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  Within that glamorous unreal shape — who could say what horror nested there?

  And yet, Falkner told himself, was any human woman lovely beneath her skin? That steaming mass of piled intestines, those tubes and globes and snaky loops, the grinning skull beneath the beautiful face? We all carry nightmare beneath our skins. It was folly to discriminate against Glair’s brand of nightmare.

  His clothing fell away. She drew him down beside her.:

  “Your legs—” he began.

  “They’re doing fine. Forget about them and show me how an Earthman makes love.”

  He touched her. “Can you — do you — ?”

  “The anatomy’s all there,” Glair assured him. “Not the internal organs, but that shouldn’t matter. Hold me, Tom. Teach me. Love me.”

  Easily, more easily than he had imagined it could happen, he embraced her, and felt her cool, slick skin against his sweating hide, and caressed her just as if she were real and this were real and none of it a dream. Desperately he seized her and found her ready, and with sudden savage relief he broke free of his self-imposed bonds and accepted the gift of love that she was offering.

  Twelve

  — and can I have your central credit number?” the motel clerk asked.

  “I don’t have a credit card,” David Bridger said. “I’ll pay cash for the room.” He saw the look of suspicion on the clerk’s face, and turned on his ho-ho-ho Santa Claus persona. He boomed out a huge laugh and said, “I guess I’m the last man in the Western Hemisphere without one, hey? Just don’t believe in the things! Cash was good enough for my daddy, cash is good enough for me! How much?”

  The clerk told him. Bridger drew several crumpled bills from the wallet that had been in his emergency kit — every Kranzoi agent carried a wad of Earthman money, just in case he might have to make a forced landing — and spread them out on the counter. The clerk looked more satisfied. A dusty stranger, without baggage, without even a credit card, tramping in here on foot — that was funny business for a motel. But the stranger’s money was green. And who could begrudge a room to Santa Claus three weeks before Christmas?

  “It’s Room Two-sixteen,” the clerk told him. “Second tier, to your left.”

  The room was a triangular wedge with scarcely any en-tranceway at all, opening out to perhaps thirty degrees of arc along the outer perimeter of the circular building. Bridger squeezed inside, locked and thumb-sealed the door, and sank down heavily on the bed. Walking these few miles had left his Earth-body exhausted. He was out of shape, he thought, even though they carefully maintained full gravity aboard the ship to keep their muscles in tone.

  He stripped off his clothing and thrust everything into the coin-operated ultrasonic cleanser against the right wall. Then he stepped under the shower. He knew in theory how a shower worked, but his Kranazoi conditioning made him hold back from activating it. Kranaz was a dry world, where water was life and power, and it appalled him to think that even here in this driest part of North America he need only touch those studs and an unending supply of water would cascade over him. Feeling shameless, he turned the water on. Bridger wished he could strip away his Earthman body of his, pull it off in great sloppy chunks and expose his true skin to this water. He stood under the shower for half an hour, reveling in it.

  He dried and dressed and eyed himself in the mirror. He looked fairly presentable. A fat man didn’t have to look really neat. The cosmetics men who had designed his skin had arranged things so that his face always seemed as though it had been shaved three hours ago, and would not need to be shaved again in another half a day. They hadn’t yet solved the technical problem of a continuously growing beard. No matter, Bridger thought. This would do.

  Now, about those three Dirnans—

  He sidled out of the room and walked down to ground level. The motel had a cocktail lounge just below the street, a fancy one with a waterfall thundering over a glass barrier. Water again! Bridger entered the cocktail lounge. He saw little groups of men, three and four at most, sitting about over drinks. They were formally dressed: businessmen, he realized. He took a seat at the bar. A girl came over to serve him. Her scanty costume left plenty of flesh visible, and Bridger observed with some fascination that her nearly bare breasts had been coated with a kind of fluorescing substance. In the dimness of the lounge, the blue-green glow of her bosom was violently conspicuous. A new style, eh? It was not to his taste; but, then, Kranazoi were not mammals, and he failed to appreciate the erotic significance of breasts at all.

  She cocked her luminous mammaries at him and said, “What’ll it be?”

  “Sherry on the rocks,” Bridger said.

  He got a queer look from her for that. Evidently no real man would drink anything so mild. Bridger merely grinned. Sherry, he knew, was only a fortified wine, less than ten percent alcohol in it. Fine. His metabolism regarded alcohol as a poison, and the less of it he consumed, the healthier he’d be. He needed to drink something, as his entree to the conversations of the cocktail lounge, but the lighter it was, the better.

  She gave him his drink. He paid her, and she jiggled off to the next patron. Bridger sipped delicately.

  He listened. His auditory system was extremely sensitive.

