KENNETH JOHNSON had  heard the Kalawego "black cloud" reports, but he wasn't much concerned about them. He was in fact grateful that they had frightened the price of real estate toward rock bottom. After three years in Europe as, a news correspondent, he had returned to buy himself a summer cottage on Kalawega Lake, and prepared for a well-deserved month of fishing along its rocky banks. If the black cloud appeared, he promised himself, he'd have a camera handy. For although he was not disturbed, he believed that the witnesses had actually seen something or other, and Ken regarded himself as skilled in judging the reliability of witnesses.

The phenomenon appeared on the third day of his vacation, but the camera was not immediately at hand.

The sun had fallen behind the high hill, and the cabin lay in afternoon shade. Ken sat with his feet on the porch rail watching the breeze-swept lake, and cursing himself for having invited the two guests who now sat on the steps in their bathing suits and tried to make light conversation about the races and nightlife and the New York stage, while they sucked at the lips of a pair of paper cups. Marcia was slightly drunk, her eyes too wandering, and her laughter too throaty. She kept patting the man's bare knee as punctuation for her long and parenthetically explanatory sentences.

They had brought their own liquor, and Ken glanced at it with a sniff. It sat in the center of the porch—a bucket of ice, a fifth of gin, a fifth of vermouth, a bottle of olives, and a silver shaker. Quite fancy, Ken thought, for an open-air weekend at a ramshackle cabin on remote Kalawego Lake. But then, having been married to Marcia once, he knew that she liked to carry her sophistication with her wherever she went. Her present husband, whose dark and narrow eyes never ceased devouring each part of her bared brown body, was part of her sophistication. He grinned sensually at everything she said, and placed his eyes wherever she directed them by her casually calculated posings.

Ken seldom looked at her, except when she turned to ask him a question or make some remark about "old times". He remembered the old times too well, and the memories hurt more than he cared to admit even to him self. Marcia's tanned skin, the soft smooth curves of her body, her quick moist lips, and the jiggling mass of rich brown hair flicking this way and that with each movement of her head. Ken could still remember the clutching possessiveness of her during the honeymoon, and his own voice muttering, "My little girl, my little girl." Yeah. He'd been in Europe three months when she wrote that she wanted the divorce—in favor of this sleek-mannered lap dog with the dark masculine beauty and the wandering eyes.

Ken, in bitter irony, had invited them for the weekend as a way of saying "who cares?" He had figured that Marcia would want to accept, thereby demonstrating to her friends the extent of her sophistication, but he had imagined that the lap dog, Phillip, would have enough pride to refuse. Evidently Phillip had no will of his own, for he seemed not in the least embarrassed in the presence of the man who'd known the body he was admiring long before he had entered the picture.

Ken's only satisfaction as he sat listening to them, was in the realization that Marcia was drinking herself tipsy and doing her best to prove that Phillip was her slave. She treated him with mingled contempt and motherly affection. And Ken remembered that she seldom overdrank—except when deeply disturbed. It was small consolation, however. For to his dismay, he found his old longing and love and desire suddenly rearoused. Instead of hating her, he found himself hating the attentive Phillip, with the kind of hate that sits and nurses thoughts of hard fists bruising a pretty face.

SUDDENLY Marcia's voice shook him from gloomy reverie. "Ken? Ken! Is that one of those black clouds?"

He looked up quickly, searching the sky where she pointed. Phillip was standing up and staring with his mouth open. "Oops! It's gone," he said suddenly, then hopped down the steps to look again.

Ken saw nothing. The breeze had grown gusty, and there were a few flakes of alto-cumulus toward the horizon, but the sky was otherwise blue.

"It was there! I swear it was there!" said Marcia.

Phillip walked a dozen steps from the porch to peer up through a clear place in the branches. "There it went again!" he shouted. "A black flash and then it was gone!" Suddenly he was running toward the lake.

Marcia sat down and sipped her drink thoughtfully while she stared after her husband. The excitement went out of her face like a switched-off light. Then she looked at Ken. He returned her gaze evenly, coolly, expecting her to make some inane remark. But her large brown eyes stared into his with a calm frankness and unsmiling intimacy. He tried to look away, but couldn't. "Well, Ken?" she breathed quietly.

