CHAPTER FIVE

Hawks was sitting in his office the next morning when Barker knocked on the door and came in. "The guard at the gate told me to see you here," he said. His eyes measured Hawks' face. "Decided to fire me or something?"

Hawks shook his head. He closed the topmost of the bundle of file folders on his desk and pointed toward the other chair. "Sit down, please. You have a great deal to think over before you go to the laboratory."

"Sure." Barker's expression had relaxed just enough to show that it had been touched by uncertainty. He walked over the uncarpeted floor with sharp scuffs of his jodhpur boot heels. "And by the way, good morning, Doctor," he said, sitting down and crossing his legs. The shim plate bulged starkly under the whipcord fabric stretched across his knee.

"Good morning," Hawks said shortly. He opened the file folder and took out a large folded square of paper. He spread it out on his desk facing Barker.

Without looking at it, Barker said: "Claire wants to know what's going on."

"Did you tell her?"

"Did the FBI reports call me a fool?"

"Not in ways that concern them."

"I hope that's your answer. I was only reporting a fact you might be interested in. It cost me my night's sleep."

"Can you put in five minutes' physical effort this afternoon?"

"I'd say so if I couldn't."

"All right, then. Five minutes is all the time you'll have." He touched the map. "This is a chart of the Moon formation. You'll find it marked to show previous deaths, and the safe path. Attached to it is the summary of actions that have proven safe, and actions that have proven fatal. I want you to memorize it. You'll have one with you when you go in, but there's no guarantee that having it won't prove fatal at some point we haven't yet foreseen.

"And I want you to remember something, Barker—you are going to die. There is no hope of your survival. You will feel yourself die. Your only hope is in the fact that actually it will be Barker M, on the Moon, who dies, and Barker L, down here in the receiver, whose physical being will be perfectly safe. Let us hope Barker L will be able to remember that." Hawks looked intently across the desk. "I'm speaking to both of you, now—to Barker M and Barker L, not to the Al Barker who will be destroyed in the scan. Remember what I'm telling you now. Because if you don't, this will be a useless death, and Al Barker—all of Al Barker; all the Al Barkers who have ever occupied this life which began with his conception—will have come to an end."

"Now, look," Barker said, slapping the folder shut, "according to this, if I make a wrong move, they'll find me with all my blood in a puddle outside my armor, and not a mark on me. If I make another move, I'll be paralyzed from the waist down, which means I have to crawl on my belly. But crawling on your belly somehow makes things happen so you get squashed up into your helmet. And it goes on in that cheerful vein all the way. If I don't watch my step as carefully as a tightrope walker, and if I don't move on time and in position, like a ballet dancer, I'll never even get as far as this chart reads."

"Even if you stood and did nothing," Hawks agreed, "the formation would kill you at the end of two hundred thirty two seconds. It will permit no man to live in it longer than some man has forced it to. The limit will go up as you progress. Why its nature is such that it yields to human endeavor, we don't know. It's entirely likely that this is only a coincidental side-effect of its true purpose—if it has one.

"Perhaps it's the alien equivalent of a discarded tomato can. Does a beetle know why it can enter the can only from one end as it lies across the trail to the beetle's burrow? Does the beetle understand why it is harder to climb to the left or right, inside the can, than it is to follow a straight line? Would the beetle be a fool to assume the human race put the can there to torment it—or an egomaniac to believe the can was manufactured only to mystify it? It would be best for the beede to study the can in terms of the can's logic, to the limit of the beetle's ability. In that way, at least, the beetle can proceed intelligently. It may even grasp some hint of the can's maker. Any other approach is either folly or madness."

Barker looked up at Hawks impatiently. "Horse manure. Is the beetle happier? Does it get anything? Does it escape anything? Do other beetles understand what it's doing, and take up a collection to support it while it wastes time? A smart beetle walks around your tomato can, Doctor, and lives its life contented."

"Certainly," Hawks said. "Go ahead. Leave now."

"I wasn't talking about me! I was talking about you." He put the folder under one arm and stood with his hands in his pockets, his head to one side as he stared flatly up into Hawks' face. "Men, money, energy—all devoted to the eminent Doctor Hawks and his toys. Sounds to me like the other beetles have taken up a collection."

