invisible film of flour, not turning the handle of the sifter but merely tapping the side of it lightly with one finger as he moved it. He did the same thing in the middle of the hallway, and at the doorway between the living room and the kitchen.
Then, so he wouldn’t have to walk through any of the cat-traps he had just set, he left by the back door and drove into town.
He ate at the place where he knew he’d be served by the most talkative waitress in town. She lived up to her billing—but there was no new suicide, nothing new in the form of strange actions of either wild or domestic animals. The most exciting thing that had happened in the past twenty-four hours had been a fire at Smalley’s Feed Store; the damage had been slight and the cause had been traced to defective wiring.
No pigs had sprouted wings; no dogs had been seen climbing telephone poles. He’d asked about those points specifically, not so much to get a laugh—although he had—but because they’d make her remember if she had heard any stories about animals behaving unnaturally.
He was heading for his car when someone called out “Hey, Staunton.” It was Dr. Gruen, and he came closer so he wouldn’t have to yell the rest of what he had to say. “Getting a little poker game and we need one more sucker. How’s about it?”
“Well,” Doc said, “guess I can sit in an hour or two. Back room at the tavern?”
Gruen nodded. “I’m going over to get Lem. We’ll be starting in about fifteen minutes.”
“Good,” Doc said. “Just time for me to get a spot of fortification at the bar. See you when you get there.”
Time can be subjective; a few minutes in a dentist’s chair can be longer than a few hours in a good poker game. Doc played what he thought was a short time and suddenly realized, when they quit playing, that it was almost midnight. And also that he was hungry again; but both of the Bartlesville restaurants would be closed by now; he would have to wait till he got home and then make himself a sandwich.
At the house he parked his car in the yard and was almost at the door before he remembered that, unless Miss Talley had had a momentary hallucination, there was a cat in his house.
He let himself in by way of the kitchen door, being careful that nothing got past him. The moonlight was so bright that, until he closed the kitchen door, he could not possibly have missed seeing anything as large as a mouse. He heard no sound.
He flicked on the kitchen light and looked around. He remembered the flour he had sprinkled on the floor and walked over to the doorway.
There were cat tracks in the flour.
He called out, “All right, Cat. Show yourself if you want anything to eat or drink. I’m not going to hunt for you, but you’re not getting out of here till I’ve met you.”
He went to the refrigerator and opened it. He got out the necessary ingredients and made himself a ham sandwich and took it and a bottle of beer over to the table and sat down.
He did a lot of thinking while he ate the sandwich slowly and sipped the beer. He didn’t think he liked what he was thinking. He was frightened, without knowing what he was frightened about. He knew that he didn’t want to turn out the kitchen lights and go upstairs to bed in the dark. Although he knew the house so well by now that he seldom used his flashlight, he got it from a cupboard drawer. He had it in his hand and turned on when he flicked off the kitchen light.
He played it ahead of him as he went through the hallway and up the steps. He felt foolish doing it (how could a
He saw nothing in the hall or on the stairs. In his bedroom he closed the door before he turned on the light and then, using the flashlight to help him, he searched the room thoroughly. This time he looked under the bed.
Wherever the cat was, it wasn’t in this room. And, harmless and ordinary though it might be, it wasn’t going to get in while he was sleeping. Luckily it was not a warm night and he would do without ventilation for once by sleeping with both the door and the window closed. Not, in the case of the window, because the cat could get through it from wherever it now was; but the cat must have got into the house that way in the first place, and what else might decide to come that way?
For some strange reason he wished he’d brought one of his guns upstairs with him.
But eventually he slept, and slept soundly.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The mind thing had panicked when he had heard the man he now knew was Doc Staunton call out: “All right, Cat…”
It was the reaction, mostly, from learning that, in addition to being the optimum host he could possibly expect to find, the man suspected something close to the truth, and could be dangerous. He’d had only contempt for any human intellect he’d hitherto encountered.
But Staunton was the perfect host—a top electronicist, solvent and free to travel, single and without responsibilities. He’d listened with increasing fascination to the conversation between Staunton and Miss Talley, and to what Staunton had dictated to her.
And, although this was extrapolating, he felt sure that Staunton would have, or have access to, every item of equipment that he would need. With Staunton as a host, he could be back on his own planet as soon as within a few weeks—and a hero of his race for having discovered a planet definitely worthy of colonization.
But why had he made the initial mistake of drawing back and hiding when Miss Talley had looked up suddenly and had caught a glimpse of him in the hall? If only he’d remembered—which he hadn’t because of his excitement over the things he was learning about Staunton—to act like an ordinary cat! Once glimpsed, he should have strolled on out in the kitchen, right into their sight. If he’d acted friendly they might have petted him, if they were people who liked cats; possibly given him a bowl of milk and then let him out when he miaouwed and scratched at the door. At worst, if they were people who didn’t like cats, they’d have opened the door and shooed him out with a broom. And he’d have been free, those many hours ago, to make an inconspicuous death and be back in his own body, his shell, under the back steps of the Gross farmhouse.
Free to plan and then choose his next host, one who could move his shell from the Gross farm to the Staunton place here, near enough for Staunton’s bed to be within his range of perception so he could take over Staunton’s mind the first time Staunton slept.
That is what he should have done, certainly. But having once hidden, he’d decided that the safest thing to do was to stay hidden until, through the first door or window left open, he could escape and be free. But Staunton— damn him for being so clever!—had left nothing open. And now, because of the catprints in that scattered flour, Staunton knew for sure that he was here.
How much more did Staunton guess? He’d definitely suspected something, even before he’d left the house, to have set that telltale trap with the flour. Alone in the house and wandering around to explore, he’d not known that he was walking in the thin film of flour until the sensitive pads of his feet had told him he was walking in something, and he’d looked down, too late. How hard he’d tried to think of a way of obliterating those paw prints, or of cleaning up the flour and spreading fresh flour! It was simply impossible, in this tiny body he now occupied. Not the cleaning up of the flour; he could have licked it up, but the problem of spreading fresh flour and doing it evenly and neatly was insuperable. He might have been able to open the cupboard door to get at the flour sifter but, small as he was and without hands, there was no way at all of his using it as the man had done. No way at all.
His real panic had come when Staunton, returning, had called him, addressing him as one intelligent being speaking to another. Had Staunton determined by logic or by intuition that a cat trapped in his house wasn’t really a cat at all? It seemed incredible that he had worked it out from such slender evidence.
But it could be. Staunton, he must remember, was a scientist. The mind thing’s contact, from inside, with human minds had been with the mind of a boy not yet out of high school and the mind of a stupid and barely literate old man. Perhaps there were things, many things, on this world that neither Tommy nor Gross knew or even suspected, but that would be elementary to Staunton. Perhaps there were species here on Earth which
