Louis Charbonneau

“ Listening, I felt a creeping contraction of horror as if I had touched something cold and alien. My God, what did they mean? They believed that I must be—human. And what were they?
"I would like to return with you—to assist in your expedition." The bright young mind spoke.
"Your task is to find the human who speaks with his thoughts and destroy him. If he is able to hear us he is dangerous. Once we are here in force it will not matter. But now——"
The horror expanded in my mind, a revulsion exaggerated now by a consciousness of danger, of menace that was suddenly close and real. ”

“ And I felt the anger growing in me, active and violent, a deep revulsion and a raging hatred for the alien things to whom human beings were simply inferior organisms to be possessed and used, discarded or destroyed. Looking down at Laurie, at this young and slim and beautiful woman, at the vivid red hair spilling over white quivering shoulders, I knew that what I felt for her was not love but something equally important, sympathy and compassion and a strong affection that could easily, under other circumstances, erupt into desire and need. ”

“ She held herself stiff with anger, her small fists clenched, but even the rigidity of her body could not change the curving softness of breast and hip and thigh to which the pale green tissue of her dress clung. Confronting her in the small room, I felt the same quick surge of desire, the same overpowering response to her beauty that had swept over me the night before when her physical presence had seemed to dominate the confined space of my own trailer. I had never reacted to a woman so immediately and so forcefully. ”

“ This wasn't like the dream, I thought, unable to disguise a quick surge of relief. Everything had been clear in the dream. I walked on slowly, cautiously, feeling the damp cold steal through the fabric of my coverall and jacket. And at last, winking at me from a flat hollow of the beach, I saw the sign: BEACHCOMBER TRAILER LODGE.
I stopped. Trying to open my mind to every impulse, I stood motionless, thinking of nothing, waiting and listening. There was only the steady, rhythmic roll and crash of the ocean beating against the edge of the land. ”

“ My skin crawled with revulsion. This was a power of which I could not have dreamed, a force which had invaded a human body, sapping its very fibers, devouring it from within while holding its matter together until the last spark of life was snuffed out, the alien's hold broken by the bullet from Laurie's gun smashing into the decayed body. Sickness twisted in my stomach. I swayed dizzily. The strumming vibrations of the alien mind shivered through my head, soundless yet like an unendurable, endless screech. ”

“ She had been too quick to throw herself at me in my trailer the night before, I had argued, too ready to provide me with an alibi when the police came. Now I knew that I had simply been deceiving myself. I had eliminated her from suspicion even before I tasted the human passion of her lips. I was going to her now because I needed her. I wanted to hold her and to lose myself in her, to forget fear and threats and self-tormenting doubts of my own sanity in the intense oblivion of love.
The westbound freeway reached the intersection of the automatic ocean causeway. ”

“ I saw the faintly gleaming, almost transparent membranes that joined the network of cell fingers. Drops of water from the spray clung to the filmy membranes like dew. The thing spread like a stain upon the sand, groping among the powdery remains of Helen Darrow's body, reaching out, stretching astonishingly.
Then it began to shrink, to draw its fingers in, folding in upon itself, its movements jerky now, stiffening. The clamor of the alien voice grew shrill. A probing tentacle touched the gray wet body of a dead fish washed up on the shore. ”

“ I stumbled back into the trailer. Dropping onto the couch under the long window, I lay motionless, my eyes open and unseeing, fixed on some distant point beyond the ceiling. My mind turned over sluggishly. With careful logic I tried to examine all the facts. Like a policeman, I thought, investigating a crime. A reported crime. You check each suspect, eliminating them one by one. When the list is limited that's not hard. I had done that. None of my four suspects was capable of the monstrous plot I had imagined. None had super-human powers. So there were no suspects. ”

“ Defeat and the knowledge of hopelessness pushed me deeper. Now I could cease to fight. Now I could give myself to the freezing numbness that stunned my flesh. Now I could taste the warming draught of memory, relive in the final instant of existence all that I had ever known and felt and dreamed, all that I had loved and lost—
The feeble spark of life still flickered. Mind and body rebelled against obliteration. I struggled weakly, straining upwards, steeling my mind against the final, crushing blow of the alien mind. ”

“ And still I could not move as the alien flowed again on the wet sand, drawing together as a cluster of frothy bubbles, spreading out once more, the moist membranes hardly visible, the rainbow-hued strings of its web-like body reaching, groping blindly, creeping toward me, closer and closer. And a small sand crab scuttled toward it across the sand between us. Sweating and shaking, I watched the hard-shelled creature crawl toward its unseen enemy. A claw touched the moist tissue and the alien struck with sudden violence, silent and terrible, enveloping, smothering, invading the helpless body. ”

“ Laurie is dangerous only if you're afraid of love, timid in the face of a strong relationship. She is not a monster. Nor is Jenkins. He had his opportunity right there on the beach in the darkness. It would have been easy for him to use the brutal force of a super-mind instead of awkward fists. He could have done it before Laurie heard the sounds of fighting and came out. It could have been done as it was in the dream. "Drown! Drown yourself!" And no one would have known how or why it happened.
No. Not Jenkins, not Laurie, not Helen Darrow or Mike Boyle. ”

“ Headlights rushed at me on the inbound lanes and hurtled past. The engine whined and wind buffeted the speeding car, but I imagined that I could hear above these sounds the crash of waves below me.
Revulsion came, bitter self-recrimination, contemptuous denunciations of my own animal fears. You're going to see Laurie, I told myself. There's nothing to be afraid of. You won't have to go near the water. You won't be alone. The nightmare of drowning is a phantom of the night, symbolical only, a graphic representation of your subconscious fear of sanity. ”