"Looking at it that way," Hawks said dispassionately, "does keep it simple. And it explains why I continue to send men into the formation. It satisfies my ego to see men die at my command. Now it's your turn. What's this"—he touched a lipstick smudge around a purple bruise on the side of Barker's neck—"a badge of courage? Whose heart will break if you are brought home on your shield today?"

Barker knocked his hand away. "A beetle's heart, Doctor." His strained face fell into a ghastly, reminiscent smile. "A beetle's cold, cold heart."

The Navy crew pushed Barker into the transmitter. The lateral magnets lifted him off the table, and it was pulled out from beneath him. The door was dogged shut, and the fore-and-aft magnets came on to hold him locked immobile for the scanner. Hawks nodded to Latourette, and Latourette punched the Standby button on his console.

Up on the roof, there was a radar dish focussed in approximate parallel with the transmitter antenna. Down in the laboratory, Ted Gersten pointed a finger at a technician. A radar beep travelled to the Moon and returned. The elapsed time and doppler progression were fed as data into a computer which set the precise holding time in the delay deck. The matter transmitter antenna fired a UHF pulse through the Moon relay tower into the receiver there, tripping its safety lock so that it would accept the M signal.

Latourette looked at his console, turned to Hawks and said: "Green board."

Hawks said: "Shoot."

The red light went on over the transmitter portal, and the new file tape began roaring into the takeup pulleys of the delay deck. One and a quarter seconds later, the leader of the tape began passing through the playback head feeding the L signal to the laboratory receiver. The first beat of the M signal had hit the Moon.

The end of the tape clattered into the takeup reel. The green light went on over the laboratory receiver's portal. Barker L's excited breathing came through the speaker, and he said: "I'm here, Doctor."

Hawks stood in the middle of the floor with his hands in his pockets, his head cocked to one side, his eyes vacant.

After a time, Barker L said peevishly in a voice distorted by his numb lips: "All right, all right, you Navy bastards, I'm goin' in!" He muttered: "Won't even talk to me, but they're sure as hell on waving me along."

"Shut up, Barker," Hawks muttered urgently to himself.

"Going in now, Doctor," Barker said clearly. His breathing cycle changed. Once or twice after that, he grunted, and once he made an unconscious, high, keening noise.

Latourette touched Hawks' arm and nodded toward the stopwatch in his hand. It showed two hundred forty seconds of elapsed time since Barker had gone into the formation. Hawks nodded a nearly imperceptible reply.

Barker screamed. Hawks' body jumped in reflex, and his flailing arm sent the watch cartwheeling out of Latourette's hand.

Holiday, at the medical console, brought his palm down flat. A hyposprayer fired adrenalin into Barker L's heart as the anesthesia cut off.

"Get him out quickly!" Weston was shouting. "He's gone into panic."

"It's just that he's alone," Hawks said softly, as if the psychologist were standing where he could hear him.

Barker sat hunched on the edge of the table, the opened armor lying dismembered beside him, and wiped his gray face. Holiday was listening to his heartbeat with a stethoscope, looking aside periodically to take a new blood pressure reading as he squeezed the manometer bulb he kept in his hand. Barker sighed: "If there's any doubt, just ask me if I'm alive. If you get an answer, you'll know." He looked wearily over Holiday's shoulder as the physician ignored him, and said to Hawks: "Well?"

Hawks glanced aside at Weston, who nodded imperturbably. "He's made it, Doctor Hawks."

"Barker," Hawks said, "I'm-"

"Yeah, I know. You're happy everything worked out all right." He looked around. His eyes were darting jerkily from side to side. "Could some of you stare at me a little later, please?"

"Barker," Hawks said gently. "Do you really feel all right?"

Barker looked at him expressionlessly. "I got up there, and they wouldn't even talk to me. They just shoved me along and showed me how to get to the thing. Bastards."

"They have problems of their own," Hawks said.

"I'm sure they do. Anyway, I got into the thing all right, and I moved along O.K.—it's—" His face forgot its annoyance, and his expression now was one of closely remembered bafflement. "It's—a little like a dream, you know? Not a nightmare, now—it's not all full of screams and faces, or anything like that—but it's . . . well, rules, and the crazy logic; Alice in Wonderland with teeth." He gestured as though wiping his clumsy words from a blackboard. "I'll have to find ways of getting it into English, I guess. Shouldn't be too much trouble. Just give me time to settle down."

Hawks nodded. "Don't worry. We have a good deal of time, now."