It was their first moment alone together. She was not sitting in the slumped comfort of relaxation, but in slightly tense erectness, leaning toward him, lips parted, posing a pose that demonstrated the length of her shapely legs, and the even flare of her hips, and the budding swell of her breasts.

"Well, Ken?"

"You didn't see anything at all, did you?" he murmured in chilly fascination.

He could see by her hesitation that she wanted to say "no", but instead she shrugged, smiled cynically toward the distant figure of her husband, looked back at Ken with lifted brows, and said, "I did see it, darling, but so what?"

He recognized the question and the invitation in her eyes. For a moment he struggled with himself. She wrinkled her nose, winked, and knocked over the gin bottle with a small and deliberate push. The liquor splashed across the porch, and the bottle rolled down the steps to shatter on the stone walkway. "What a shame," she murmured thoughtfully. "Now poor Phillip will have to make a trip to town for more."

Ken shuddered and stood up. "I better get my camera," he mumbled. "That cloud you saw might come back."

HE MOVED into the house, found the camera, and glanced at its film-window. He had forgotten to load it. He was threading the paper tip through the roller when her bare feet tiptoed up behind him. He kept on loading the camera, feeling the dull anxiety of self-loathing. She was standing a few inches in back of him, her shadow across his shoulder. She neither spoke nor touched him, but he could feel her warmth, hear her breathing, smell the faint perfume of her breath. His fingers were nervous with the film.

"Got a cigaret, Ken?" she asked in a small subdued voice.

Silently he handed her his pack over his shoulder, without looking around. But she didn't take them.

"Light it for me, Ken."

He put the camera down, lit the cigaret, and turned, offering it to her. She kept her hands at her sides, and took it from his fingers with her lips, eyeing him questioningly. He wiped a trace of lipstick from his fingernail while he stared at her.

"Not satisfied with what you've got?" He meant to make it insulting, but his voice was hoarse.

"Not at the moment," she breathed amid an exhaled aura of smoke, and her eyes fell speculatively to his shirt-throat where a patch of yellow fur lay in view. Then she stirred it absently with her forefinger while she watched his eyes. "Phillip has his advantages, but then—you have your advantages too."

Ken choked a curse in her face and slapped her hand away from his throat. But her sudden laughter kept him from stalking away in rage. With grim horror, he realized that he wanted her back—almost at any price.

"You're a man, Ken. I need a man once in a while. Phillip's—"

He slapped her brutally, leaving bright finger-welts across her cheek. She caught her breath, put her palm against her face, but continued speaking, almost without interruption.

"—not always a comforting pet. His lovemaking is highly specialized."

Ken seized the camera and jostled roughly past her. He lumbered toward the door with a sick knot in the pit of his stomach. Suddenly he realized that something was wrong. The light was gloomy outside, and the wind was wailing about the eaves.

Then he heard someone screaming in the distance. He broke into a run, and burst onto the porch. Phillip was racing up the trail and howling with fright, bending far forward against the sudden gale. A patch of darkness hung over the lake, beyond the branches in front of the cottage. It obscured the sunlight on the water.

"It came at me!" Phillip was shrieking. "It tried to get me!"

KEN LEAPED into the yard and dashed toward an opening in the trees, angling for a clear shot of the strange meteorological phenomenon. But before he reached it, the cloud winked away, as if it had never been there, leaving a clear blue sky, dulling with late afternoon's haze. There was a brief grumble of faint thunder. The wind stopped, reversed itself for a moment, then stopped again.

Phillip was chattering excitedly to his wife on the porch. Ken turned disgustedly and shuffled toward them, staring disconsolately at the ground while listening to their voices.

" ...really, Phil, that's no reason to pull up your skirts and shriek, as if you'd seen a mouse or something!"

"But I tell you, Marsh! It tried to..." His voice tapered off as he heard his host approaching. He slumped to the porchrail, his hands trembling slightly. "Whew!" he breathed. "I need a drink."