  “—raised the dividend four years in a row, and I’ve got the word they’ll split three to one in April—”

  “—so he took her up to the room, you know, but when he got her clothes off her it turned out that—”

  “—Braves don’t have a chance if Pasquarelli really plays out the season in Japan—”

  “—no matter what they say about that damn fireball, I refuse to believe that it was only a—”

  “—they’s got seven lots left in that subdivision, except three of them’s half sold to—”

  “—how can you argue with earnings of six bucks a share?—”

  “—forty-one home runs with a sprained wrist — ”

  “—and then she said, give me fifty bucks or I’ll call a cop, so he—”

  “—flying saucer—”

  “—putting in the utility lines, that’s an extra cost—”

  “—over-the-counter now, but they’re going to be listed in—”

  “—sure I believe that stuff! Listen, mac, they’re all over the goddam place!—”

  “—they got this Mexican shortstop, no, Cuban—”

  “—kicked her good and hard—”

  “—after the bank forecloses, we can—”

  Bridger took another cautious sip of his drink. Then he pulled himself ponderously out of his seat and crossed the room, working hard to look benevolent and friendly. He stood above the group of four men a moment; they took little notice of him. A waitress with purplish thighs flitted by. The men were young, Bridger guessed, but not very young. When a couple of them looked up, the Kranazoi agent beamed broadly and said as affably as he could, “Excuse me for butting in, fellers, but I couldn’t help hearing you talk about that flying saucer—”

  Thirteen

  Mirtin knew that he was violating regulations by striking up this intimacy with the Indian boy. A Dirnan forced to land on Earth was in general supposed to avoid all contact with Earthmen; for survival, certain exceptions to the letter of the regulations were permitted, but he had gone far beyond their limits. Among the things he was forbidden to do was to explain the purpose of the Dirnan mission, to discuss the location and civilization of Dirna, or to permit any Earthman to handle the equipment that the watcher had brought with him when he landed. Mirtin had done all of these things.

  Yet he felt little guilt about it. He had served the mother world well and faithfully through a long lifetime. For what amounted to hundreds of years, by the reckoning of Charley Estancia’s species, Mirtin had obeyed all the regulations. He was entitled to a small lapse in his old age.

  Besides, there was Charley to consider. Mirtin could see the boy flowering, growing from one night to the next The raw material had been good: an alert, inquisitive mind, a natur
e hungry for knowledge and experience. Environment had thwarted Charley by dropping him into an enclave where deliberately primitivistic cultural traits were maintained. Mirtin felt that the universe owed Charley Estancia a glimpse of something greater than his mud pueblo. If, as it happened, the universe had chosen Mirtin of Dirna to be the agent of the boy’s awakening, Mirtin would simply have to accept that fact, without worrying too much about the security regulations. Sometimes mere patriotism had to give way to higher obligations.

  Charley squatted beside him, fondling the shining tools that Mirtin had allowed him to take from his suit.

  “What does this one do?” the boy asked.

  That’s a — well, we think of it as a portable generator. It makes electricity.”

  “But I can hold it in my hand. You got a little magnet in there somewhere? How does it work?”

  “It taps the magnetic field of the planet,” said Mirtin. “You know that every planet is like a large magnet?”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure.”

  “This instrument sets up lines of force that run counter to the planetary magnetic field. You squeeze that lever and it cuts across the magnetic lines to induce a current. We call it a cheater, Charley, because it seems to be stealing power out of thin air. Of course, it’s really just borrowing, not stealing.”

  “Can I try it?”

  “Go ahead. But how will you use it?”

  The boy pointed to the canteen. “You left a little water over. If this really makes a current, I ought to be able to split the water up, right? Into hydrogen, oxygen? What’s the word? Electro — electrolly—”

  “Electrolysis,” Mirtin said. “Yes, that’ll work. Be careful, though.”

  “You bet.”

  Mirtin showed the boy how to extrude the electrodes. With great precision Charley readied the tool for use and slipped the electrodes into the water. Then he activated the generator. They both watched in delight as the current shattered the molecules of water in the proper fashion.

  “Hey, it works!” Charley cried. “Listen, can I open it up? I want to see what’s in there that makes the current!”

  “No,” Mirtin said harshly.

  “You won’t let me, huh? I’ll put it back together again afterward. Just like good. I won’t hurt it.”

  “Please, Charley. Don’t try to open it. You — you’ll break it. It’s designed to burn out the moment anybody opens the seal.”

  It was a lie, and Mirtin was not good at lying to Charley. He tried not to meet the shining dark eyes.

  Charley said, “That’s so if anybody from Earth accidentally gets hold of it, he won’t be able to open it up and learn how to make one?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Maybe you got a second one? I could open the other one up and at least get a look at it before it burns out.”

  “There is no other one in my kit,” Mirtin said. He sighed. “If I had one, I wouldn’t let you open it anyway.”

  “You’re afraid I’d learn too much? That I’d learn some-thing Earth people aren’t supposed to know?”

  “That’s it” Mirtin confessed. I shouldn’t even be showing you these things. I’m breaking one rule to do that. But I mustn’t let you look inside them. Don’t you see, Charley, it isn’t any good if we just come down here and hand you our tools and let you study and imitate them. There are some things a planet has to discover for itself. If the discovery doesn’t come from within, it’s no good. I’ve seen civilizations rot because they didn’t develop their own technology. Not here. Other planets. They borrowed, they stole — and they rotted.”

  “So I can’t look inside?”

