I turned back and picked up the papers he'd dropped. There was a little sheaf of them, printed on incredibly thin paper. The printing resembled the wave-forms I had seen upon the 'scope. It was like some twisted Arabic script. And this strange script was overprinted on a star-chart which I thought I recognized.

I plumbed my mind, I had it! In a star identification course at M. I. T. they had given us star-charts showing us the galaxy as seen from another star which we were asked to identify. One of those charts at M. I. T. had been almost exactly the same as this: the galaxy as viewed from Alpha Centauri!

I was stunned. I staggered a bit as I went back out on the stoop and looked down the street. I welcomed the sight of Ed Fitzgerald hurrying up across the neighbors' forelawns, uprooting some of the burbanked tropical plants en route.

By the time Fitzgerald reached me, the census taker had come out of Mike Kozulak's like a fission-freed neutron, staggered a few times in an orbit around one of Mike's greenhouse-shelled shrubs, and actually streaked across the two vacant lots between Mike's and Manny Cohen's.

"He's not human," I said to Ed. "Not Earth-human. I'll swear he's from Alpha Centauri; look at these papers! What he's after Heaven knows, but maybe we can find out. It's a cinch he'll eventually reach Maitland Browne's. Let's get there fast; maybe we'll be able to trap him!"

I dragged Fitzgerald inside and we went up the passenger shaft under optimum ascent.

My little Ponticopter's jets seared the roof garden as I blasted forward before the vanes had lifted us clear of the stage. I think I out-Browned Browne in going those five blocks and I know I laid the foundation for a Mrs. Browne vs. Mr. Rainford feud as I dropped my 'copter with dismaying results into the roof garden which was her idea of Eden. I had to, though; Brownie's is a one-copter stage and his ship was on it.

We beat the alien. We looked back down the hill before we entered Brownie's passenger shaft. The fellow was just staggering out of Jack Wohl's rancher at the lower end of this last block.

We found Browne working on a stripped-down stereo chassis which had been carelessly laid without protective padding in the middle of the highly polished dining table. I knew then that his wife couldn't possibly be home.

Browne looked up as if he were accustomed to unannounced 

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