Barker grinned up at him with a sudden flash of boyishness. "I got quite a distance beyond Rogan M's body, you know. You'll never believe what killed him. What finally got me was—was—was the— was—"

Barker's face began to flush crimson, and his eyes bulged whitely. His lips fluttered. "The-the-" He stared at Hawks. "I can't!" he cried out. "I can't—Hawks—" He struggled against Holiday and Weston's trying to hold his shoulders, and curled his hands rigidly on the edge of the table, his arms locked taut, quivering in spasms. "Hawks!" he shouted as though from behind a thick glass wall. "Hawks, it didn't care! I was nothing to it! I was—I was—" His mouth locked partly open and the tip of his tongue fluttered against the backs of his upper teeth. "N-n-n . . . No—N-nothing!" He searched Hawks' face, desperate. He breathed as though there could never be enough air for him.

Weston was grunting with the effort to force Barker over backward and make him lie down. Holiday was swearing as he precisely and steadily pushed the needle of a hypodermic through the diaphragm of an ampule he had plucked out of his bag.

Hawks clenched his fists at his sides. "Barker! What color was your first schoolbook?"

Barker's arms loosened slightly. His head lost its rigid forward thrust. He shook his head and scowled down at the floor, concentrating fiercely.

"I—I don't remember, Hawks," he stammered. "Green—no, no, it was orange, with blue printing, and it had a story in it about three goldfish who climbed out of their bowl onto a bookcase and then dived back into it. I—I can see the page with the illustration: three fish in the air, falling in a slanted tier, with the bowl waiting for them. The text was set with three one-word paragraphs: 'Splash!' and then a paragraph indentation, and then 'Splash!' and then once more. Three 'Splashl's in a tier, just like the fish."

"Well, now, you see, Barker," Hawks said softly. "You have been alive for as long as you can remember. You are something. You've seen, and remembered."

Barker was slumped, now. Nearly doubled over, he swayed on the edge of the table, the color of his face gradually returning to normal. He whispered intently: "Thanks. Thanks, Hawks." Bitterly, he whispered: "Thanks for everything." He mumbled suddenly, his torso rigid: "Somebody get me a wastebasket, or something."

Latourette and Hawks stood beside the transmitter, watching Barker come unsteadily back from the washroom, dressed in his slacks and shirt.

"What do you think?" Latourette growled. "What's he going to do now? Is he going to pull out on us?"

"I don't know," Hawks answered absently, watching Barker. "I thought he'd work out," he said under his breath. "We'll simply have to wait and see. We'll have to think of a way to handle it."

He said as though attacked by flies: "I have to have time to think. Why does time run on while a man thinks?"

Barker came up to them. His eyes were sunken in their sockets. He looked piercingly at Hawks. His voice was jagged and nasal.

"Holiday says I'm generally all right, now, everything considered. But someone must drive me home." His mouth curled. "D'you want the job, Hawks?"

"Yes, I do." Hawks took off his smock and laid it folded down atop the cabinet. "You might as well set up for another shot tomorrow, Sam."

"Don't count on me for it!" Barker sawed.

"We can always cancel, you know." He said to Latourette: "I'll call early tomorrow and let you know."

Barker stumbled forward as Hawks fell into step beside him. They slowly crossed the laboratory floor and went out through the stairwell doors, side by side.

Connington was waiting for them in the upstairs hall, lounging in one of the bright orange plastic-upholstered armchairs that lined the foyer wall. His eyes flicked once over Barker, and once over Hawks. "Have some trouble?" he asked as they came abreast of him. "I hear you had some trouble down in the lab," he repeated, his eyes glinting.

"God damn you, Connington—" Barker began with the high, tearing note in his voice.

"So I was right." Connington grinned consciously. "Goin' back to Claire, now?" He blew out cigar smoke. "The two of you?"

"Something like that," Hawks said.

Connington scratched the lapel of his jacket. "Think I'll come along and watch." He smiled fondly at Barker, his head to one side. "Why not, Al? You might as well have the company of all the people that're trying to kill you."

Hawks looked at Barker. The man's hands fumbled as though dealing with something invisible in the air just in front of his stomach. He was staring right through Connington, and the personnel man squinted momentarily.

Then Barker said lamely: "There isn't room in the car."

Connington chuckled warmly and mellifluously. "I'll drive it, and you can sit on Hawks' lap. Just like Charlie McCarthy."