  “No. Try to imagine what’s in there, yes. But don’t peek.” Charley said, “You can’t move your arms or your legs, Mirtin. You couldn’t stop me if I opened it up.”

  “Correct,” Mirtin replied calmly. “I couldn’t stop you at all. The only one who could stop you is you, Charley.”

  It was very quiet in the cave suddenly. Charley ran his hand along the sleekness of the generator’s butt, and took two or three quick glances in Mirtin’s direction. Reluctantly, he set the tool down beside Mirtin’s other equipment.

  “You want a tortilla?”

  “ I’d like one.”

  Charley unwrapped the package and drew another tortilla out. As usual, he held it above Mirtin’s mouth while the Dirnan, lying flat on his back, bit off chunks of it. This time, Mirtin bit off a chunk but failed to catch it, and it slipped down the side of his chin toward the cave floor. Automatically he tried to bring his right hand up to catch the falling piece of tortilla. The tortilla fell away; but he had moved his arm.

  “Hey!” Charley yelled. “You lifted your hand!”

  “Just a few inches.”

  “But you lifted it! You can move again! When did that start?”

  “It’s been happening little by little. I noticed it yesterday. I’m regaining the use of my limbs.”

  “But your back is broken!”

  “The central column is nearly healed. The nerves are beginning to regenerate. It’s happening swiftly.”

  “It sure is. But I forget, you aren’t human. What they got in you, it’s artificial. It’s better than human bone, isn’t it? Would my back grow back if I broke it?”

  “Not this way.”

  “I didn’t think so. How long before you can walk again, Mirtin?”

  “A while, yet. Yesterday a couple of fingers, today a whole hand … but I have some distance to go before I can lift my body.”

  “It’s great, though. You’re getting better.” Instantly, Charley’s mood shifted. “When you can walk again, you’ll go back to Dirna, huh?”

  “If I can get rescued. I can’t just flap my wings and take off, you know. I’ve got to attract the attention of a rescue team,”

  “How you do that? You send up a flare, or something?”

  “I have a communicating device in my suit. It broadcasts a signal that they ought to be able to detect.”

  There was no eluding Charley’s agile mind. “If you got a thing you can signal for help with, how come you didn’t already call for someone to come get you?”

  “The communicator is worked with the hand. My hand is paralyzed, right? I am not able to reach the device.”

  “Well, then—” Charley gulped. “I could do it for you, couldn’t I?”

  “You already have,” Mirtin said.

  “What?”

  “While you’ve examined the equipment of my suit, you’ve touched the communicator a number of times. The signal’s been going out for days. Apparently there’s something wrong with the communicator, or they’d have found me by now. If they’re looking for me, that is.”

  “You didn’t tell me any of this.”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “Will you be able to fix the communicator, Mirtin?”

  “Possibly. I won’t know until I can use my body again.”

  “Could I fix it for you?”

  “If you did, and they came, you’d never see me again. Do you want me to go away from you that fast?”

  “Hey, no,” Charley said. “I’d like you to stay here forever, talking to me, teaching me things. But — but — you ought to be back with your own people. You ought to have a doctor. I’d fix the communicator for you, Mirtin. Even if it meant that you’d go away.”

  “Thank you, Charley. But not just yet. I’m not whole enough yet to withstand acceleration, anyway. I have to knit a while longer before they can take me away. So we have some more time to talk. And then, perhaps, you can help me fix the communicator. All right?”

  “Whatever you say, Mirtin.”

  Charley was looking at the tools again. He picked up another one, the disruptor.

  “What’s this?”

  It’s a cutting and excavating toot. It gives off an extremely strong beam of light that burns through anything within range.”

  “Like a laser, you mean?”

  “It is a laser,” said Mirtin. “But a far
more powerful one than any used on Earth. At the right opening it can melt rock or cut through metal.”

  “You mean it?”

  Mirtin laughed. “You want to try it, don’t you? All right, then. Hold it by the rounded end. That’s the control stud. Let me see what range it’s set for. Yes, ten feet. Good enough. Mow, point it at the cave floor, and make sure your feet aren’t in the way, and press the—”

  The beam flared out. It consumed a patch of the floor of the cave five inches across and nearly a foot deep in the first moment. Charley yelled and switched the disruptor off. Holding it at arm’s length, he stared in wonder.

  “You could do anything with this!” he cried.

  “It’s very useful, yes.”

  “Even — even kill somebody!”

  “If you wanted to kill somebody,” said Mirtin. “We don’t do much killing in our world.”

  “But if you had to,” Charley said. “I mean, it’s clean and quick, and — listen, I don’t think about killing much. Will you tell me how this works? I suppose I can’t open this one up either, but—”

  He was full of questions. The disruptor excited him even more than the power tool had, perhaps because he could comprehend the basic principles of the generator, more or less, but the concept of destroying matter through optical pumping baffled him. Mirtin did his best to explain. He used analogies and images, and even a few evasions where the technology of the device was beyond his own grasp. Charley already knew about lasers, but he knew of them as bulky machines requiring an input of light. What .puzzled him about this one was, for one, its small size, and for another, its self-contained nature. Where did the light beam come from?