7

THURLOW SAT SMOKING HIS PIPE, HUNCHED OVER THE wheel of his parked car. His polarizing glasses lay on the seat beside him, and he stared at the evening sky through raindrops luminous on the windshield. His eyes watered and the raindrops blurred like tears. The car was a five-year-old coupe and he knew he needed a new one, but he'd fallen into the habit of saving his money to buy a house ... when he'd thought of marrying Ruth. The habit was difficult to break now, although he knew he clung to it mostly out of perverse hope that the past year might yet be erased from their lives.

Why does she want to see me? he wondered. And why here, where we used to meet? Why such secrecy now?

It had been two days since the murder and he found he still couldn't assemble the events of the period into a coherent whole. Where news stories mentioned his own involvement, those stories read like something written about a stranger -- their meaning as blurred as the raindrops in front of him now. Thurlow felt his whole world invaded by Joe Murphey's psychotic ramblings and the violent reactions of the community.

It shocked Thurlow to realize that the community wanted Murphey dead. Public reaction had struck him with and the violence of the storm which had just passed.

Violent storm, he thought. A violence storm.

He looked up at the trees on his left, wondering how long he'd been here. His watch had stopped, unwound. Ruth was late, though. It was her way.

There'd been the storm. Clouds had grown out of a hard gray sky with rain crouched low in them. For a time the eucalyptus grove around him had been filled with frightened bird sounds. A wind had hummed through the high boughs -- then the rain: big spattering drops.

The sun was back now, low in the west, casting orange light onto the treetops. The leaves drooped with hanging raindrops. A mist near the ground quested among scaly brown trunks. Insect cries came from the roots and the bunchgrass that grew in open places along the dirt road into the grove.

What do they remember of their storm? Thurlow wondered.

He knew professionally why the community wanted its legal lynching, but to see the same attitude in officials, this was the shocker. Thurlow thought about the delays being placed in his path, the attempts to prevent his own professional examination of Murphey. The sheriff, district attorney George Paret, all the authorities knew by now that Thurlow had predicted the psychotic break which had cost Adele Murphey her life. If they recognized this as a fact, Murphey had to be judged insane and couldn't be executed.

Paret already had shown his hand by calling in Thurlow's own department chief, the Moreno State Hospital director of psychiatry, Dr. LeRoi Whelye. Whelye was known throughout the state as a hanging psychiatrist, a man who always found what the prosecution wanted. Right on schedule, Whelye had declared Murphey to be sane and "responsible for his acts."

Thurlow looked at his useless wristwatch. It was stopped at 2:14. He knew it must be closer to seven now. It would be dark soon. What was keeping Ruth? Why had she asked him to meet her in their old tryst-big place?

He felt suddenly contaminated by this way of meeting.

Am I ashamed to see her openly now? he asked himself.

Thurlow had come directly from the hospital and Whelye's unsubtle attempts to get him to step aside from this case, to forget for the moment that he was also the county's court psychologist.

The words had been direct: " ... personal involvement ... your old girlfriend ... her father ... " The meaning was clear, but underneath lay the awareness that Whelye, too, knew about that report on Murphey which rested now in the Probation Department's files. And that report contradicted Whelye's public stand.

Whelye had come up just as they were about to go into a Ward Team conference to consider the possible discharge of a patient. Thurlow thought of that conference now, sensing how it encapsulated the chief of psychiatry.

They'd been in the ward office with its smell of oiled floors and disinfectant -- the Protestant chaplain, a small sandy-haired man whose dark suits always seemed too large and made him appear even smaller; the ward nurse, Mrs. Norman, heavy, gray-haired, busty, a drill sergeant's rocky face with cap always set squarely on her head; Dr. Whelye, an impression of excess bulk in a tweed suit, iron gray at the temples, and in patches through his black hair, a sanitary and barber-scraped appearance to his pink cheeks, and a look of calculated reserve in his washed blue eyes.

Lastly, almost something to overlook around the scarred oval table, there'd been a patient: a number and a first name, Peter. He was seventeen, mentally limited by lack of the right genes, lack of opportunity, lack of education, lack of proper nutrition. He was a walking lack, blonde hair slicked down, veiled blue eyes, a narrow nose and pointed chin, a pursed- up little mouth, as though everything about him had to be shelled up inside and guarded.

Outside the room had been green lawns, sunshine and patients preparing the flower beds for Spring. Inside, Thurlow felt, there had been little more than the patient's smell of fear with Whelye conducting the interview like a district attorney.

"What kind of work are you going to do when you get out?" Whelye asked.

Peter, keeping his eyes on the table, "Sell newspapers or shine shoes, something like that."

"Can't make any money like that unless you have a big corner stand and then you're in big business," Whelye said.

