Before the Universe

This story was a Three-way collaboration—Cyril myself, and Dirk Wylie—and was originally published under Dirk's name. Dirk was a founding Futurian, and a long-time friend of mine (We met as freshmen at Brooklyn Technical High School, when we were both twelve.) Like most fans and nearly all Futurians, Dirk wanted to be a professional writer. He had talent. He was good at a kind of science fiction nobody seems to write any more: quixotic adventure, I suppose you would call it; the kind of thing That Percival Christopher Wren invented with Beau Geste. In science fiction it exists, among others, in the stories of C. L. Moore, notably the Jirel of Joiry and Northwest Smith series. I think the chances are good that we might now be saying "in the stories of Dirk Wylie" if a war hadn't come along just as he was hitting his stride. Dirk enlisted early. Like Cyril, he served In The Battle of the Bulge and, like Cyril, he ultimately paid for it with his life. Neither was wounded by enemy fire. What Dirk did was injure his back in a truck. It began to mend, then worsened and tuned into tuberculosis of the spine, and he died of it at the age of twenty-nine.

I. Return from Venus

"Happy New Year," Marvin said bitterly. "Shuddup!" growled Camp, trying to chuck a weightless book at him. "Him" was the talking lizard, tentatively christened petrosaurus parlante veneris, and generally sworn at as Marvin. Camp sorely regretted the day he had ever taught the little creature to talk; now its jeering, strangely booming voice was never still. He would have stuffed it if he had had the courage to kill it first, but in many ways August Camp was a sensitive man.

Marvin silenced, except for his eternal, sarcastic chuckle, Camp turned again to his log book. "Final entry," he wrote. "September 17, 1997. Approximately one hundred thousand kilometers from Earth at the present time, 10:17:08 A.M. I shall set the robot pilot for Newark Landing Field, wavelength IP twelve, and the Third Venus Expedition will be over."

He locked the manuals and swung a cover over their multiple pins and contacts, and threw the switch that would put the ship under the guidance of the Newark beam. A space-sphere couldn't be landed easily—not, at least, without outside assistance. There were nearly one million factors too many, all of them interacting, which had vital bearing on the dynamics of the particular vessel trying to ease itself to the seared pave of the field.

At the Newark port there were monstrous machines that would shudder into action as soon as his flares were detected—computators which would grind out the formulae of his descent, using a strange, powerful mathematics all their own. No human mind could do that unaided, nor could Camp's ship accommodate even the immense charts that were the summarized and tabulated knowledge of the computators and the men who operated them.

Camp dragged himself along a line over to the small, unshuttered port and swiped a patch of frost from its center, using a patch of waste for the job; even at that his hand was chilled and numbed by the frightful cold of the thick glass. He stared through the port at the meager slice of Earth that he could see, old, half-forgotten memories crowding his brain, and his muscles tensed at the thought of seeing people once more. The first thing he would do, he decided, would be to head for Manhattan and walk up and down Broadway as long as he could.

No more loneliness. No more talking to oneself or to a brainless lizard....

Camp had started, not alone, but with two companions, One had died on the trip out to Venus three years ago, lost in space—that had been Manden—and the other, Gellert, had disappeared from their stockaded camp on the cloudy planet; for two years Camp had been alone, doing the jobs of three men and doing them remarkably well. It had been difficult, of course, but ...

... it was not supposed to be a joy ride. And things were just as tough, in a relative way, on Terra. The cycle of murderous wars just completed had left great, leprous areas of poisoned land scabbing the Earth's surface. Oil pools were empty and coal beds depleted; clean, fertile ground was at a minimum. A new source of supply had to be found.

Camp was not the first of the interplanetary travellers; in the late Sixties Soviet Russia had been seized by a passion for exploration of the other worlds. Most of their huge ships had failed in one way or another, with appalling loss of life, but one had managed to reach the moon. The period that followed the next successful flights was one of feverish lunar exploration and even madder scrambling for concessions when it was found that the moon was rich in the materials needed on Earth. As might have been foreseen, this soon produced another war.

The conflict was of short duration, and men once more looked to the stars. A new, more powerful propellant had been developed during the war, and using this fuel, an expedition managed to reach the cloud-wrapped surface of Venus. A second expedition soon followed, and a third, of which Camp was a member.

The results of Camp's investigations had exceeded his wildest hopes. Venus, while too young a world to have much (if any) coal or oil, was still rich in minerals and cellulose organisms; the industrial processes of Terra could easily be adapted to employ cellulose fuels. The ground was swampy, for the most part, and contained a high percentage of a sort of peat. That constituted the principal source of danger to potential colonists; a fire in a Venusian peat-bog would kindle a blaze that might sweep hundreds of square miles.

Then too, there wasn't a drop of drinkable water to be had on the planet. But with distilling apparatus, and fuel to be had for the mere digging of it, what problem was that?

Camp muttered in annoyance as he blotted the page he was working on, and he crumpled the sheet and tossed it into a corner. The slight motion lifted him from his seat and sent him drifting across the cluttered cabin. He cursed absently at the inconveniences of weightlessness, and hauled himself back to his former position. He looked up suddenly. There was something wrong!

"Oh, my God!" he gasped. His continued lack of weight meant that the sphere was still falling free, that for some reason Newark had not taken over control. He yanked the shell from the robot and peered intently at its intricacies; it was not in operation. Hastily he checked the device for faulty connections in any of its delicate grids, and turned away unsatisfied. As far as he could tell the receiver was in perfect condition.