Ken spat on the walk, then sat on the bottom step and stared at the lake. Their voices went on behind him.

"Well, there isn't any, Phil. I broke the bottle. You'll have to drive in for another."

"I've got a bottle of bourbon," Ken said without looking around, "if you can stand it."

"I could use it," Phillip admitted.

"All right, darling," Marcia said. "Sit still and I'll get you a drink. Where do you keep your liquor, Ken?"

"Kitchen shelf," he admitted in amazement, then regretted it immediately. But Marcia slipped into the house without another word.

She called to him faintly from the kitchen. "You just thought you had some, Ken."

He stiffened and cursed inwardly. "There's a full bottle!" he bellowed. Then he turned as her footsteps approached through the hall.

She stood behind the screen waving an empty fifth at him and smiling. Her eyes mocked him, daring him to accuse her of pouring it down the sink which, he knew, was exactly what she'd done. "You don't remember your last binge very well, I guess," she said, then eyed her husband. "I could use one too, Phil."

Phillip slipped off the rail and sighed. "Well, let's drive in after another. I'm sure Kenneth won't mind being left alone for an hour or so."

"I'm not going," Marcia said flatly. They locked glances for a moment, and when he made no move to leave, she added, "Afraid a black cloud'll chase you? Or are you afraid something'll happen while you're gone?"

"Really, Marcia!"

"Oh, I'll go with you, if you're afraid, Phil."

"That won't be necessary," he replied stiffly, and brushed past her into the house. "Excuse me while I get out of this bathing suit."

KEN SAT still staring at the lake's reflection of approaching twilight, and wishing fervently that he'd never left Europe. Coming back to this sort of decadence, and becoming a part of it, was hardly the answer to his dreams of home. He despised himself for still loving the evil creature who stood watching him from the doorway. Why didn't he tell them both to get out?—To go and leave him completely alone. Why didn't he go tell the lap dog that his mistress was scheming to send him away— "Look, Phillsy-boy, your missus is getting fresh with me."

But then, after all, if he hadn't taken the European assignment, Marcia would never have left him. He remembered the way she'd begged him not to go, and fumed at how he couldn't love her if he left that way. And Ken had said, "Look, babe, it's only for six months." And he'd laughed when she threatened to be deliberately unfaithful. Then, after three months, the letter—and the bitterness that made him stay three years.

What if he had come back then?

When the letter came, asking for a divorce. Maybe the letter had been intended to bring him back. He'd thought about it before. Marcia did things like that sometimes. But when he said, "Get it and be damned. I'm staying three years," she got it anyway.

Maybe some of the mess was his fault. A sensible woman could have waited six months in the interest of her husband's job; but Marcia wasn't a sensible woman, and he had known it when he married her. She selfish and high-strung and possessive—and now she was something else too—something that wasn't quite healthy. Still, he loved her, and wished she'd go away. Inviting her had been the worst kind of mistake.

He heard Phillip leave by the back door, slamming the screen petulantly. Marcia was humming a nerve-wracking tune in the doorway. A starter growled behind the house, then Phillip's car roared away up the narrow road. There was a moment of stillness; the only sound was the rustle of sparrows fluttering in the brush. The lake was mirror-calm in the dusk.

The screen door spring creaked behind him, and Marcia's bare feet padded across the porch. She sat silently on the step above him and hung one foot on either side. Then he felt her hands on his shoulders, lightly. And she placed her forehead against the back of his neck.

"I was a little tight, Ken. It's wearing off."

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry, Ken. But if I hadn't been tight, I'd have done it anyway. I'd just have been nicer about it, that's all."

"Trying to reset the stage now?" he growled.

"Yes...yes, Ken. To reset the whole darn thing. From the beginning. I shouldn't have tried to own you so hard, should I? You don't own easy."

"Phillip does. And apparently you like it."

FOR A WHILE she said nothing, then, "Do me a favor, Ken. Love me. Just for now. Then I'll let you alone. I couldn't go back to you, even though I still love you. You wouldn't take me anyway, but right now—"

"Stop babbling!" he snapped. Then he walked away from her, leaving her on the steps and moving down the trail toward the dock. He shivered at the damp touch of his shirt collar; it was soggy with her tears.