Watching this, Thurlow wondered why the psychiatrist would suppress ideas instead of trying to draw the boy out. He asked himself then what Whelye would do if he, Thurlow, should stop the proceedings and take the patient's place to describe " ... a thing I saw the other night, something like a flying saucer. It was interested in a murderer."

Mrs. Norman had Peter's social service files on the table in front of her. She leafed through them, obviously not paying much attention to Whelye. The chaplain, Hardwicke, had taken Thurlow's own psychometry file on Peter, but wasn't studying it. He seemed to be interested in the play of a sprinkler visible out the window at his right.

"Could you tell us your general attitude today, Peter?" Whelye asked. "How do you feel?"

"Oh, I'm all right."

"Are you still working in the sewing room? Seems to me you'd be more interested in that kind of work outside." "Yes, I'm working there. I've been working there ever since I came."

"How long have you been here?"

"Pert' near two years now."

"How do you like it here?"

"Oh, it's all right But I been wondering when you're going to let me out ... so I can get back home an' help support my mother."

"Well, that's one thing we have you in here for," Whelye said, "so we can think it over."

"Well, that's what they been telling me for six months, now," Peter said. "Why do I have to stay here? The chaplain" (Peter shot a covert glance at Hardwicke) "told me you were going to write my mother to see if she wanted me home. An' if she did want me home, he'd take me down there."

"We haven't heard from your mother yet."

"Well, I got a letter from my mother an' she says she wants me home. The chaplain said if you'd let me go he'd take me home. So I don't see any reason why I can't go."

"It's not a simple decision, Peter. It's not just the chaplain's decision."

Hardwicke opened the psychometry file, made a pretense of studying it. Thurlow sighed, shook his head.

What was that thing I saw? Thurlow wondered. Was it real there beside Murphey's window? Was it illusion? The question had been plaguing him for two days.

"Well, he said he'd take me," Peter said.

Whelye stared at Hardwicke, disapproval on his face. "Did you say you'd take him down to Mariposa?"

"If he were discharged," Hardwicke said. "I said I'd be glad to give him the trip down there."

Whelye faced Peter, said: "Well, we have to do some more looking into this matter, generally to find out if your mother wants you and if the chaplain's schedule will allow him to take you down there. If all these things work out, we'll let you go."

Peter was sitting very still now, no emotion on his face, his gaze intent upon his hands. "Thank you."

"That's all, Peter," Whelye said. "You can go now."

Mrs. Norman signaled an attendant waiting at the screened window to the Common Room. The attendant opened the door. Peter got up and hurried out.

Thurlow sat for a moment, the realization growing in him that Peter had taken away what amounted to a promise to be released, but that because of the way he had conducted the conference, Dr. Whelye wasn't aware of this. Whelye would be thinking that all the "ifs" involved made this a hypothetical case.

"Well, Dr. Whelye," Thurlow said, "you've made a definite commitment to this patient to discharge him -- promptly."

"Oh, no -- I didn't promise I'd discharge him."

"Well, the patient certainly understood he'd be home in short order -- and the only qualifications are Chaplain Hardwicke's schedule and confirmation of the mother's letter."

"Call the patient back and well settle this with him right now." Whelye said. He looked angry.

Mrs. Norman sighed, went to the Common Room door, signaled an attendant. Peter was brought back and returned to his chair. The boy kept his eyes down, shoulders bent, unmoving.

"You understand, don't you, Peter," Whelye asked, "that we haven't made any definite promise to discharge you? We're going to look into your home situation and see if everything is all right and if you can get a job. We'd also like to look into the possibility of you returning to school for a year or so. Perhaps you could get a better job. You understand, don't you, that we aren't making any definite commitment?"

"Yeah, I understand." Peter looked at Chaplain Hardwicke who refused to meet the boy's gaze.

"What's this about school?" Thurlow asked.

"The boy hasn't finished high school," Whelye said. He faced Peter. "Wouldn't you like to go back and finish high school?"

"Yeah."

"Do you like to go to school?" Whelye asked.

"Yeah."

"Wouldn't you like to finish your education and get a job where you could pay your own way and save money and get married?"

"Yeah."

Whelye glanced triumphantly at Thurlow. "Anybody got any questions?"

Thurlow had slowly been building up in his mind the analogy of a stud poker game. Peter was in the position of a player who didn't believe anything happening here, nor did he disbelieve anything. He was waiting to see the rest of the cards.

"Isn't it true, Peter," Thurlow asked, "that you'd rather be hungry than on a full stomach?"

"Yeah." The boy had turned his attention to Whelye now.

"Isn't it true, Peter," Thurlow asked, "that you'd rather eat a dry crust of bread than have a nice juicy piece of meat on your dinner plate?"

"Yeah."

"That's all," Thurlow said.

At Mrs. Norman's signal, the attendant took Peter once more from the room.

"I think when we get to the next patient," Thurlow said, "we should swear him in like they do in court."

