rest--perhaps long enough for him to waylaysomeone at night and steal enough for them to leave town. Thatwouldn't be much help--but it was all he had left to count on.
He saw trucks loading there, as he paid the cab-driver. His heart sankabruptly, until he studied the way the big trailer was parked. If hewatched carefully, he could slip under it from the side, and there wasa chance he wouldn't be seen.
He darted beneath it.
Luck, for once was with him as he drew Ellen under the trailer and theplatform. The old opening was covered with rubble, but he scraped itaside, and found an entrance barely big enough for them to wigglethrough. Then they were back in a dark pocket under the back of theplatform, barely big enough for them to sit upright. The hole hadseemed bigger when he was a kid.
Outside, he heard a boy's voice yelling. "Monster attacks cops!Monster kills five cops! Extra Paper!"
Now he was a monster, to be shot on sight, probably.
"I shouldn't have brought you into this, Ellen," he said bitterly. "Ishould have left you. You don't even know what's going on--you haven'tthe faintest idea. If it were just humans, as you think...."
She snuggled against him in the coldness of the little cave. "Shh. Igot you into it. I--I ratted on you, Scarface!"
* * * * *
But he couldn't reply to her attempt at humor. There was no fearnow--not even the relief of fear. He'd felt brave for a few minutes,back in the hallway of the apartment. Now the chips were down, andsunk. They were here, in a dank hole, without food, and without achance, while all the world searched for him to kill him--and whilestill-unknown aliens with unknown reasons played out their little gamewith consummate skill that would inevitably locate him.
It might take them a day--they probably would do nothing to him untilnight came, and the warehouse street was deserted! Ten more hours!
If he only knew what they wanted of him, or why! If he could remember!
He sat there, numbed within himself. Ellen leaned her head forwardonto his lap, and he began stroking her hair softly. He'd have likedto have had a chance with her. One night wasn't enough for a wholelife. He reached down to draw her face to his....
Fear hit him, as something rustled behind him. He tried to turn andlook, but his neck refused. The fear grew to panic, and swelled higheras the golden haze began to spread over the little cave. Then hismuscles snapped his head around sharply. The slim young man wascrawling toward them, holding something that looked like a flashlight.Behind it, he could see the tense lips drawn back over clenched teeth.The man wasn't smiling now. He opened his mouth, just as the thinglike a flashlight sprang into light.
No time seemed to elapse, but suddenly Ellen and the young man wereboth gone, and he sat in the dark hole, alone. He let out an animalcry, and dashed out, crawling through the opening, and kicking therubble back as he went. He slipped out, and under the trailer. Butthere was no sign. They'd taken her, and left him unconscious!
He groaned, trying to figure. He'd always gone back to the same placeto hide, since he'd found it. They must expect him back there. They'dtake Ellen there and wait for him, drugging her, changing her mind,setting her up to use against him. The first time hadn't worked, butthey'd try it again. It had to be that. If they hadn't taken herthere, he had no way of finding her, and he had to find her.
He began running down the street, forcing himself to believe she wasthere. Then he slowed. It would do no good to have them all noticehim, here on the street. Someone might recognize him then. He turnedaround, walking back to the bus stop. There were still two dimes and anickel in his pocket.
* * * * *
He hunched down on the seat of the bus that seemed to crawl up TenthAvenue. But no one noticed him in the almost empty vehicle. He got offat Sixty-Sixth and forced himself to walk to West End, up that to theapartment-house.
Men were drawing up in cars--men with guns in their hands. He made afinal dash for the apartment entrance. This must be the real show--forwhich the other had been only a dress rehearsal to throw him offbalance. They could wait.
He fumbled with the lock, until he finally got it open. Then he jumpedin, slamming the door shut behind him. Ellen stood there, and thecreature that had assaulted him before was pawing at her. But he hadno time for the monster.