He wanted her. But to take her would be to come back again...and again ...and finally he'd be helpless. That's the way she wanted him, helpless. She wasn't aware of it, of course. Love? Maybe, if she were capable of it, but she wanted him helpless.

He walked out on the dock and stared across the five-mile expanse of gray water in the gloom. Crickets were chirruping along the banks, and he heard a deer tearing through the brush to reach the shore. It was, he thought, a good place to be standing when Phillip came back. He stole a cautious glance toward the porch, half-expecting to see Marcia approaching. But she was nowhere in sight. Maybe she's coming to her senses, he thought…

...but he doubted it.

Ten minutes later he heard her coming down the path to the dock. When her high heels clattered on the loose boards, he glanced back in surprise; she had shed the bathing suit and was fully dressed in a bright print skirt and white blouse. She was smiling crisply, but her eyes were hard, determined. They mocked him.

"My face is bruised where you slapped me, Ken."

"Sorry. You know I'm short on temper."

"Phil didn't see it. I kept my face turned. But he'll see it when he comes back." She stood facing him, smiling up at him coldly.

"What're you driving at?"

Suddenly her hand lashed out like a striking rattler, and he felt her sharp nails rake down his cheek in a quick sear of pain. He recoiled, leaned against a dock piling, and stared at her.

"He'll see that too, Ken. Watch it; it's bleeding on your shirt."

He stood transfixed, remembering the shotgun in Phillip's car, and the crazy jealousy of men who allowed themselves to be owned by a woman. A stiff breeze was springing up, but he scarcely noticed it. Marcia glanced at the sky.

"There's the cloud again, in case you're interested." Her tone implied that she was not. She looked down at herself, then seized the front of her blouse and ripped it, tearing a long rent from shoulder to waist. "He won't like this either, Ken."

But Ken was staring up at the sky in dismay. A swirling globe of dark gray mist hovered a thousand feet over the lake—like the spent smoke of a mighty ack-ack burst. Meanwhile, Marcia was still preparing her revenge.

"Look at the way you've messed up my hair, Ken. And my lipstick. Phil will be furious. If he doesn't kill you, I'm sure he'll go for the police."

CAUGHT impotent between the cloud and the woman's wrath, he stood speechless, while the howling wind sucked at his shirt and washed about his burning cheek. Marcia turned suddenly and began running along the dock toward shore. Helplessly, he glanced at the cloud. It was growing blacker in the gray sky of dusk. And settling lower. Then he saw that the wind was rushing toward it from all directions. The trees on the opposite shore were bending lakeward.

The birth of a twister?

He turned to follow Marcia. With an explosive crack, a dead tree limb broke loose and fell just ahead of her, carried along the dock by the gale. She leaped " over it, tripped, and sprawled full length across the boards. "My ankle!" she wailed above the wind's wail.

He raced toward her, fighting the wind, and pausing to heave the limb from the dock. Her shoe was off, the high heel wedged in a crack between the boards; and she was moaning with pain as he knelt beside her.

"Can you stand?" he shouted.

She started to her feet, but fell back with a cry. The ankle was twisted askew. He lifted her in his arms, but found it impossible to carry her against the hurricane force that was tearing debris from the shore and hurling it out over the angry waves. He sank to his knees again and laid her on the dock, but she clung fiercely to his neck, shrieking with fright. "Don't leave me here, for God's sake, Ken!"

He saw what she was thinking. It would look like an accident, and for an instant he was tempted to go on alone. But the arms were the arms of a child clinging to her father, and wasn't that the meaning of insanity—being a child when one had no right to be a child? He pressed his mouth against her ear.

"Let go, babe! I won't leave you."

"You love me, Ken? Say you love me!" She was still screaming, and her eyes were wild, her lips parted hungrily.

"Yeah, sure, kid."

She let go of him then. They were lying stretched out full length on the boards, but still the wind tugged them menacingly. The dock was quaking and groaning under the force.

"It's going to collapse, Ken. I can feel it. Look at the pilings...."

