Part 9

I looked at her sharply and she blushed. Her head turned away quickly, but not before I saw the creeping stain of red under her skin. For a moment, I was too astonished to reply. The girl's next words made me forget all about her odd behavior.

"The police were here," she said, her glance brushing mine for only an instant. "They wished to see you."

I felt a quick stab of warning. My gaze narrowed, trying to read her expression. The police had not been satisfied with my story, then. And this girl had backed up my alibi.

"Were they questioning you again--about the other night?" I asked with an attempt at casualness.

"Oh, no!" She shook her head in a terse, firm negative. "They were very nice. They said they would stop back to see you later."

"You didn't--tell them anything else?"

A faint smile touched her lips and I seemed to see her face revealed for the first time without the mask of shyness. It was a face that mirrored warmth and a hidden humor, a sensitive, lovely face.

"There was no need," she said. "I do not think they are interested any more."

"But they didn't say why they wanted to see me?"

All at once she appeared to become aware of my close scrutiny and she took a step back. "Nothing," she said quickly. "They--they told me nothing."

She started to turn away and I stepped quickly toward her, catching her arm. "Wait!" I said urgently. I could feel a faint trembling under my fingers, a current of--what? Excitement? Fear? "I want to thank you--for being worried about me."

Her eyes met mine briefly and I was surprised to see that they reflected none of the timidity or apprehension that seemed to vibrate in her body.

"It is only natural that I would be concerned," she said, and even her voice held a different tone, a note of surprising tenderness.

And while I stared, she pulled away from me and ran lightly up the steps and into her trailer. The door closed firmly behind her.

I took a step after her. Her words came back to me, her news about the police. They would be back. And there could be only one reason for their wanting to talk to me again.

It took all the control I had to keep from turning and running.

I let myself into my trailer. It seemed stuffy inside, the clean, cool, filtered air slightly stale after a day without human smells to combat. An impulse of caution made me go through the trailer quietly. In the compact, carefully planned rooms, it would have been impossible for anyone to hide. I felt the absurdity of expecting to find police lurking in the closet or under the bed, but I was not acting very rationally. The desire to flee followed me through the empty rooms.

A woman had been killed and the police had reason to think that I might be involved. And I had lied. Why else should I lie unless I was guilty? From their point of view the conclusion was obvious. And then it occurred to me that they might have even more reason than I knew to find me a prime suspect. Evidence could have been planted to incriminate me. Why not? It would be one way to muffle the listener's ears. Modern forces of justice were quick and unsentimentally ruthless in dealing with a murderer. They had to be in an overcrowded world.

Restraint snapped. I ran into the bedroom and fumbled hastily in the closet for my one small suitcase. Tossing it onto the bed, I began to pull a few clothes out of the closet and the chest. I snatched a razor from the washstand and a windproof jacket from its hook. When I had jammed everything into it and slammed it shut, I stood over the suitcase, panting. It seemed to me that I could smell my own fear, sharp and acrid, soiling the conditioned air. I felt an unexpected revulsion.

I sat on the bed. For a long moment I didn't move. My mind seemed frozen. The trailer was very silent and I listened to my own strained breathing. And at last I held up my fear and examined it, and I knew that I could not run.

I was not guilty. Flight, in any event, would be more incriminating than anything I could possibly do, and if they were really after me I would be picked up within hours.

Besides, I thought without humor, I could always plead insanity.

* * * * *

I had less than an hour to wait. I heard the helicopter whirring overhead and was at the window when it dropped gently onto the landing strip across the street. The two policemen came directly toward my trailer, moving unhurriedly. I recognized the chunky sergeant who had questioned me before. The same lean partner was with him. I opened the door as they reached the steps.

Sgt. Bullock looked up mildly. "Glad we caught you in, Mr. Cameron."

"I heard you were looking for me."

"Yeah, we thought you might be a little worried about the case we talked to you about."

I stared at him, puzzled. His attitude was not that of the aggressive policeman. He seemed almost apologetic.

"We have our job to do, Mr. Cameron, and we have to run down every possibility just as a matter of routine."

"Sure. I understand."

He grinned. The square face which had appeared so mean and hard acquired the pudgy friendliness of a well-fed puppy.

"You have to admit it looked kind of funny, your asking about the girl and her being killed a couple of hours later. It's the kind of thing we can't ignore."

"Yes, of course. Have you--discovered anything new? I mean, do you know who did it?"

"Oh, yeah, we got him. The owner of the restaurant where she worked."

"Harry?"

"That's his name. Seems like he's been crazy about the girl and there's been a little trouble before. She was the friendly type. I guess she's been servicing half the college crowd."

I shook my head. "Harry," I repeated blankly.

"Yeah. Well, he's caused trouble before this when he caught her with some kid. He hangs around her place and he beat her up a couple of times. So it looks like he was jealous and they had a battle and he lost his head." The sergeant shrugged. "Happens every day."

