Part 10

"Senator, did you consult with the people responsible for handling the situation before making your speech?"

"I tried. I was willing to co-operate in every way, but my patience ran out. Also, I was alarmed at the bungling and inefficiency I saw. For that reason I went straight to the people with my story."

"Senator, I have a wire from the governor of your state. It just arrived in response to my query as to his attitude on this affair. The governor says, quote, _No comment_, unquote. Would _you_ care to comment on his statement?"

Senator Crane thought he heard a faint ripple of mirth drift across the room. But, of course, he had to be mistaken. "I think the governor replied wisely. I expect to return home and confer with him as soon as possible."

"Senator, can you explain why, out of all the able, sincere officials in Washington, D.C., elected or otherwise, you were the only one with enough wisdom and courage to put this matter before the people?"

"Young man, I am not going to pass judgment on anyone in Washington or elsewhere. Each of us, I'm sure, does his duty as he sees it."

Again it seemed to Senator Crane that he heard a ripple of mirth--louder this time. It had to be something to do with the acoustics. Except that he was suddenly aware of smiles, too. The next question had to do with possible consultation with Russia on the matter of the coming space invasion.

Senator Crane agreed that such consultation should be made and then retired hastily into seclusion. A touch of panic hit him. He felt like a man who was far out in the water without a boat, with the closest land a few hundred feet straight down. Good God! Had he miscalculated? Of course not. He had only to await the verdict of the nation's top newspapers before proceeding with the publicity program that might well make him presidential timber.

* * * * *

John Dennis, for the first time since Rhoda had known him, seemed nervous. He kept licking his lips and shifting his eyes from Rhoda to Frank Corson.

Frank Corson sat quietly, keeping his thoughts to himself. Rhoda crossed to the liquor cabinet and poured a double Scotch. She went to the sofa and sat down a little uncertainly.

"I guess you two haven't met. John, this is Frank Corson."

John Dennis paid no attention. He walked to the sofa, sat down, and took a sheaf of notes from his jacket pocket.

"I've known Mr. Dennis for quite some time," Frank commented wryly.

"Be quiet."

John Dennis' tone was neither hostile nor friendly. They were the words of a person whose mind was on other things. They watched him as his eyes scanned the notes.

He appeared to be memorizing them.

The air became somewhat electric, the silence so deep it seemed to scream. Rhoda looked across at Frank Corson. Frank's expression was empty, as though he'd suffered some traumatic emotional blow and was struggling to recover.

John Dennis stirred. He also appeared to be struggling. He turned his eyes on the drink Rhoda was holding. He took it out of her hand and downed it in a single gulp.

They watched as he went back to work, leafing through the notes, one at a time. As he came close to the end, he lifted his head and shook it violently, as though from sudden pain. He scowled at the empty glass he'd handed back to Rhoda.

"Do you want another?" she inquired.

"Give me another."

She poured a second Scotch and handed it to him. He drank it like so much water.

The last sheet of notations was covered. Then John Dennis sat motionless for a minute, his frown and uncertainty returning. "It's hard to project the details," he said. "All this detail. Difficult."

He dropped the last sheet and got up and poured himself another Scotch. "They will make an army now," he said. The Scotch went down smoothly. He went to the window and looked out. "This planet is different. The sun there is blue and the air is very thin. Their bodies are nothing, but their heads are very big. Now they will create an army and take this planet."

Frank Corson was shaking his head slowly like a groggy fighter. Rhoda sat huddled on the sofa, her mind such a mixture of tumbling emotions that it seemed to be trying to tear itself out of her head. John Dennis came back and stood in the middle of the room. He swayed drunkenly. "So many things I don't understand. I see people I know--or I should know. I--" He turned his eyes--eyes no longer empty--on Rhoda.

"I want to make love!"

Frank Corson got up from his chair and hurled himself on Dennis.

Rhoda screamed.

