night.

the land turned gray and silver and white under the chill light of the rising moon. the buildings of gila lake base iv were sharp and distinct, glowing faintly in the moonlight as if lit somehow inside the concrete walls.

on the landing pad, phoenix i squatted darkly, clumsily. the moon washed its bulbous flanks with cascading light that flowed down the long surfaces of the hull and disappeared into the absorbent blackness without trace. tiny prickling reflections of stars glinted from the once-polished metal.

at the edges of the base, where wire meshes stretched up out of the desert dividing the things of the desert from the things of men, nervous patrols paced forlornly in the night.

one of the blockhouses at the inner edge of the landing area presented two yellow rectangles of windows to the night. inside the blockhouse were two men, talking.

one of the men was in uniform, and his collar held the discreet star-and-comet of a staff officer, spaserv. he was young for his rank, perhaps in his early forties, with gray eyes that now were harried. he sat on the edge of his desk regarding the other man.

the second of the two was a civilian. he was slumped in an oddly incongruous overstuffed chair, with his legs stretched out straight before him. he held the bowl of an unlit pipe in both hands and sucked morosely on the stem as the spaserv brigadier talked. he was slightly younger than the other, but his hair was beginning to thin at the temples. he had sharp blue eyes that regarded the tips of his shoes without apparent interest. colin meany was his name, and he was a psychiatrist.

finally general banning finished his account of the afternoon, raised his hands in a shrug, and said, "that's it. that's all we have."

colin meany took his pipe out of his mouth and regarded the tooth-marked bit curiously. he shoved it in his coat pocket and walked over to the window, looking out across the moon-flooded flat to the looming, ominous shape of phoenix i. he stood with his hands clasped behind him, rocking gently back and forth on his toes.

"ugly thing," he said casually.

banning shrugged. the psychiatrist turned away from the window and sat down again. he began to fill his pipe.

"where is he now?" he asked.

"in the ship," the general told him.

"what's he doing?"

banning laughed bitterly. "broadcasting a distress signal."

"voice?"

"does it matter?" the general asked.

"i don't know."

"no, it's code. it's an automatic tape. the kind all passenger vessels carry."

colin considered this for a moment. "and he didn't say anything."

"absolutely nothing," said general banning. "he got out of the ship, walked over to the reception committee, slapped a few people and ran back to the ship and locked himself in."

"it doesn't make any sense."

"you're telling me?" after a second the general added almost wistfully, "he knocked senator gilroy down."

colin laughed. "good for him."

"yeah," the general agreed. "that bastard fought us tooth and nail all the way down the line, cutting appropriations, taking our best men.... then when we get a ship back, he's the first in line for the newsreels."

colin looked up. "you have newsreels?"

"sure, but i don't think they're processed yet."

"why didn't you tell me that in the first place? check them, will you?"

the general made a short phone call. when he hung up he looked embarrassed. "you want to see them?"

"very much."

"there's a viewing room in building three," banning said. "we can walk."

when the lights had come on again, colin sat staring at the blank screen for a long time. finally he sighed, stood and stretched.

"well," banning said. "what do you think?"

"i'll want to see it again. but it's pretty clear, i think."

the general looked up in surprise. "clear? it's just the same thing i told you."

"oh, no," colin said. "you left out the most important part."

"what was that?"

"your boy is blind and deaf."

"blind and deaf! you're crazy. the ship, he looked at the ship, and the microphone, and...."

"oh, it's pretty selective blindness," colin said. he filled his pipe with maddening slowness and lit it before he spoke again.

"people," he said finally. "he doesn't see people. at all."

harkins fell asleep leaning forward in the control chair with his head on his arms. when he wakened, the sky outside the viewport was turning dark. with a sense of sudden danger, he clamped down the metal shutters over the port. methodically he climbed down catwalks the length of the ship, making certain all ports were secured both from entry and from sight. he didn't want to see outside.

when he had done this, he felt easier. walking to the galley, he put a can of soup in the heater, and took it back up to the control room with him.

he sat there, absently eating his soup and staring ahead at the console. he noted he was beginning to get used to the harsh outlines it presented in this space. suddenly he realized there was a red light on the board. he put the bowl of soup carefully on the deck and went over to the transmitter where a loop of tape was endlessly repeating itself, apparently broadcasting. he could not remember having inserted it. the empty spool lying beside the transmitter read automatic distress code.