Fifty thousand kilometers to fall ...

Then the observatories had not seen his signals, rockets that exploded with a ground-shaking detonation.... But why not? Had another war begun in his absence, to make mysterious explosions a matter of slight notice? If he only had a radio.... Newark! Newark! Why don't you take over, Newark?

One thousand ...

Should he unlock the manuals? Was he adept enough to jockey the huge space-sphere to a safe landing? Perhpas he would gun the motors too much, to find himself a scant hundred meters from the surface with his tanks drained to the dregs. Or he might keep his jets open too long, and send a destructive backwash into his motors.

Newark! Where are you, Newark?

Nine hundred kilometers ... a thin whistle keened through the ship as it plunged through the first fringes of atmosphere.

He unlocked the manuals and touched a switch. The grating beneath his feet quivered in sympathy with the awakened motors, and weight suddenly returned to him as the sphere's shrieking descent was checked by the powerful jets. He could see, from his place at the C-panel, almost all of North America, rapidly increasing in size as he watched. He shot a swift glance through another port. The sky was still black, but already more than half of the stars whose shifting configurations he had come to know were gone, their feeble emissions filtered out by the thin blanket of air which had been interposed.

He cut the jets, and again the ship fell free; this was by far the cheapest means of descent, in terms of fuel. He fired a short burst from a secondary jet to clear a slowly drifting lake of cirrus clouds far below, and the Great Lakes suddenly appeared beneath him. He closed a firing switch in sudden panic at the thought of making a submarine landing. The space-sphere had been designed to float, if necessary, but he had packed the buoyancy tanks with specimens and samples, depending on the Newark beam to land him safely.

The explosions of the steering-jet veered the sphere northward, well over the Canadian border, and the ship dropped again.

One hundred kilometers ...

Like a dancer he tiptoed the vessel up and down, balancing it nicely and precisely on a blast, with a minimum of fuel expenditure, but dropping, always dropping, to the surface.

He snatched a hasty look at his altimeter. Only a couple of kilometers now, he thought, and prayed that the exactly-measured fuel would last out this moment of terrible need. He cut the jets again, knocked the legs from under the sphere, and fell in a last wild plunge.

He strained his eyes, staring intently at the altimeter—at the little spot of light creeping steadily toward a red line on the dial. They met! And Camp, his fingers quivering on a half score of firing-keys, kicked over a foot lever that opened the jets to their fullest capacity, and pressed the keys. The rockets flamed with their utmost, ravening power, and the smooth rush of the sphere jolted to a shuddering halt as it danced uncertainly at the tip of the column of hellfire.

He had stopped flat about one hundred meters from the ground, he observed. Swifter, then, than was compatible with absolute safety, he reduced the power of the blast, bit by tiny bit, and the sphere settled rapidly into the incandescent pit its fiery breath had dug. The jets coughed, picked up again ... and ceased altogether ... and the sphere settled easily into the impalpable ash of the pit.

II. Village of Silence

"Son of a ... !" Camp whispered, and in any other circumstances it would have been a curse. He lit a cigarette, watching the blue-gray smoke twist in slow, fantastic whorls across the cramped cabin, and wondered what he should do now. He absently released the lock that controlled the loading-port of the sphere, and watched idly as a small motor drove the heavy panel open to the air. A beam of sunlight, the first in three years, cut across the cabin, causing Marvin to chuckle with alarm. Camp tossed a black cloth over the reptile's cage. Marvin would keep, he thought, until it was discovered just what sunlight would do to the pallid little creature.

He finished his cigarette and flipped the butt through the open port. Years on another gravity and weeks in space had not spoiled his aim, he thought happily. Some things a man kept forever, once he'd acquired them.

Camp began to tap his foot impatiently. Then he began to count. Before he realized it, ten minutes had passed, and still there were no high-pitched voices babbling outside, no white, excited faces peering through the port, no visitors to his crater to welcome him as befitting a returned hero.

Almost angrily he strode to the lip of the port's shelving door and vaulted to the top of the parapet of charred, powdered earth his landing had flung up. He had come down, he saw, near the shore of a fairly large body of water, a lake somewhere near Lake Superior, from what he'd been able to see during the descent. To his right was the water; to his left a concrete highway, and, a kilometer or two along the road, he saw the slick ferroconcrete structures of a town. But over all the country in his sight, there was not a single person to be seen, nor any sign of life.

He took a few steps toward the highway, stopped uncertainly, and returned to the space-sphere. He rummaged out a pack of cigarettes and matches, and stood for a moment balancing a heavy automatic in his palm. With a laugh at his own adolescent ideas he tossed the pistol back to its place and climbed once more from the crater. Something wriggled in his pocket.

"What the devil?" Camp asked of the empty air, and fished an eel-like Marvin from his white coverall.

"Women!" gloated Marvin, leering at Camp in idiot affection. "Lead me to 'em!"

Camp strode across the grass to the white streak of the highway. "You be good," he commanded, stuffing the lizard back into his pocket, "or I'll send you to bed without any sugar. We're going to call on the deacon."

The walk was a dismal and seemingly interminable keeping to the left of the concrete pavement, expecting any moment to be hailed by the klaxon of a five-decker bus roaring past. Camp plodded steadily toward the village, glad even for the slight company of Marvin.