Almost as she spoke, the outer end of the dock twisted aside, splintered and crashed into the waves, hurling broken boards into the storm that bore them away across the water.

"The boat!" he shouted. "Into the boat!" He scrambled to a nearby piling and began winding in the mooring rope of his small fishing craft. The boat was metal, but there were sealed air-tanks in the prow and stern which would keep it afloat if it capsized in the wave-tossed lake.

"I can't make it, Ken! My ankle!" He seized the piling, swung himself down, and dropped sprawling into the tossing craft. "Roll to the edge! I'll catch you."

CLINGING to the piling with one hand, he lurched to his feet and seized her about the waist as she came hurtling over the edge of the platform. They fell in a tangle into the wobbling boat, rocking it dangerously. There were several inches of water in the bottom. He shook off her clutching hands, crawled to the prow, and sawed at the rope with his pocketknife. "Start baling her out!" he howled. "There's a can somewhere!" Faintly, he heard her scraping at the bottom and sloshing water over the side. Then the half-severed rope snapped free, and the wind whisked the boat away from the sagging dock. He threw himself down and crawled back to Marcia. She had lost the baling can in the wind, and she was sobbing plaintively.

"Don't be scared, kid! If we tip over, hang onto the swivel rings—on the sides of the boat!"

She caught him down beside her. "I'm not scared, Ken. Just sorry! God, I'm sorry!"

He glanced quickly at the cloud. It had fallen toward the lake, and it hovered fifty feet above the water—a pitch-black patch of—

"Marsh!" he howled. "There're stars in it! It's not a cloud at all."

But she was still shrieking at him that she was sorry! He stared at the black globe of emptiness. There were stars glittering beyond it—where the opposite hillside should have been. A piece torn out of space! A dark tunnel into the void! The wind was pouring through it into nothingness. The gloom of evening was lightened by contrast with the awful hole.

The boat was pitching among the white-capped waves, but as they raced with the wind, the force of the gale lessened slightly.

He heard Marcia praying. She was speaking to him, but still it was a prayer. The evil mask stripped away, she was a child, clinging to him. "Don't leave me, Ken! You left me once, and I was lost. Don't leave me again. Why didn't you come back?"

When? When she'd asked for the divorce? Maybe he would have—if she'd made it conditional. But he was no whipped puppy to come begging. That's what she wanted—or thought she wanted. But if he had come back, he'd have lost his pride; and now he'd be another Phil. No, not quite, but almost.

"Answer me, Ken! Was there another woman? Over there? In Europe?"

He looked down into her frightened face and shook his head slowly. After what she'd done, she could still ask a thing like that. Marcia, Marcia. Not sane, neither was she insane. He saw her mind tightly locked in a vault of self. Desperately, she was trying to open it to him, but the hinges were rusty. But she was still his wife; her eyes told him so. No red tape nor official pronouncements by the courts could change that.

THE BOAT was moving faster, but the waves had diminished. He looked at the globe-gap and saw the cause. It had settled until a segment of its base lay beneath the water, and the lake was pouring toward it like a river over the brink of a waterfall. They were a thousand yards away and soon, he thought, they would be plunging through the emptiness.

"It was Phil's fault!" she cried. "He used to tell me about the girls in Europe. He made me think—"

"Shut up!" he roared at her. He'd never put the finger of blame on the other guy. It took two to do what they'd done, but it only took one to say "no". Marcia hadn't said it, and he couldn't blame any man for wanting his wife. Especially a weakling like Phil. But now he wanted to shift the blame, knowing that it was wrong to do so. "Just shut up!" he roared again.

But she kept talking in an incomprehensible babble. Not about the black maw that was preparing to devour them, not looking at it, nor even seeming to think about their plight. She recognized death though, and raved on, trying to make things right when they could never be right.

"Love me, Ken! For God's sake! Love me!"

He stared at the star-lanced gulf. Something was glistening in its center—a gleaming ball, growing larger, coming toward them out of nowhere. A visitor out of space? A hole torn in the fabric of universe to admit some alien creature?

