propagate, but I gathered that there wouldn't be any shortage of earrings to go around, on Earth. Earrings or bracelets or, however, they'd attach themselves.

"Bracelets, probably, or arm or leg bands, because wearing earrings like that would be too conspicuous on Earth, and they'd have to work in secret for a while. Take over a few people at a time, without letting the others know what was going on.

"And Lecky—or the thing that was running Lecky—told me they'd been using me as a guinea pig, that they could have put a ring on me, taken me over, at any time. But they wanted a check on how they were doing at imitating normal people. They wanted to know whether or not I got suspicious and guessed the truth.

"So Dick—or the thing that was running him—had kept himself out of sight under Dick's sleeve, so if I got suspicious of the others, I'd talk it over with Dick—just as I really did do. And that let them know they needed a lot more practice animating those bodies before they took the ship back to Earth to start their campaign there.

"And, well, that was the whole story and they told it to me to watch my reactions, as a normal human. And then Lecky took a ring out of his pocket and held it out toward me with one hand, keeping the pistol on me with the other hand.

"He told me I might as well put it on because if I didn't, he could shoot me first and then put it on me—but that they greatly preferred to take over undamaged bodies and that it would be better for me, too, if I—that is, my body—didn't die first.

"But naturally, I didn't see it that way. I pretended to reach out for the ring, hesitantly, but instead I batted the gun out of his hand, and made a dive for it as it hit the floor.

"I got it, too, just as they all came for me. And I fired three shots into them before I saw that it wasn't even annoying them. Damn it, the only way you can stop a body animated by one of those rings is to make it fix it so it can't move, like cutting off the legs or something. A bullet in the heart doesn't worry it.

"But I'd backed to the door and got out of it—out into the Ganymedean night, without even a coat on. It was colder than hell, too. And after I got out there, there just wasn't any place to go. Except back in the ship, and I wasn't going there.

"They didn't come out after me—didn't bother to. They knew that within three hours—four at 

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