Hawks pulled his glance away from Barker's face and said sharply: "I'll drive it."

Connington chuckled again. "There's going to be a meeting of the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon tomorrow. They got the report on Rogan, and a long memorandum from Cobey and the Con El legal department. There's going to be a decision made on whether to cancel the project contracts. I'll drive." He turned back toward the double plate-glass doors and began walking out. He looked back over his shoulder. "Come along, friends," he said.

Claire Pack stood watching them from the head of the steps up to the lawn. She was wearing a one-piece skirtless cotton swimsuit cut high at the tops of her thighs, and was resting her hands lightly on her hips. As Connington shut off the engine and the three of them got out of the car, she raised her eyebrows.

"Well, Doctor!" she said with low-voiced gravity and a pucker of her lips, "I'd been wondering when you'd drop by again."

Connington, coming around the other side of the car, smiled watchfully at her and said: "He had to chaperone Al home. Seems there was a little hitch in the proceedings today."

She glanced aside at Barker, who was closing the garage doors. She ran her tongue over the edges of her teeth. "What kind?"

"Now, I wouldn't know as to that. Why don't you ask Hawks?" Connington took a fresh cigar out of his case. "I like that suit, Claire," he said. He trotted quickly up the steps, brushing by her.

"It's a hot day. Think I'll go find a pair of trunks and take a dip myself. You and the boys have a nice chat meanwhile." He walked quickly up the path to the house, stopped, lit the cigar, glanced sideward over his cupped hands, and stepped out of sight inside.

"I think Al will be all right," Hawks said.

Claire looked down at him. She focussed her expression into an open-faced innocence. "Oh? You mean, he'll be back to normal?"

Barker brought the garage doors down and passed Hawks with his head bent, striding intendy as he thrust the ignition keys into his pocket. His face jerked up toward Claire as he climbed the steps. "I'm going upstairs. I may sack out. Don't wake me." He half-turned and looked at Hawks. "I guess you're stuck here, unless you want to take another hike. Did you think of that, Doctor?"

"Did you? I'll stay until you're up. I'll want to talk to you."

"I wish you joy of it, Doctor," Barker said, and walked away, with Claire watching him. Then she looked back down at Hawks. Through all this, she had not moved her feet or hands.

Hawks said: "Something happened. I don't know how much it means."

"You worry about it, Ed," she said, her lower lip glistening. "In the meantime, you're the only one left standing down there."

Hawks sighed. "I'll come up."

Claire Pack grinned.

"Come over and sit by the pool with me," she said when he reached the top of the steps. She turned away before he could answer, and walked slowly in front of him, her right arm hanging at her side. Her hand trailed back, and reached up to touch his own. She slackened her pace so that they were walking side by side, and looked up at him. "You don't mind, do you?" she said gently.

Hawks looked down at their hands for a moment, and as he did, she put the backs of her fingers inside his palm. She smiled and said: "There, now," in an almost childishly soft voice.

They walked to the edge of the pool and stood looking down into the water. Then her mouth parted in a low, whispered laugh. She swayed her upper body toward him, and put her other hand on his arm.

Hawks put his right hand around his own left wrist and held it, his arm crossed awkwardly in front of his body.

She looked down at his arm. "You know, if I get too close to you, you can always dive into the pool." Then she grinned to herself again, keeping her face toward him to let him see it, and, taking her hands away, sank down to lie on one hip in the grass. "I'm sorry," she said, looking up. "I said that just to see if you'd twitch. Connie's right about me, you know."

Hawks squatted angularly down next to her. "In what way?"

She put one hand down into the blue water and stirred it back and forth, silvery bubbles trailing out between her spread fingers. "I can't know a man more than a few minutes without trying to get under his skin," she said in a pondering voice. "I have to do it."

Hawks continued to look at her gravely, and she slowly lost the vivacity behind her expression. She rolled over suddenly on her back, her ankles crossed stiffly, and put her hands down flat on her thigh muscles.

"What's happening to Al?" she said, moving only her lips. "What are you doing to him?"

"I don't know exactly," Hawks said. "I'm waiting to find out."

She sat up and twisted to face him, her breasts moving under the loose top. "Do you have any kind of a conscience?" she asked. "Is there anyone who can hurt you?"

He shook his head. "That kind of question doesn't apply. I do what I have to do."

