Part 13

I thought the skin of his neck paled, but I couldn't be sure. Again I was struck by the degree of his self-control. But perhaps he has no emotions, I thought. Perhaps he doesn't feel anything at all--love or hate, excitement or fear. He might be able to analyze them coldly but he wouldn't understand them. The thought excited me. Here was a weakness in the alien mind.

"You are a sick man, Mr. Cameron," Dr. Temple said quietly. "I realized that you were ill when you talked to me on Saturday--but I did not then believe you capable of murder. If you've really killed someone you are in serious trouble. And you have also been hurt. Your hand--"

"I only need one good finger to kill you," I said. "I could have done it as you walked through the door but I wanted you to know it was coming."

He smiled thinly. "And why should you want to kill me?"

"Because you are one of them--the leader. I should have known it before, I guess. It wasn't until I saw the hardened crystal that I knew. That's how you got to earth, Doctor--as a pair of innocent-looking crystals. I don't pretend to understand what kind of creature you are but I've seen the other crystal there in both its frozen and its active states. I imagine you were the first one to be activated. The real Dr. Temple received the crystals for research. He was probably the first one to touch them with his bare hands--or his tongue."

"You have a vivid imagination, Mr. Cameron."

"Then all you had to do was find a suitable subject for the other crystal. Helen Darrow was a shrewd choice. She would never be suspected and she could work closely with you under the guise of a student."

"Helen Darrow?"

I laughed. "It's no good, Doctor. It won't work."

"I'm going to call a doctor for you, Mr. Cameron. I hope what you say about killing a girl is not true. But I'm afraid I shall also have to call the police."

For the first time I felt a twinge of doubt. His reactions were not what I had expected. But he had to be the other alien. It couldn't be anyone else.

He took a step away from me. "Don't move!" I snapped.

He froze. I pushed the muzzle of the gun hard against the back of his neck.

"If you do that again, I'll kill you!" I said savagely.

For a moment he was silent. Then he spoke quietly, his voice soothing like that of a parent talking to an offended child. "That will accomplish nothing except my pointless murder, Mr. Cameron. I will do all I can to help you. And I assure you that you will not be held responsible for the killing of this--this girl you say is dead. You are not of sound mind. I can testify to that and I'll be believed. My word carries a lot of weight."

"I'm sure it does. But you're not going to testify to anything. I'll think no more of destroying you than the other one. It will give me pleasure."

"You keep saying you killed one of these--these aliens of yours. Tell me, how did you succeed in doing it? Didn't you tell me they were able to control your mind? Surely the creature would have been able to stop you."

"She did stop me, Doctor--but I'd figured on that. I took precautions. I had someone else there with me--a girl. She had a gun. While the alien tried to make me drown myself, the girl got behind her unnoticed and shot her."

The scientist was silent for a moment. When he spoke his voice seemed harder, colder. "Clever, if true," he said. "But it surprises me that a bullet would destroy the hold this creature had on its body. If it was as powerful as you say it was, I would think--"

"Hope, you mean, don't you, Doctor? Are you still wondering whether a bullet would disturb your body? I think it will. I gambled on that and won. You'll lose control. There really isn't much of that body left, is there?"

"You should write fiction, Mr. Cameron. This is all very interesting, but since I'm not one of your aliens will you please remove that gun from my neck? It is not a pleasant feeling."

I hesitated. He hadn't introduced one false note. If he were not the alien I would be destroying one of the world's greatest men, an irreplaceable mind. But there was only one way of finding out. I had to make him act.

"I'm sorry, Doctor," I said. "I can't take any chances. And I've delayed too long. I have to kill you."

"You'll never get away--the shot will be heard."

"I'll have to run that risk."

My finger started to tighten on the trigger. My hand was shaking and my mouth was dry.

"Stop!"

The unleashed force of his mind was beyond any power I had yet experienced, crushing and terrible. My right hand was a thing of petrified wood, without nerve or feeling, incapable of the fractional pressure that would have sent a bullet smashing into the alien's brain.

"You force me to do this," he said harshly. "You are a stupid man."

I fought to open the constricted muscles of my throat. "You--you didn't think I'd come alone, did--did you?" I choked out.

He smiled. "That's a very old trick, Mr. Cameron. I am in full possession of Dr. Temple's memory so I cannot be fooled by your childish ruses. I'm perfectly aware that there is no one behind me. Coming alone was very foolish. You might have won."