Still stunned, I stared at the two officers. The full implications of what Sgt. Bullock had said were just beginning to penetrate. If Harry was the killer--

"Are you sure?" I asked.

The sergeant appeared surprised. "Oh, he hasn't confessed yet. We picked him up a few hours ago and he wouldn't say anything. Stubborn guy. But we'll have the results of the lie detector and serum tests within a few hours and that'll wrap it up. He did it, all right. He was seen near her place that night, and the neighbors heard them quarreling. We'll be digging up more stuff on him, now that we got it pinned down."

I felt a numbing cold settling at the base of my neck. "Thanks for taking the trouble to tell me this," I said thickly.

"No trouble, Mr. Cameron. This is our patrol area anyway. We're around here pretty regular. Just thought we'd drop by and take a load off your mind."

"Thanks."

The thin, silent partner spoke for the first time. "Never thought you did it anyway," he said laconically.

I tried a smile. My lips felt like stiff rubber. "You had me worried. I'm glad it's all cleared up."

"Yeah," the sergeant said heavily. "So are we."

They turned away. I managed to utter a reply to their casual goodbyes. They crossed the street and climbed into the helicopter. A moment later, it rose slowly into the air. I watched it until it had dwindled out of sight, lost in the afternoon haze.

All over, I thought. The mystery all cleared up. No mystery at all. There never had been one. Lois Worthington's murder had been the one tangible proof I had that the aliens were real and dangerous. But she had been killed by a jealous lover.

There were no more threads to cling to.

I stumbled back into the trailer. Dropping onto the couch under the long window, I lay motionless, my eyes open and unseeing, fixed on some distant point beyond the ceiling. My mind turned over sluggishly. With careful logic I tried to examine all the facts. Like a policeman, I thought, investigating a crime. A reported crime. You check each suspect, eliminating them one by one. When the list is limited that's not hard. I had done that. None of my four suspects was capable of the monstrous plot I had imagined. None had super-human powers. So there were no suspects. Better take another look at the crime, a close look. Question the witnesses, see if their testimony is reliable, make sure it stands up. This time there was only one witness who claimed that a crime had been committed, an attempt at murder. The victim himself, Paul Cameron. Queer duck, a bastard, mother's dead so he lives alone, keeps pretty much to himself, no close friends. Got a vivid imagination. Keeps hearing things. Is he the only witness to the fact that there was a crime? Yes. Well, how do we know he's not lying? How do we know it's not all in his mind?

And that was it. Investigation completed. There was no crime. There were no aliens.

For long, painful, unaccounted minutes I confronted this inevitable conclusion. Then, in one of those odd mental leaps that seem to have no apparent motive, like the sudden sideways jump of a grasshopper, I thought of Swami Fallaninda, the Exalted One. I could hear the vibrant echo of his voice. "Know that when your mind is opened to truth the powers of darkness can hold no influence over you." A wise platitude, I thought. When you examined with the cold objectivity of distance any of the little man's pompous phrases, they resolved themselves into very ordinary statements. His devoted circle of followers thought he was a man apart, a special being in touch with the Cosmic Consciousness, a man one with God. The brief episode with the little mystic had left an unusually deep impression on me--but the message he brought back from his astral plane could not save me.

There was another god left to me, one I had not turned to, the last one who stood between me and the powers of darkness which sought to possess my mind--the man of science.

18

Dr. Jonas Temple was a man of about sixty, whose appearance belied his years. His hair was a crisp iron gray, cropped close to a large, strongly-modeled head. His features were heavy without being coarse and the flesh was firm and ruddy. Of medium height and powerfully built, he looked more like an athletically vigorous man who was capable of exhausting physical labor than a renowned geophysicist who seldom left the pale blue atmosphere of his laboratory.

His eyes, bright blue and intelligent, regarded me steadily. Their expression was thoughtful and appraising rather than mocking. I felt grateful.

I knew that I had been fortunate in finding him in his office alone on a Saturday evening. The building was almost empty. One of Dr. Temple's assistants was working in a small laboratory down the hall and janitors were puttering about the building on their routine cleanup chores. I reflected that it was an index to the character of the man in front of me that I would have found him here, still working at the end of a long day, tireless and dedicated. And it was even more characteristic that he would take the time to listen to my story without laughing or showing impatience.

"Let's review what you're suggesting," Dr. Temple said. He touched a jet of flame to the fragrant ash in the deep bowl of his pipe. "What you're asking me to believe is that some form of alien life has assumed human form--"

"Possessed human bodies."

"Ah, yes. Possessed." The blue eyes squinted at me speculatively, and I knew that the word had called to mind the devil-possessions and exorcisms which had once been so prominent a part of the history of Christianity. "They control these bodies as their own. A kind--intelligent parasite."

