"I could use a drink," blurted Kinkare. "You got anything in this place, Sparks?"

"Gin on the shelf," said the radioman, pointing.

Kinkare picked up the bottle. "You always leave the cap off?"

"No! Somebody's been at it."

"Where is he?" asked Pink in a whisper.

"What, Captain?" Kinkare stopped the bottle halfway to his lips.

"Where the devil is the brute? We combed the place. He can't have got through the mutiny gates. He can't have slipped past our chain. Where the hell is he?"

"Maybe disguised as one of us," said Daley slowly. "He isn't a Martian, but he imitated one to the last pore. Why couldn't he imitate us?"

"Well, I'm me," said Kinkare, and put the bottle to his mouth. Then he dropped it, screeching. Pinkham stared at him and saw his upper lip turned violent, hideous scarlet. Blood began to drip to the rug. The skin and flesh of his lip had dissolved as though sprayed with acid.

Kinkare fell to his knees, covering his face with both arms. The others sprang to help him, Sparks reaching for the medicine chest; but Pink snatched up the gin bottle. What the hell? Acid? Or—

From the square spout poured a gush of smoke, writhing sinuous in the bright indirect light of the small room; it coalesced, clotted into a body. Impossible, brain-boggling, an unreal fantasy amid the most concrete achievements of man, the thing swelled into solidity before the Captain's staring eyes.

He was eight feet tall, three broad; his eyes were brilliant vermilion, his swollen head was egg-bald, and the expression on his coarse features was at once lecherous, evil, savage and cunning. He was stark naked, completely humanoid. And he had come out of the bottle.

A voice boomed from him like a vocalizing cannon. "I object to anyone trying to drink me!" he roared at them.

In the reeling chaos of all his beliefs gone wild, Pinkham had one sane thought, and yelled it as fast and short as he could. "Don't shoot! For God's sake, don't shoot!" Then, as Calico and Jerry held their pistols partly 

 Prev. P 16/65 next