The Brain-Stealers

15

When the sun rolled up as an angry red ball, next morning, Jim was two hundred miles away. In the first direct sun-rays the grass and the tree-leaves and even the concrete roadways were wet and sparkling with dew. The webs of morning-spiders looked like jeweled veilings hung upon the bushes. The air was fresh and very fragrant, and it was such a morning as should make any man very happy to be alive.

But Jim had driven all night long, stopping only once to refuel the little car. He was very weary, but he felt that he would never be able to sleep again. Still, with the coming of dawn it was wisest for him to hide. A glance into the back-view mirror, at daybreak, convinced him that daylight driving would be impossibly dangerous. His clothes had been taken from another man, to begin with, and did not fit him properly. The wig he'd gotten from a display-dummy did not match his hair by half a dozen shades, and his wire cap was no such snug fit as he could have made with tools and a mirror to fit it by. His head was not shaped right, with the cap on it and the wig on top of that. So he'd passed quick inspection in dim light, but daylight driving was out of the question.

He hunted for a hiding-place. He drove along a broad, six-lane highway which seemed to stretch indefinitely before him through sheer forest. A single heavy truck hove in sight, moving in the opposite direction. Its aluminum hood and body glowed readily in the dawnlight. It hummed past him and dwindled to the rear. It was gone, and the road was empty again. A rabbit darted awkwardly out of the forest and onto the highway. Jim swerved automatically to avoid it. It seemed paralyzed with fear when it discovered his approach. He was wakeful, but unbelievably tired.

He saw a tiny woods-road, seemingly unused. It had been cut across by the highway and now it was growing up swiftly in saplings and underbrush. He was past it before he realized its perfection as a hiding-place. Then he braked. It was his instinct to stop, and back up, and then drive into it. He was in the act of backing along the highway when the logical course occurred to him. He sighted carefully. If another vehicle came along now, he could not risk it. But—

He backed and swerved on the concrete to the most nearly perfect line he could manage. He backed off onto the grassy shoulder, holding the steering-wheel fixed. He backed in a long smooth curve to the exit of the disused road. He backed into it. He got out once to be sure of the way. He backed the little car completely out of sight from the highway.

The Thing quivered in its covered-over cage beside the driver's seat. Jim knew with savage satisfaction that it raged. Its iron-wire cage was not luxurious. This Thing did not lie soft and warm! The iron wires would be both cold and hard. They would be harsh and uneven. The Thing would be uncomfortable and it would be bewildered, too. All during the night it must have been sending its instructions in a frantic rage, commanding its instant rescue. But the iron wires of the cage nullified all its efforts. Probably, in the end, the Thing had merely gone into a panic, far-fallen from the complacency of a creature who possessed domestic animals called men to serve it and on whom it fed, and who had lain softly in a padded nest stinking of its own beastly odor.

Jim inspected the cage with grim care. He saw little spots of dried foam where the Thing had tried to use its sharp mandibles on the iron, to cut its way out. That sign of desperation pleased him. His eyes were cold and hard as he made very, very sure that the Thing had been able to do no damage to the security of its cage.

He debated, and moved the cage to the trunk-space of the car. Locked inside there, there would be an extra barrier of iron to the broadcast of its thoughts. When he drove on again, too, there would not be even the softening effect of a seat-cushion under the cage. It should suffer such discomfort as it most hated.

He locked the trunk-space and separated the key to it from the driving-key which controlled the car. If anything should happen— But now he went back toward the highway. He raised and set upright the saplings that had been bent over by the car. Those that had been broken, he leaned toward the road. If anyone examined the tracks outside minutely, they could tell that the car had backed in. But most men would read the trail to the highway as that of a car which had come out of a disused woods-trail and onto the highway, instead of the other way about.

He returned to the driver's seat. He made sure that he had his looted pistol handy—ready to draw and use instantly. He settled back to try to rest during the daylight hours and more especially to plan his next move. He had tried to make plans all during the night. His only conceivable hope, of course, was to use the captive Thing to persuade Security of the danger facing men. Once Security was convinced, the matter would be handled with inexorable efficiency. Wire-capped Security police could land from patrol-ships near Clearfield. They could raid and search the farmhouses. The slaves of the Things, of course, would resist in passionate loyalty to their obscene masters, but a single Thing found slavering and raging in fury in its nest would prove Jim's report to the uttermost. And then—

The rest of it would be grim business, naturally. They'd have to make terribly sure that no Things remained alive to make slaves of men. The Things' subjects would fight despairingly, in the impassioned belief that they fought of their own will. But the Things could be destroyed, and then—sardonically—the tyranny of Security would be justified for all time because of the overwhelming peril from which it had saved humanity. Jim himself could hope for no reward. The freedom of research for which he had fought would be gone forever. The only gain would be that men would be tyrannized over by other men instead of alien monstrosities. But even that—

Jim realized the irony of the fact that he was trying to concoct a plan by which he might make Security forever invulnerable and revered. But there was simply nothing else to do.

He sat quietly in the car, weary and bitter but unable even to think of sleep while he waited for night to come again. He heard the humming of vehicles going past on the highway a hundred yards off. Traffic was beginning to roll, now that morning had come. In an hour there would be a continuous droning of turbine-motors along all the highway's length. Had he been only a little later in finding his hiding-place, he could not well have hoped to conceal himself unseen.

It was very quiet. Leaves whispered overhead. Now and again he heard small, abrupt rustling in the dry stuff on the ground. Tiny hopping birds. Squirrels, perhaps. He heard insects and bird-songs...

He heard something else. Sustained movements. Something or someone moving along the overgrown woods-road. He tensed and put his hand very, very quietly to the pistol in his pocket. The movement stopped, and Jim stayed motionless. There had been no more than two feet in motion. It was not a four-footed animal. It was human. It paused, surveying the car. Of course the car was motionless and looked deserted. But if this figure grew suspicious because he could tell that it had been backed into position; if he started to go away at a run....

The rhythmic movements came closer. With infinite care, Jim slid himself down toward the floor-boards. His pistol was in his hand now. If he had to shoot, maybe the cars on the highway would think someone was taking a pot-shot at game out of season....

Hesitating, uncertain movements. Then the figure came close. It peered into the car.

And into the muzzle of Jim's revolver.

"If you make a noise," said Jim conversationally, "I'll kill you."

He meant it. His tone carried conviction. The eyes staring into his first blazed, and then focused on the gun-barrel, and then stared back very savagely at Jim. Above those eyes, just under the hair-line, there was a long, knife-edged scar. Then a defiant voice said furiously; "You'll have to shoot, my friend! If you damned slaves want to make sure why I'm immune to your damned Little Fellows, you'll have to try your tricks on my corpse! Go ahead and shoot, or I'll break your damned neck......"