"My God, but it's creepy," Camp said confusedly. There were not, he suddenly realized, even birds or animals to be seen, not an insect buzzing stridently. The town seemed asleep in the warm September sunshine, as quiet as a peaceful Sunday morning; here and there a gay-striped, orange-and-black awning flapped listlessly in the gentle breeze, and autos were parked in thin lines along the curbs.

But the awnings were torn and flapped by the wind's tugging fingers, and the bleaching cars stood on flat tires, rusting away where they were parked.

Camp strode along the main street of the village, searching, hunting, looking through the windows of the little specialty shops and the larger general stores, some of them empty and gaping like blind eyes where old-fashioned glass had shattered or fallen out. The stores were unlocked, all of them, indicating that whatever had befallen the populace had occurred during the daytime, and though Camp opened several doors, yet some undefined fear kept him from entering any of the shops. Dust was thick on the floors, eddied into drifts and strange designs by vagrant winds, yet in the food stores meats and fruits seemed solid and sweet enough beneath their vacuum-exhausted glass housings.

He hurried to the other side of the street, looking nervously over his shoulder as he went, to a print shop whose sign read, "The Meshuggeh Junction, Advertiser." He poked tentatively at the door. Like all the others he had tried, it swung open beneath his touch, and its hinges protested loudly in the thick silence.

An ancient Goss power press was the chief feature of the press-room, dwarfing a single monotype, and racks of fonts and job presses for smaller work. And in the rolls of the Goss was a stream of paper midway between blank and finished page. It seemed to Camp that the operator of the Goss had had barely time enough to shut off the power before he—went away.

Camp forced himself to bend over and read the date of the paper in the press. It was the issue of the "Advertiser" for Monday, May 22, 1995... and today, the stunned Camp thought, is Wednesday, the seventeenth of September, 1997!

He feverishly scanned what little of the paper was made up, finding no clue to the nightmare he was experiencing. He stepped from the shop, at last, and stood blinking for a moment in the bright afternoon sunshine.

Then he heard the silence ... what silence! Silence deep and unbroken, unending, terrifying... silence blanketing a world! He whirled suddenly and shouted, flinching as the echo bounced eerily back from the nearby hills. He went on down the street, looking around at every step. He felt that if he could turn quickly enough, he would see somebody peering stealthily over a window-sill or around a door. His hurried pace turned into a run.

"You're crazy, Camp," Marvin jeered from his pocket.

Camp found himself at the village docks. There were boats moored there, the gay-bannered cruisers and motor-yachts of vacationers who had been there for the spring fishing and camping when it—whatever unimaginable thing the single syllable implied—happened.

Only the larger and newer craft, those with the duraloy hulls so popular before Camp had left for another planet, were still afloat, and all of these, he soon discovered, needed repairs of one sort or another before they would run. He finally chose, after thorough inspection, a sturdy cabin cruiser. Its tanks were slopping-full of oil, but Camp wasn't quite sure how good this would be after its two-year ripening. He drained the tanks accordingly, and refilled them from sealed cans he had found.

He started the motors, grimacing as thick clouds of black smoke vomited from the twin exhausts and backfire popped sharply once or twice, indicating vital need of a tune-up.

He worked grimly and silently, the only sounds breaking the heavy quiet being the clicking of his tools and the strident buzz of a battery charger. Dimly apparent in the back of his mind was an awareness of inimically circling shadows, of a vague menace watching him as he worked, and he shivered uncontrollably.

At last it was too dark to continue the repairs. He straightened his aching back and tossed his wrench aside, wiping a gob of grease from his face with a bit of waste. He stepped into the darkness of the battery-room, a darkness relieved only by the spasmodic, cold, blue flickering spark of the charger. The door closed behind him.

Camp pried one eye open a terrific trifle and yawned. Halfway through the yawn he sat bolt-upright, his heart pounding against his ribs like a frightened steam hammer, and stared about the small, bare room.

"Well?" a jeering voice demanded, and Camp jumped. Memory returned to him with a rush.

Unwilling, in his unfamiliarity, to leave the batteries charging all night, he had turned off the charger; finding this couch in an adjoining room, the gas station had seemed as good a place as any to bed down for the night. And the voice? Marvin, of course.

He had but to connect a starter-wire or so and clean up the resultant mess in the motor-well of the cruiser, and carry a few cases of canned food aboard. A map he had found indicated that this was Lake Nipigon, in Ontario. Nipigon, he knew, connected with Lake Superior; once in the Great Lake he could head for Isle Royale and the town of Johns. Why he decided on his old summer home he didn't know, but familiar surroundings would be better than the terrifying stillness of this deserted, unknown village. He carefully steered through the maze of moored and awash craft before him, and once out in the lake, set the course for the mouth of the Nipigon River and left it up to the automatic steering gear....

The Nipigon River opened up into Lake Superior, and a large island—Isle Royale, by his map—loomed ahead, its bays offering comfortable harbor for his small craft. Camp paralleled its shore, searching for recognizable landmarks. At last he spotted the old, familiar buoy, and on the island, just over a clump of trees, the red roof of the hotel he had patronized in the old days. He put in to shore and tied up at the dock.

Quite suddenly Camp realized that he'd only a very sketchy breakfast and no lunch, and that he was hungry. He slung Marvin into a pocket again and said, "Come on, Marvin. We're off to see the wizard."

