Part 2

There was a pale round moon overhead and as we got out of the city and night came on it brightened and made a glowing path on the water. After while we left the main road and headed into the Catskills. At last we dipped down into a deep little glen where there was a cosy two-room cabin I'd often rented before when I had a tough writing assignment that demanded absolute solitude.

There was no one within miles.

We unloaded the car like a couple of kids. I had practically bought out a delicatessen. Then Alice started fussing around the cabin, putting away my fishing tackle and hanging up some curtains and pictures she had picked up at Woolworth's. I kept on pinching myself to believe she had really married me and marveling how every little thing she did suited me perfectly.

"Hungry, darling?"

"You said it!" I made a tentative bite at her ear, grinning, but she eluded me teasingly.

I uncorked the champagne, managed to spill my first glass, then decided I was too hungry to bother with it now. We ate cold chicken and all kinds of fixings. Outside the night lay deep and warm. The moon shimmered on the evergreens.

I got up from my chair and went to Alice.

Now she wanted that kiss. She put up her lips.

I kissed her.

The world rocked.

A buzzing noise sounded behind me. It made my blood crawl, because it was familiar. I jumped back from Alice just in time.

"No," I moaned. "_No--Alice!_"

But it happened.

I imagine that I'm the only man who ever kissed his bride on their wedding night, then watched her turn into a monstrous bug before his eyes....

* * * * *

Outside the owl hooted.

Max Field tossed aside his notebook and pounded his knee with his fist. God! To have _seen_ that happen! To sweet little Alice!

His dream girl. But naturally. She had been too perfect, actually. She was designed for him, perhaps only a clever illusion clothed in flesh by his own imagination. At any rate she was the reason for him filling out all those forms. To discover just what he liked in every department. To give them a pattern for "Alice".

They were cute. Even to the point of having Starr pretend to dislike her. When Starr pretended to poke carefully into her background, that was enough to prevent Max from doing just that. Because actually she had no background. It was phony.

That phone call he had made to Corky. The girl who answered. That could have been Alice, using a heavy Brooklyn accent to cover her voice. She had been so convincing he hadn't bothered to check back later.

Now, the two of them were in the kitchen planning his death. "Science Fiction Editor Accidentally Killed in Mountain Retreat. Bride Stricken." Then the grief-stricken bride would carry on in his place. _Orion_ was going great guns now. It really didn't need Max Field. And without him their propaganda machine could move forward all the faster--forward to the day when the Kiriki cosmic crusade moved down into this solar system. The Patterned Contentment boys would take over. Whose pattern? Kiriki, of course....

The kitchen door opened slowly. Max tensed.

It was--_Alice_.

She wore that clinging black lace negligee he had bought in an exclusive Fifth Avenue shop.

"Max."

He stood up stiffly, staring.

"Change, damn you! _Change!_"

"Why, Max," she pouted. "Don't you love me any more?"

It was intended to drive him nutty, maybe to suicide.

"You should have drunk the champagne," she said softly. "It would have been easier for you. Would you like a drink now?" She held out a glass.

All of a sudden he wanted that glass more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. Even Alice. It was the end of the line, the dropping off point. He couldn't take it any more. Not Alice--like that.

He walked over to her and took the glass. He lifted it to his lips.

* * * * *

Something slapped the glass out of his hand as the window behind them shattered inward. Alice flashed an angry glance at the face in the window, then moved quickly back into the kitchen.

"Ric!"

Max's bewilderment changed to sudden hope.

"Hurry!" Planter cried. "Get through this window!"

Max dove through while the writer yanked him by the elbows. Max was shivering and sweating at the same time. But the cool night breeze helped a little.

"W-where in the billy-hell did you--"

"Come from?" Ric finished. "Been on Starr's trail for weeks. Had this thing figured out for some time, even before you tipped me off on the phone that day. I followed Starr here. Been watching and waiting."

He was wearing a fish-basket and, incongruously, it was filled with bombs. He handed some to Max.

"Start heaving. Aim for the kitchen door before they close it."

He tossed a handful of the bombs into the room. Max followed suit. Inside, the bombs broke, letting out a pungent gas.

"What is it?"

"Insecticide," Ric grinned. "More potent than DDT. Those outlines Starr made out furnished the clews. It should do it."

"Won't they get out the kitchen door?"

"Uh-uh. I sealed it up proper. It and the window."

The door between the rooms slammed shut but not before half a dozen bombs had got through. Ric slammed the shutters too. They waited.

"If it doesn't kill them it'll put them to sleep for hours. Basically, from Starr's dossiers on the Kiriki, they have all the vulnerable points of our grasshoppers. And fire will destroy them utterly. I'm afraid we can't take chances, so this cabin will have to go. Match?"

* * * * *

They watched it burn down to the last slab of stilted-up planking. Max stared down at the two small charred remainders of the Kiriki advance guard and shuddered.

On the road back to New York, Max said: "Do you think they'll try it again?"

"The Kiriki? Not for a while. Like you said, they dislike war. They like it the easy way."

"Propaganda. Invasion of minds. Well, two can play at that. We'll keep _Orion_ going--only we'll print the real story. We'll make men detest and despise the Kiriki so that any feelers they send down will send them hopping to the furthest end of space. Maybe we can get somebody started on that telepathic wave interrupter of yours, too. So if they do land we can cut them off from each other. We'll work on this reverse propaganda hard."

Max jerked his eyes back on the road and put his foot on the gas hard. Sure he would work, work to save his sanity, too.

It wasn't going to be easy to forget a lost dream--a dream that had lived and breathed and promised a lifetime of patterned contentment. It would take a lot of mental welding to hold back the horror of that kiss.

But he would try.