Whelye remained silent for a moment. He shuffled his papers, then: "I don't see what you're driving at."

"You reminded me of a district attorney of my acquaintance," Thurlow said.

"Oh?" Whelye's eyes glazed with anger.

"By the way," Thurlow said, "do you believe in flying saucers?"

The heads of both Mrs. Norman and Chaplain Hardwicke snapped up. They stared at Thurlow. Whelye, however, drew back, his eyes veiled, watchful. "What is the meaning of that question?" Whelye demanded.

"I'd like to know your position," Thurlow said.

"On flying saucers?" There was a cautious disbelief in Whelye's tone.

"Yes."

"They're delusional material," Whelye said. "Utter nonsense. Oh, there could be a few cases of mistaken identity, weather balloons and that sort of thing, but the people who insist they've seen spaceships, these people are in need of our services."

"A sound opinion," Thurlow said. "I'm glad to hear it"

Whelye nodded. "I don't care what you think of my methods," he said, "but you're not going to find my opinions based on delusional material -- of any type. Is that clear?"

"Quite clear," Thurlow said. He saw that Whelye was convinced the question had carried a subtle intent to discredit

Whelye got to his feet, glanced at his watch. "I fail to see the point in all this, but doubtless you had some idea in mind." He left the room.

Mrs. Norman took a deep breath, bent a look of sympathy on Thurlow. "You like to play with fire, evidently," she said.

Thurlow stood up, smiled.

Hardwicke, catching Thurlow's eyes, said: "The defense rests."

As the scene passed through his mind, Thurlow shook his head. Again, he glanced at his wristwatch, smiled at himself as the unconscious gesture displayed the stopped hands. The air coming in the car window smelled of wet leaves.

Why did Ruth ask me to meet her here? She's another man's wife now. Where is she -- so damned late! Could something have happened to her?

He looked at his pipe.

Damn pipe's gone out. Always going out. I smoke matches, not tobacco. Hate to burn myself with this woman again. Poor Ruth -- tragedy, tragedy. She was very close to her mother.

He tried to remember the murdered woman. Adele Murphey was photographs and descriptions in stories now, a reflection from the words of witnesses and police. The Adele Murphey he'd known refused to come out from behind the brutal new images. Her features were beginning to grow dim in the leaf whirl of things that fade. His mind held only the police pictures now -- color photos in the file at the sheriff's office -- the red hair (so much like the daughter's) fanned out on an oil-stained driveway.

Her bloodless skin in the photo -- he remembered that.

And he remembered the words of the witness, Sarah French, the doctor's wife from next door, words on a deposition. Through Mrs. French's words, he could almost visualize that violent scene. Sarah French had heard shouting, a scream. She'd looked out of her second floor bedroom window onto moon-flooded night just in time to see the murder.

"Adele ... Mrs. Murphey came running out of her back door. She was wearing a green nightgown ... very thin. She was barefooted. I remember thinking how odd: she's barefooted. Then Joe was right behind her. He had that damned Malay kriss. It looked horrible, horrible. I could see his face ... the moonlight. He looked like he always looks when he's angry. He has such a terrible temper!" Sarah's words -- Sarah's words ... Thurlow could almost see that zigzag blade glinting in Joe Murphey's hand, a vicious, shivering, wavering thing in the mottled shadows. It had taken Joe no more than ten steps to catch his wife. Sarah had counted the blows.

"I just stood there counting each time he struck her. I don't know why. I just counted. Seven times. Seven times."

Adele had sprawled onto the concrete, her hair spreading in that uneven splash which the cameras later recorded. Her knees had drawn up into a fetal curve, then straightened.

And all that time, the doctor's wife had been standing there at the upstairs window, left hand to mouth, her flesh a rigid, mortal concrete.

"I couldn't move. I couldn't even speak. All I could do was just watch him."

Joe Murphey's oddly thin-wristed right hand had come up, hurled the kriss in a short arc onto the lawn. Unhurriedly, he had walked around his wife's body, avoided the spreading patch of red that trailed down the concrete. Presently, he'd merged with the shadows of trees where the driveway entered the street. Sarah had heard a car motor start Its lights had flashed on. The car had roared away in a gritty scattering of gravel.

Then, and only then, Sarah had found she could move. She'd called an ambulance.

"Andy?"

The voice brought Thurlow back from a far distance. Ruth's voice? he wondered. He turned.

She stood at his left just behind the car, a slender woman in a black silk suit that smoothed her full curves. Her red hair, usually worn close around her oval face, was tied in a severe coil at the back of her neck. The hair bound so tightly -- Thurlow tried to put out of his mind all memory of the mother's hair spread on the driveway.

Ruth's green eyes stared at him with a look of hurt expectancy. She had the appearance of a tired elf.

Thurlow opened his door, slipped out to the wet grass beside the road.

"I didn't hear your car," he said.

