Part 9

"Right. But I've got to start somewhere and hope I'm on the right track."

"One thing occurs to me. Eight of the androids died and one was killed. What if all ten had succumbed? How did they plan to get their data?"

"Who knows? I'm not saying the idea is foolproof. But a certain amount of risk had to be involved. If the ten died, they would have missed. Maybe they'd try again in that case. But they were lucky--one survived."

Entman was peering thoughtfully at nothing. "Your idea is bolstered by the fact that the androids were found all over the country. They could have been testing various climates."

"But it's weakened by the creatures being found in cities--the least likely places to escape detection. Why didn't they stay in isolated sections?"

Entman smiled. "I like the way you reach out for arguments against your own theory, but you reached too far for that one. If they'd done that, who would find the androids and do the research work?"

Brent Taber brightened. "You comfort me, Doctor. That little thread got lost in my maze. They wanted the creatures to be found. They didn't expect to fool us. Why else would the one in Chicago go brazenly into a tavern, start to drink and then get into an argument?"

"That's right. The argument must have been started deliberately." Entman beamed on Taber. "I think we deserve another Scotch."

Entman poured the drink. He looked kindly at Taber as he handed it to him, and made what seemed an abrupt change in subject. "They're giving you a very hard time, aren't they, son?"

Taber considered the question as he downed a healthy belt from the glass. "I guess you could call it that. I'm getting pretty unpopular in some places. As a matter of fact, I've wondered why you stick by me."

Entman poured himself a drink. "That hurts me a little, son."

"I'm sorry. It's getting so I don't even know how to treat a friend."

Entman raised his glass in salute. "I'm afraid this sentimental chit-chat doesn't become either of us. Let's go back to our friend from the _Herald Tribune_. You're sure he photographed the data?"

"I think we can depend on it."

"When I got your call, I acted as fast as I could. The data looks authentic, I'm sure, but it was a quick job of fiction. Now I'd like to know the rest--whatever you didn't have time to tell me."

"It's still a logic-chain, with some pretty flimsy strands in some places, but I'm afraid I'm stuck with it. King was greedy and hungry when I first talked to him, but I think I scared him off. I think, left to himself, he would have let the thing alone.

"So I was surprised when he showed up at the old location. My first thought was that Crane had sent him. It would have been logical--Crane sending a man to try and find out where we'd taken the cadavers he obviously wants to get his hands on.

"But I couldn't connect Crane with King. I couldn't figure how Crane could have known of King's existence." Taber paused to drink and grin his humorless grin. "So I made a daring leap. If it had to be someone else, why not the tenth android himself?"

Entman frowned as he toyed with the idea. "Why, good lord--!"

"You said yourself that the androids probably possessed extraordinary powers."

"Yes, but--"

"All right. If we accept the need-of-data theory, which we have to, what would the tenth android be doing? Trying to get his hands on it. He could conceivably have made contact with King. King took a picture of the ninth android. Our still able and functioning number ten found his way to Doctor Corson's room in Greenwich Village and demolished number nine, for reasons of his own, so he could have made contact with King, put him under domination, and sent him after the data."

"How could he know where the data was?"

Taber shrugged. "I said there were some pretty weak strings in my logic. But it so shaped, as I saw it, where it would stand or smash on one point. If King had waited in your office for your return, I would have been forced to assume he was there on his own. But he left, so I'm going to figure he took what he came for--the bait you dangled under his nose."

"That brings up a question in my mind. If you're right, King will now make contact with the android, will he not?"

"I assume he will."

"And that will give you a chance to capture him and have the whole ten accounted for?"

"I don't want him until he sends the data back to whoever is waiting for it."

"You'd like to have them build their synthetic army on the specifications I made out?"

"I'd dearly love that."

"Do you know where to contact King again?"

"He's being tailed. They stripped me, but I still have two men left."

"You're being treated miserably!" Entman scowled. "I'm going to talk to some people about this. I refuse to allow--"

"Thanks, but not for a while. I've shaped my operation on a one-man basis. I'd be embarrassed if they relented. I wouldn't know what to do with all the men."

Entman's little eyes shone with affection. "I can only wish you good luck."

"Thanks. I'll need it."

"And one more thing I was wondering."

"What's that?"

"Why do you suppose the tenth android killed the one in the Village?"

"Another case of taking one reason for want of a better one. I think it was his way of delivering the creature to us for research. He couldn't know for sure that we already had his 'brothers.'"

"You're right--you must be," Entman agreed.

"Small consolation. I'd like a few facts to go on for a change instead of having to depend on logic all the time," Taber growled.

"What are you referring to?"

"The data. I'm assuming, _if_ that's what's important, that the tenth creature has a way of getting the stuff back up there."

