Desiring noise and company, he went along to the shooting gallery and knocked down a few ducks. The flat case burned in his pocket. The dully burnished metal of his wrist-watch burned in his memory. The remembrance of that drainage from his brain, and the immediate replacement burned in his mind. Presently bar whiskey burned in his stomach.

He’d left Chicago because of sinusitis, recurrent and annoying. Ordinary sinusitis. Not schizophrenia or hallucinations or accusing voices coming from the walls. Not because he had been seeing bats or robots. That thing hadn’t really been a robot. It all had a perfectly natural explanation. Oh, sure.

Health, fame and fortune. And if—

THARN!

The thought crashed with thunderbolt impact into his head.

And then another thought: I am going nuts!

A silent voice began to mutter insistently, over and over. “Tharn—Tharn—Tharn—Tharn—”

And another voice, the voice of sanity and safety, answered it and drowned it out. Half aloud, Kelvin muttered:

“I’m James Noel Kelvin. I’m a reporter—special features, leg work, rewrite. I’m thirty years old, unmarried, and I came to Los Angeles today and lost my baggage checks and—and I’m going to have another drink and find a hotel. Anyhow, the climate seems to be curing my sinusitis.”

Tharn, the muffled drum-beat said almost below the threshold of realization. Tharn, Tharn.

Tharn.

He ordered another drink and reached in his pocket for a coin. His hand touched the metal case. And simultaneously he felt a light pressure on his shoulder.

Instinctively he glanced around. It was a seven-fingered, spidery hand tightening—hairless, without nails—and white as smooth ivory.

The one, overwhelming necessity that sprang into Kelvin’s mind was a simple longing to place as much space as possible between himself and the owner of that disgusting hand. It was a vital requirement, but one difficult of fulfilment, a problem that excluded everything else from Kelvin’s thoughts. He knew, vaguely, that he was 

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