"You mean I was just having hallucinations? I tell you —"
"Not quite that simple," Arnold cut in. "Longstead 42 works directly on the subconscious. It releases your strongest subconscious fears, the childhood terrors you've been suppressing. It animates them. And that's what you've been seeing."
"Then there's actually nothing here?" Gregor asked.
"Nothing physical. But the hallucinations are real enough to whoever is having them."
Gregor reached over for another bottle of brandy. This called for a celebration.
"It won't be hard to decontaminate Ghost V," Arnold went on confidently. "We can cancel the Longstead 42 with no difficulty. And then — we'll be rich, partner!"
Gregor suggested a toast, then thought of something disturbing. "If they're just hallucinations, what happened to the settlers?"
Arnold was silent for a moment. "Well," he said finally, "Longstead may have a tendency to stimulate the mortido — the death instinct. The settlers must have gone crazy. Killed each other."
"And no survivors?"
"Sure, why not? The last ones alive committed suicide or died of wounds. Don't worry about it. I'm chartering a ship immediately and coming out to run those tests. Relax. I'll pick you up in a day or two."
Gregor signed off. He allowed himself the rest of the bottle of brandy that night. It seemed only fair. The mystery of Ghost V was solved and they were going to be rich. Soon he would be able to hire a man to land on strange planets for him, while he sat home and gave instructions over a radio.
He awoke late the next day with a hangover. Arnold's ship hadn't arrived yet, so he packed his equipment and waited. By evening, there was still no ship. He sat in the doorway of the prefab and watched a gaudy sunset, then went inside and made dinner.
The problem of the settlers still bothered him, but he determined not to worry about it. Undoubtedly there was a logical answer.
After dinner, he stretched out on a bed. He had barely closed his eyes when he heard someone cough apologetically.
"Hello," said the Purple-striped Grabber.
His own personal hallucination had returned to eat him. "Hello, old chap," Gregor said cheerfully, without a bit of fear or worry.
"Did you eat the apples?"
"Dreadfully sorry. I forgot."
"Oh, well." The Grabber tried to conceal his disappointment. "I brought the chocolate sauce." He held up the can.
Gregor smiled. "You can leave now," he said. "I know you're just a figment of my imagination. You can't hurt me."
"I'm not going to hurt you," the Grabber said. "I'm just going to eat you."
He walked up to Gregor. Gregor held his ground, smiling, although he wished the Grabber didn't appear so solid and undreamlike. The Grabber leaned over and bit his arm experimentally.
He jumped back and looked at his arm. There were toothmarks on it. Blood was oozing out — real blood — his blood.
The colonists had been bitten, gashed, torn and ripped.
At that moment, Gregor remembered an exhibition of hypnotism he had once seen. The hypnotist had told the subject he was putting a lighted cigarette on his arm. Then he had touched the spot with a pencil.
Within seconds, an angry red blister had appeared on the subject's arm, because he believed he had been burned. If your subconscious thinks you're dead, you're dead. If it orders the stigmata of toothmarks, they are there.
He didn't believe in the Grabber.
But his subconscious did.
Gregor tried to run for the door. The Grabber cut him off. It seized him in its claws and bent to reach his neck.
The magic word! What was it?
Gregor shouted, "Alphoisto??"
"Wrong word," said the Grabber. "Please don't squirm."
"Regnastikio?"
"Nope. Stop wriggling and it'll be over before you —"
"Voorshpellhappilo!"
The Grabber let out a scream of pain and released him. It bounded high into the air and vanished.
Gregor collapsed into a chair. That had been close. Too close. It would be a particularly stupid way to die — rent by his own death-desiring subconscious, slashed by his own imagination, killed by his own conviction. It was fortunate he had remembered the word. Now if Arnold would only hurry...
He heard a low chuckle of amusement.
It came from the blackness of a half-opened closet door, touching off an almost forgotten memory. He was nine years old again, and the Shadower — his Shadower — was a strange, thin, grisly creature who hid in doorways, slept under beds and attacked only in the dark.
"Turn out the lights," the Shadower said.
"Not a chance," Gregor retorted, drawing his blaster. As long as the lights were on, he was safe.
"You'd better turn them off."
"No!"
"Very well. Egan, Megan, Degan!"
Three little creatures scampered into the room. They raced to the nearest light bulb, flung themselves on it and began to gulp hungrily.
The room was growing darker.
Gregor blasted at them each time they approached a light. Glass shattered, but the nimble creatures darted out of the way.
And then Gregor realized what he had done. The creatures couldn't actually eat light. Imagination can't make any impression on inanimate matter. He had imagined that the room was growing dark and —
He had shot out his light bulbs! His own destructive subconscious had tricked him.
Now the Shadower stepped out. Leaping from shadow to shadow, he came towards Gregor.
The blaster had no effect. Gregor tried frantically to think of the magic word — and terrifiedly remembered that no magic word banished the Shadower.
He backed away, the Shadower advancing, until he was stopped by a packing case. The Shadower towered over him and Gregor shrank to the floor and closed his eyes.
His hands came in contact with something cold. He was leaning against the packing case of toys for the settlers' children. And he was holding a water pistol.
Gregor brandished it. The Shadower backed away, eyeing the weapon with apprehension.
Quickly, Gregor ran to the tap and filled the pistol. He directed a deadly stream of water into the creature.
The Shadower howled in agony and vanished.
Gregor smiled tightly and slipped the empty gun into his belt.
A water pistol was the right weapon to use against an imaginary monster.
It was nearly dawn when the ship landed and Arnold stepped out. Without wasting any time, he set up his tests. By midday, it was done and the element definitely established as Longstead 42. He and Gregor packed up immediately and blasted off.
Once they were in space, Gregor told his partner everything that had happened.
"Pretty rough," said Arnold softly, but with deep feeling.
Gregor could smile with modest heroism now that he was safely off Ghost V. "Could have been worse," he said.
"How?"
"Suppose Jimmy Flynn were here. There was a kid who could really dream up monsters. Remember the Grumbler?"
"All I remember is the nightmares it gave me," Arnold said.
They were on their way home. Arnold jotted down some notes for an article entitled "The Death Instinct on Ghost V: An Examination of Subconscious Stimulation, Hysteria, and Mass Hallucination in Producing Physical Stigmata." Then he went to the control room to set the autopilot.
Gregor threw himself on a couch, determined to get his first decent night's sleep since landing on Ghost V. He had barely dozed off when Arnold hurried in, his face pasty with terror.
"I think there's something in the control room," he said.
Gregor sat up. "There can't be. We're off the —"