She seemed to be almost hypnotized. She leaned closer.

"I want to see if Al's all right," Hawks said, getting up.

Claire arched her neck and stared up at him. "Hawks," she whispered.

"Excuse me, Claire." He stepped around her drawn-up legs and moved toward the house.

"Hawks," she said hoarsely. The top of the swimsuit was almost completely off the upper faces of her breasts. "You have to take me tonight."

He continued to walk away.

"Hawks—I'm warning you!"

Hawks flung open the house door and disappeared behind the sun-washed glass.

"How'd it go?" Connington laughed from the shadows of the bar at the other end of the living room. He came forward, dressed in a pair of printed trunks, his stomach cinched by the tight waistband. He was carrying a folded beach shirt over his arm and holding a pewter pitcher and two glasses. "It's a little like a silent movie, from here," he said, nodding toward the glass wall facing out onto the lawn and the pool. "Hell for action, but short on dialogue."

Hawks turned and looked. Claire was still sitting up, staring intently at what must have been a barricade of flashing reflections of herself.

"Gets to a man, doesn't she?" Connington chuckled. "Forewarned is not forearmed, with her. She's an elemental—the rise of the tides, the coming of the seasons, an eclipse of the Sun." He looked down into the pitcher, where the ice at the top of the mixture had suddenly begun to tinkle. "Woe to us, Hawks. Woe to us who would pursue them on their cometary track."

"Where's Barker?"

Connington gestured with the pitcher. "Upstairs. Took a shower, threatened to disembowel me if I didn't get out of his way in the hall, went to bed. Set the alarm for eight o'clock. Put down a tumbler full of gin to help him. Where's Barker?" Connington repeated. "Dreamland, Hawks—whatever dreamland it was that awaited him."

Hawks looked at his wristwatch.

"Three hours, Hawks," Connington said. "Three hours, and there is no Master in this house." He moved around Hawks to the outside door. "Yoicks!" he yapped twistedly, raising the pitcher in Claire's direction. He pushed clumsily at the door with his shoulder, leaving a damp smear on the glass. "Tally ho."

Hawks moved farther into the room, toward the bar. He searched behind it, and found a bottle of Scotch. When he looked up from putting ice and water into a glass, he saw that Connington had reached Claire and was standing over her. She lay on her stomach, facing the pool, her chin resting on her crossed forearms. Connington held the pitcher, saying something and pouring awkwardly into the two glasses in his other hand.

Hawks walked slowly to the leather-covered settee facing the windows, and sat down.

Claire rolled half-over and stretched up an arm to take the glass Connington handed down. She perfunctorily saluted Connington's glass and took a drink, her neck arching. Then she rolled back, resting her raised upper body on her elbows.

Connington sat down on the edge of the pool beside her, dropping his legs into the water. Claire reached over and wiped her arm. Connington raised his glass again, held it up in a toast, and waited for Claire to take another drink. With a twist of her shoulders, she did, pressing the flat of her other hand against the top of her suit.

Connington refilled their glasses.

Claire sipped at hers. Connington touched her shoulder and bent his head to say something. Her mouth opened in laughter. She reached out and touched his waist. Her fingers pinched the roll of flesh around his stomach. Her shoulder rose and her elbow stiffened. Connington clutched her wrist, then moved up to her arm, pushing back. He twisted away, hurriedly set his glass down, and splashed into the pool. His hands shot out and took her arm, pulling them forward.

Claire came sliding into the water on top of him, and they weltered down out of sight under the surface. A moment later, her head and shoulders broke out a few feet away, and she stroked evenly to the ladder, climbing out and stopping at the poolside to pull the top of her suit back up. She picked her towel from the grass with one swoop of her arm, threw it around her shoulders, and walked quickly off out of sight toward the other wing of the house.

Connington stood in the pool, watching her.

Then he swam forward, toward the diving board. For some time afterward, until the low sun was entirely in sight and the room where Hawks was sitting was filled with red, the sound of the thrumming board came vibrating into the timbers of the house at sporadic intervals.

At ten minutes of eight, a radio began playing loud jazz upstairs. Ten minutes later, the electric blat of the radio's alarm roiled the music, and a moment after that there was a brittle crash, and then only the occasional sound of Barker stumbling about and getting dressed.

Hawks went over to the bar, washed out his empty glass, and put it back in its rack.