"I've been staying with Sarah, living with her. I walked up from the house. That's why I'm so late."

He could hear the tears in her voice and wondered at the inanity of their conversation.

"Ruth ... damn it all! I don't know what to say." Without thinking about it, he crossed to her, took her in his arms. He could feel her muscles resisting him. "I don't know what to say."

She pulled out of his embrace. "Then ... don't say anything. It's all been said anyway." She looked up at his eyes. "Aren't you still wearing your special glasses?"

"To hell with my glasses. Why wouldn't you speak to me on the phone? Was that Sarah's number they gave me at the hospital?" Her words were coming back to him, " ... living with her." What did it mean?

"Father said ... " She bit her lower lip, shook her head. "Andy, oh, Andy, he's insane and they're going to execute him ... " She looked up at Thurlow, her lashes wet with tears. "Andy, I don't know how to feel about him. I don't know ... "

Again, he took her in his arms. She came willingly this time. How familiar and right it felt for her to be there. She began to sob gently against his shoulder. Her crying felt like the spent aftermath of sorrow. "Oh, I wish you could take me away from here," she whispered.

What was she saying? he asked himself. She was no longer Ruth Murphey. She was Mrs. Neville Hudson. He wanted to push her away, start throwing questions at her. But that wouldn't be professional, not the right psychological thing to do. He decided it wasn't what he wanted to do after all. Still, she was another man's wife. Damn! Damn! Damn! What had happened? The fight. He remembered their fight -- the night he'd told her about the fellowship grant. She hadn't wanted him to take it, to be separated for a year. Denver had sounded so far away in her words. "It's only a year." He could hear his own voice saying it. "You think more of your damn career than you do of me!" The temper matched her hair.

He'd left on that sour note. His letters had gone into a void -- unanswered. She'd been "not home" to his telephone calls. And he'd learned he could be angry, too -- and hurt. But what had really happened?

Again, she said: "I don't know how to feel about him."

"What can I do to help?" It was all he could say, but the words felt inadequate.

She pushed away from him. "Anthony Bondelli, the attorney -- we've hired him. He wants to talk to you. I ... I told him about your report on ... father -- the time he turned in the false fire alarm." Her face crumpled. "Oh, Andy -- why did you go away? I needed you. We needed you."

"Ruth ... your father wouldn't take any help from me."

"I know. He hated you ... because of ... what you said. But he still needed you."

"Nobody listened to me, Ruth. He was too important a man for ... "

"Bondelli thinks you can help with the insanity plea. He asked me to see you, to ... " She shrugged, pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, wiped her cheeks.

So that's it, Thurlow thought. She's making up to me to get my help, buying my help!

He turned away to hide his sudden anger and the pain. For a moment, his eyes didn't focus, then he grew aware (quite slowly, it seemed) of a subtle brownian movement at the edge of the grove. It was like a swarm of gnats, but unlike them too. His glasses. Where were his glasses? In the car! The gnats dissolved away upward. Their retreat coincided with the lifting of an odd pressure from his senses, as though a sound or something like a sound had been wearing on his nerves, but now was gone.

"You will help?" Ruth asked.

Was that the same sort of thing I saw at Murphey's window? Thurlow asked himself. What is it?

Ruth took a step nearer, looked up at his profile. "Bondelli thought -- because of us -- you might ... hesitate."

The damned pleading in her voice! His mind replayed her question. He said: "Yes, I'll help any way I can."

"That man ... in the jail is just a shell," she said. Her voice was low, flat, almost without expression. He looked down at her, seeing how her features drew inward as she spoke. "He's not my father. He just looks like my father. My father's dead. He's been dead ... for a long time. We didn't realize it ... that's all."

God! How pitiful she looked!

"I'll do everything I can," he said, "but ... "

"I know there isn't much hope," she said. "I know how they feel -- the people. It was my mother this man killed."

"People sense he's insane," Thurlow said, his voice unconsciously taking a pedantic tone. "They know it from the way he talks -- from what he did. Insanity is, unfortunately, a communicable disease. He's aroused a counter-insanity. He's an irritant the community wants removed. He raises questions about themselves that people can't answer."

"We shouldn't be talking about him," she said. "Not here." She looked around the grove. "But I have to talk about him -- or go crazy."

"That's quite natural," he said, his voice carefully soothing. "The disturbance he created, the community disturbance is ... Damn it! Words are so stupid sometimes!"

"I know," she said. "I can take the clinical approach, too. If my ... if that man in the jail should be judged insane and sent to a mental hospital, people'd have to ask themselves very disturbing questions."

"Can a person appear sane when he's really insane?" Thurlow said. "Can a man be insane when he thinks he's sane? Could I be insane enough to do the things this man did?"

