It was 3 A.M. Nearly an hour had passed since she had heard the front door click gently into place behind Drake and his burden. She didn't know where he was going, what he intended doing-
She sat there numbly. There was no desire to sleep; no desire to move. She kept her mind traveling in tight circles, away from the thing she knew and which she wanted not to know.
Parasitic minds! Was it only a coincidence or was it some queer racial memory, some tenuous long-sustained wisp of tradition or insight, stretching back through incredible millennia, that kept current the odd myth of human beginnings? She thought to herself, there were two intelligences on Earth to begin with. There were humans in the Garden of Eden and also the serpent, which 'was more subtil than any beast of the field.' The serpent infected man and, as a result, it lost its limbs. Its physical attributes were no longer necessary. And because of the infection, man was driven out of the Garden of eternal life. Death entered the world.
Yet, despite her efforts, the circle of her thoughts expanded and returned to Drake. She shoved and it returned; she counted to herself, she recited the
names of the objects in her field of vision, she cried, 'No, no, no,' and it returned. It kept returning.
Drake had lied to her. It had been a plausible story. It would have held good under most circumstances; but Drake was not a biologist. Cancer could not be, as Drake had said, a disease that was an expression of a lost ability for normal growth. Cancer attacked children while they were still growing; it could even attack embryonic tissue. It attacked fish, which, like extraterrestrials, never stopped growing while they lived, and died only by disease or accident. It attacked plants which had no minds and could not be parasitized. Cancer had nothing to do with the presence or absence of normal growth; it was the general disease of life, to which no tissue of no multicellular organism was completely immune.
He should not have bothered lying. He should not have allowed some obscure sentimental weakness to persuade him to avoid the necessity of killing her in that manner. She would tell them at the Institute. The parasite could be beaten. Its absence would not cause cancer. But who would believe her?
She put her hands over her eyes. The young men who disappeared were usually in the first year of their marriage. Whatever the process of reproduction of the parasite intelligences, it must involve close association with another parasite-the type of close and continuous association that might only be possible if their respective hosts were in equally close relationship. As in the case of newly married couples.
She could feel her thoughts slowly disconnect. They would be coming to her. They would be saying, 'Where is Harg Tholan?' And she would answer, 'With my husband.' Only they would say, 'Where is your husband?' because he would be gone, too. He needed her no longer. He would never return. They would never find him, because he would be out in space. She would report them both, Drake Smollett and Harg Tholan, to the Missing Persons Bureau.
She wanted to weep, but couldn't; she was dry-eyed and it was painful.
And then she began to giggle and couldn't stop. It was very funny. She had looked for the answers to so many questions and had found them all. She had even found the answer to the question she thought had no bearing on the subject.
She had finally learned why Drake had married her.
'Breeds There a Man...?'
Police Sergeant Mankiewicz was on the telephone and he wasn't enjoying it. His conversation was sounding like a one-sided view of a firecracker.
He was saying, 'That's right! He came in here and said, 'Put me in jail, because I want to kill myself.'
'... I can't help that. Those were his exact words. It sounds crazy to me, too.
'. . . Look, mister, the guy answers the description. You asked me for information and I'm giving it to you.
'. . . He has exactly that scar on his right cheek and he said his name was John Smith. He didn't say it was Doctor anything-at-all.
'. . . Well, sure it's a phony. Nobody is named John Smith. Not in a police station, anyway.
'. . . He's in jail now.
'. . . Yes, I mean it.
'... Resisting an officer; assault and battery; malicious mischief. That's three counts.
'... I don't care who he is.
'. . . All right. I'll hold on.'
He looked up at Officer Brown and put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. It was a ham of a hand that nearly swallowed up the phone altogether. His blunt-featured face was ruddy and steaming under a thatch of pale-yellow hair.
Copyright (c) 1951 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc.
He said, 'Trouble! Nothing but trouble at a precinct station. I'd rather be pounding a beat any day.'
'Who's on the phone?' asked Brown. He had just come in and didn't really care. He thought Mankiewicz would look better on a suburban beat, too.
'Oak Ridge. Long Distance. A guy called Grant. Head of somethingo-logical division, and now he's getting somebody else at seventy-five cents a min . . . Hello!'
Mankiewicz got a new grip on the phone and held himself down.
'Look,' he said, 'let me go through this from the beginning. I want you to get it straight and then if you don't like it, you can send someone down here. The guy doesn't want a lawyer. He claims he just wants to stay in jail and, brother, that's all right with me.
