Part 7 (1/2)

”Okay, here I am. The girl goes free!”

The man spun around as if mounted on a ball bearing and pulled by strings. The gun fell from his hands. His emotion-taut face loosened suddenly, seemed to run like melted wax, and congealed again in an expression of utter idiocy. He gargled frothily, and then screamed--high and shrill, like a tortured woman.

Suddenly he was a lunging maniac, tearing up the street.

Now the others were running--some toward cars, and some toward the corners, running flat and desperately on the flat of their feet, without any spring to their motions.

Hawkes jerked his eyes down toward the big gas-storage tanks where most of them had been, and the glow that had been in the corner of his vision was gone. Men seemed to be coming out of a trance. They were breaking away, forgetting about their guns and fleeing.

Three men alone were left.

Hawkes ducked back into the hall of the apartment, dragging Ellen with him. The gla.s.s of the door was somewhat dirty, but it made a dim mirror. He could see the slim young man and two others still there.

The two men darted into a waiting car, and the leader turned up the street, running smoothly toward the apartment house.

Hawkes could make no sense of it--unless it was another of the seeming tricks designed to drive him out of his mind. He had decided he was one of the rats in the maze that didn't go crazy--the pressure could drive him somewhat mad, but it couldn't keep him that way.

He didn't wait to see what had happened, or whether the sirens that were sounding now were reinforcements for the men with guns or the police. He didn't bother with the slim young man any more. They'd apparently used their dupes to frighten out the people, and then had scared off the dupes--the poor humans who didn't know what it was all about. Now two of the three were gone, and the third monster was coming for him.

He'd escaped before. But sooner or later, they'd catch him--once they were sure he wouldn't be driven insane.

Or was this the beginning of insanity--a delusion of power, a feeling that he could escape? He could never know, if it was. He had to a.s.sume that he was sane.

He crouched back behind the stairs, while the young man in the gray tweeds dashed up them. Then he headed out into the street. The siren was near now--and tardily, he realized that the siren might herald the coming of the real monsters. It was as easy to look like a cop as any other human!

He jerked open the door of the nearest car, pulled Ellen in, and kicked the motor to life. He gunned away from the curb, tossed it into second, and twisted around the corner, straight toward the siren that was nearest. At the last minute, he jerked to the side of the street, to let the police car shoot by. ”Never run from a tiger--run toward it. It sometimes works, and it's no worse.”

The car was a big one, and the motor purred smoothly. He glanced down at the dash, and frowned. There was no key in the switch. For a second, he stared at it, and then grinned. He'd picked a monster's car, apparently--they'd done a neat job of duplicating, but they didn't need all the safeguards that humans used, and the switch had obviously been a dummy.

He looked at the b.u.t.tons on the dash, wondering which would make it levitate. But he had no desire to test it, nor to stay in an auto which could probably be traced so easily.

He braked to a halt outside the subway and led Ellen down.

”We're down to the last hole,” he told her as the train pulled out of the station. ”How much money do you have?”

She shook her head, and held up her arm. ”I left it, Will.”

They were beyond the last hole, then. He realized now that as long as they'd been in a crowded apartment house, filled with other humans, it had proved a tough nut to crack for the aliens. But on the move....

”Maybe we have a chance,” he told her. ”If humans were after me, it'd be tough--but these things have to avoid the police.”

She looked at him, misery on her face. ”There are no aliens, Will.

Those men you saw were F. B. I. men. That's where I reported you.”

”You....”

He stared at her, but she was serious.