"I'm through crying now," she said. She glanced up at Thurlow, looked away. "The daughter's had her fill of ... sorrow. I ... " She took a deep breath. "I can ... hate ... for the way my mother died. But I'm still a psychiatric nurse and I know all the professional cant. None of it helps the daughter much. It's odd -- as though I were more than one person."

Again, she looked up at Thurlow, her expression open, without any defenses. "And I can run to the man I love and ask him to take me away from here because I'm afraid ... deathly afraid."

The man I love! Her words seared his mind. He shook his head. "But ... what about ... "

"Nev?" How bitter she made the name sound. "I haven't lived with Nev for three months now. I've been staying with Sarah French. Nev ... Nev was a hideous mistake. That grasping little man!"

Thurlow found his throat was tight with suppressed emotion. He coughed, looked up at the darkening sky, said: "It'll be dark in a few minutes." How stupidly inane the words sounded!

She put a hand on his arm. "Andy, oh Andy, what've I done to us?"

She came into his arms very gently. He stroked her hair. "We're still here," he said. "We're still us."

Ruth looked up at him. "The trouble with that man in the jail is he has a sane type of delusion." Tears were running down her cheeks, but her voice remained steady. "He thinks my mother was unfaithful to him. Lots of men worry about that. I imagine ... even ... Nev could worry about that"

A sudden gust of wind shook raindrops off the leaves, spattering them.

Ruth freed herself from his arms. "Let's walk out to the point."

"In the dark?"

"We know the way. Besides, the riding club has lights there now. You see them every night across the valley from the hospital. They're automatic."

"It's liable to rain."

"Then it won't matter if I cry. My cheeks'll already be wet."

"Ruth ... honey ... I ... " "Just take me for a walk the way ... we used to."

Still he hesitated. There was something frightening about the grove ... pressure, an almost sound. He stepped to the car, reached in and found his glasses. He slipped them on, looked around-nothing. No gnats, not a sign of anything odd -- except the pressure.

"You won't need your glasses," Ruth said. She took his arm.

Thurlow found he couldn't speak past a sudden ache in his throat. He tried to analyze his fear. It wasn't a personal thing. He decided he was afraid for Ruth.

"Come on," she said.

He allowed her to lead him across the grass toward the bridle path. Darkness came like a sharp demarcation as they emerged from the eucalyptus grove onto the first rise up through pines and buckeyes that hemmed the riding club's trail. Widely spaced night-riding lights attached to the trees came on with a wet glimmering through drenched leaves. In spite of the afternoon's rain, the duff-packed trail felt firm underfoot.

"We'll have the trail to ourselves tonight," Ruth said. "No one'll be out because of the rain." She squeezed his arm.

But we don't have it to ourselves, Thurlow thought. He could feel a presence with them -- a hovering something ... watchful, dangerous. He looked down at Ruth. The top of her head came just above his shoulder. The red hair glinted wetly in the dim overhead light. There was a feeling of damp silence around them -- and that odd sense of pressure. The packed duff of the trail absorbed their footfalls with barely a sound.

This is a crazy feeling, he thought. If a patient described this to me, I'd begin probing immediately for the source of the delusional material.

"I used to walk lip here when I was a child," Ruth said. "That was before they put in the lights for the night parties. I hated it when they put in the lights."

"You walked here in the dark?" he asked.

"Yes. I never told you that, did I?"

"No."

"The air feels clear after the rain." She took a deep breath.

"Didn't your parents object? How old were you?"

"About eleven, I guess. My parents didn't know. They were always so busy with parties and things."

The bridle path diverged at a small glade with a dark path leading off to the left through an opening in a rock retaining wall. They went through the gap, down a short flight of steps and onto the tarred top of an elevated water storage tank. Below them the city's lights spread wet velvet jewels across the night. The lights cast an orange glow against low hanging clouds.

Now, Thurlow could feel the odd pressure intensely. He looked up and around -- nothing. He glanced down at the pale grayness of Ruth's face.

"When we got here you used to say: 'May I kiss you?'" she said. "And I used to say: 'I was hoping you'd ask.'"

Ruth turned, pressed against him, lifted her face. His fears, the vague pressure, all were forgotten as he bent to kiss her. It seemed for a moment that time had moved backward, that Denver, Nev --none of these things had happened. But the warmth of her kiss, the demanding way her body pressed against him --these filled him with a mounting astonishment. He pulled away.

"Ruth, I ... "

She put a finger against his lips. "Don't say it." Then: "Andy, didn't you ever want to go to a motel with me?"

"Hell! Lots of times, but ... "

"You've never made a real pass at me."

He felt that she was laughing at him and this brought anger into his voice. "I was in love with you!"

"I know," she whispered.

"I didn't want just a roll in the hay. I wanted ... well, dammit, I wanted to mate with you, have children, the whole schmoo."

"What a fool I was," she whispered.

"Honey, what're you going to do? Are you going to get ... a ... " He hesitated.