* * * * *

Senator Crane sat at his desk. There were a pile of newspapers in front of him. The first one carried a front page story with the headline:

SENATOR CRANE WARNS OF SPACE INVASION

SHADES OF ORSON WELLS' MARTIAN SCARE STALKS CAPITOL CORRIDORS.

Crane tossed the paper aside listlessly and picked up the second one:

SENATORS VOICE CONCERN FOR SANITY OF COLLEAGUE

CRANE IN STUNNING TIRADE WARNS OF SCIENCE-FICTION DISASTER.

The third paper featured an internationally syndicated columnist, famous for his biting wit:

* * * * *

Senator Crane today launched a one-man campaign to make America space-conscious. If there was any Madison Avenue thinking behind the launching it was certainly lower Madison Avenue.

In order to make his point--exactly what this was confused a vast roomful of newspapermen--the Senator invented a race of creatures called androids. These androids, it seems, look exactly like Tom Smith down the block except that they'd just as soon cut your throat as not.

We fear the Senator must have been watching the wrong television shows--knives yet, ugh!--possibly _Jim Bowie_, because there wasn't a ray gun nor a disintegrator in his whole bag of exhibits.

All in all, it would appear that the project was pointed toward making the people Senator Crane-conscious rather than aiming their attention at the deadly heavens.

* * * * *

Senator Crane put that paper aside and looked at the next. This one, more so than all the rest, was completely factual:

SENATOR CRANE DELUGED WITH WIRES FROM HOME

CONSTITUENTS CLAIM WASHINGTON RIDICULE HEAPED ON SENATOR REFLECTS AGAINST STATE.

Crane dropped the paper and got up from the desk. That son-of-a-bitch Taber was to blame for this. Shaping up a goddamn hoax and feeding it out piecemeal. By God--!

He went to the desk and dialed, and when the answer came he said, "Halliday? Senator Crane here. I want to have a little talk with you about that damned tape. It's pretty obvious now that Taber planted it in a deliberate attempt to ... What's that? An appointment! Why, goddamn it, who the hell do you think you are?.... Fifteen minutes next Wednesday? You're talking to a United States Senator--"

But Crane was no longer talking to Halliday. He had hung up.

Crane dialed another number. A pleasant female voice said, "Matthew Porter's office."

"This is Senator Crane. Put Porter on."

"Just a moment."

Crane waited. He waited for what seemed like ages, but a glance at his watch told him it had been less than five minutes. He disconnected and dialed again.

"This is Crane. We got cut off. I want to talk to Porter."

"I'm sorry but Mr. Porter has gone for the day."

"Well, where can I reach him? It's important."

"I'm sorry. Mr. Porter left no number."

"When will he be back?"

"He didn't say."

Crane slammed the phone down. "The bastards!" he snarled. "The lousy, crummy bastards. Running like a pack of scared rats. Bureaucrats! Damned, cowardly, self-appointed opportunists!"

He stopped cursing and sat for a while.

When he got up and left the office he looked and felt old but he had faced a truth. It would not be necessary to campaign next year.

It wouldn't be of any use.

13

John Dennis showed human surprise as Frank Corson lunged at him. He had either been lax in using the controlling power he'd been given, or else Frank Corson had an exceptional resistance.

Dennis released Rhoda, swayed drunkenly under Frank Corson's clumsy football-type tackle, and swung his arm like a pivoting beam. The blow was a lucky one. His fist smashed low on Corson's jaw, numbing the nerves of his neck on the left side.

Corson went down and, as he lay helpless, Dennis kicked him twice--once in the side and once, viciously effectively, in the head. Corson rolled over and lay still.

Dennis looked down at him in a drunken daze. "They will make an army and bring it here."

Rhoda, standing in the center of an emotional maelstrom, watched the struggle from the prison of her own horror. At that moment she was physically, mentally and spiritually ill; a human being caught in the midst of forces beyond her knowledge and control.

Dennis laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. "I want to make love."