But the creature in his arms caught his hair and pulled his face down against hers. She kept shrieking his name, and repeating her demand, as if it would save them from the dark death. Grimly, he realized that in her mind the black threat was a personal thing, whose coming was for the purpose of punishing her. And she clawed at Ken as if he had the power to absolve her guilt, thereby driving the threat away. He pitied her, and held her tightly as the boat swirled on in the rushing torrent whose waves had nearly subsided.

The metallic sphere blossomed larger in the gulf, growing so as to fill the globe of emptiness. The wind seemed to be diminishing as the volume of the sphere occupied more and more of the gap.

"Look, Marsh! It's letting up!"

But she paid no heed. She was laughing now, against his throat, nuzzling his neck, and calling out: "I won't ever try to own you, Ken. Never again. It's the other way around. I'm your property, baby. You hear that? It's what I really wanted, anyway. But I was ashamed. Own me like a piece of furniture, Kennie. That's what I want to be. Do you hear me? And you know what I want you to do with Phil?"

HE STARED at her and said nothing. It was no time to tell her that she was stuck with life the way she'd chosen it—if she lived at all. Stuck with Phil, and stuck with ownership. Why ownership, anyway? Still a kid, wanting to be possessed by huge hulking parents, and denying the wish by trying to possess others.

"Know what I want you to do with him? Kill him! Kill him, Kennie!" Her voice went to a savage snarl. "No, I'll do it! Oh, but they don't let you do that, do they? I'll just maim him, then."

A child shattering a toy. He shuddered and looked at the globe. It had filled the space, and now it was floating in the lake—a hundred foot sphere of metal, half submerged. The wind stopped with a whoompf as it lost its point of exit. There was a moment of calm.

Marcia sat up, gazing at him with worshipful eyes, as if he had been responsible for the disappearance of the threat. Her sodden clothing clung to her shapely young body, and she was shivering slightly as she hugged herself and smiled up at him happily, saying nothing.

He looked around, then gasped. The water, driven by its inertia, was still rolling toward the center of the lake. The boat was being borne ever upward on a rising hillock of water whose center was the floating sphere, now glimmering mysteriously in the light of an early moon. Ken stood up and quickly estimated the final results of what was happening.

Then he barked at Marcia: "Over the side! There'll be a wave! Hang onto the ring."

For the first time, she seemed to become fully aware of events. She glanced at the sphere and murmured fearfully—but now her fear seemed rational. She glanced back toward the dark shoreline, down the ever-steeping slope of water. Then she tossed him a nervous smile, threw her feet over the side of the boat and slipped into the lake, moaning with pain as the rush of water tore at her ankle. Ken dived out, caught one of the rings on the opposite side of the boat, and called to her: "You okay, Marsh?"

"Okayer than I've ever been, Kennie," she said weakly, but he couldn't see her head beyond the boat.

He kicked his feet and paddled one hand, maneuvering the boat so that its prow was aimed toward the sphere, still being lifted on the watery mountain. He hoped that the backwash, when it came, would not come as a breaker. But already a first crest was rolling down the slope, while the undercurrents still pressed up from beneath.

THE CREST caught them. The boat swooped up sickeningly, then plunged. The sphere seemed buoyed up higher as the mountain began to sink. Then it sank deeper, much deeper, pressing the water away from it in a roaring, rushing wave.

"K-Kennie—I—I'm slipping."

"Hang on!" he screamed. "Hang on! It'll be over in a minute!"

"And we'll get married again?"

"Yeah! Hell yeah, we will!" Gasping and fighting the swirling tide, he knew that he meant it. It would be a helluva life, but— "Hang on!"

The watery monster was upon them. The boat leaped up, then ducked as the torrent broke over it.

"Kennie—it would have been...better this time—"

Her words choked off suddenly. The boat tipped up on end. Ken gripped the ring and rode it half out of the water. The boat crashed over on its face and the ring tore from his grasp. The icy tide closed over his head for a moment, but the swirling currents buoyed him up again, and he was swimming a few feet from the capsized craft.

"Marcia?" He paused, waiting for her answer. "Marcia! ...Marcia!... Answer me! ...MARCIA!"