"I can help a little on that," Entman said. "I can assure you that from what I've found in those brains, the data could, most likely, be sent mentally."

"You're sure of that?"

"I've found a certain part of those brains developed in a peculiar way--"

Taber smiled. "You're sure of that?"

"Well ... that's my theory. It would appear logical that--"

Taber leaned forward suddenly and extended his glass, the grin on his face showing some genuine humor. "Let's have another drink, Doctor. Then I'll go. I love the factual way this Scotch of yours hits my stomach."

12

Frank Corson entered the office of Wilson Maynard, Superintendent of Park Hill Hospital. Maynard looked out over the tops of his old-fashioned pince-nez glasses and said, "Oh, Doctor Corson. You phoned for a chat."

It was the rather pompous superintendent's way of saying he was happy to give Frank Corson a little time. He considered all the doctors and nurses at Park Hill his "boys and girls," and he did the "father" bit very well.

"Yes, I--"

Maynard peered even harder. "You don't look well, Frank. Pale. You've been working too hard."

"Nothing important, Doctor Maynard."

"Sit down. Will you have a cigarette?"

"No, thank you. I just wanted to ask you about a transfer."

"A transfer!" This was amazing. "Aren't you happy at Park Hill?"

"I've been very happy."

Maynard went swiftly through a card file on his desk. "You have--let's see--five more months of internship. Then--"

"Then I'd planned to enter private practice. But something personal has come up and I think a change is for the best."

"I'm certainly sorry to hear that."

"One of the men I graduated with went to a hospital in a small Minnesota town. We've corresponded and he's given me a pretty clear picture--a nice town, a need for doctors and physicians--"

"But we need them here in the East, too."

"I realize that, and I'm making the move with some regret. But, frankly, New York City no longer appeals to me. I think perhaps a small hospital is more suited to my temperament."

"I'm certainly sorry to hear this, Corson. But I won't try to dissuade you. Normally, I might bring a little more personal pressure to bear, but I sense that your mind is made up. We're sorry to see you go, but the best of luck to you."

"Thank you, sir."

After Frank Corson left, Superintendent Maynard sorted a memo out of the pile on his desk. The memo concerned Frank Corson. Superintendent Maynard reread it and thought how well things usually worked out. Now it wouldn't be necessary to have that talk with Corson about sloppy work. Obviously there had been something on the young intern's mind for weeks now. Too bad. But let the Minnesota hospital, wherever it was, worry about the trouble and perhaps put Corson on the right track again.

He was their baby now.

Maynard took Corson's card from the files and wrote across it: _Transfer approved with regret._

* * * * *

Brent Taber stood in the shelter of a doorway on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and watched an entrance across the street. He had been there for over an hour.

Another hour passed and Taber shifted from one aching foot to the other as a man in a blue suit emerged from the entrance and moved off down the street.

When the man had turned a corner, Taber crossed over and looked up at the brownstone. It was a perfect place to hide--one of the many rooming houses in the city where, if you paid your rent and kept your peace, no one cared who you were or where you came from.

Not even, Taber reflected, if you had been born in a laboratory and had come from someplace among the stars.

He climbed the steps of the brownstone and tried the knob. The door opened. He went inside and found himself in a drab, dark hall furnished with an umbrella stand, a worn carpet, and a table spread with mail.

There was a bell on the table. He tapped it and, after a lazy length of time, a shapeless woman came through a door on the right and regarded him with no great show of cordiality.

"Nothing vacant, mister. Everything I've got is rented."

"I wasn't looking for a room. I'm just doing a little checking."

"My license is okay," the woman said belligerently. "The place is clean and orderly."

"That's not what I'm checking about. There's been some counterfeit money passed in this neighborhood and we're trying to trace it down."

The woman had a pronounced mustache that quivered at this news. "Counterfeit! My roomers are honest."

"I'm sure they are. But some people carry counterfeit money without knowing it. Do they all pay in cash?"

"Only two of them."

"Men or women?"

"One girl--Katy Wynn."

"Where does she work?"

"Down in Wall Street."

"Not much chance we're interested. This money has been turning up around Times Square."

"The other's a man--quiet, no trouble, pays his rent right on the dot every week. John Dennis his name is and he doesn't look like no counterfeiter."

Taber took a forward step. "What's his room number?"

"Six--on the second floor. But he isn't in now. He just went out."

"Okay. Maybe I'll be back. As I said, we don't suspect anybody. We're just checking for sources."

Taber turned toward the door. The woman vanished back into her own quarters as Taber snapped the lock. He stood in the vestibule for a minute or two, studying some cards he took from his pocket, and when she did not reappear, he opened the door, went back in, and climbed the stairs.

The door to number six was not locked. Taber went inside. The window was small and gave on an areaway. He could see nothing until he turned on the light. Even then, he could see nothing of interest--the room was ordinary in every sense.