"No--no. Please--"

The drunkenness ebbed slightly and his eyes emptied. They looked into Rhoda's. She shivered. He took the neck of her brunch coat in his fist and jerked downward. She had just come from the shower when she'd first opened the door for Frank Corson, and the vicious denuding gesture left her completely naked.

Dennis went clumsily to his knees, his arms around her, and he pulled her to the floor. She sobbed, but the tears were gone now and they were dry, wracking sobs.

"Undress me."

She fumbled with his jacket and pulled it off while he knelt there in anticipation of he knew not what; wondering, wanting, knowing only an urge he could not understand but which had become a compulsion.

She took off his necktie and unbuttoned his shirt. Frank Corson stirred but did not regain consciousness. "Please," Rhoda said, "let me help him."

In answer, Dennis put his arms around her and drew her to him. "We will make love."

"Yes--yes, we will make love--"

The ring of the doorbell was like thunder in the room. Dennis tensed, his eyes widened, and he got to his feet and stood swaying. Looking up at him, Rhoda saw a trapped animal, but the excitement was still there and she wanted to take him in her arms and hold him and protect him from the world.

But he had forgotten her. A cunning sneer took the place of the slavering animal look and he ran to the kitchen to reappear moments later with a butcher knife in his hand.

The bell rang again. Dennis snarled at the door and, in some kind of sheer ecstatic bravado, emitted a Tarzan roar.

Instantly a weight hit the door from the outside. It shuddered but did not give. Dennis crouched, gripping his knife. Frank Corson staggered to his feet and hurled himself groggily at the android. Dennis roared again, pushed away and arced the knife at his throat.

Rhoda screamed and lunged at Dennis' legs. "No! No! Stop it! Please!"

Dennis teetered under her weight and the knife slanted downward across Frank's chest. It ripped a red gash as the door shuddered a third time.

Dennis turned in that direction and crouched. The door splintered and flew open. Dennis lunged, like a line-bucking football player. He hit both Brent Taber and Captain Abrams simultaneously, sprawling them both and sending Abrams' gun spinning out of his hand.

He leaped over them and dashed down the hall where the elevator man waited uncertainly, not sure whether to dispute the right of way or not. His indecision was fatal. Dennis wrapped an arm around his neck, pulled his head back and cut his throat with one slash of the knife.

Captain Abrams' head had hit a doorjamb opposite the entrance to Rhoda's apartment. He stirred and tried to come erect but he was unable to make it.

Brent Taber clawed the gun off the floor and came to one knee. He got off one shot as the elevator door was closing and saw the android spin away from the controls as the impact of the slug smashed the bone of his shoulder.

Taber lunged to his feet and went for the stairs.

There was no one in the lobby when he arrived there--no dead bodies, either. But on the sidewalk, in front of the building, a woman lay dead in a pool of blood.

In a sick rage, Taber looked in both directions and saw the android dive through a group of people half a block away. He tipped them over like tenpins and ran on. Taber gripped the gun tight and started in pursuit.

He could not fire because there was enough sidewalk traffic to make it dangerous. On ahead, the android's path was blocked by a man. He sought to get clear but the android passed him close enough to jam the knife into his neck and send him screaming to the sidewalk.

A uniformed patrolman appeared on the other side of the street, further down. He took the situation in and understood Taber's frantic gesture. A car screamed to a halt as the patrolman raced across the street, drawing his gun.

The android, seeing his escape cut off, veered into an areaway. The patrolman got there first and plunged in after him.

Taber, gasps tearing at his lungs, arrived thirty seconds later. During that time, he'd expected the sound of shots from the patrolman's gun. But there was silence.

He braked on his heels, skidded into the areaway, and saw the android advancing on the patrolman. The latter stood motionless, the gun hanging useless at his side.

"Drop! Drop!" Taber yelled. He cursed as he tried to angle in the narrow areaway in order to get a clear shot.

