipped an arm paternally across her slim shoulders.

"I'll explain," he said. "It'll pass the time till he gets back."

Jana nodded.

"The alien," Jerry said softly, "was a mimic. A perfect mimic. It was, while non-intelligent, of an abnormally well developed mind in one function: telepathy. That's how it could carry on apparently intelligent mental conversation with me, during my first contact. It could sense my questions, then probe my mind for the answers I wanted most to hear--and play them back to me. For my forty minutes of contact, it told me only what I wanted to know, like a selective echo. It needed no understanding of my questions, nor of the answers it plucked from my mind. It had one instinct: self-preservation. It could sense my question, select an uncontroversial answer from my mind and feed it back to me, without really understanding how it warded me off as a menace to it, any more than a dog understands why lowering its ears and hanging its head as it whines can fend off the wrath of its master. It works; that's all the creature cares about."

"But how did you _know_--?" Jana asked.

"I didn't," Jerry replied. "It fooled me completely. Until the Ensign--Bob told me that my full forty minutes in Contact had elapsed, despite my knowledge that the sun and clouds had remained motionless during my Contact. That threw me, I'll admit, for quite a while. It just didn't make sense."

Jana's eyes widened as she suddenly understood. "And then you realized that you had seen the sun and clouds motionless because that was what you _expected_ to experience when enhosted in a baby!"

"That's it," Jerry nodded. "It made an error with the baby, though. It was able to duplicate it in almost every respect except two: Size and appearance."

"Why?" asked Jana. "And why appear as a baby at all?"

* * * * *

"I'm coming to that," said Jerry. "The size was off because the first thing I saw when I blinked open my eyes was a distant copse of trees, which I took to be an upright pile of leafy twigs. Since my mind possessed information regarding the relative size of babies and twigs, the alien immediately made sure my mind saw other things in the same perspective. By the time it realized it had made an error, it was too late to normalize the baby's dimensions; that would have given its fakery away."

"But why did the thing choose a baby?"

"Because that was the thing's protection! It had a powerful hypnotic power, one that worked on its victims' minds directly through its telepathic interference with sensory perception. It always appeared as the thing the victim would be least likely to harm. In my case, a baby. But it made a slight error there, too. I'm a bachelor, Jana. There's only one baby with whom I ever had any great amount of experience: myself."

"And the invisibility?"

"I have no recollection, even now, of my body when I was a baby. I may have stared at my toes, played with my fingers, but they just never registered on my consciousness as being part of _myself_. So the thing was stuck when it came to reproducing me visually, since it depended upon my own memory for details. But it was able to supply the way I'd _felt_ as a baby. Every baby has an acute awareness of its own skin; it will cry if any particle of its flesh is bothered in the slightest. So the alien fed the 'feel' of my baby-body back to me, if not the view. Which is why the electronic brain on the ship was able to duplicate the detail into an almost perfect replica of my babyhood likeness."

Jana nodded, as she finally understood the meaning of that strange illusion. "And this time? That post-hypnotic suggestion you had the doctor give you, I mean: that you'd think you were a gray rat until such time as the light of the arc-torch caught you directly in the eyes...."

"Duplicity, Jana. It had to be that way. The alien was very sure of its powers. If I returned, and it were a baby again, I couldn't attack it or thwart its ends. And such an attack was necessary. I had to be able to fight it, to hold it in place for that last moment before it was destroyed. Which is why I chose a gray rat, an animal I cannot bear the sight of. When the light struck my eyes and I became myself again, I caught the alien unawares. Then, before it could change to a baby, and start lulling me back into camaraderie, it was too late. Bob had given the order to fire. And here I am."

* * * * *

Hurrying footsteps sounded in the corridor. The door burst open and Bob rushed in, his face anxious and creased with worry until he saw Jerry sitting on the couch, alive and well.

"Whoosh!" The tech expelled a mingled chuckle and sigh as he sank into a chair opposite the zoologist. "Well, sir, I can't tell you how glad I am to see you. I couldn't be sure you'd gotten out of that thing alive until I got back here. Glad you made it, sir. Damn glad!"

"That 'thing' you mentioned," said Jerry. "What did it _actually_ look like?"

Bob jerked his head toward the corridor. "The other guys are bringing it along. I kind of thought you'd want a peep at it."

As more footfalls were heard from the corridor, Bob bounced to his feet again, and stepped to the door. "Hold it a minute, guys," he said, then turned back into the room. "Jana, I don't think you'd better stick around for this. It's not very pretty."

The girl hesitated, then flashed him a smile and shook her head. "I'll stay. It can't look as ugly as a bad case of peritonitis on the surgeon's table. If I can take that without upchucking, I can take anything."

Bob shrugged. "Suit yourself, honey. Just remember you got fair warning." He leaned back out the door. "Okay. Bring it in."

The crewmen, looking a little ill, came slowly into the room, bearing a bloated, scorched object on a stretcher they'd contrived from two long poles and their jackets. They set it onto the tiled floor before the zoologist, then stepped away, all of them wiping their hands hard against their trousers in ludicrous unison, though their grip on the poles had not brought them into actual contact with the alien's corpse.

"There it is, sir," said Ollie Gibbs. "And you are very welcome to it."

Jana, to her credit, had not upchucked, but she went a shade paler, and her mouth grew tight.

Jerry studied the burnt husk, from its sharp-fanged mouth--easily eighteen inches from side to side--to its stubby centipedal cilia under the grossly swollen body.

"Damn thing's all bloat, slime and mouth," said the tech, suddenly shuddering. "I wonder if its victims felt those jaws rending them open, or if it kept their minds fooled through to the end?"

"I don't think we'll ever know that, Ensign," said Jerry. "Unless you feel like going out there and playing victim to one of this thing's confreres?"

"No thanks, sir," said Bob, so swiftly that Jana laughed. "I'd rather fall out an airlock in hyperspace."

* * * * *

"Well, here's what we do to get rid of this thing, then," said Jerry. "Since it assumes a form that's the least likely to be harmed by whatever presence stimulates its mimetic senses, we'll have to trick it. Before this thing decomposes too far, rig it up with an electrical charge, and stimulate its nerve-centers artificially. That ought to give you an accurate microtape of its life-pulse. Then hook the tape to a scanner-beam, and _send_ the life-pulse into the mine-area. When the fellows of this creature react to it, they'll assume the safest possible form: their own."

"I get you, sir!" said Bob. "Then all the miners have to do is see it for what it is, and shoot it."