Marvin snuggled into a comfortable ball and sleepily corrected. "Lizard ... petrosaurus parlante veneris ."

Camp soon found Broadway, the central avenue of the town, and wandered disconsolately past dusty alleys and snug little homes, all silent and dead. There was a cafeteria ahead, the only one the town boasted, and he listlessly entered, wondering vaguely if he should take one of the checks protruding from the dispenser.

He stepped behind the long counter, feeling singularly guilty, and saw plastic containers of milk stacked up by the score. He took one, broke the seal, and drained it. It was warm, of course, but pure, though the cream had formed a solid chunk at the top of the container; the sterile milk would not sour under any conditions or range of temperature once it had been imprisoned behind its translucent shell. A vacuum-trap container yielded a slice of cake, marbled with pink and green streaks, to his questing fingers. He bit into it and found it sound and firm, but powder-dry in his mouth. He set the slice down unfinished and coughed.

Repressing his resurgent panic with a distinct effort he walked slowly from the grave-quiet cafeteria—it was too spooky, that place which should have resounded with the clatter of knife and fork and plate quiet with the stillness of a deserted tomb, too spooky even for a ghost—and headed down the street to the public library. He had thought to find some hint, some clue to the disappearance of every living thing, but the library's doors were locked, and he walked on.

Far down the street something flickered ... and again. Camp stared stupidly, waiting for a recurrence of the flash of motion. "Red," he said vaguely. "Red fabric." Had it been a banner of some sort, writhing under the caress of the afternoon breeze? No, he thought not. He quickened his pace. The flash had seemed to come from the door of a bookshop ...

Cautiously Camp trotted to the other side of Broadway. The windows of the shop were smudged and dirty; he strained his eyes to peer past the streaky glass into the dark interior.

"Must have imagined it," he mumbled.

And then the door of the shop opened, and a girl stepped out to the bright sidewalk.

III. Girl Alone

Camp's eyes bulged dangerously. He knew her! "Lois—Lois Temple!" he exclaimed, and ran across the street.

He grabbed her shoulders, shouting incoherent, near-hysterical questions at her, almost unsettled by his joy and relief at finding another human being. But she stared blankly at him, and yet—no! There was such a concentration of intense life in her eyes that for a moment he felt almost as though he had received a physical blow. Her eyes, for all that, were uniquely vacuous, and yet they seemed as penetrating as a powerful fog-light. Her lips worked slightly, as though she were reading an extraordinarily difficult passage in some obscurely written book, and Camp felt, as he later phrased it, as though someone were stirring his brains with a stick. Then her taut, white face relaxed, and she murmured, "August Camp!"

"Yeah," he babbled. "I just got back from Venus; came down on the other side of the border, by Lake Nipigon. But there was nobody there. There's nobody at all! Lois, what's happened?"

"August Camp," she said once more, as though to reassure herself. "One morning, two years ago, I woke up and found that everybody was gone. I've been alone ever since."

"Isn't anybody left?"

She shook her head, sending amber-colored ringlets tumbling about her pale face. "I've tried to work the telephones and a transmitting set I found," she said, "and there is never any answer."

He stared at her, suddenly noticing that she was dripping wet. "What the devil happened to you?" he demanded, indicating her soaked clothing.

"Fell in the lake."

Camp was puzzled by her costume. It was somewhat the same as the gown she had worn when last he'd seen her—but there was a subtle difference. It had been at a party then, the party for the Expedition members, and her dress had been fashionably modest. The lines of her present frock were the same, he saw, but the intent was somehow different. The dress was backless, and moreover, dipped sharply in front, baring more of her neck and slim, shapely shoulders than was strictly proper for the afternoon. The skirt apparently reached her ankles, but as she turned a trifle he saw that it was slit from hem to thigh.

"I landed in Canada," he repeated, "near Meshuggeh Junction. I was—scared—by the silence, and promoted myself a boat and buzzed over here to Johns. It's awfully odd that I should find the one person left on my first attempt."

The girl's attractive lips twitched in a smile.

"I don't understand it myself. Did you say that you came over by boat? There's not a single piece of machinery turning on the Earth today; all the generators have stopped. They've run out of fuel or broken down, or something."

Camp fished a flat case from the breastpocket of his coverall and popped a cigarette between his thin, crooked lips. "Odd,' he commented. "My boat started easily enough after a minor overhaul, considering that the oil was all of two years old. Wonder the stuff didn't thicken or gum up."

"Your boat's a Diesel?" she asked irrelevantly.

Camp cast a covert glance at her. Her eyes were wide and staring; she looked far from well. There was a strange note to her low voice, a note of—effort, he thought. That, her odd, lonely survival, her inexplicable, though quite agreeable clothing—he decided to ask her....

"Lois ... I want you to tell me whatever you can about this."

"Yes?" she said, with white, even teeth flashing in a smile that he had remembered through all his three years of voluntary exile.

"I want you to tell me how you happened to keep alive—or here, rather—though everyone else has vanished. Tell me that, and how you managed to survive the past two years." This, he thought with some satisfaction, was a fair test.

He watched her face closely as she began to answer. Then—again that sensation of physical force, that feeling of mind-muddling probing that he'd experienced a few minutes before ... and the girl slumped to the ground like a devitalized zombie. "Damn me for a stupid, thoughtless ass!" Camp swore, and felt her Pulse. She was alive, and her heartbeat was strong and regular; it seemed an ordinary faint, but he didn't dare take any chance.