“ And still the overwhelming pull of the strange vibrations dragged me forward—one, two, three painful steps. There I held. I felt the momentary flutter of her terror, saw a strange vision of the frozen state of death, and from the alien's weakness found the power to hold. She was dying! Life was pouring out of the mortally wounded body—and the thing pulsating within wanted me! Wanted my body! Needed it!
I held and knew the rising pulsation of its fear. The force which pulled at me grew weaker. At last it hesitated, lashed out weakly, stopped. The alien mind drew in upon itself. ”

“ I stared at each of them—Laurie, Boyle, the blond youth, the little brunette with small, demure features, the red-faced stranger who appeared to be more angry than concerned. The memory of the car's fender brushing past me as I fell returned so vividly that a reaction hit me. I had to fight down the impulse to get away, to run, to limp, to hobble, even to crawl, just so that I could be away from the thing that watched me, luring behind anxious human eyes. ”

“ All men may approach this realm if they but wish it. It is necessary to purify the self, to rise above the interfering vibrations of material need and base emotions and ego-dominated thoughts, to learn control of the body and the mind. Only then can we rise like the phoenix from the ashes of a dead ego, into a new life in the higher plane where the self does not exist. ”

“ Always in those sharp, isolated moments of crystal clarity, I saw everything with extraordinary vividness. Colors held an intensity I had never seen before—the shimmering green of a patch of grass, the brown of a tree trunk projecting from the yellow hills, the hot red of a plastic chair, the glittering white of a trailer, the shiny yellow-and-black of a police helicopter stuck against the intense blue of the sky. I saw in the most commonplace plant an unimaginable beauty, an exquisite natural architecture of life. ”

“ And in the past eighteen months those lighted windows had seemed to symbolize man's growing knowledge of life, not only on earth, but in the limitless space in which we whirled. And specifically, of course, on Mars, for Dr. Temple was the man who had directed the exhaustive program of analysis and study of the dead relics of life brought back from the red planet. Like everyone at the university I had been privileged to enter those offices and to stare in wonder at the rows of curious mineral and fossil formations behind the glass doors of their special cabinets. ”

“ I remembered how strikingly beautiful they had appeared in their dazzling interplay of light and color.
With a shudder I thought of the scientist's habit of touching strange crystals with the tongue.
When I reached Laurie, she was already stirring. I felt an intense relief. Oblivious of the throbbing burn in my left hand, I knelt beside her and put my arm under her shoulders to raise her to a sitting position. Fainting had saved her life—and mine. If she had been conscious the alien would not have needed my body. ”

“ I made my way carefully among them until I reached the empty strip of beach fringing the ocean. Here the roar of the waves was almost deafening, magnified in the darkness and the silence of the night. Dimly, I could make out the white foam boiling up the wet slope toward me. I had to fight down the cringing panic, holding my mind closed like a steel trap against the invasion of memory, against the terror of the dream whose vivid details crowded forward, demanding to be seen and heard and felt. ”

“ The coverall he wore began to sag as his body disintegrated before my eyes, no longer held together by the power of the alien mind, pulsating now in shrill, meaningless waves. I saw behind the powdery tissue a withdrawing tentacle of cells. Feet sounded in the corridor outside and there was a murmur of voices. Someone tried the door.
The alien shrank, the fingers folding inward, wrapped in the hardening membraneous tissue. I waited a moment longer. An urgent knock rattled the glass panel of the door. The singing vibrations dimmed in my mind like the fading wail of a siren. ”

“ He touched a jet of flame to the fragrant ash in the deep bowl of his pipe. "What you're asking me to believe is that some form of alien life has assumed human form—"
"Possessed human bodies."
"Ah, yes. Possessed." The blue eyes squinted at me speculatively, and I knew that the word had called to mind the devil-possessions and exorcisms which had once been so prominent a part of the history of Christianity. "They control these bodies as their own. A kind—intelligent parasite."
I nodded. I could feel the tension in my body as I waited, like a network of wires being stretched tighter. ”

“ The car lurched forward with gathering speed. A crushing weight of defeat made me slump on the seat. Tears of frustration blurred my vision of the road ahead. The speedometer climbed rapidly. A car's horn blasted and I swerved from the middle of the road back into my lane. I caught a glimpse of a red, angry face flashing past. The familiar headlights winked in the rear view screen like the eyes of the alien whose power had smashed through my flimsy barrier of resistance. Despair twisted like a fist in my stomach.
"Faster!" ”

“ I rose slowly. The muscles of arms and legs and shoulders felt stiff and sore, as if they had actually been tested and strained in the ordeal of which I had dreamt. I glanced at the luminous clock face built into the wall just to the left of the bedroom telescreen. It was after three in the morning.
The floor of the trailer creaked gently as I plodded barefoot into the tiny kitchenette. The creak always gave me the impression that the trailer was moving, like a ship that groans protestingly even as it rides with no apparent sway on smooth waters. ”

“ Eyes and mouths round and big and open. For a moment I gazed at them numbly without feeling or thought. The numbness began to fade and I felt the tickling sensation of returning fear. All of the faces showed concern or anxiety. One was the face of a stranger. The driver of the car, I thought. And one of the faces was a mask behind which hid a thing incomprehensible and terrible.
"Mr. Cameron! Are you all right?"
I looked into the large green eyes of Laurie Hendricks. They were remarkably beautiful eyes, framed by thick dark lashes, their color deep and vivid. ”

“ As I listened, I thought of the younger alien the night before, standing among the students on the campus and watching while the other flung me into the street in front of the racing car. I heard the words of the centuries-old epic and a detached portion of my mind told me that, unlike the mighty Anglo-Saxon warrior, I couldn't wait out the enemy. ”