"A divorce?" she asked. "Of course --afterward."

"After the ... trial."

"Yes."

"That's the trouble with a small town," he said. "Everyone knows everyone else's business even when it's none of their business."

"For a psychologist, that's a very involved sentence," she said. She snuggled against him and they stood there silently while Thurlow remembered the vague pressure and probed for it in his mind as though it were a sore tooth. Yes, it was still there. When he relaxed his guard, a deep disquiet filled him.

"I keep thinking about my mother," Ruth said.

"Oh?"

"She loved my father, too."

Coldness settled in his stomach. He started to speak, remained silent as his eyes detected movement against the orange glow of clouds directly in front of him. An object settled out of the clouds and came to a hovering stop about a hundred yards away and slightly above their water-tank vantage point. Thurlow could define the thing's shape against the background glow --four shimmering tubular legs beneath a fluorescing green dome. A rainbow circle of light whirled around the base of each leg.

"Andy! You're hurting me!"

He realized he had locked his arms around her in a spasm of shock. Slowly, he released his grip.

"Turn around," he whispered. "Tell me what you see out there against the clouds."

She gave him a puzzled frown, turned to peer out toward the city. "Where?"

"Slightly above us --straight ahead against the clouds."

"I don't see anything."

The object began drifting nearer. Thurlow could distinguish figures behind the green dome. They moved in a dim, phosphorescent light. The rainbow glow beneath the thing's tubular legs began to fade. "What're you looking at?" Ruth asked. "What is it?"

He felt her trembling beneath his hand on her shoulder. "Right there," he said, pointing. "Look, right there."

She bent to stare along his arm. "I don't see a thing --just clouds."

He wrenched off his glasses. "Here. Look through these." Even without the glasses, Thurlow could see the thing's outline. It. coasted along the edge of the hill-nearer ... nearer.

Ruth put on the glasses, looked where he pointed. "I ... a dark blur of some kind," she said. "It looks like ... smoke or a cloud ... or ... insects. Is it a swarm of insects?"

Thurlow's mouth felt dry. There was a painful constricting sensation in his throat. He reclaimed his glasses, looked at the drifting object. The figures inside were quite distinct now. He counted five of them, the great staring eyes all focused on him.

"Andy! What is it you see?"

"You're going to think I'm nuts."

"What is it?"

He took a deep breath, described the object

"Five men in it?"

"Perhaps they're men, but they're very small. They look no more than three feet tall."

"Andy, you're frightening me. Why are you frightening me?"

"I'm frightening myself."

She pressed back into his arms. "Are you sure you see this ... this ... I can't see a thing."

"I see them as plainly as I see you. If it's illusion, it's a most complete illusion."

The rainbow glow beneath the tubular legs had become a dull blue. The object settled lower, lower, came to a hovering stop about fifteen yards away and level with them.

"Maybe it's a new kind of helicopter," Ruth said. "Or ... Andy, I still can't see it."

"Describe what you see ... " He pointed " ... right there."

"A little mistiness. It looks like it's going to rain again."

"They're working with a square machine of some kind," he said. "It has what look like short antennae. The antennae glow. They're pointing it at us."

"Andy, I'm scared." She was shivering in his arms.

"I ... think we'd better get out of here," he said. He willed himself to leave, found he couldn't move.

"I ... can't ... move," Ruth whispered.

He could hear her teeth chattering, but his own body felt frozen in dull cement.

"Andy, I can't move!" There was hysteria in her voice. "Is it still there?"

"They're pointing some device at us," he husked. His voice felt as- though it came from far away, from another person. "They're doing this to us. Are you sure you can't see anything?"

"Nothing! A misty little cloud, nothing else."

Thurlow felt suddenly that she was just being obstinate. Anyone could see the thing right there in front of them! Intense anger at her surged through him. Why wouldn't she admit she saw it? Right there! He hated her for being so obstinate. The irrational abruptness of the emotion asserted itself in his awareness. He began to question his own reaction.

How could I feel hate for Ruth? I love her.

As though this thought freed him, Thurlow found he could move his legs. He began backing away, dragging Ruth with him. She was a heavy, unmoving weight. Her feet scraped against the gravel in the tank's surface.

His movement set off a flurry of activity among the creatures beneath the green dome. They buzzed and fussed over their square machine. A painful constriction seized Thurlow's chest. Each breath took a laboring concentration. Still, he continued backing away dragging Ruth with him. She sagged in his arms now. His foot encountered a step and he almost fell. Slowly, he began inching backward up the steps. Ruth was a dead weight.

"Andy," she gasped. "Can't ... breathe."

"Hold ... on," he rasped.

They were at the top of the steps now, then back through the gap in the stone wall. Movement became somewhat easier, although he could still see the domed object hovering beyond the water storage tank. The glowing antennae remained pointed at him.

