"Okay, okay," Bob said. "But I've got to see this dial--Ah, yes. This is the way, all right. Come on. Ollie, keep that beam so it spills on the tracking-cone dial as well as on the earth. We don't dare risk losing our way. There are only seven minutes left until Contact is broken."
"Yes, sir. I'll keep it right on there," Ollie said. "But about the lieutenant--are you _sure_ he won't--"
"That's what the stopwatch is for. We _must_ strike just as Contact is being broken. Any sooner, and we kill Lieutenant Norcriss with the alien. Any later, and the alien kills us. The same way it did the others who came upon it."
"But what does it do? What does it look like?" Ollie persisted.
"Damn it, there's no time to talk now! Just keep that light steady, and hurry!"
The men plunged onward through the woods, the white circle of light from the arc-torch splashing the cold leaves and damp, colorless grass with sickly, stark illumination.
"If you would only release your hold," the alien was saying. Then its mind-voice stopped.
Jerry, too, had seen the dancing white freckles that spattered the boles and branches of the nearby trees. The darkness of the woods was rent by streamers of ruler-straight light beams. They began to radiate like luminous wheel-spokes through the tangled leaves of the woods.
"Men!" cried the alien mind. "Men are coming here. Men, our enemies!"
Jerry, still in partial control of the invisible rat-body, fought the flight-impulse that began to stir beneath the unseen skin.
"Run!" shrieked the alien mind. "You fool, can't you see that we must flee this place? Quickly, or we are done for!"
"Run--Flee--" Jerry said dully, within the alien mind. "Yes. Run from men ... the eternal enemy, men. Run, hide, a dark corner, under a bush, behind a tree...."
He felt his own mind joining that of the alien in the preliminary tension that comes before flight.... Then the glaring beam of the arc-torch was full in his eyes, and the hypnotic illusion, at this, the trigger of his psyche, was shattered. And Jerry once again knew himself to be a man.
A man in the body of a rat--the animal which Jerry Norcriss loathed most of all creatures!
"Run!" screamed the alien. "Why don't you--!" Its commands ceased as it realized the difference within the mind that had invaded its body. "You again!" it cried, trying wildly to reassume the placid plump image of that unseen baby once more.