Barker came down carrying a half-filled squareface bottle. He saw Hawks, grunted, hefted the bottle and said: "I hate the stuff. It tastes lousy, it makes me gag, it stinks, and it burns my mouth. But they keep putting it in your hands. And they fill their folklore with it. They talk gentleman talk about it—ages and flavors and brands and blends, as if it wasn't all ethanol in one concentration or another. Have you ever heard two Martini drinkers in a bar, Hawks? Have you ever heard two shamans swooping magic?" He dropped into an easy chair and laughed. "Neither have I. I synthesize my heritage. I look at two drunks in a saloon, and I extrapolate toward dignity. I suppose that's sacrilege."

He lit a cigarette, and said through the smoke: "But it's the best I can do, Hawks. My father's dead, and I once thought there was something good in shucking off my other kin. I wish I could remember what that was. I have a place in me that needs the pain."

Hawks went back to the settee and sat down. He put his hands on his knees and watched Barker.

"And talk," Barker said. "You're not fit company for them if you don't say 'eyther' and 'nyther' and 'tomahto.' If you've got a Dad, you're out. They only permit gentlemen with fathers in their society. And, yeah, I know they licked me on that. I wanted to belong—Oh, God, Hawks, how much I wanted to belong—and I learned all the passwords. What did it get me? Claire's right, you know—what did it get me?

"If she could see me, Hawks—if she could see me in that place!" Barker's face was aglow. "She wouldn't be playing footsie with you and Connington tonight—no, not if she could see what I do up there . . . how I dodge, and duck, and twist, and inch, and spring, and wait for the-the-"

"Easy, Barker!"

"Yeah. Easy. Slack off. Back away. It bites." Barker coughed out bitterly: "What're you doing here, anyway, Hawks? Why aren't you marching down that road again with your ass stiff and your nose in the air? You think it's going to do you any good, you sitting around here? What're you waiting for? For me to tell you sure, a little sleep and a little gin and I'm fine, just fine, Doctor, and what time do you want me back tomorrow? Call Washington, tell 'em the show's back on the road? Or do you want me to crack wide open, so you can really move in on Claire?

"A man should fight, Hawks," Barker said softly, his eyes distant. "A man should show he is never afraid to die. He should go into the midst of his enemies, singing his death song, and he should kill or be killed; he must never be afraid to meet the tests of his manhood. A man who turns his back—who lurks at the edge of the battle, and pushes others in to face his enemies—" Barker looked suddenly and obviously at Hawks. "That's not a man. That's some kind of crawling, wriggling thing."

Hawks got up, flexing his hands uncertainly, his arms awkward, his face lost in the shadows above the lamp's level. "Is that what you wanted me here for? So no one could say you wouldn't clasp the snake to your bosom?" He bent his head forward, peering down at Barker.

"Is that it, warrior?" he asked inquisitively. "One more initiation rite? A truly brave man wouldn't hesitate to lodge assassins in his house, and offer them food and drink, would he? Let Connington the back-stabber come into your house. Let Hawks the murderer do his worst. Let Claire egg you on from one suicidal thing to the next, ripping off a leg here, another piece of flesh another time. What do you care? You're Barker, the Mimbreno warrior. Is that it?

"But now you won't fight. Suddenly, you don't want to go back into the formation. Death was too impersonal for you. It didn't care how brave you were, or what preparatory rites you'd passed through. That was what you said, wasn't it? You were outraged, Barker. You still are. What is Death, to think nothing of a full-fledged Mimbreno warrior?

"Are you a warrior?" he demanded. "Explain that part of it to me. What have you ever done to any of us? When have you ever lifted a finger to defend yourself? You see what we're about, but you do nothing. You're afraid to be thought a man who wouldn't fight, but what do you fight? The only thing you've ever done to me is threaten to pick up your marbles and go home.

"Do you know why you're still sane after today, Barker? I think I do. I think it's because you have Claire and Connington and me. I think it was because you had us to run to. It isn't really Death that tests your worth for you; it's the menace of dying. Not Death, but murderers. So long as you have us about you, your vital parts are safe."

Barker was moving toward him, his hands half-raised. Hawks said:

"It's no use, Barker. You can't do anything to me. If you were to kill me, you would have proved you were afraid to deal with me."

"That's not true," Barker said, high-voiced. "A warrior kills his enemies."