The android advanced with his knife raised. In desperation, Taber fired at the lethal fist that held the weapon. And he was lucky. The hand snapped open under the ripping impact of the bullet and the knife rang sharply against the wall as it ricocheted to the ground.

Only then, did the patrolman obey the order to drop. He went to one knee and Brent Taber fired three shots into the chest of the android.

He hesitated. There was only one slug left in the revolver. If the three didn't spot the android, he planned to wait for closer contact and put the sixth slug into the forehead.

The android shuddered. The fire and frenzy went out of him. He tried to lift a leg and was surprised when it didn't move. He looked down at it. Completely bemused, he peered down at his crimson chest. He looked up at Taber without anger, only with surprise. A distinct expression of wistful regret crossed his face as he sank to the ground.

The tenth android was dead.

The patrolman came shakily to his feet. His face was as pale as death. "I--I don't know what happened. Buck fever. Pure buck fever, and I've been on the force for ten years."

"Don't worry about it," Taber said.

"Don't _worry_. All of a sudden I freeze under pressure and he says, 'Don't worry.'"

"I meant it. This is no ordinary man. It wasn't buck fever at all. I couldn't have faced him myself if I hadn't rattled him with that lucky shot."

The patrolman wanted to believe. He most pathetically wanted to believe. "Honest?"

"It's the God's honest truth. No man could have stood in front of that killer and pulled a trigger. He's a master hypnotist. You're all right. We won't say a word about what happened in here. And you'll have no trouble in the future."

The patrolman shook his head. "Still, I gotta do something about it."

"Talk to your psychiatrist," Taber said. "In the meantime, keep that crowd out there from spilling in here."

Taber pushed out through the choked entrance to the areaway and went back up the street. It was alive with activity now and he passed unnoticed. No one recognized him as the man who had given chase in the bloody business that would make headlines that evening in every New York newspaper.

And yet the radio and TV news commentators gave it no special attention. It went in along with other items of the day's news as a more or less routine big-city happening.

One national-hookup headliner stated: "In New York City today, a man identified as John Dennis, address unknown, went berserk in a fashionable Upper East Side apartment. Dennis, wielding a knife, killed a man and a woman, and seriously wounded another man before he was cut down by police bullets.

"A jet airliner, down in the North Atlantic today, imperiled the lives of seventy-six ..."

* * * * *

Frank Corson lay propped on two pillows in a private room of the Park Hill Hospital. Rhoda Kane sat in a chair beside the bed. She was pale and very beautiful. The fire was now gone from her body and the fever from her eyes.

"They say he wasn't human. They say he was an android." She shuddered, looked down quickly, then slowly raised her head.

"Yes."

"I'll--I'll never understand. I get sick thinking about it. I'll just never understand."

"He was human and yet not human. He had extraordinary powers that we don't begin to understand, so that what happened to you is no disgrace."

"It's a terrible disgrace."

"It happened to me, too. When he told me to sit down I had to do it. I was helpless."

"But you fought! You overcame it."

Frank Corson smiled wryly. "No, I didn't. It was just that he'd had little time to work on me. It was a single mental blow, so to speak, that laid me out. Like one punch in the ring. Gradually, I came out of it."

"I think I _tried_ to fight."

"Of course, you did. The disgrace was mine. I acted like a child. I should have realized that something extraordinary had happened. But I nursed my miserable little ego like a three-year-old."

"How could you know? My cruelty to you--"

"Don't talk like that! I knew about the ninth android, and I met the tenth one in front of your apartment that second morning. I should have associated. Brent Taber did, otherwise we might both be dead."

"It's all over now. It doesn't make any difference."

"No, it doesn't make any difference."

She looked at him in silence for several moments. "You've changed, Frank."

"Yes, I guess I have. I guess we all grow up eventually. We all face reality and live with it."

"Frank--I think I'm going to cry."

He could not turn his eyes in her direction. He looked straight ahead but his voice was soft. "Go ahead, Rhoda. I understand."

