Part 3

The first truck had crashed head on into a flat rock wall. The second lay on its side in a steep ditch to the right of the road. The third lay right behind it. The only one that was apparently untouched was the halftrack.

It was standing alone halfway up a sand hill to the south, its nose pointed up at a sharp angle. All of the trucks were empty. But in the half light he couldn't be sure.

He walked up to the halftrack, looking for the bodies.

There weren't any. When he had looked around for a few moments, he realized what had happened. The men had all disappeared.

He was a little more ready for it now, but it was by no means easy to take. On the seat of the halftrack he found two fatigue caps, two twill shirts, two pairs of pants.

On the floor were the shoes and socks. The men had disappeared rapidly, while the trucks were still moving.

Web looked up into the sky.

None of the stars were moving.

But the aliens would be coming back soon. He climbed into the halftrack, threw out the clothes and started the engine. The thing had stalled, probably, running off by itself up a hill. He was lucky. The motor turned over. He was going quickly away, in no particular direction, when he remembered food.

He stopped the halftrack and looked in the back.

Towing apparatus, to take the pod back.

He groaned.

The second truck had burned, was still hot, but the third was intact. He found some K-rations and an untouched thermos, opened the thermos immediately and gulped down a huge draught of pleasantly warm coffee. With the coffee in him he felt much better and began to think.

He would have to get out of here damn fast.

But where? In the least likely direction.

Which was?

In the opposite direction to the base?

No. At right angles. Better yet, at any old angle. Neither directly toward home, nor directly away. Not by any means toward the nearest town.

So just run.

But first cigarettes--and money.

He rifled the first pair of pants he found, then another. The second had belonged to an officer. In a moment of sudden clarity, realizing the uselessness in town of the overalls he now wore, he took the full uniform with him. He did not think about the man that had been in them. He was coming fully awake now, beginning to realize the jam he was in. He had as much chance of getting out of this desert alive as a crippled snail.

He started up the halftrack and drove off over the sand at an even eighteen miles an hour.

* * * * *

"There he goes," said Kunklin. "What is that thing he is driving?"

"Extraordinary," Prule agreed. "You'd think that even with their primitive technology these poor souls would have reasonably comfortable conveyances."

"And faster," Kunklin said. "The Faktors will be back."

"Where are they now?"

"North. They reason, obviously, that he has slipped through on the ground. They are taking no chance on the bong having missed, which is characteristically thorough. They are fanning out from the North, beginning to ring the desert."

"There is no hurry then. If the Faktors think he is a Galactic they will be very discreet, very cautious."

Kunklin turned from the eyepiece, his handsome face lighted with interest.

"Listen, now there's a thing we'll have to discuss. Could this man be a Galactic?"

"Fully? No, of course not," Prule sniffed. "A Galactic run from a Faktor? Humph!"

"But he undoubtedly has Galactic blood," said Kunklin cheerfully, "else how do you explain his escape from the satellite?"

"True," said Prule seriously, "but that is not particularly extraordinary. He has Galactic blood. So do hundreds of humanoid peoples on hundreds of worlds. As long as we allow tourists to visit any world they choose, whether it's aware of us or not, we will continue to find people with traces of Galactic blood. This is a failing of human nature which I expressly--"

But Kunklin was grinning widely.

"You mean his father?--"

"Or mother," Prule said dourly. "Either party might well have been at fault. It is not difficult to conjecture. A tourist drops in on this planet, notes the--ah--male or female, as the case may be--to have a certain measure of attraction, and the normal processes ensue. Most likely, of course the tourist was his father. A Galactic mother would have done--ah--whatever it is that--ah--well of course."

Prule, who was something of a moralist, became somewhat flustered. Kunklin, who was young and handsome and no moralist at all, grinned lecherously.

"Well, by Cosmos! This is really cute. I'll bet he doesn't even know!"

"In all probability. Since the laws decree silence, it is not likely that even his mother knew."

Kunklin looked back at the halftrack, chortling.

"Well, really, we have to look after him. Blood brother, I think the phrase goes."

Prule drew himself up with great dignity.

"Agent Kunklin, we must look after them _all_. There must be no more killing. First the satellite, then the trucks, then the helicopter--"

"Was there a helicopter?"

"Yes. I was too late to save it. Although I did remove the small Faktor ship that destroyed it."

Kunklin brooded.

"Well now, really, it's about time we did something, don't you think?" Prule said.

Kunklin nodded.

"Yes. Unfortunately, there is only one thing we can do."

"Use the Earthman? Um. I had expected that."

"What other course is there? They think he's a Galactic. They'll try to get him in any way possible, to stop a patrol ship from arriving on the scene. And we, already here, have no way of knowing where on this planet they are, where they've cached their--uh--spoils. Hence we must follow the Earthman."

"Well, after all, it is his planet," Prule said.

"His _women_," Kunklin corrected.

* * * * *

Late in the afternoon the halftrack struck a road. It climbed up onto it and Web pressed full speed to thirty. He had considered hiding the halftrack somewhere during the day and going on at night, but there was really no place to hide, and the aliens would probably double back and find the halftrack missing and come looking for it very soon, and they could probably see in the dark anyway. So he got out of the desert as quickly as he could.

In all, three separate scouting crews found him in the first four hours. They died silently, above him, without him being even slightly aware of their existence.

He had plenty of time to think. The big mystery, of course, was why in hell he hadn't disappeared along with everybody else. The damn things certainly wanted to kill him, or why had they followed the pod down? Well somehow, they had missed him. And he had been so doggone lucky up until now that he was beginning to feel invulnerable. He considered the whole business from beginning to end, trying to figure out what they were and why they wanted nobody in the satellite.

They wanted no Earthmen in space.

Then why didn't they just blow the thing up?

Maybe they were worried about starting a war. Maybe--yes--they wanted nobody up there because anybody up there could see what they were doing, would give an alarm, but a full scale war would be the worst thing that could happen, because they were undoubtedly somewhere on Earth right now, and they would be caught in the middle of it.

After that much thinking he was through. In the end, of course, there was no way of knowing, but whatever it was they wanted it was certainly pretty bad. Bad enough to kill him, which was all the bad he needed.

He pushed the halftrack at full speed down the road.

In the next town he stole a car. He did it quite simply, not bothering to explain, because he was in something of a hurry. He approached the car he wanted as it was standing at the curb, as its owner, a small, beefy man with a greasy shirt, was just getting out. He took the keys away from the man and took the car.

At the first town he came to he parked the car quickly, headed for the nearest phone booth, and tried to call Dundon.

He couldn't get through. Neither Dundon nor the colonel were "available," and there was no one else there who knew who he was, or what he was doing. And he could take no time to explain. Dundon and the Colonel were probably out looking for him. He swore thoroughly, but all he could do was leave his name, and ask for the message to be left that he had called, and was in the town of Huntsville. It was a heck of a situation, but he was stuck. Who would send an escort for a drunk-sounding second lieutenant?

He walked out of the booth, realizing that he must forget about the car outside, and now that he had spent a few consecutive seconds in one place he felt a deep nervousness beginning. He searched through the people around him, expecting any moment the coming of wide, white eyes and knifelike noses. But the people here were all apparently human.

Although you couldn't know. Easy to disguise eyes with contact leases.

He left a store, found a hotel room. He could not seek safety with the police. They would all disappear. Anyone he went to would disappear. There was nothing to do now but hide. He lay down on a bed and waited.

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.