But as Brent Taber checked it out, some unusual aspects became apparent. There were two pieces of luggage in the closet. One, an oversized suitcase, stood on end.

And jammed neatly down behind it was the body of Les King. His throat had been cut.

Brent Taber stared down into the closet for what seemed like an interminable time. His eyes were bleak and his mouth was grim and stiff as he passed a slow hand along his jaw.

He took a long, backward step and closed his eyes for a moment as though hoping the whole improbable mess would go away. But it was still there when he opened them again.

He turned, went downstairs, and took the receiver off the phone on the wall by the front door.

The shapeless landlady came out again. She scowled at Taber. "What are you doing here?"

He regarded her with a kind of affectionate weariness. "Have you got a dime, lady?"

Gaping, she pawed into her apron pocket and handed him a coin.

"Thanks much." He dialed. "Is Captain Abrams there?"

There was a wait, during which Brent Taber asked the oddly bemused landlady: "Are you afraid of the dead?"

But before she could decide whether she was or not, Taber turned to the phone. "Captain?.... That's right, Brent Taber ... No, right, here in Manhattan. There's been a little trouble. You'd better come over personally."

He turned to the landlady. "What's the address here, sister?"

And later, with the landlady back in her lair, Brent Taber sat down on the stairs to wait; sat there with surprise at the feeling of relief that filled his mind. He had no feeling of triumph about it; no sense of a job well done. But there was no great guilt at having failed, either.

Mostly, he thought, it was the simplification that had come about. There had been so many confusing and bewildering complications in the affair; improbability piled on the impossible; the ridiculous coupled with the incredible.

But now, with one stroke of a knife, it had been simplified and brought into terms everyone could understand; into terms Captain Abrams of the New York Police Department would grasp in an instant.

A killer was on the loose.

* * * * *

One of Senator Crane's priceless gifts was a sense of timing. Much of his success had sprung from the instinctive knowledge of when to act. He had a sense of the dramatic which never deserted him. As a result, he had been known to turn in an instant from one subject to another--to dodge defeats and score triumphs with bewildering agility.

His preoccupation on this particular day was with a home-state issue--the location of a government plant. After he obtained the floor, he counted the house and noted that only a bare quorum was present. Gradually, the members of the Senate of the United States would drift to their seats. So Crane began reading letters which tended to support his state's claim to the new plant and the benefits that would accrue therefrom.

Crane droned on. The Vice-President of the United States looked down on the top of Senator Crane's massive head and became fruitfully preoccupied with thoughts of his own.

Then, quite suddenly, the line of Crane's exposition changed. The Vice-President wasn't quite sure at what precise point this had come about. He wasn't aware of the change until some very strange words penetrated:

" ... so, therefore, it has become starkly apparent that the American people have been denied the information which would have made them aware of their own deadly danger. Invasion from space is now imminent."

The Vice-President tensed. Had the stupid idiot gone mad? Or had he, the Vice-President, been in a fog when vital, top-secret information had been made public?

He banged the gavel down hard, for want of a better gesture, and was grateful when a tall, dignified man with a look of deepest concern on his face rose from behind his desk out on the floor.

"Will the Senator yield to his distinguished colleague from Pennsylvania?"

Crane turned, scowling. "I will yield to no man on matters of grave import." With that he turned and continued with his revelations. "The people of this nation have been deprived of the knowledge that the invasion from space has already begun. A vanguard of hideous, half-human creatures have even now achieved a beach-head on our planet. Even now, the evil hordes from beyond the stars ..."

The Vice-President looked around in a daze. Had someone forgotten to brief him? Had that project come to a head overnight? The last he'd heard there had been much doubt as to--

" ... The injustice perpetrated on the American people in this matter has been monstrous. And this is not because of any lack of knowledge on the part of the government. It has been because of the petty natures of the men to whom this secret has been entrusted. Jealousies have dictated policy where selfless public service was of the most vital importance ..."

The floor was filling up. The visitor's gallery was wrapped in hushed silence. Newsmen, informed of sensational developments, were rushing down corridors.

And the Vice-President was wondering why he hadn't had the good sense to refuse the nomination.

" ... These invaders from another planet are not strangers to the men in power. It is on record that they are inhuman monsters capable of killing without mercy--yet they are quite ordinary in appearance. They walk the streets, unsuspected, among us. It is on record right here in Washington that these creatures are not human but, rather, soulless androids, manufactured to destroy us, by a race so far ahead of us in scientific knowledge that we are like children by comparison ..."

"Will the Senator yield to the Senator from Alabama?"

"I will not. I refuse to be gagged in the process of acquainting the American people with facts upon which their very survival depends."

The floor was crowded now. The press and the visitors' galleries were packed as Senator Crane's words continued to boom forth.