There was the awful possibility that the only other human being on the Earth might die!

She had received a bad drenching when she had fallen into the lake, he thought; her skin was still wet. That, and the shock of their sudden encounter, must have taken heavy toll of her strength. He gathered her up in his strong arms—she was so like a little child!—and carried her to the boat.

As he set her down he thought vaguely that she must have lost weight. Her hair was a little longer, too, as he would have wished it to be. Altogether she was nearer to his ideal than she had been when last he saw her, and in no way had the certain privations of her solitude affected her beauty.

He placed her gently in one of the small bunks, drawing the blankets up around her chin, and set canned broth heating on the incredibly tiny electric stove. He had noticed, during the trip over, that the generator seemed to be out of kilter, and he took this opportunity of repairing it.

It was getting rather dark now, and working partly by touch, partly by the illumination of a droplight, he had jerry-rigged the cruiser's generator to operate satisfactorily. Fumbling a bit in the cramped space of the motor-well he reconnected the mechanism and started the motor. Tiny sparks inside the housing of the generator assured him that his work was serviceable, and he turned away satisfied.

He stiffened as he heard a little moan from Lois's bunk. She must be coming to, he thought. A full-grown scream yanked him bodily from the hatch, and he skidded madly into the cabin.

Lois was tossing feverishly in the narrow bunk, writhing in the nastiest convulsions Camp had ever seen. He grasped her wrist.

"There, there," he crooned soothingly, smoothing the damp hair back from her sweat-slicked face. Her eyes opened wide, and she stared agonizedly at him. Another raw scream ripped her throat, and she clawed wildly at Camp's restraining grip.

Insane or delirious, he thought. He muttered what he hoped to be calming words as he frantically rummaged through the lockers in search of a medicine kit, intending to give her a sedative. Looking back at her as her screams whispered away, he saw that her normally creamy skin was darkening.

"What the hell?" he whispered. His quick mind, accustomed to instantly analyzing the split-second phases of Venusian botany, tore the situation apart and reintegrated it satisfactorily. Her spasms had begun when he started the motors. Was it possible that the stale oil in the fuel tanks had suffered a deterioration causing it to emit poisonous fumes? With an exclamation he hurried to the controls and switched off both motors. Almost at once the girl's moans were stilled and her wild tossings ceased, with no more movement than an occasional twitch of relaxing muscles. Her tawny eyes closed, and her breathing again became regular and effortless.

If the motors were throwing off dangerous gases ... Camp dragged a mattress and blankets from the other bunk and fixed a fairly comfortable bed on deck, on the windward side of the twin motors and out of range of any potential fumes.

Back in the cabin, he took Lois's wrist to check her pulse; she had fallen into a quiet, easy sleep. Pulse normal again, he thought, and thank God for that! But—her wrist was still wet! She'd had plenty of time to dry off since he had found her. Curiously he wiped away the film of moisture from her skin, and felt it again. Cold, rather, and not a little slimy. No—not slimy, he decided, but slippery ... like a seal's smooth hide.

With a baffled shake of his blond head he picked the girl up and easily carried her up the short ladder to the deck. Gently he deposited her on the mattress and returned to his work.

The starter switch stared at him like a cold, unwinking, metallic eye. He petulantly stabbed the button. The motors purred again.

And again the air was torn by that shrill scream! One desperate leap pulled Camp over the hatch coaming to the deck. For a split-second too long he stared at an empty mattress—and out of the corner of his eye saw something slither over the side of the boat. He dashed to the rail and stared through gathering darkness into the water; there was nothing to be seen but a widening series of ripples....

The black night pressed closer upon him, and a chill wind sowed through the trees on the shore. But it was quiet—so very quiet! Then Marvin's raucous tones sounded, somewhere aboard the cruiser, pushing the heavy, menacing stillness aside and shaking Camp from his shocked immobility.

Something had reached aboard the cruiser—slipped aboard at a point not three meters from an alert, quick-nerved man whose existence had previously depended on his ability to scent danger ... something was out there now, chuckling inhumanly as it lugged the girl off to whatever doom had overtaken the rest of the Earth's teeming millions....

He was sure that he had seen a bit of the bright red skirt that the girl had worn, and a slim arm crooked over the side of the boat ... but something, he felt, was wrong, and he wished devoutly for the automatic he had left back at the space-sphere.

Had the thing really abducted Lois? Somehow he doubted that the girl had been seized against her will. So close together had been her body and the thing's blurred form, he thought that they might have been fervidly embracing each other.

IV. Twin Trouble

Camp stirred restlessly and awoke from a night filled with uneasy dreams. No solution of the preceding day's insane events had occurred to him while he slept, or if one had, he failed to recall it. Philosophically he turned on the stove and prepared for breakfast. He decided, after running an exploratory hand over his chin, to skip that day's shaving, and began to tumble through the cruiser's supplies, bringing to light a sealed tin of bacon. He opened it with the aid of a screwdriver, being unable to locate a can-opener, and carefully inhaled the aroma of the meat. He hadn't come several million kilometers to die of simple food poisoning.