I nodded. I could feel the tension in my body as I waited, like a network of wires being stretched tighter.

"And you can hear their thoughts?" Dr. Temple asked.

"They're telepaths."

"But that means you are, too, because you're the only one who hears them."

"Yes," I said stubbornly.

"Can you hear mine? Can you project yours to me?"

I was silent. This was one of the barriers I had run into every time I reviewed the facts in my mind. There was one answer I had tried to accept, but even as I voiced it now I knew it didn't sound convincing.

"Perhaps true telepathy--direct and conscious tele-communication as opposed to the random reception of a thought--requires two beings capable of extra-sensory perception in a highly developed degree--sender and receiver."

"Which would help to explain why this--this talent of yours hasn't revealed itself before now."

"But it has! That is, there were things like the vision of my father's death--not telepathy but related experience, clairvoyance."

"Yes." The scientist frowned. "You will forgive me, Mr. Cameron, if I do not give too much weight to that experience. It's not at all uncommon. People envision harm to those close to them every day and it is inevitable that they will think it extraordinary when one day something does happen."

"But I didn't even know my father existed!"

"Perhaps." The voice was gentle, the blue eyes kindly. "You could easily have known that he did, by deduction or through some chance remark of your mother's. You could have reached the conclusion subconsciously while not admitting it on a conscious level because you found the fact unpleasant to face."

"That's possible," I said slowly, unconvinced.

"Mr. Cameron, I'm not trying to ridicule what you have suggested. I am just trying to review all the implications of what you're asking for me to believe--asking yourself to believe--and we must restrict ourselves to directly pertinent information. Your vision of your father's death could or could not be relevant. There are, I admit, fairly well authenticated cases of clairvoyance. But with reference to your recent experiences, that earlier vision is inconclusive and subject to varying interpretations."

He shifted in his chair and sucked vigorously at his pipe until the bowl glowed red. As I waited in the stillness of his office for him to continue, my eyes strayed past him to the cabinets along one entire wall. Behind glass doors was the famous collection of Martian crystal and fossil formations, to the study of which the scientist had devoted his life. Surely these must have revealed something of the nature of Martian life. If some kind of intelligent parasite had existed there, wouldn't it leave traces detectible to a man like Temple?

"This alien form of life you postulate could exist," Dr. Temple said. "Grant that. There is no reason why life, intelligent life, on other planets would have to be recognizable to us. What you postulate is essentially a form of parasite, and the idea of a parasitical being which is also intelligent is not completely beyond the evidence of life we know even on earth. Let us concede that it could happen. An intelligent being, evolving under vastly different environmental conditions, might discover early in the progress of evolution that it could use a material host with a more highly developed physical organism but an undeveloped intelligence. And through the eons of change and self-improvement such an intelligent being might evolve physically only along those lines which would be necessary to its survival and its mental development. If it could use the body of a host, it would tend not to improve its own self-sufficient physical organism, as man has developed his body, but rather to perfect the ability to seize and to control its varied hosts."

I nodded eagerly, feeling hope stir and unfold. It was possible!

"However," the scientist said slowly, "it's rather a difficult step to accept the idea that such a parasitical life form could live in _any_ host--even one from another planet and with a totally strange organism, such as man."

"But it is conceivable," I said doggedly, unable to relinquish the blossoming hope.

"Perhaps. We know so little of life, of the living organism. We know, or at least we think we know, that any highly developed being would have cells, and that it would be constructed ultimately of the same limited number of atoms from which everything in our universe is manufactured. But the forms which life could take are infinite. And the possibility which you suggest has one interesting facet." He paused and I leaned forward, feeling sweat on my palms. "An intelligent parasite," Dr. Temple said thoughtfully, "controlling and living within its host, feeding upon its host or upon what the host consumed, is one form of life which could easily survive space travel--providing its host could survive. For the parasite's own environment within the host would not substantially be altered."

He glanced at me sharply, as if a sudden thought had occurred to him. "But why wouldn't such an intelligent being, its mental capacities presumably far beyond man's if your experience is any indication, have mastered space travel long before us? Why should it be dependent upon an inferior intelligence?"

"Because it didn't have a host like man to use," I said quickly. "That seems to be one main reason for coming here--and for wanting to bring other aliens here. They've never known a physical organism like man. They haven't developed one themselves because they didn't need to--or possibly because it wouldn't have been able to exist under Martian conditions of life. Their hosts never developed the perfection of usefulness man's body has reached with his arms and hands and fingers. What's more, we know that Mars is almost a dead planet. Wouldn't a parasite eagerly seize upon any new organism that came along--especially one that was physically far superior to anything that had evolved on Mars?"