And in the press gallery a reporter from the Sioux City _Clarion_ looked at a representative of the London _Times_, and said, "Good God! He's gone off his rocker!"

The Englishman, aloof but definitely enthralled, touched his mustache delicately and answered, "Quite."

* * * * *

Frank Corson rang the bell and waited at the door of Rhoda Kane's apartment. The door opened. She wore a pale blue brunch coat. Her hair glowed in the light of midmorning, but her face was pale and a little drawn.

Her eyes were slightly red, as though she might have been crying.

"Hello, Rhoda."

"Hello, Frank."

"I really didn't expect to find you. I was going to write a note and slip it under the door."

"I didn't feel well today so I didn't go to work."

"May I come in?"

"Of course."

Inside, a shadow of concern moved like a quick cloud across her beautiful face. "You don't look well, Frank."

"I'm quite all right, really. Haven't been sleeping too well, but there's been a lot on my mind."

"I've been hoping you'd phone."

"I wanted to but there didn't seem to be anything to say. Nothing except that I'm sorry I let you down so miserably."

"Frank! You didn't. You really didn't. It was just that--oh, it's not important any more."

"No. It's not important now."

"Would you like a drink?"

"Thanks, no. I've come to say good-bye."

"Good-bye?"

"Yes. I'm leaving Park Hill--leaving New York. I'm going into a small Minnesota hospital to finish my internship. Then I'll probably practice out there somewhere."

Behind the new glitter of her eyes there was stark misery. "Frank--Frank--what went wrong with us?"

The appeal was a labored whisper.

"I don't know, Rhoda. I should know but I don't. I should have known what was wrong so I could have done something about it. It just went sour, I guess."

She turned and walked to the window. He wondered if there were tears in her eyes.

"Good-bye, Rhoda."

"Good-bye, Frank. I'm sorry."

The door hadn't quite closed. Now, as Frank Corson turned, he found it open. A man stood there--a man in a blue suit with empty eyes.

Frank stared at the man for long seconds. His eyes went toward the window. Rhoda had turned. She was watching the man in the doorway, looking past Frank at the creature from somewhere in space who was neither man nor machine. _But how--?_ Frank Corson asked himself the question. _Good God! How had this thing come about?_

"Not--not _him_," he finally exploded.

Rhoda was walking forward. The look of fevered excitement was in her eyes. "Please leave, Frank." She did not look at him as she spoke. She kept her eyes on the man in the blue suit.

"Not him!"

"Please leave, Frank."

But it was too late. The door had closed. The man was looking at Frank. "Sit down," he said.

Frank Corson sat down. He saw the man and he saw Rhoda, but they seemed unimportant. Something had happened to his mind and he was busy struggling with it. That was all that was important.

The strange lethargy that came like a cloud over his mind was beyond understanding.

* * * * *

Captain Abrams looked into the closet and back at Brent Taber. His lips were back a little off his teeth. With Abrams, this indicated anger.

"All right. What does Washington do about this one? Does Washington tell us to be good little boys and go hand out parking tickets?"

"It wasn't like that," Taber said.

"It doesn't much matter how it was. The thing is--how is it going to be now?"

"You got a murder, friend. Plain and simple. What do the New York police do when they get a murder?"

Abrams spoke bitterly. "Sometimes they let a panel truck drive in and haul the body away and that's that."

"Let's save the sarcasm until later. I called you in. It's your case. What do you want me to do?"

"Talk a little, maybe. The other one--now this one. The same killer?"

"I think so."

"What does he look like?"

"Medium height. One-eighty. Around forty. And dangerous."

"Dangerous, he says," Abrams muttered. "Any idea where we might go to have a little talk with him?"

"No, can't say that I have."

"Try the streets of Manhattan--is that it?"

"I guess that's about it." Taber paused. "Wait a minute. If he's looking for a spot to hide in he wouldn't come back here and he certainly wouldn't try King's room. There's just a wide-open chance he might have another location. Wait a minute while I look up an address."

* * * * *

An hour after he'd finished delivering his speech on the floor of the Senate, Crane held a press conference in one of Washington's most important hotels. The place was crowded. He stood on a platform, looked out over a sea of heads, and pointed at an upraised hand for the first question.

"Senator, have you gotten any reaction from the people of your state on the revelations contained in your speech?"

"There has been very little time, but telegrams have been pouring in."

"What is the reaction?"

"Frankly, I haven't had time to read them. However, I think there is little doubt as to the mood of my people. They will be indignant and angry at Washington bungling."

He pointed to another hand.

"Senator, granting the details you outlined are accurate, have you any knowledge as to--"

"Young man. _Every_ detail I outlined was completely accurate." Senator Crane withered the reporter with a hostile look and pointed elsewhere.