A frying pan was placed on the stove, and the bacon arranged in careful rows on the hot surface. He smiled almost happily as the cabin became filled with the crisp breakfast smell, and set coffee to boil. He had found that given a good morning meal, a man could tackle almost anything with a fair hope of success.

His breakfast was set out soon, and he hungrily munched the crisp strips of bacon. Through a cabin port he could see Isle Royale and the town of Johns in the distance. He had cruised about a kilometer or so out before turning in, searching for any sign of whatever had taken Lois, recklessly exposing himself in the hope of drawing the thing from concealment. The past evening seemed like an unpleasant dream, until—

A shadow darkened his plate, and he looked up.

"You," he stated coldly, "are about the most irregular creature I've ever met."

"Nuts!" Marvin lipped, and scuttled to the protection of the leg of his master's coverall.

Lois smiled brightly, and sat down opposite the staring Camp. "Most men are irritable before breakfast," she said. "Finish your bacon, and maybe then you'll be in a better mood."

Camp obediently speared a chunk of bacon, looked distastefully at it, and put it down again.

"How did you get here?" he demanded. "And what the hell, if you'll pardon my language, happened to you last night?"

She gestured vaguely.

"Something grabbed me," she said. "Something fishy grabbed me when I was only half conscious, and dragged me overboard."

"'Something fishy' is right!" Camp snorted. "For God's sake, what did the thing look like?"

"I couldn't describe it," Lois said, and shuddered. "It had arms, and it weaved through the water— "

"Where'd it take you?"

"On shore at Isle Royale, to a cove near Johns. When I came to I saw it watching me, and I ran for the lake and jumped in. It didn't follow me—no, I don't know why—and I swam back to the boat and climbed on ... and here I am. Does that make sense, or bring the story up to date?"

"Um," Camp said thoughtfully. "I guess so." He scratched his stubbled chin, wishing he had shaved after all. He looked again at his plate of bacon and tinned bread. "Here," he said, climbing to his feet, "I'll fix up some of this for you."

"No," said the girl. "I don't want any."

Camp frowned. What was wrong with her? He knew that she hadn't eaten for hours—a whole day, at least.

"Nonsense," he said firmly. "You've got to eat something." He tossed some more bacon into the pan and turned the current high. In a moment or so the food was ready and sizzling. He slipped the strips into a plate and set it down before the girl.

"There," he said. "Stow that away and maybe we'll get the sparkle back in your eyes. Very nice eyes, too."

The girl looked wanly at the plate of food. "I really don't want any," she said faintly. "I'm afraid you won't be able to spare it."

Camp glowered at her. "With the supplies of a whole world to be looted? Of course I'll be able to spare it," he persisted. "And anyway, it's cooked already. On moral grounds alone you should eat it; the stuff'll be wasted otherwise. I don't think I could comfortably manage more bacon myself."

Lois smiled weakly, and stared blankly at the loaded plate. As though she were forcing herself to an unpleasant task she picked a bit of bacon and swallowed it.

"No," she said suddenly. "I don't want to— " and broke off. Her face was set in definite lines of disgust; the food seemed to have made her slightly ill.

The baffled Camp removed the plate. "Okay,"' he said apologetically. "I'm sorry if there's anything wrong. Don't you like bacon?"

"No," she replied, with evident relief. "Not bacon."

"Then how about a string of sausages? Rich and racy, ground from happy hogs," he suggested with ill-advised humor. Lois retched daintily.

"Not sausages," the girl answered, somewhat unevenly. "The thought of it makes me ill. I would like a drink of water, though." Camp poured a glass for her, and watched silently as she swallowed it in one quick gulp. "That was good," she smiled. "That took the edge off my appetite."

Camp blinked. "Oh?" he said. "But you can't live on water!"

Lois arched one thin eyebrow. "No? I can try."

And again something seemed to click in place inside the man's mind. The preposterous contradictions of the whole damned, fantastic set-up seemed to point to some huge, shadowy, indistinct conclusion far off in the distance—and, he thought, he feared for his sanity.

"Lois," he said firmly, "sit down." She obeyed, and he assumed a commanding posture above her. "Now," Camp went on, "what precisely is wrong with me or the world—or perhaps just you? I still don't know how you, of all the living things on Earth, survived whatever happened; I still don't know what it was that did happen; I don't know a single thing about your disappearance last night ... and I don't think you'd tell me the truth anyway."

"But— " she began.

"None of that!" he snapped, and slammed his hand down hard on the tabletop. Marvin squeaked shrilly and scurried into Camp's pocket.

"If I've guessed right," Camp intoned, "you've got some ungodly peculiar friends!"

There was a faint scratching noise behind him. Camp whirled, his hard fists poised and ready for anything.

Ready for anything but what he saw. For it was Lois there in the cabin's doorway.

He shot one quick, unbelieving glance at the girl sitting quietly in the chair behind him, and then looked at her exact twin only two or three meters away. They were, he saw unbelievingly, alike in every detail.

The two girls stared at each other in obvious confusion. It was plainly apparent to Camp that something had gone wrong with the plans of one—or both.

"What the hell is this?" he growled helplessly. There was no answer.

He strode to the cabin door and stood before it, blocking it with his broad shoulders. "Neither one of you two phonies gets out of here until I find out what's going on," he rasped. "You!" This to the second Lois. "Where'd you come from?"