Dr. Temple nodded slowly. "Yes, that is a plausible explanation." He sighed. "It's all possible, Mr. Cameron, all plausible--up to a point. The existence of extra-sensory powers in such an intelligence would be quite natural--even inevitable. But--"

There was reluctance in his voice, compassion in his eyes. "Go on," I said harshly.

"There are two objections to your theory for which I can find no answer. One is that my own studies do not reveal any evidence of the kind of creature you have postulated. And I am led irrevocably to the conclusion that there would be tell-tale signs."

"And the other?" I whispered.

"The second objection is the manner in which this parasite actually came to earth--on a returning space ship. This we have from the aliens, themselves, according to what you overheard. This is the only way they could have got to earth. And yet that way is impossible."

I didn't want to ask why. The word was thick and hard and painful in my throat but I had to voice it. "Why? Why?"

"Your alien said something about transferring to another body--and you concluded that he meant this was necessary for the return trip through space to Mars. What is especially pertinent, he wanted to effect this transfer at the last possible moment when it would be too late for any close physical examination."

"Yes, one of them said something like that."

"And obviously, Mr. Cameron, we do not need the alien to give us the information that they would want to avoid close examination of the host. The presence of a powerful parasitical organism in man's body can quite readily be detected. We might not know what it was but we would know that it was there. We must assume that this would be particularly true in the case of a parasite so powerful that it was able to control directly the human body and mind. Any exhaustive examination would reveal the alien's existence in the body."

I felt the hope withering, turning brown and fragile.

"Mr. Cameron," Dr. Temple said quietly, "no parasite entered earth in the body of any of the men who came back. I need hardly tell you that each of those men was put through exhaustive, painstakingly complete physical and mental tests under rigidly controlled conditions, even before coming in contact with any humans back here on earth. You see, we had to be careful. There was the risk of bringing back deadly viruses that might not yet have visibly affected the men. There was the question of radiation, of contagious diseases, of any number of harmful effects. In addition, the very fact that these men had survived extensive space flight made them priceless subjects for study. Mr. Cameron, you needn't take my word for it, you can easily verify what I'm saying, but nothing unusual could have escaped the examination these men underwent." Dr. Temple swung toward the glass cases along the wall. "Why, even every bit of rock and bone and dead fungus you see in these cabinets was exhaustively examined and re-examined and tested with every means known to science before ever being touched by human hands!"

"But there must be some way--"

"Let me finish. There is another factor which you may have failed to consider, one that you could not be expected to know. The men on our ship never once came in direct physical contact with any object on Mars or among the items brought back from that planet. The landing party was never directly exposed even to the Martian atmosphere. It was too great a risk. A protective wall always interposed between the men and the objects they contacted. Nothing was touched by human hands. So how would a parasite have made entry?"

"I don't know!" I said harshly. "But it happened!"

Something stirred in my mind, something urged into activity by Dr. Temple's words, but the moment I concentrated on it, trying to isolate it, a door seemed to close solidly down a dimly lighted corridor of my mind.

"Maybe it was dormant when it was brought in," I said desperately. "Maybe it didn't show up under the tests. How can we be so sure our instruments tell us everything?"

For a moment the scientist did not answer. I saw the compassion in his eyes and knew that he did not believe the aliens existed. He was trying to be kind and patient. I was taking up a great deal of his valuable time but he gave no indication of this. His pipe had burnt out again and now he set it carefully in the big ash tray on his desk. He leaned forward.

"Mr. Cameron, I am a scientist. When I'm presented with a strange new set of facts or apparent facts, even if they seem to contradict my own established theories, I have to consider them. I must try to let the facts speak for themselves without my imposing a preconceived meaning upon them. I've tried not to do that with what you've told me. I've tried to consider seriously the theory or explanation you've offered for the particular set of facts. However, when investigation appears to preclude one possible explanation we have to look for another, an alternative meaning, and see if it will provide a vessel into which the facts might fit precisely. In the present situation there does seem to be another possible answer."

"I know what you're going to say--"

"There may be no alien minds," Dr. Temple said quietly. "Or rather, there may be only one. Your own."

The words dropped with a brutal finality into my brain.

"I am not a psychiatrist," Dr. Temple went on gently, each word falling like the blow of a hammer, "but everything you have told me admits of a known delusional pattern with which even I am familiar. The presence of enemies with super-human powers, your own possession of abnormal abilities and the fact that your unique talents make you an object of persecution by these enemies, seems to fit a schizophrenic syndrome. I would have to look it up, but--"

"That won't be necessary," I said dully. "I looked it up. Paranoid schizophrenia."

"The hallucinations, if I'm not mistaken, both visual and auditory are also part of that pattern," the scientist added. "And also the indications of withdrawal which you've admitted. Even the idea of being possessed, forced to do things you don't want to--"

"Oh, yes," I agreed bitterly. "It all fits. Perfectly."