Ruth began to move her legs. She turned, and they hobbled together onto the bridle path. Each step grew easier. Thurlow could hear her taking deep, sighing breaths. Abruptly, as though a weight had been lifted from them, they regained full use of their muscles.

They turned.

"It's gone," Thurlow said.

She reacted with an anger that astonished him. "What were you trying to pull back there, Andy Thurlow? Frightening me half out of my wits!"

"I saw what I told you I saw," he said. "You may not've seen it, but you certainly felt it"

"Hysterical paralysis," she said.

"It gripped us both at the same instant and left us both at the same instant," he said.

"Why not?"

"Ruth, I saw exactly what I described."

"Flying saucers!" she sneered.

"No ... well, maybe. But it was there!" He was angry now, defensive. A rational part of him saw how insane the past few minutes had been. Could it have been illusion? No! He shook his head. "Honey, I saw ... "

"Don't you honey me!"

He grabbed her shoulders, shook her. "Ruth! Two minutes ago you were saying you love me. Can you turn it off just like that?"

"I ... "

"Does somebody want you to hate me?"

"What?" She stared up at him, her face dim in the tree lights.

"Back there ... " He nodded toward the tank. "I felt myself angry with you ... hating you. I told myself I couldn't hate you. I love you. That's when I found I could move. But when I felt the ... hate, the instant I felt it, that was exactly when they pointed their machine at us." "What machine?"

"Some kind of box with glowing rods or antennae sticking out of it."

"Are you trying to tell me that those nutty ... whatever could make you feel hate ... or ... "

"That's how it felt."

"That's the craziest thing I ever heard!" She backed away from him.

"I know it's crazy, but that's how it felt." He reached for her arm. "Let's get back to the car."

Ruth pulled away. "I'm not going a step with you until you explain what happened out there."

"I can't explain it."

"How could you see it when I couldn't?"

"Maybe the accident ... my eyes, the polarizing

"Are you sure that accident at the radlab didn't injure more than your eyes?"

He suppressed a surge of anger. It was so easy to feel angry. With some difficulty, he held his voice level. "They had me on the artificial kidney for a week and with every test known to God and man. The burst altered the ion exchange system in the cones of my retinas. That's all. And it isn't permanent. But I think whatever happened to my eyes, that's why I can see these things. I'm not supposed to see them, but I can."

Again, he reached for her, captured her arm. Half dragging her, he set off down the path. She fell into step beside him.

"But what could they be?" she asked.

"I don't know, but they're real. Trust me, Ruth. Trust that much. They're real." He knew he was begging and hated himself for it, but Ruth moved closer, tucked her arm under his.

"All right, darling, I trust you. You saw what you saw. What're you going to do about it?"

They came off the trail and into the eucalyptus grove. The car was a darker shape among shadows. Thurlow drew her to a stop beside it.

"How hard is it to believe me?" he asked.

She was silent for a moment, then: "It's ... difficult."

"Okay," he said. "Kiss me."

"What?"

"Kiss me. Let's see if you really hate me."

"Andy, you're being ... "

"Are you afraid to kiss me?"

"Of course not!"

"Okay then." He pulled her to him. Their lips met. For an instant, he sensed resistance, then she melted into his embrace, her arms creeping behind his neck.

Presently, he drew away.

"If that's hate, I want lots of it," he said. "Me, too."

Again, she pressed herself against him.

Thurlow felt his blood pounding. He pulled away with an abrupt, defensive motion.

"Sometimes I wish you weren't so damned Victorian," she said. "But maybe I wouldn't love you then." He brushed a strand of the red hair away from her cheek. How faintly glowing her face looked in the light from the bridle trail lamps behind him. "I think I'd better take you home ... to Sarah."

"I don't want you to take me home."

"I don't want you to go home."

"But I'd better?"

"You'd better."

She put her hands against his chest, pushed away.

They got into the car, moving with a sudden swift embarrassment. Thurlow started the engine, concentrated on backing to the turn-around. The headlights picked out lines of crusty brown bark on the trees. Abruptly, the headlights went dark. The engine died with a gasping cough. A breathless, oppressive sensation seized him.

"Andy!" Ruth said. "What's happening?"

Thurlow forced himself to turn to the left, wondering how he knew where to look. There were four rainbow glows close to the ground, the tubular legs and the green dome just outside the grove. The thing hovered there, silent, menacing.

"They're back," he whispered. "Right there." He pointed.

"Andy ... Andy, I'm frightened." She huddled against him.

"No matter what happens, you don't hate me," he said. "You love me. Remember that. You love me. Keep it in your mind."

"I love you." Her voice was faint.

A directionless sense of anger began to fill Thurlow. It had no object at first. Just anger. Then he could actually feel it trying to point at Ruth.

"I ... want to ... hate you," she whispered.

"You love me," he said. "Don't forget that."