"From—from Isle Royale," she faltered. "Something fishy grabbed me when I was only half— "

He stopped her with a choppy motion of one bronzed hand. "That's enough," he said curtly. He eyed the two girls angrily.

"I don't know what's going on, or what your game is," he said, "but I'm going to give you one chance to talk before I put the screws on. One chance ... will you talk now, or shall I get tough?"

No answer, except an apprehensive stirring.

"Okay," he lipped. "I haven't forgotten what happened when I ran the generator last night. I'm going to turn it over now, and we'll see which one of you throws the first fit."

A quick glance assured him that the cabin's two ports were too small to allow the passage of even the girl's slim bodies. He stepped outside, and slammed the door and bolted it.

As soon as he had started the generator he raced back to the cabin. He knew that blue sparks must now be chasing themselves around the brushes of the generator, and he watched the girls carefully.

And then ... both girls collapsed in horrible, writhing convulsions!

Camp stared in horrified fascination at their frenzied, whipping contortions. Every theory of his was shot, now; he was certain that neither girl was Lois. But if neither one was the girl he knew—what were they?

Their struggles were pitiable, but Camp could be diamond-hard when the necessity arose. Grimly unheeding of their screams he waited for the next development. The discoloration he had seen last night spread simultaneously over the skins of the two sufferers, a rash that seemed to extend itself into a silky, dark-hued coating.

"My God!" he cried thinly. The girls were melting—losing their forms! Slumping into ovoid, tapering creatures that flopped about the floor, each whipping eight short tentacles in open discomfort. Suddenly, then, he knew. These creatures—it had been one of them which he had seen slip over the side of his boat last night, not carrying an unconscious girl but halfway transformed from human to monster!

V. Restoration

"Gah!" Camp said feelingly. He tumbled backwards out of the suddenly cramped cabin and grabbed up the rifle. Marvin, in his pocket, protested sleepily at the sudden commotion.

A metallic click accompanied the introduction of a cartridge into the chamber of the rifle, and Camp felt better. He peered cautiously into the comparative darkness of the cabin.

A clear, curiously gentle voice seemed to sound in his brain.

"Earthman," it said. "Turn off your motors. We will not harm you."

Camp thought it over for a second, and switched off the motors, though not letting his hand stray too far from the starter button.

"Who said that?" he demanded, suspiciously eyeing the two limply relaxed creatures.

One of them oozed forward a trifle. "That's far enough!" Camp warned hastily.

"I did," came that clear voice again.

"Yeah?" Camp said. His hand hovered indecisively over the starter switch. "Start at the beginning of everything and tell me all about it." Cradling the rifle in the crook of his elbow he fished a cigarette from his pocket and applied the flame of a small briquet to its tip....

"The name of our race," the thing began, "would mean nothing to you. It is sufficient only to say that we have come from another dimensional plane coexistent with your Earth, bound in certain relationships with your world by natural laws.

"We have always been a quiet, peaceable people, previously ignorant of death, for the world from which we come does not know that terrible phenomenon. Our science had overcome that, had passed beyond the point in the histories of all worlds whereat the vibrations of the mind gain dominance over matter; by a very small expenditure of effort we can mould any mass to serve our needs."

Camp snorted blueish smoke. "Go on," he drawled amiably, settling the rifle into a more comfortable position. He felt an almost overwhelming desire to laugh. "Go on. I may as well tell you that you don't actually exist, that I'm only dreaming you, but go ahead anyway. What brought you to Earth, or shouldn't I ask that?"

The creature's soft, wistful eyes regarded him steadily. "From another world alien to us," it continued. "They were a race of conquerors, and to us were as horrible as we must seem to you. They had weapons, and they conducted a swift, merciless war upon us. Most of my people were killed, since we could do no such thing as taking the lives of our foes, even to save our race from total extinction."

The other alien being wriggled forward. When it "spoke," Camp was astounded to detect a difference of timber and expression in the tone of the telepathed words.

"So," the thing said, continuing the rather one-sided conversation, "we left our world. The handful—literally—of us that were left was rotated into this plane and onto this planet, whose existence the experiments of our scientists had led us to suspect. But ... our people could not live with yours. We are terrifically sensitive to certain types of electrical radiations, as you have seen, and the myriad power-operated machines which made things pleasant and comfortable for you would have meant our deaths."

"Um," remarked Camp, and slapped Marvin's sharp little teeth away from his thigh.

"I'm a lone cowhand," the small lizard announced, somewhat irrelevantly. Camp scowled. "So?" he prompted. "What then?"

The thing hesitated, and looked at its companion.

Then, "There is a third plane parallel with our own and this one, but it is a bleak world of eternal gloom, lit only by terrifying sheets of radiation from random stars which dip over its surface. To both your race and mine it would normally be uninhabitable—in fact, we would be unable to survive there under any conditions—but it was thought that all the inhabitants of Earth, all living things, could be placed under suspended animation and rotated into this plane. They would come to no harm, and would know absolutely nothing of what had been done to them. In time we would awaken them and bring them back to their home; we know, you see, that in ten years or so, as you measure time, our enemies will have destroyed themselves."

Camp nodded slowly. "I see," he said thoughtfully. "You had a hell of a nerve, though, to do what you did, but I suppose you had some justification. I suppose, too, that I'm crazy, but I believe you. I'm willing to call the war off and play on your side."

"Thank you," the creatures said together.