They were silent for a time, then Rhoda began to cry quietly into her handkerchief. After a while even that sound was stilled.

He turned to look at her. She was standing beside the bed. He almost reached out and took her hand, but drew his own back at the last minute.

"How soon will you be leaving?" she asked.

"The wound was superficial. I really didn't need to be hospitalized. I'm being released tomorrow morning. I'll probably leave immediately."

"You'll make a fine doctor, Frank."

"Thank you, I'll try."

"Good-bye, Frank."

"Good-bye--darling."

She turned and fled.

And judging by the deep sadness in his soul, he knew he had hit bottom.

There was no place to go but up.

* * * * *

Brent Taber's phone rang.

"Hello, Taber. Halliday here."

"How are you, Halliday."

"Tops, old man. Ragged by the stress of it all, of course, but tops."

Taber waited. Halliday waited. Seeing that he would get no help, he said, "By the way, that little ... misunderstanding we had, the Senator Crane thing, I'm sure you realized that our talk was ... well, the words were put into my mouth. I felt the same way about the oaf as you did. But sometimes, in the line of duty, old man ... well, I know you were reading between my lines all the time."

"I'm pretty good at that."

"I knew we understood each other."

"Is that what you called about?"

"Yes, but I've got a little tip for you. They want to see you upstairs. I happen to know they liked the way things turned out. Just between you and me, the humiliation of Crane made certain high officials pretty happy. I was queried and I gave you all the credit."

"Before or after the good Senator fell on his face?"

Halliday laughed. "Okay, pal. You're entitled to your little dig. But you know this--I'm with you and I always will be."

"And I'm with you, too, pal," Brent said wearily and hung up.

The phone rang again. Automatically, Brent picked up the receiver.

"Brent? Porter on this end. How is it with you, old man?"

"Ducky. Just ducky."

Porter laughed. "Just called to say, 'Good job well done.'"

"Thanks."

"Want to give you a little tip, too. They want you upstairs. A commendation. Not generally known, though. And you deserve it. You'll be called up tomorrow."

"You never know the day or the hour."

The laugh came again. "You're humor is priceless, old man."

"Isn't it?"

"Another thing--I got pretty hot when I got wind of how the ground was being cut out from under you. I made it my business to do something about it. I hate to see a good man pushed around. Of course I okayed the orders cutting you down--a matter of routine--I had to follow through. But then I got busy. A thing like that won't happen again."

"Thanks, Porter. It warms a man to know he's got a friend--a friend like you."

"Just between us, old man, I'm one of your admirers." Porter laughed and sprayed charm through the phone like perfume from an atomizer. "But if you quote me, I'll deny it."

"Oh, I wouldn't think of quoting you, old man," Taber replied in a kindly voice and put down the phone.

He sat back and closed his eyes. Three people dead. One person maimed. Blood in the streets.

Good job well done.

He opened a drawer of his desk and reached for the Scotch bottle.

* * * * *

At the Newark Airport he would not trust his suitcase to a porter because the leather loop holding one side of the handle was very thin and he was afraid it would break.

Once he had been ashamed of the shabbiness of the bag and had planned to buy a new one, but now there was an affinity between them, a kind of warmth.

Were they companions in misery?

He asked the question with a quick smile and then realized he was not miserable. A little bleak of mind, perhaps, with Minnesota and what lay ahead affording no glow of anticipation in his mind. But that would pass. No, he had relegated the hurt to a mental pigeonhole; maybe he would bring it out and look at it once in a while, after enough time had passed.

But he was not miserable.

He went to the counter, checked in, and they told him his plane would take off on time. He glanced at his watch. Thirty-two minutes.

He went back to the bench and found Rhoda Kane sitting beside his suitcase.

She wore a plain, black suit with a ridiculous little black hat and she was so beautiful he was angry with her. He hated her. This good-bye wasn't necessary. Why had she come?