Hawks watched Barker's eyes. "You're not a warrior, Al," he said regretfully.

Barker's arms began to tremble. His head tilted sideward, and he looked at Hawks crookedly, his eyes blinking. "You're so smart!" he panted. "You know so damned much! You know more about me than I do. How is that, Hawks—who touched your brow with a golden wand?"

"I'm a man, too, Al."

"Yes?" Barker's arms sank down to his sides. The trembling swept over his entire body. "Yes? Well, I don't like you any better for it. Get out of here, man, while you still can." He whirled and crossed the room with short, quick, jerking steps. He flung open the door. "Leave me to my old, familiar assassins!"

Hawks looked at him and said nothing. His expression was troubled. Then he walked forward. He stopped in the doorway and stood face to face with Barker.

"I have to have you," he said. "I need your report to wire to Washington in the morning, and I need you to send up there into that thing, again."

"Get out, Hawks," Barker answered.

"I told you," Hawks said, and stepped out into the darkness.

Barker slapped the door shut. He turned away toward the corridor leading into the other wing of the house, his neck taut and his mouth opening in a shout. It came inaudibly through the glass between himself and Hawks: "Claire? Claire!"

Hawks walked out across the rectangle of light lying upon the lawn, until he came to the ragged edge that was the brink of the cliff above the sea. He stood looking out over the unseen surf, with the loom of sea-mist filling the night before him.

"An dark," he said aloud. "An dark an nowhere starlights." Then he began walking, head down, along the edge of the cliff, his hands in his pockets.

When he came to the flagstoned patio between the swimming pool and the far wing of the house, he walked toward the metal table and chairs in its center, picking his way in the indistinct light.

"Well, Ed," Claire said from her chair on the other side of the table. "Come to join me?"

He turned his head in surprise, then sat down. "I suppose."

Claire had changed into a dress, and was drinking a cup of coffee. "Want some of this?" she offered. "It's a chilly evening."

"Thank you." He took the cup as she reached it out to him, and drank from the side away from the thick smear of lipstick. "I didn't know you'd be out here."

She chuckled. "I get tired of opening doors and finding Connie on the other side. I've been waiting for better company."

"Al's up."

"Is he?"

He passed the coffee cup back to her. "I thought you might like to see him."

She reached across the table and took his hand. "Ed, do you have any idea of how lonely I get? How much I wish I wasn't me at all?" She tugged at his hand. "But what can I do about it?"

She rose to her feet, still holding his hand, and came around to stand in front of him, bent forward, clasping his fingers in both hands. "You could tell me you like me, Ed," she whispered. "You're the only one of them who could look past my outsides and like me!"

He stood up as she pulled at his hand. "Claire—" he began.

"No, no, no, Ed!" she said, putting her arms around him. "I don't want to talk. I want to just be. I want someone to just hold me and not think about me being a woman. I just want to feel warm, for once in my life—just have another human being near me!" Her arms went up behind his back, and her hands cupped his neck and the back of his head. "Please, Ed," she murmured, her face so close that her eyes brimmed and glittered in the faraway light, and so that in another moment her wet cheek touched his, "give me that if you can."

She began kissing his cheeks and eyes, her nails combing the back of his head. "Hawks," she choked, "Hawks, I'm so lost. . . ."

His head bent, her fingers rigid behind it, the tendons standing out in cords on the backs of her hands. Her lips parted, and her leather sandals made a shuffling noise on the patio stones. "Forget everything," she whispered as she kissed his mouth. "Think only of me."

Then she broke away suddenly, and stood a foot away from him, the back of one hand against her upper lip, her shoulders and hips lax. She was sighing rhythmically, her eyes shining. "No—no, I can't hold out. . . not with you. You're too much for me, Ed." Her shoulders rose, and she moved half a step toward him. "Forget about liking me," she said from deep in her throat as she reached toward him. "Just take me. I can always get someone else to like me."

Hawks did not move. She looked at him, arms outstretched, her face hungry. Then she sobbed sharply and cried out: "I don't blame you! I couldn't help it, but I don't blame you for what you're thinking. You think I'm some kind of nympho."

"Oh, no, Claire—I think you're just afraid of men. And you don't want them to find that out. Particularly not the ones you're most afraid of. You tell them they frighten you, but no one's supposed to think it's true, are they?"