"And as a friend," went on one of them, "we ask you not to use any equipment that would generate sparks or short radio waves if you can possibly help it. You've seen what it does to us."

Camp stowed the rifle in a corner where it would be out of the way, but not too unhandy in case of need. These disturbing creatures, with their seal-and-octopus bodies and quiet mental voices, were spooky enough, and while they might be on the level, he thought, still it was best to take no chances.

"Okay," he agreed, however. "Mind if I ask a favor in return? I'd rather you assumed human forms whenever you can, around me. It's a trifle disconcerting to find such lofty ideals and intellects in such—er—unusual—bodies."

The two creatures blurred and expanded swiftly. Again they were twin Lois Temples.

"Ah—no," Camp said hurriedly. "Could one of you change to some other person? I hate to be such a bother, really, but ..."

One of the girls said, "Think of a person; we can imitate his form."

Camp searched his mind for friends, and smiled ruefully as he failed to correctly visualize a single person. When he looked up he gasped.

"Hugo!" he exclaimed. "Hugo Menden!"

"No," corrected the image. "His body idealized by you. I found this figure in the back of your mind, surrounded with much respect and sorrow. Who was Hugo Menden?"

"A rather close friend of mine," Camp explained. "He died in space, while we were bound for Venus." His thoughts rambled for a moment. There was something buzzing around in his brain ...

"Yeah," Camp said suddenly. "Look, I got an idea! Why don't you people go to Venus? I just got back from there, and I know it's approximately the same as Earth. Certainly it offered me no particular inconvenience, and should present none to you. Then you can return my people to their homes, and everybody will be happy.

Manden's figure nodded gravely. "Splendid," he said simply.

Camp's jubilant expression suddenly faded, and he looked comically woeful and downcast.

"Yeah," he said dully. "Yeah, but I've only got one space-sphere, and that won't hold more than three or four of you. There was another ship at Newark, but that was dismantled for repairs or something before I left. Certainly I can't build one ... can't you people do something about it? You did say that you could—ah—mould any mass to suit your needs."

"Not to that extent," Menden revised hastily. "By using the full power of all our minds, we might have, at one time; but now there are too few of us left. So few, I think, that one space-sphere will be quite large enough to carry us all. There are only twenty-seven of my race alive."

Camp tossed his cigarette butt into the water and watched it hiss into black extinction.

"Sure," he protested, "but even twenty-seven are too many to put in the ship. How are you going to manage it?"

Menden smiled. "Simple," he told Camp. "We can put all but three or four in a state of suspended animation for the length of the voyage."

But Camp was yet unsatisfied. "That's fine," he said. "That part's okay, but I just thought of something else. What, precisely, will you do about fuel?"

"No," Lois told him. "The sphere can be moved by telekinesis—mind-power. Three of us can do it."

Camp stood by a smooth-lined, waist-high machine, so-called by him though, as far as he could see, it had no moving parts whatsoever. At his side stood Menden, and shadowing the scene was the great, round bulk of the space-sphere.

"Not very big,' commented Camp, indicating the odd machine. "How does the thing work?"

Menden stepped forward and inserted a fist-sized ball, its surface dotted with an intricate pattern of perforations, into a socket in the device.

"Its action is largely mental," he obligingly explained. "That small globe is a sort of matrix which has been impregnated with the proper thought patterns to set up the automatic operation."

"Stop right there," Camp said. "I can see that it'd be too deep for me to understand." He cast a sidelong glance at his companion. "I'm kind of going to miss you and your people. You've taught me a couple of tricks—besides that little knack of levitation—that wouldn't have been developed by our science for a heap of years."

Manden smiled slowly. "You, in return, have done a lot for us. You've given us a world where we can live in safety and perfect ease of mind. We would not have been happy here, Camp, knowing that we were mere usurpers.

"Yeah," Camp mumbled. "I guess you're right."

Menden, with Lois close behind him, hesitated a little. "Goodbye, Camp," they said simply, and as they hurried into the space-sphere Camp could see them slumping and blurring into their normal tentacled forms.

The great sphere stirred uneasily, rose swiftly toward the zenith in a long, graceful sweep. It was uncanny, Camp thought, to see that tons-heavy mass dance lightly skyward unaided by the ravening, fiendishly hot rocket blasts. He sat down to wait.

After a space of time, about five cigarettes later, he became aware of a growing tension in the air. The light breeze which had been playing with his hair as he sat there had died away, and the hot and oppressive atmosphere was unnaturally still. He shuffled his feet uneasily.

The sky had darkened, and now bloated clouds, like the swollen bellies of poisoned alley cats, scudded past in a frightened cavalcade. The wind, too, had picked up again, and wailed through the nearby trees like a mournful banshee.

Each individual hair on his body was standing erect, now, vitalized by the tension in the struggling, saturated atmosphere, and breathing was strangely difficult.

He threw himself flat on the quivering ground, and felt easier.

The machine that had been left was fairly blazing now, glowing angrily through its mantle of flame. Little whorls and specks of phosphorescence appeared, dancing like fireflies, danced and grew, solidifying as they grew. The explosion of the thunder expanded to the destruction of worlds, and the little specks of light increased in size.

"People!" Camp muttered thickly. And people they were, and all the living things of Earth with them, replaced to the millimeter in the spots from which they had been so summarily plucked by a refugee race.

Camp began to wonder how he would explain the loss of the space-sphere.