The moonswept lake was empty— save for the sphere and the overturned boat. The water's surface was concave now; and soon the wave's reflection would sweep back from the shore.

"Marcia!"

Still no answer. Choking with grief, he gasped a lungful of air and plunged beneath the surface, feeling about with his hands, and straining his eyes to penetrate the cold and swirling blackness. The moon made a shimmering mirror of the surface above his head. He dived down deep, as far as his lungs would bear, then turned over on his back and stared upward, hoping to see her form silhouetted against the silver-bright surface. But he could see nothing but the twisting bubbleclouds left by the roaring wave. And the lake was eighty feet deep in places. He dived deeper, giving no heed to the groaning of his lungs for air.

Suddenly he was being pushed by undercurrents. Glancing up, he saw the dim-bright surface growing darker, receding higher above him. The wave was reflecting back, and he was being pulled in the thrall of its undertow. The craving for air overwhelmed all thoughts of search. He began fighting his way upward.

THE CURRENTS were persistent.

They bore him up momentarily, then with a rolling motion pressed hint downward again, swirling him this way and that. Frantically he clawed at the water. Points of light danced in his mind. A dim disk of self-light bloomed into a great orange sun within his brain. Craving for air overwhelmed reason. He breathed—and almost sighed with relief as the cold tide sucked into his throat and clogged his nose.

Suddenly he was on the surface, still fighting at the encompassing fluid, still choking for the breath that could not pass the clogged bronchia. Something wound around his arm, like a tight cable or a tentacle. He fought against it weakly as the orange sun grew to consume his mind. Strangling, and trying to shriek, he felt himself being tugged upward.

Then, with no sensation of time's passage, he found himself lying face down upon an incined pallet, with his head hung lower than his feet, coughing the water out of his lungs and throat. He coughed until coughing wore away his consciousness—and he slept.

When he awoke, the pallet had been leveled. He lay upon his back, staring at a low and indirectly lighted ceiling. He glanced around weakly and found himself in a small windowless room, empty save for his pallet and a low pedestal in the center of the floor. The walls and ceiling gleamed dully, as if made of metal. Feebly, he pushed himself to a sitting position. The room was deathly silent.

A hospital?

"Hello!" he called.

There was another moment of silence, then a low and throaty voice issued from a loudspeaker on the wall: "Hello, Thinkman."

He frowned, then caught his breath. The voice, though distorted, seemed familiar. "Marcia?" he called hopefully.

There was another pause, then, "No, we are not the thinkwoman."

Ken felt the back of his neck shiver with crawling flesh. The voice was Marcia's, but the words were not.

"Whoever you are, can't you come in here? Do you have to talk through the wall? What is this, anyway?"

Another pause. "Very well, we shall enter. But do not be disturbed by what you see. We remind you again, we are not the thinkwoman."

He heard a click from the loudspeaker, then the muffled sound of a door opening somewhere beyond the wall. It closed again, and a motor whined for several minutes. Suddenly it stopped, the door swung open, and Marcia walked into the room. She stood staring at him calmly, impersonally—with a cool openness he had never seen before. His scalp was crawling again. Something was wrong, bad wrong!

"We remind you for the third time," she said. "We are not the thinkwoman whom you call Marcia. We found it necessary to adopt her image, because she was the only thinkhuman available for detailed biosimulation."

Ken bounded off the cot and retreated across the room. His hands were working nervously. Suddenly he felt certain of his whereabouts—he was within the sphere! "What did you do with her?" he cried. "If you're not..."

THE IMAGE of Marcia answered calmly: "We took her from the lake. Her functions had ceased. We tried to revive her. But certain tissue degenerations had already occurred. So we used her as a pattern for our own rebiosimulation of this planet's life forms. Except for our internal organs which are our own invention. Her body is intact. Would you like to see it?"

Ken shook his head dumbly. Conflicting emotions—grief, fear, gnawing anger—flooded him, leaving him helpless to act or speak. He sat down on the pedestal. Had they killed Marcia?

The Marcia-like creature answered his thought: "No, we did not kill her, Thinkman. Observe! We could have deluded you if we wished. We could have impersonated her with complete accuracy and not informed you of her cessation."