"Stay there!" he shouted at her. "You can't risk it outside now! We'vegot to--"
He saw she wasn't listening to him. He had to get rid of the creaturesomehow, if he could get it far enough away from her. Then they'd findsome way to get outside, without going out through the entrance.
The creature sprang at him awkwardly. His arm darted down to catch oneshoulder, and his right hand swung back and up. There was a savagesatisfaction in seeing the creature crumple.
Ellen's voice reached him. "Will! Will, before I go crazy...."
"You're free," he told her. "Go down the fire escape and leave thathere. I'll get rid of them out front somehow."
He shut the door again, and went down. The words had sounded braveenough, but there had been no courage behind them. Fear still rodehim, like the little golden haze that again hovered over him, showingthey had spotted him.
He walked out, with it thick around him, rising slowly in temperature.They had him--but Ellen might get away. He walked down the steps, hishands up. They drew back, surprise and something else on theirfeatures, their eyes on the haze that surrounded him. They wereshouting, but he couldn't hear the words over the shrieks of thepeople along the street, rushing inside or trying to drag their kidsto safety.
Hawkes doubled his legs under him and leaped. He was still attackingthe tiger--the slim young man, down by the big gas-storage tanks,directing the new crop of human dupes.
His charge carried him there, while the young man slipped aside. Thensomeone fired a gun.
He heard the young man yell hoarsely. "No shooting! Stop it! Damn it,NO SHOOTING!"
They weren't paying any attention to the shouts. Bullets tickedagainst the tanks. Hawkes ducked frantically, physical fear knottinghis stomach.
* * * * *
Suddenly, he seemed to jerk upwards, to find himself suspended inmid-air, fifty feet off the ground, just beyond the tanks. He stareddown at the men, dizzy with the height, but no longer surprised byanything. The men were pointing their guns upwards, while the youngman leaped about among them. Bullets were splatting out, though nonecame near Hawkes. They seemed to ricochet off the air a few feet infront of him.
The slim young man drew back. And now, the rubble and stones along thestreet began to lift, and to drive savagely at the attackers. A galeswept along the street, though Hawkes could feel no breath of air, andthe force of it was enough to knock most of them down.
They got up and began running, dashing away from the super-sciencethat the young man now seemed bent on turning against his own troop ofdupes, now that they were out of control.
Hawkes came drifting downward. He started to cry out in fear, until henoticed that the ground was coming up at him slowly, and that he wasslipping sideways. He landed on a street back of the tanks, as gentlyas a feather.
Surprisingly, everyone was gone when he risked a glance back at thescene of the fight, with the back of the slim man just darting intothe apartment house. Then Hawkes cursed, as the creature came dartingout, with Ellen behind him, to leap into a car and drive off. Thesound of sirens grew louder, and a police car swung onto West End.
Hawkes straightened up slowly, as it hit him. It had been the samescene he'd gone through before that morning--but with himself in themiddle! He shot a glance at the sun, to see it still to the east,though his memory of the day indicated it should have been after noon.
Time! They'd twisted him back through time--the weapon that had lookedlike a flashlight must have tossed him hours backwards, instead ofknocking him out. He'd been attacking himself there in the hallway ofhis apartment! He'd knocked himself out. And the fight he had justbeen through was the same fight t
hat he had seen come to its endbefore!
Now, his younger self and Ellen must be just fleeing toward thehideout under the loading platform, with the slim man still following.If he could get there in time, before the man could run off withEllen....
VII
The paper he'd found kept the other passengers on the bus from seeinghim, but he was too deep in his own thoughts to read it. His eyesroamed back to the story of the cop-killing monster--a seeminglyharmless florist in Brooklyn who'd suddenly gone berserk and rusheddown the streets with a knife; he'd been wrong in thinking thatconcerned him. And he'd been wrong in thinking anyone would try tokill him on sight. The reward notice and picture were in front of hiseyes--but it was a reward for information, and there was a huge boxthat proclaimed he was _not_ a criminal and must not be harmed, oreven allowed to know he was recognized.
