CHAPTER IV

I caught the seven a.m. train for Boston. I hadn't slept or even lain down all night. The sole conclusion I'd come to was that I didn't dare ask for help in this job, not yet at any rate. I would be jeopardizing Nessa's life.

I had thought of the police. But they'd had two years to find Bill Cuff and failed. One hint that they were looking for him, and he with his crazy Old Companions would stamp out my wife's life as off-handedly as I'd squash a beetle. I'm a law-abiding citizen and I respect the enforcers of the law; but this was a special case. I'd done my civic duty other times, but now I was on a one-man crusade. I had to save Nessa. If I could chop down Cuff, well and good. But Nessa came first.

As the train shot along through countryside scattered with dying autumn foliage, swept with intermittent rains, I thought of my brother Howard and his work. On Odo Island he and six other top-grade brains were creating a space station for the United States--a man-made moon, the first jump to the stars--and equally important, a lookout post from which we could keep tabs on all of Earth.

A lot of the heavy forest on Odo was false; it couldn't be detected from the air, and the formation of the island prevented its being seen from the sea, but plenty of that green was only a big canopy shielding the small air field on which a great wheel-shaped space station had already been put together. 237 feet across, it would in the near future be carried off the earth, towed by the enormous three-stage rockets which were already waiting in hiding along the eastern coast of the States. One thousand miles up--one thousand _plus_--it would then become a satellite of Terra.

Odo was guarded by its coast, a real rock-bound wreckers' paradise, and by six brace of anti-aircraft guns. There were forty Marines based there, six scientists, and eighty-odd workmen. Everyone had been screened back to his grandparents, and evidently none of the Old Companions had been able to worm in, since Bill Cuff hadn't known where the artificial moon was being constructed.

Pompey Island was about twelve miles to the south of Odo. There wasn't anything on it but trees and the only chuckle I could muster during that whole train ride was at the picture of Bill Cuff at the head of a hundred Neanderthal men (all clad in mammoth skins and carrying stone-headed clubs) landing on Pompey and roaring over it in search of my brother and his metal moon.

I had no idea why I was to meet Cuff in Boston. For all I knew, Nessa might be held in New York, in Alabama, or in Evanston, Illinois. But I had to go to Boston, because I had no other lead whatever. I couldn't form plans because I was so totally in the dark. I just had to do what I could. And I had to be ready to think like lightning when I did meet Cuff and find out what was happening.

Just as we drew into the station, I used an old writer's trick: I swallowed a couple of dexedrine tablets so that for a few hours my fatigue would lie down and I'd have a kind of false vigor of intellect and muscles. I'd be mighty tired by morning, but for now I'd be at peak. I got off and took a taxi to a hotel near School Street. I bathed and shaved and checked my automatic and the extra clips in my jacket; then I ate an early supper and walked over to City Hall.

* * * * *

On the nose of five o'clock a gray car drew up and one of the men in the back seat rolled down the window and gestured me over. I got in beside the driver and we moved away into the traffic. Nobody said anything until we had left Boston behind and were almost into Lynn. Then Bill Cuff said from the back seat, "You seem pretty calm, Ray," and laughed. "That's the blood," he said admiringly. "That's the dark blood. A _man_ would be fizzing and twitching and babbling his head off."

I had determined not to think any further than the rescue of Nessa. I wasn't going to bog down in speculations as to my humanness, or the truth of this whole theory of Cuff's; but even so, the chills chased over me when he said _man_ like that. Wasn't I altogether human? Would I, too, eventually experience the dawn brain's awakening, the revulsion against humanity, the reversion to pre-historic emotion?

I said as casually as possible, "Seems you don't trust the dark blood any further than you could spit it, Bill."

"Not in you, not yet. I'm sorry about Nessa. She was a sensible precaution. You wouldn't think much of my wits if I hadn't taken her."

"Where is she?" I held my breath tensely.

"You'll see her at the end of the trip."

"And when's that?" My breathing relaxed a trifle.

"Few hours."

"He wants to know too much," said the driver. I looked over at him. He was a thick, short, shallow-templed fellow, gray of eye and straight of thin-lipped mouth. He had ears like a baby elephant's long unkempt hair draping over them. I could smell his breath three feet away.

"Shut up, Trutch," said Bill Cuff impatiently. "He's my cousin."

"But has he the dawn brain? Are you sure he--"

"Shut up. Just shut up," said Bill, and his voice was like that of a maniac holding himself in with a terrible effort.