He had to believe me. I had to break for an instant the unbearable pressure of the force that froze my hand. Then I realized that my burned hand could move. I controlled the first leap of excitement. He wouldn't believe I had an ally--unless he read my mind! If he felt the wild rush of my relief and excitement he would believe. And it wouldn't have to be relief--it could be any emotion! Any feeling at all! He wouldn't immediately know the difference!

And suddenly I looked past him. My eyes brightened with delight and a smile leaped to my lips. In that same instant, I scraped the raw, burned flesh of my left hand across the sharp-edged buckle of my belt. Pain stormed through my body and exploded in my brain--searing, hideous, heart-stopping pain. And the alien turned in frantic haste.

For a split-second I felt relief from the pressure of his mind. My finger jabbed the trigger and the gun spat. A raw, black hole opened in his skull.

As he fell, I was already jamming the gun into my pocket and fumbling for the lighter. The sound of the shot had been loud in my ears, but I felt sure that it would have been only a muffled retort in the corridor. It might be another minute before anyone came to investigate. Or it might be seconds.

His face started to decompose. The coverall he wore began to sag as his body disintegrated before my eyes, no longer held together by the power of the alien mind, pulsating now in shrill, meaningless waves. I saw behind the powdery tissue a withdrawing tentacle of cells. Feet sounded in the corridor outside and there was a murmur of voices. Someone tried the door.

The alien shrank, the fingers folding inward, wrapped in the hardening membraneous tissue. I waited a moment longer. An urgent knock rattled the glass panel of the door. The singing vibrations dimmed in my mind like the fading wail of a siren.

And the glittering crystal lay still on the floor among the dust and the soft white bones and the crumpled coverall. I turned on the blue jet of flame and held it on the bright surface of the crystal chunk, held it while the coverall's smoking stench filled my nostrils, held it until the blackened face of death had seeped deep into the heart of the thing on the floor.

I heard voices through the haze in my brain. "Something's burning!" "Open up in there!" "Dr. Temple? Are you there?"

I scooped up the crystal chunk. It was still hot, but there was no life in it. I grabbed the other from the desk and jammed both into my pocket. Then I bundled the pile of soft, pulpy bones and decayed tissue in the folds of the coverall and threw the bundle into a wastebasket beside the desk. I grabbed a pile of papers and crammed them into the basket.

When the door was smashed inward I was heroically trying to put out the fire which had somehow started in the wastebasket. I had burned my left hand badly in the process. There was nothing left of the man who had been Dr. Jonas Temple but a pile of smoking ash.

25

Morning sunlight had dissipated the early mist. I walked slowly along the road from the elevated station toward my trailer. Behind me the night's nightmare, the hour of suspicious questioning about the fire. Someone had remembered my visit to Dr. Temple on Saturday, so my appearance there this morning had seemed plausible. There would be more questions, I knew, when Dr. Temple did not appear. I didn't care. There would be questions but no answers.

The two small crystal clusters felt heavy in my pocket. I stopped and took them out, weighing them in my hand like marbles. I had an impulse to throw them into the dust at the side of the road. Instead I pushed them back into my pocket.

Souvenirs, I thought. One needed to remember.

I looked up. A tall slim figure stood at the edge of the highway, her blonde hair shimmering in the sunlight. She began to run toward me. I couldn't move. I felt an elation I had never known before, a strange whispering excitement. And suddenly I knew what I must subconsciously have divined at the very beginning, knew the incredible truth. Here was more than a woman's suppliant beauty, so marvelously warm and human. Here now the reason for the shy withdrawal, the trembling eagerness, the intimate knowledge. Here was--

"Erika!"

The cry arrested her. She stopped not ten feet away from me, breathless. I felt the quivering of her unvoiced fear for me, the surge of joy that leaped into her mind.

Her mind!

I knew then that I had not called aloud.

* * * * *

MADNESS ON HIS MIND

Paul Cameron heard voices.

There were two of them. They were whispering to each other in the bones of his skull, wearily, interminably, making monstrous plans to conquer the Earth....

Cameron was an educated man, an English professor at a leading university. Was he going insane? Or was he really tuned in somehow on the telepathic conversations of a recon patrol for a terrible Martian invasion?

He tried warning the others, but nobody believed him.

And then one day the voices stopped for a moment. "_Wait_," one of them said then. "_There's a listener. We've got to get the listener. When you find out who he is, kill him...._"

A ZENITH ORIGINAL