he understood all the words, all right, but put together they didn't seem to make any sense. automatic distress code. what would it be for? why would such a thing be broadcast? if you were in distress, you surely knew it without transmitting it.

he shook his head. things were very bad with him. he was profoundly disturbed by his loss of control. performing all sorts of meaningless actions without volition.... and now, with this tape, he had not even been conscious of the act, could not remember it.

he went back to the control chair and finished his bowl of soup.

thinking about it, his meaningless activities had all been centered around one thing, this odd transmit-receive apparatus, this radio. he had looked at it before, and he realized it was very carefully constructed, and complicated. the wiring itself confused him. and more than that, he could not determine any possible use such a thing might have.

thinking about it gave him the same prickly sensation at the back of his neck as when he thought about the nonsense words in the songs he knew. "wife." things like that.

he rubbed the back of his neck hard, until it hurt. he realized his headache had almost gone away when he secured the ports, but now it was coming back again.

another light flashed on the console, and a melodic "beep—beep" began to sound from somewhere behind the panel.

automatically he reached forward and flipped a switch, and the "beep—beep" stopped. without surprise, he noticed it was the switch marked receive.

so. when the light flashed and the "beep—beep" sounded he was supposed to throw that receive switch. presumably, then, he should receive something. was that right?

he looked around the control room, but nothing happened.

just on the edge of his consciousness there was a faint sussuration, but when he turned his attention to it, it disappeared. there was no sound. but when he thought of something else, it came back again.

it was like an image caught in the corner of his eye. there was nothing there, but sometimes you thought you caught just a flash of something out of the corner of your eye. like this afternoon....

he shuddered at the recollection.

in all his life, he could not remember anything that had driven him into such pure panic as the loathsome invisible touches he had felt. what kind of creatures were these?

this was earth. this was his home, it was where he belonged, and he couldn't remember anything about invisible....

yes! yes, he did remember! but there was still something wrong because—he couldn't think why.

he remembered walking on a grassy meadow on a spring day. the grass was rich and luxuriant and the sun was hot copper in the sky. he was walking toward the top of a hill. right at the top there was a single small, green tree. he was going to go up and lie down under that tree and look down in the valley at the meadow. and beside him there was—a presence. he remembered turning to look, and—nothing. there was nothing there.

but the feeling of the presence next to him made him pleased, somehow. it was right. it was not menacing, like this afternoon, it was more—comforting. as the sound the skipdrive made was comforting. it made him feel fine. but when he turned to look, there was nothing.

he could not remember.

what kind of presence? like the ship? no, much smaller. smaller even than himself. compared to the ship, he was small, quite small. he was infinitely smaller than even planetary mass. and there were things on the ship that were smaller than he.

but he couldn't quite place himself with assurance on the scale of size. he was larger than some things, like the bowl of soup, and he was smaller than other things, like planets. he must be of a sort of medium size. but closer to the bowl of soup than the planet.

a wife is a martha.

he remembered thinking that just as the rockets had fired. it was in the song.... he whistled a few bars. i had a good wife but i left her, oh, oh, oh, oh.

and it had something to do with the remembered—presence, when he was walking in the meadow.

but what was a martha? you can't define a nonsense word in terms of another nonsense word. or perhaps, he thought ruefully, you can't define it any other way.

a wife is a martha. a wife is a martha. a martha is a wife.

nothing.

but he felt the headache coming on again.

he went down to the galley again, and took the soup bowl with him. he put it in the washer, and rummaged around in the cabinets until he found the little white pills that helped his headaches. he took three of them before he went back up to the control room.

he had to make some kind of plans for—for what? escape? he didn't want to escape. he was home. he wanted to stay here. but he had to deal with the—things, somehow. he wondered if they could be killed. there was no way to tell. if you killed one you couldn't see its body.

and he didn't have any weapons, at any rate. he would simply have to outsmart them. he wondered how smart they were. and how large. that would make a good deal of difference, how large they were.

he went to the viewport and cracked the shutter, just a little. it was dark. he didn't want to go out in the dark, that was too much. it would be too much risk. he would wait until morning.

in spite of the pills, the headache was getting worse, almost to the insane level it had been in the afternoon. he decided he'd better try to sleep.