He glanced at the screen, and the Thing was looking out of it with a ravening, unguarded hatred in Its expression. To Tommy it abruptly looked like the leader of those Mercurians who had wanted to wipe out the human race so they could emigrate to Earth. And suddenly he realized that It hated him and all of humanity with a terrible, burning fury.

"Say!" said Tommy Driscoll, his small-boy's hands clenching and his brows contracting in the best possible imitation of Space Captain McGee. "This don't look so good!" His voice wabbled suddenly, and he swallowed. "I'm going to ask my father about this!"

The Thing argued. Plausibly. Flatteringly. But Tommy felt corrosive hatred behind the ingratiating thoughts. Somehow It reminded him of the Dictator of Pluto in one of the comic books he had read only the day before. It asked almost sneeringly if he was afraid.

"Scared, no!" said Tommy in his clear treble, but with the portentious grimness of McGee. "I'm just cagey! I'll have my father look this over to see if it's what you say it is!"

Then the Thing raged. Into Tommy's brain there came such menaces, such threats, that his mind reeled. There was authority there, too, and at ten years one is accustomed to obey authority.

But there was sudden deep suspicion in Tommy's mind, too, and he was fortified by all his knowledge of how the Star Rover and Captain McGee behaved when defying worm monsters and giraffe-men and immaterial entities and other non-human races.

As the Thing raged at him, trying to overwhelm his will with iterated and reiterated commands and threats and sneers and mockery and derision and everything else which should have made Tommy try out his gadget—as the Thing raged at him, Tommy fought sturdily, but under a strain which manifested itself as terror, and then panic, and then as hysterical defiance.

Which, of course, was essential if the comic books were ordained by Fate and Destiny to come true.

Tommy was white and shaking and terrified when he got home. His family was at breakfast. He went into the dining room on leaden feet and with a whipped, scared look on his chalky-white face. It was nine o'clock. Tommy had slipped away at sunrise. Now he returned, carrying a seemingly crude and seemingly purposeless object in his hand. It was made of copper wire with a bit of carbon and a morsel of iron.

"Where've you been?" 

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