The new facts only confused the issue. He twisted about in his mind,trying to explain why the young man had left him to drift down, andgone rushing into the apartment. He was ready for the collecting--andhe'd been left uncollected!
The girl had said there were no aliens. Now he wondered. She had knownmore than he'd found from her--she'd known his brand of cigarettes,even. And there had been that shopping list, with the lipstick onit--the same type he now remembered her using. He'd known herbefore--and not just as a little girl. That tied him in with Meinzer,who was a mystery in himself.
He puzzled over it. The things that had happened to him had alwaysbeen preceded by violent emotion, instead of followed by it. Usually,it had been fear--but sometimes some other emotion, as had been thecase just before he was suddenly shifted to the Moon. Whenever heseemed on the verge of discovering something or emotionally upset, ithit at him. Did that mean he was only susceptible to the phenomenawhen off balance? It still didn't account for the fact that some ofthe things hadn't directly affected him, at all.
The more he knew, the less he knew.
He got off the bus and headed for the warehouse. This time, he had towait before he could see a chance to dart under the trailer and intothe entrance. He noticed that the gray sedan was parked nearby.
He darted in.
They were still there! He heard Ellen's voice, sounding as if she hadbeen crying, and then an answer from the other. He felt his waycarefully over the rubble, working as close as he could. Now, if hesprang the few feet....
"... must be a time-jump," the man's voice said, doubtfully. "I tellyou, Ellen, those damned fools were firing at him, up there in theair, while you were still with him in the apartment. That's an angleon this psi factor stuff we hadn't expected."
The voice stopped for a moment. Then it picked up again. "Drat it! Iwish you hadn't called the F. B. I. on him--they got rattled when hecame out looking like a saint in a halo and jumped fifty feet up tofloat around. Some fool started shooting, and the rest joined in."
"I had to--he was talking about alien monsters. I thought he was goingcrazy, Dan. I couldn't tell him anything--I promised him I wouldn't,and I kept my promise. But I thought enough of them might catch him,somehow.... Dan, can't we find him now? He needs us!"
* * * * *
Hawkes lay frozen. He tried to move forward, but his body was tensed,waiting for more. If something happened now....
"Alien monsters?" Dan's voice grew bitter. "It is alien--and amonster. This psi factor...."
The words blurred, and seemed to echo and re-echo inside Hawkes' head.That made twice he'd heard them mention the psi factor--the strangeability a few human minds had to perform seeming miracles. Men who hadit could make dice roll the way they wanted. Young girls sometimeshad it before puberty, and could throw heavy objects around a roomwithout touching them; they did not even know they were the cause ofthe motion, but blamed it on poltergeists. Other men caused strangeaccidents--fires, for instance--the old salamander legend!
There'd been a piece of paper--psi equals alpha, the psi factor wasthe beginning of infinity for mankind. But it had been wrong. He'dchanged that, on the other side. It should have read psi equals omega,the absolute end.
He gasped hoarsely, and heard their startled voices stop, while theflashlight beam swung around, to pick him out in the darkness. He feltEllen and her younger brother, Dan, pulling him forward into thelittle cave with them, and he heard their voices questioning him. Buthis head was spinning madly under the sudden flood of memories thatthe missing key word had suddenly brought back.
The letter from Professor Meinzer had been about his paper onpoltergeists which the old man had seen before publication. He'd beendoing research on the psi factor for the government, and he needed amathematician--even one who proved something which he knew wasn'ttrue, provided the mathematics could handle his theories.
Hawkes' head was suddenly brimming with mental images of the sevenmonths, while he worked on the mathematics to tie down the strangepattern of brain waves the old professor had found in the minds ofthose who had the mysterious psi factor. Dan had worked with them, inthe little cluttered apartment, building the apparatus they needed. Itwas through Dan that Ellen was hired, as a general assistant andsecretary.
