The screen quit its flickering and she seemed to stand in a downtown street.
A voice said: …no one yet can give an explanation of what happened here less than an hour ago. There are conflicting reports and no two stories absolutely check. The hospital is beginning to calm down now, but for a time there was pandemonium. There are reports that one of the patients is missing, but the reports can't be confirmed. Most accounts agree that some animal, some say it was a wolf, went raging through the corridors, attacking everyone who stood in its way. One story is that the wolf, if wolf it was, had arms that sprouted from its shoulders. The police, when they arrived, fired at something, spraying the reception room with bullets…
Elaine caught her breath. St Barnabas! This was St. Barnabas. She had gone there to see Andrew Blake and her father now was on his way there — and what was going on?
She half rose from her chair, then sat down again. There was nothing she could do or should do. The senator would be able to look out for himself; he always had. And whatever had been in the hospital now was gone, or apparently it was. If she waited just a little while, she'd see her father get out of the car and walk up the stairs.
She stood and shivered in the chill wind that was sweeping down the street.
18
The footsteps sounded near, slipping and sliding on the shards of stone that lay outside the cave mouth. A beam of light speared into the cave.
Thinker pulled himself tighter and denser and reduced his field. The field might betray him, he knew, but he could not reduce it much farther, even so, for it was a part of him and he could not exist without it. Especially not here, not at this moment, with the chill of the atmosphere sucking hungrily at his energy.
We must be ourselves, he thought. I, myself, and Quester quester's self and Changer changer's self. We cannot be more or less than we are and we cannot change except through the process of long, slow evolution, but in the millennia to come might it not be possible that the three would meld as one, that there would not be three separate minds, but one mind only? And that mind would have emotion, which I do not have, which I can recognize, but cannot understand, and the hard, cold, impersonal logic which is mine, but not my companions', and the keen sharp sensitivity which is Quester's, but is neither mine nor Changer's. Blind chance alone that put the three of us together, that put our minds inside a mass of matter which can be made a body — what were the odds that such a happening could have come about? Blind chance or destiny? What was destiny? Was there destiny? Could there be some great, overriding universal plan and was this happening which had put the three of them together one part of that plan, a necessary step before the plan could reach that remote conclusion towards which it always moved?
The human was crawling closer, the loose rock sliding underneath his feet, his hands clawing at the ground to hold himself against the downhill pull of gravity, the lighted flashlight in one fist bobbing and bouncing so that it threw an erratic arch of light.
He got one elbow over the lip of the cave and hoisted himself upward so that his head was level with the opening.
He gasped and yelled.
'Hey, Bob, this cave has a funny smell. There's been something in here. Just a while ago.
Thinker expanded his field, pushing it outwards violently. It hit the man like a plunging fist. It knocked his elbow loose from the lip of rock and hurled him outwards and away. He twisted and plunged downwards. He screamed once, a shriek of terror pushed out of his lungs. Then his body thumped and slid. Thinker could sense its sliding, taking with it rocks that bounced and clicked, trash wood that slithered and rattled. The slithering and the clicking stopped and from the slope below came the sound of splashing.
Thrashing bodies went plunging down the slope, lights bobbing back and forth, sweeping across brush and shiny tree trunks.
Voices cried out:
'Bob, something happened to Harry!
'Yeah, I heard him yell.
'He's down there in the creek. I heard him hit the water.
The plunging bodies kept on going past, going down the hill in braking rushes. Half a dozen lights bobbed madly at the bottom of the slope and several of the humans were wading in the stream. From farther off came other shouts.
Something stirred questioningly inside Thinker's mind.
— Yes, he asked, what is it?
— What do we do now? growled Quester. You heard what he yelled. They're all excited now, but one of them will remember. There'll be some of them coming up here. They may start shooting at us.
— I agree, said Changer. They'll investigate. The man who fell…
— Fell! said Thinker, witheringly. I pushed him.
— All right, then. The man you pushed tipped them off.
He smelled Quester, maybe.
— I don't stink, said Quester.
— That's ridiculous, said Thinker. I would suspect all three of us have distinctive body odours. Your body form was there long enough to contaminate the cave.
— It might have been your body odour, said Quester. Don't forget…
— Cut it out, said Changer, sharply. The question isn't which one of us he smelled. It is what do we do now. Thinker, can you change into something thin and flat, a shape that will give no profile, and creep out of here and up the hill?
— I doubt it. The planet's far too cold. I'm losing energy too fast. If I extended my body surface I'd lose it that much faster.
— That's a problem we have to face, said Quester. The problem of retaining sufficient energy. Changer will have to eat for us. He'll have to supply the energy, ingesting in his own body form the foods that are available. And staying in his body's form long enough for the food to be digested. There are few energy sources for Thinker and probably no food that I could eat and that my bodily apparatus would be able to handle. I would suspect…
— This all is true, said Changer. But let's consider it some other time. For the moment, let's go back to our present problem. Can you take over, Quester? They'd spot me. My body would show up white.
— Certainly I can, said Quester.
— Good. Crawl out of the cave and up the hill. Go easily, go quietly. But as swiftly as you can. We've got the searching party all together and if they don't hear you, it's unlikely we'll run into any of them.
— Over the hill, asked Quester, and then what?
— Up on one of the drives, said Changer, we should find a public telephone.
19
'If what you believe is true, Chandler Horton said, 'then we must lose no time in contacting Blake.
'What makes you think it's Blake any longer? asked the chief of staff. 'It wasn't Blake that ran off from this hospital. If Daniels is right, it was an alien creature.
'But Blake was there, too, protested Horton. 'It might have been in an alien's body, but it could change back to Blake.
Senator Stone, hunched up in the big chair, sneered at Horton. 'If you want to know what I think, he said, 'this all is poppycock.