She stared at him for a moment. Then her back arched, and her head was flung back. She laughed stridently: "Who're you trying to sell that to?" She straightened and took one or two aimless steps. "You're afraid, Hawks!" Her fingers dug into the dress fabric over her tensed thighs. "You're scared, Hawks. You're scared of a real woman, like so many of them are."

"If you were a real woman, would you blame me? I'm frightened of many things. People who waste things are among them."

"Why don't you just shut up, Hawks?" she cried. "What do you do, go through life making speeches? You know what you are, Hawks? You're a creep. A bore and a creep. A first class bore. I don't want you around any more. I don't want to ever see you again."

"I'm sorry you don't want to be any different, Claire. Tell me something. You almost succeeded, a moment ago. You came very close. It would be foolish for me to deny it. If you had done what you tried to do with me, would I still be a creep? And what would you be, making up to a man you despise, for safety's sake?"

"Oh, get out of here, Hawks!"

"Does my being a creep make me incompetent to see things?"

"When are you going to stop trying? I don't want any of your stinking help!"

"I didn't think you did. I said so. That's really all I've said." He turned away toward the house. "I'm going to see if Al will let me use his phone. I need a ride away from here. I'm getting too old to walk."

"Go to Hell, Hawks!" she cried out, following him at his own pace, a yard or two behind him.

Hawks walked away more quickly, his arms swinging through short arcs.

"Did you hear me? Get lost! Go on, get out of here!"

Hawks came to the kitchen door, and opened it. Connington was sprawled back against a counter, his beach shirt and his swimming trunks spattered with blood and saliva from his mouth. Barker's hand, tangled in his hair, was all that kept him from tipping over the high stool on which he was being held. Barker's fist was drawn back, smeared and running from deep tooth-gashes over the bone of his knuckles.

"Just passed out, that's all," Connington was mumbling desperately. "Just passed out in her bed, that's all-she wasn't anywhere around."

Barker's forearm whipped out, and his fist slapped into Conning-ton's face again.

Connington fumbled apathetically behind him for a handhold. He had made no effort to defend himself at any time. "Only way you ever would. Find me there." He was crying without seeming to be aware of it. "I thought I had it figured out, at last. I thought today was the day. Never been able to make the grade with her. I can find the handle with everybody else. Everybody's got a weak spot. Everybody cracks, sometime, and lets me see it. Everybody. Nobody's perfect. That's the great secret. Everybody but her. She's got to slip sometime, but I've never seen it. Me, the hotshot personnel man."

"Leave him alone!" Claire screamed from behind Hawks. She clawed at Hawks' shoulder until he was out of the doorway, and then she raked at Barker, who jumped back with his hand clutching the furrows on his arm. "Get away from him!" she shouted into Barker's face, crouching with her feet apart and her quivering hands raised. She snatched up a towel, wet a corner of it in the sink, and went to Connington, who was slumped back against the stool, staring at her through his watered eyes.

She bent against Connington and began frantically scrubbing his face. "There, now, honey," she crooned. "There. There. Now." Connington put one hand up, palm out, his lax fingers spread, and she caught it, clutching it and pressing it to the base of her throat, while she rubbed feverishly at his smashed mouth. "I'll fix it, honey—don't worry. . . ."

Connington turned his head from side to side, his eyes looking blindly in her direction, whimpering as the cloth ground across the cuts.

"No, no, honey," she chided him. "No, hold still, honey. Don't worry. I need you, Connie. Please." She began wiping his chest, opening the top of the beach shirt and forcing it down over his arms, like a policeman performing a drunk arrest.

Barker said stiffly: "All right, Claire—that's it. I want your things out of here tomorrow." His mouth turned down in revulsion. "I never thought you'd turn carrion-eater."

Hawks turned his back and found a telephone on the wall. He dialled with clumsy haste. "This—this is Ed," he said, his throat constricted. "I wonder if you could possibly drive out to that corner on the highway, where the store is, and pick me up. Yes, I—I need a ride in, again. Thank you. Yes, I'll be there, waiting."

He hung up, and as he turned back, Barker said to him, his expression dazed: "How did you do it, Hawks?" He almost cried: "How did you manage this?"

"Will you be at the laboratory tomorrow?" Hawks said wearily.

Barker looked at him through his glittering black eyes. He flung out an arm toward Claire and Connington. "What would I have left, Hawks, if I lost you now?"