"I don't think you ought to tell him things like--" persisted Trutch, and then Bill Cuff had leaned forward and given him a hell of a wallop on the side of the head with his open palm. The driver jerked forward and grunted and then he was quiet, as the car lurched and recovered. We were doing fifty. Cuff said, "Shut up! When I tell you that, do it!"

There were two other men in the back. One of them growled, "Easy, Bill. We live by the primal rage, but you must control it."

* * * * *

I turned and put my arm across the back of the seat and looked at the man who had spoken. He was another of the short and stocky breed. His eyes were snapping gray gems in a face as tan as a boot. He had more hair piled on top of his long skull than I ever saw on anyone but a movie actor: it was bright yellow, not gold but sulphur yellow, and slicked with oil. His features were broad and at the same time vulpine, the thickened muzzle of a fox. I had meant only to glance at each of them in turn, but my gaze was held by this Old Companion. His expression was good-humored and yet he radiated evil, an old, old wickedness commingled with piercing intelligence. When at last I managed to tear my eyes from him, I knew that this was the worst of my enemies. I could not have defended that by logic, but neither could I have been argued out of it. I would have faced five giant Bill Cuffs rather than this yellow-haired creature.

"My name is Skagarach," he said to me, bringing my eyes back to him involuntarily. "I am third leader in our muster of the Old Companions. You have met the second leader, Old One. That is the truth of our folk. In time, in generations, we shall all look so, and the effete refinements of Homo sapiens will be gone." He glanced at Bill Cuff, who towered beside him, watching me. "Bill is first leader. In two years he has become so. He killed nineteen of us to gain that leadership." Skagarach smiled, cunningly and drily. I gathered that he was not fond of my cousin. And that was my first piece of real hope.

"The man at the wheel," he went on, "is called Trutch. As far as I know he has no other name. The fourth is Vance." This last was a young fellow, about as wide as he was high, with the usual gray eyes.

"Are the eyes a distinguishing characteristic?" I asked.

"Some ninety per cent of us have them. You do yourself. But every gray-eyed man is not Homo-Neanderthal by any means."

"How _do_ you--we--tell each other apart from men?"

"Actions: Cuff killed insanely, from a human viewpoint, that is, and then answered our telepathic call. Occasionally we have only actions, not mental communication, to judge by, and then we find the one who has gone berserk and test him. Sometimes the dawn brain returns to an Old Companion without the gift of telepathy."

"Suppose I were to say that I remembered being a caveman. How would you test that?"

Skagarach and Bill Cuff grinned. The other two seemed without humor. "Go ahead, tell us what you remember," said my cousin.

"I don't--but suppose I say, I remember hunting a mammoth...."

"You would be lying. You'd recall other things--mating with human women, being stalked to your death, fighting the upstart Man. You would have flashes of other centuries, of being named werewolf, vampire, hobgoblin, ogre, bugbear and demon. Always the violence, the antagonism to man, the slaying and being slain. Not the common everyday life, but the high and savage points."

"I see. You give me a swell opportunity to lie to you," I told him candidly. I had nothing to lose, for I wouldn't bother lying. I had a hunch it wouldn't do me any good in this swift job I had to do.

"There are other checks on you," said Skagarach. He leaned forward suddenly. "Truthfully--_do you_ have stirrings when I say those things? Does your brain murmur the least surprise of faintest recognition?"

"Truthfully," I said, "no."

"Never mind," said he, sitting back again. "It took me 17 years to develop the memory fully. Others are given it by a knock on the head, or even, as Cuff here, gain it full-blown in a few days with no stimulus from outside. You be patient, Ray. It will come."

_And when it does, if it does_, I thought, _I hope I have the strength to kill myself before I stop being a man and turn into one of these pre-historic horrors!_

Then I remembered that they claimed telepathic powers. I glanced from one to another. Either my sudden thought hadn't reached them, or they hadn't minded its implications. I said tentatively, "Can you read the thoughts of other men?"

"_Men_, not other men," said Trutch viciously.

"Yes," said Skagarach.

Now I had spent a good many years around actors, and damned good ones at that. This Skagarach was an actor from the word go, but I believed that I was a better one. So I said carelessly, "Can you tell what I'm thinking?" and allowed my face to assume the tiniest lines of worry, the smallest indications of fear possible to the facial muscles. Skagarach said immediately, "You're fretting over your wife."

It was a good guess. He knew his book of reactions and signs inside and out. The only trouble was that I had at that moment been concentrating intently on a chocolate milk shake and a cheeseburger. I had even been saying the words over in my mind. So I knew that he had been trying to convince me of the truth of a lie, and that was another flake of hope for me.

It was a good thing for me that I had those few minute hopes. They were _all_ I had.