There had been only the four of them, working in deepest secrecy inthe three rooms which the government had felt were more suitable tomaintain complete security than any deeply buried laboratory couldhave been. Ellen made a pretense of living there, and it was aneighborhood where no landlady worried about the men who went to agirl's place, provided everything was quiet.
They'd succeeded, too--they had found the tiny bundle of cells thatcontrolled the psi factor, and learned to stimulate them by artificialwave trains and hypnosis. But the small group in the top division ofthe government to whom they were responsible had demanded more proof.
* * * * *
Hawkes had treated himself secretly, not knowing that Meinzer had donethe same two days before. And both had learned the same thing. Thewild talents appeared, but they couldn't be controlled. Meinzer hadn'tfound security in the hospital, hard as he'd tried to find it. He'dgotten up in the middle of the night and walked through the solidwall, unable to stop until he was back with the group.
Hawkes had tried another way to stop the wild abilities that operatedwithout his conscious control. He'd prepared a new hypnotic tape,worded to make him forget everything he knew, or even the fact that hehad worked on the psi factor. He'd put in commands that would make himavoid any reference to it, so that he couldn't learn accidentally.He'd ordered his brain to have nothing to do with it. Then he'ddrugged himself with a combination of opiates and hypnotics thatshould have knocked out a horse. Then he'd telephoned Dan to have menpick him up in an hour and keep him drugged. He'd turned on the taperecorder and stumbled back to the bed.
He groaned, as he remembered his failure. "It's the ultimate, absolutealien, all right--the back of a man's own mind. It's Freud'sunconsciousness, or id. The psi factor is controlled by that, and notby the conscious mind. And the id is a primitive beast--it operates onraw impulse, without reason or social consciousness. Every man'sunconsciousness is back in the jungle, before civilization--and we'vegiven that alien thing the greatest power that could exist when wewake up the psi power."
"Meinzer thought it was controlled, for a while," Ellen said. "He camewhen Dan and I called him. I went with him up to your apartment, whileDan got the men to carry you away. But we couldn't reach you--Meinzerbarely touched the tape-recorder when something seemed to pick us upand drive us out of the room and down the stairs. We were just goingback when you came out."
She shuddered, and Hawkes nodded. He'd obviously used that psi factorto throw off the drugs at the first sign of anyone near him. He toldthem sickly what had happened to the old man.
"So I killed him," he finished bitterly.
Dan shook his head. "No. Your psi factor works differently. Youcontrol heat and radiation, you can move yourself or any object inspace for almost any distance, instantly if you want, and it seems youcan do the same through time.
But you can't disintegrate things, asMeinzer could. He had a suicide urge--we knew that before. When it gotout of control again, he blew himself up--just as your dominant urgeto protect yourself did all those things around you."
* * * * *
Hawkes grimaced. It wasn't pleasant to know, that he'd been doing allthe things he'd blamed on monsters. He'd somehow remembered thatsomeone was supposed to come to get him, and he'd run out in wildfear, while his unconscious mind blasted the apartment with heat todestroy all traces. He'd blasted down the subway entrance with anotherbolt of energy to make his getaway. The poor cat had surprised him,and been killed. His unconsciousness gone wild had tossed Dan's cartwo hundred feet to the roof of the garage. When it found him losingcontrol emotionally with Ellen, it hadn't let his conscious brain giveit the information it needed--it had simply thrown him completely offEarth, pulled air to him, and warmed the rocks. Then, when it foundthe Moon unfit for life, it had thrown him back to his own world. Ithad tossed him hours back in time this morning, and lifted him intothe air while it pelted his "enemies" with rocks, and built a wallaround him by throwing the bullets back instantly.
And it had somehow clung to the implanted idea that he must not findout about himself. It had destroyed anything where the written wordmight give him a hint, and had even melted the telephone so that hecouldn't continue listening to other evidence.
It had probably done a thousand other things that he couldn't evenremember, whenever its wild, reasonless fears were aroused and itdecided that he had to be
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