Pete said to Patricia, "Yesterday you were concerned about my safety. Now this." He gestured at the two heat-needles. "Why the change?"

"Because in the meantime you were out with my daughter," Patricia said. "I wish you hadn't been. I told you that she was too young for you; I warned you away from her."

"However," Pete pointed out, "as you read in my mind at the time, I found Mary Anne to be stunningly attractive."

The elevator came; the doors slid open.

In the elevator stood the detective Wade Hawthorne. He gaped at them, then fumbled inside his coat.

Alien McClain said, "Being a pre-cog helps. You can never be surprised." With his heat-needle he shot Hawthorne in the head. Hawthorne crashed back against the far wall of the elevator, then fell sloppily and lay sprawled face-first on the floor of the elevator.

"Get in," Patricia McClain said to Pete. He got in and so did the McClains; with the body of Wade Hawthorne they descended to the ground floor.

Pete said to the Rushmore unit of the elevator, "They're kidnapping me and they've killed a detective. Get help."

"Cancel that last request," Patricia McClain said to the elevator. "We don't need any help, thank you."

"All right, miss," the Rushmore Effect said, obediently.

The elevator doors opened; the McClains followed behind Pete, through the lobby and out onto the sidewalk.

To Pete, Patricia McClain said, "Do you know why Hawthorne was in that elevator, riding up to your floor? I'll tell you. To arrest you."

"No," Pete said. "He told me on the vidphone last night that they'd gotten Luckman's murderer, a man back East."

The McClains glanced at each other but said nothing.

"You killed an innocent man," Pete said.

"Not Hawthorne," Patricia said. "Hardly innocent. I wish we could have gotten that E. B. Black at the same time but it wasn't along. Well, maybe later on."

"That damn Mary Anne," Alien McClain said as they got into the car parked at the curb; it was not Pete's car. Evidently the McClains had come in it. "Somebody ought to wring her neck." He started the car and it spun upward into the morning haze. "That age is amazing. When you're eighteen you believe you know everything, you possess absolute certitude. And then when you're one hundred and fifty you know you don't."

"You don't even know you don't," Patricia said. "You just have a queasy intimation that you don't." She sat in the back seat, behind Pete, still holding the heat-needle pointed at him.

"I'll make a deal with you," Pete said. "I want to be

sure Carol and the baby are all right. Whatever you want me to do—"

Patricia interrupted, "You've already made that deal; Carol and the baby are all right. So don't worry about them. Anyhow, the last thing we would want to do is hurt them."

"That's right," Alien said, nodding. "It would defeat everything we stand for, so to speak." He smiled at Pete. "How does it feel to have luck?"

"You ought to know," Pete said. "You've got more children than any other man in California."

"Yes," Alien McClain agreed, "but it's been over eighteen years since that first time, many years indeed. You really went out and tied one on last night, didn't you? Mary Anne said you were in a trance. Absolutely blind."

Pete said nothing, Gazing down at the ground below, he tried to make out the direction of the car's motion. It seemed to be heading inland, toward the hot central valley-region of California and the Sierras beyond. The utterly desolated Sierras, where no one lived.

"Tell us a little more about Doctor Philipson," Patricia said to him. "I catch some ill-formed thoughts. You called him last night after you got home?"

"Yes."

To her husband, Patricia said, "Pete called him up and asked him if he—Doctor Philipson—was a vug."

Grinning, Alien McClain said, "What did he say?"

"He said that he was not a vug," Patricia said. "And then Pete called Joe Schilling and told him the news; you know, that we're entirely surrounded by them, and Joe Schilling suggested he call Hawthorne. Which he did. And, that's why Hawthorne came over this morning."

"I'll tell you who you should have called, instead of Wade Hawthorne," McClain said to Pete. "Your attorney, Laird Sharp."

"Too late now," Patricia said. "But he'll probably run into Sharp somewhere along the line anyhow. You can talk to him then, Pete. Tell him the whole story, how we're an island of humans swamped in a sea of non-terrestrials." She laughed, and so did her husband.

"I think we're scaring him," McClain said.

"No," Patricia said. "I'm scanning him and he's not scared, at least not like he was last night." To Pete she said, "That was an ordeal for you, wasn't it, that trip home with Mary Anne? I'll bet you never get over it as long as you live." To her husband she said, "His two frames of reference kept switching back and forth; first he'd see Mary Anne as a girl, as an attractive eighteen-year-old Terran, and then he'd peek over, out of the comer of his eye—"

"Shut up!" Pete said savagely.

Patricia continued, "And there it would be. The amorphous mass of cytoplasm, spinning its web of illusion, to mix a metaphor. Poor Peter Garden. It sort of takes the romance out of life, doesn't it, Pete? First you couldn't find a bar that would serve Mary Anne and then—"

"Stop it," her husband said. "That's really enough; he's gone through enough already. This rivalry of yours with Mary Anne, it's bad for both of you. You shouldn't be competing with your own daughter."

"Okay," Pat said, and was silent as she lit a cigarette.

Below them, the Sierras passed slowly. Pete watched them drop behind.

"Better call him," Patricia said to Alien,

"Right." Her husband clicked on the radio transmitter. "This is Dark Horse Ferry," he said into the microphone. "Calling Sea Green Lamb. Come in, Sea Green Lamb. Come in, Dave."

A voice from the radio said, "This is Dave Mutreaux. I'm at the Dig Inn Motel in Sparks, waiting for you."

"Okay, Dave; we'll be right there. Another five minutes." Alien McClain switched his transmitter off. "All set," he said to Patricia. "I can preview it; there won't be any gaffs."

"Splendid," Patricia said.

"By the way," Alien McClain said to Pete, "Mary Anne will be there; she came direct, in her own car. And several Other people, one of whom you know. It'll be interesting for you, I think. They're all Psis. Mary Anne, by the way, is not a telepath, as her mother is. Despite what she told you. That was irresponsible of her. A good deal of what she told you was hogwash. For instance, when she said—"

"Enough," Patricia said, firmly.

McClain shrugged. "He'll know in another half hour; I can preview that."

"It just makes me nervous, that's all. I'd rather wait until we're at the Dig Inn." To Pete, she said, "By the way, you would have been better off if you had listened to her and kissed her goodnight, as she asked you to."

"Why?" Pete said.

"Then you would have known what she was." She added, "Anyhow how many opportunities do you get in-your lifetime to kiss stunningly-beautiful girls?" Her voice, as before, was bitter.

"You're eating your heart out for nothing," Alien McClain told her. "Christ, I'm sorry to see you do it, Pat."

Pat said, "And I'm going to do it again later on with Jessica, when she's older."

"I know," McClain said, nodding. "I can preview that even without my talent." He looked morose.

On the flat sand outside the Dig Inn Motel the car landed. With the heat-needle the McClains ushered Pete Garden out and toward the, single-story Spanish style adobe building.

A long-limbed man, well-dressed, middle-aged, strode toward them from the motel, his hand extended. "Hi, McClain. Hi, Pat." He glanced at Pete. "Mr. Garden, the one-time owner of Berkeley, California. You know, Garden, I darn near came to Carmel to play in your group. But, sorry to say, you scared me off with your EEG machine." He chuckled. "I'm David Mutreaux, formerly on Jerome Luck-man's staff." He held out his hand to Pete, but Pete did not accept it. "That's right," Mutreaux drawled, "you don't understand the situation. Yet I'm a little muddled about what's happened and what's shortly to come. Old age, I suppose." He led the way up the flagstone path, to the open doorway of the motel office. "Mary Anne got in a few minutes ago. She's taking a swim in the pool."