'Well, will you listen? He came in yesterday, walked right up to me, and said, 'Officer, I want you to put me in jail because I want to kill myself.' So I said, 'Mister, I'm sorry you want to kill yourself. Don't do it, because if you do, you'll regret it the rest of your life.'
'... I am serious. I'm just telling you what I said. I'm not saying it was a funny joke, but I've got my own troubles here, if you know what I mean. Do you think all I've got to do here is to listen to cranks who walk in and-
'. . . Give me a chance, will you?' I said, 'I can't put you in jail for wanting to kill yourself. That's no crime.' And he said, 'But I don't want to die.' So I said, 'Look, bud, get out of here.' I mean if a guy wants to commit suicide, all right, and if he doesn't want to, all right, but I don't want him weeping on my shoulder.
'. . . I'm getting on with it. So he said to me. 'If I commit a crime, will you put me in jail?' I said, 'If you're caught and if someone files a charge and you can't put up bail, we will. Now beat it.' So he picked up the inkwell on my desk and, before I could stop him, he turned it upside down on the open police blotter.
'. . . That's right! Why do you think we have 'malicious mischief tabbed on him? The ink ran down all over my pants.
'. . . Yes, assault and battery, too! I came hopping down to shake a little sense into him, and he kicked me in the shins and handed me one in the eye.
'. . . I'm not making this up. You want to come down here and look at my face?
'. . . He'll be up in court one of these days. About Thursday, maybe.
'. . . Ninety days is the least he'll get, unless the psychoes say otherwise. I think he belongs in the loony-bin myself.
'. . . Officially, he's John Smith. That's the only name he'll give.
'. . . No, sir, he doesn't get released without the proper legal steps.
', . . O.K., you do that, if you want to, bud! I just do my job here.'
He banged the phone into its cradle, glowered at it, then picked it up and
began dialing. He said 'Gianetti?', got the proper answer and began talking.
'What's the A.E.C.? I've been talking to some Joe on the phone and he says-
'. . . No, I'm not kidding, lunk-head. If I were kidding, I'd put up a sign. What's the alphabet soup?'
He listened, said, 'Thanks' in a small voice and hung up again.
He had lost some of his color. 'That second guy was the head of the Atomic Energy Commission,' he said to Brown. 'They must have switched me from Oak Ridge to Washington.'
Brown lounged to his feet, 'Maybe the F.B.I, is after this John Smith guy. Maybe he's one of these here scientists.' He felt moved to philosophy. 'They ought to keep atomic secrets away from those guys. Things were O.K. as long as General Groves was the only fella who knew about the atom bomb. Once they cut in these here scientists on it, though-'
'Ah, shut up,' snarled Mankiewicz.
Dr. Oswald Grant kept his eyes fixed on the white line that marked the highway and handled the car as though it were an enemy of his. He always did. He was tall and knobby with a withdrawn expression stamped on his face. His knees crowded the wheel, and his knuckles whitened whenever he made a turn.
Inspector Darrity sat beside him with his legs crossed so that the sole of his left shoe came up hard against the door. It would leave a sandy mark when he took it away. He tossed a nut-brown penknife from hand to hand. Earlier, he had unsheathed its wicked, gleaming blade and scraped casually at his nails as they drove, but a sudden swerve had nearly cost him a finger and he desisted.
He said, 'What do you know about this Ralson?'
Dr. Grant took his eyes from the road momentarily, then returned them. He said, uneasily, 'I've known him since he took his doctorate at Princeton. He's a very brilliant man.'
'Yes? Brilliant, huh? Why is it that all you scientific men describe one another as 'brilliant'? Aren't there any mediocre ones?'
'Many. I'm one of them. But Ralson isn't. You ask anyone. Ask Oppen-heimer. Ask Bush. He was the youngest observer at Alamogordo.'
'O.K. He was brilliant. What about his private life?'
Grant waited. 'I wouldn't know.'
'You know him since Princeton. How many years is that?'
They had been scouring north along the highway from Washington for two hours with scarcely a word between them. Now Grant felt the atmosphere change and the grip of the law on his coat collar.
'He got his degree in '43.'
'You've known him eight years then.'
' 'That's right.'
us 'And you don't know about his private life?'
'A man's life is his own, Inspector. He wasn't very sociable. A great many of the men are like that. They work under pressure and when they're off the job,