"I love you. Oh, Andy, I love you. I don't want to hate you ... I love you."

Thurlow lifted a fist, shook it at the green dome. "Hate them," he rasped. "Hate bastards who'd try to manipulate us that way."

He could feel her shaking and trembling against his shoulder. "I ... hate ... them," she said.

"Now, do you believe me?"

"Yes! Yes, I believe you!"

"Could the car have hysterical paralysis?"

"No. Oh, Andy, I couldn't just turn on hate against you. I couldn't." His arm ached where she clutched it "What are they? My God! What is it?"

"I don't think they're human," Thurlow said. "What're we going to do?"

"Anything we can."

The rainbow circles beneath the dome shifted into the blue, then violet and into the red. The thing began to lift away from the grove. It receded into the darkness. With it went the sense of oppression.

"It's gone, isn't it?" Ruth whispered.

"It's gone."

"Your lights are on," she said.

He looked down at the dash lights, out at the twin cones of the headlights stabbing into the grove.

He recalled the shape of the thing then --like a giant spider ready to pounce on them. He shuddered. What were the creatures in that ominous machine?

Like a giant spider.

His mind dredged up a memory out of childhood: Oberorn's palace has walls of spider's legs.

Were they faerie, the huldu-folk?

Where did the myths originate? he wondered. He could feel his mind questing down old paths and he remembered a verse from those days of innocence.

"See ye not yon bonny road

That winds about yon fernie brae?

That is the road to fair Elfland.

Where thou and I this night maun gae."

"Hadn't we better go?" Ruth asked. He started the engine, his hands moving automatically through the kinesthetic pattern.

"It stopped the motor and turned off the lights," Ruth said. "Why would they do that?"

They! he thought. No doubts now.

He headed the car out of the grove down the hill toward Moreno Drive.

"What're we going to do?" Ruth asked.

"Can we do anything?"

"If we talk about it, people'll say we're crazy. Besides ... the two of us ... up here ... "

We're neatly boxed, he thought. And he imagined what Whelye would say to a recountal of this night's experiences. "You were with another man's wife, you say? Could guilt feelings have brought on this shared delusion?" And if this met with protests and further suggestions, "Faerie folk? My dear Thurlow, do you feel well?"

Ruth leaned against him. "Andy, if they could make us hate, could they make us love?"

He swerved the car over to the shoulder of the road, turned off the motor, set the handbrake, extinguished the lights. "They're not here right now." "How do we know?"

He stared around at the night --blackness, not even starlight under those clouds ... no glow of weird object --but beyond the trees bordering the road ... what?

Could they make us love?

Damn her for asking such a question!

Not I mustn't damn her. I must love her ... I ... must.

"Andy? What're you doing?"

"Thinking."

"Andy, I still find this whole thing so unreal. Couldn't there be some other explanation? I mean, your motor stopping ... Motors do stop; lights go out. Don't they?"

"What do you want from me?" he asked. "Do you want me to say yes, I'm nuts, I'm deluded. I'm ... "

She put a hand over his mouth. "What I want is for you to make love to me and never stop."

He started to put an arm around her, but she pushed him away. "No. When that happens, I want to know it's us making love, not someone forcing us."

Damn her practicality! he thought. Then: No! I love her ... but is it me loving her? Is it my own doing?

"Andy? There is something you can do for me."

"What?"

"The house on Manchester Avenue ... where Nev and I were living --there're some things I want from there, but I've been afraid to go over there alone. Would you take me?"

"Now?"

"It's early yet. Nev may still be down at the plant My ... father made him assistant manager, you know. Hasn't anyone told you that's why he married me? To get the business."

Thurlow put a hand on her arm. "You want him to know ... about us?"

"What's there to know?"

He returned his hand to the steering wheel. "Okay, darling. As you say."

Again, he started the motor, pulled the car onto the road. They drove in silence. The tires hissed against wet pavement. Other cars passed, their lights glaring. Thurlow adjusted the polarizing lenses. It was a delicate thing --to give him enough visibility but prevent the pain of sudden light.

Presently, Ruth said: "I don't want any trouble, a fight. You wait for me in the car. If I need help, I'll call."

"You're sure you don't want me to go in with you?"

"He won't try anything if he knows you're there."

He shrugged. She was probably right. Certainly, she must know Nev Hudson's character by now. But Thurlow still felt a nagging sensation of suspended judgment. He suspected the events of the past few days, even the menacing encounter of this night, made some odd kind of sense. "Why did I marry him?" Ruth asked. "I keep asking myself. God knows. I don't. It just seemed to come to the point where ... " She shrugged. "After tonight, I wonder if any of us knows why we do what we do."

She looked up at Thurlow. "Why is this happening, darling?"

That's it, Thurlow thought. There's the sixty-four dollar question. It's not who are these creatures? It's ... what do they want? Why are they interfering in our lives?