He glanced up frowning, prepared to say that it couldn't be done—not with the strange manner of speech. But suddenly the girl-thing smiled. It was Marcia's sophistismile—a pert drawing up at the corners of the mouth. She then hopped upon the edge of the pallet, crossed her long brown legs, and exposed the pretty knees beneath Marcia's skirt, which had been dried but not re-pressed. She daintily remoulded the back of her hair with her fingertips, then leaned toward him, wrinkling her nose. "Got a cigaret, Ken?" she asked.

He found himself hurrying across the room. "Marcia..."

"No! We are not the thinkwoman! Watch, please." She gestured toward the wall behind him, and he heard a faint clicking sound.

Nothing happened for a moment. Then a circular patch of wall glowed with dull red heat, faded, and became transparent. He was looking through it into an adjoining room—with a pallet—upon which lay the body of an unhappy child—Marcia, gray in death.

He lowered his head. Maybe it was better. She could never be happy, not with anyone. Well, maybe she'd died in a happy moment—"okayer than she'd ever been".

The creature seemed to read his thoughts. "In examining her thinking organ, we found she ceased function during a surge of radient emotion-response."

KEN TURNED quickly, saw the pert face like a ghost, closed his eyes and shuddered. "As long as you have to look like her, I wish you'd talk like her. What are you, anyway?"

She smiled again. "Okay, Ken, if it's more comfortable for you." She paused, summoning a moment of reflection in which to ape Marcia's personality patterns. "I'd better anticipate all your questions, I guess," she murmured thoughtfully. She skipped off the cot, patted his pockets, found a dry and unopened pack of cigarets and lighted one.

"I'm from a star system you never heard of. And I'm a fugitive—the last of my race, so far as I know. We were attacked by a race from our twin planet. They invaded, then began a systematic extermination. They had to; we were so good at mimicry that we could have infiltrated their occupation forces as saboteurs." She paused. "The reason I'm telling you this: I want to live here—on friendly terms."

Ken said nothing. He was still too dazed by her appearance, her mannerisms, the tone of her voice....

"I escaped in this ship, found my way to your sun system and hid on your moon for thirty years."

"Moon?"

"Yes. Observing your race—by radio, mostly. Sometimes by opening up a five-space landing tunnel. You know, the 'black cloud' business. Call it a spacewarp, if you like. Anyway, I could look through it. Or come through it. I've observed your race carefully. And I decided that our basic psychic patterns are similar enough to allow my living here without any real incompatibility—in human form, of course." She hesitated, watching his face. Then, "You're thinking it wouldn't work," she said. "Why?"

Ken paused long enough to wonder why he believed her at all. Surely this was Marcia...some mad gag... some ...but no, he believed her. And the shock of recent events kept him from feeling much surprise.

"It wouldn't work," he said dully, "because you're telling me about it, and I presume you mean to tell others."

She nodded. "And so I wouldn't be accepted. Well, I hadn't meant to reveal my identity. But it's become an unpleasant necessity. You see, I'll have to do so in order to convince people that they must evacuate the area around this lake for a hundred and fifty miles. Immediately."

"What! Evacuate! Why?" He leaned forward to glower at her.

WITH A habit that was irritatingly Marcia's, she held her cigaret's glow close to her lips, and blew off the ashes with a thin jet of smoke between her pretty lips. "That's right," she said calmly. "The enemy's in the solar system now—looking for me. If they find this, find this five-space sphere..." She snapped her fingers ominously. "The surrounding geography will probably collect in an orbit around the earth. You'll have a new ocean." She shrugged. "I'm sorry about it, but I never thought they'd trail me here."

Ken frowned angrily. A hundred and fifty mile radius! That would encompass several large industrial cities. Why hadn't she gone to another planet? Or at least to empty desert country. Actually, she was responsible...

"For Marcia's death." She finished his thought aloud. "That's right. I'll repay according to the code of my race. But first, look at this other business. I already had this five-space course plotted … from that moon crater to here. I plotted it before I saw the enemy ship come into Sol's field—out by Pluto. After that, there was no time to plot another; it's an intricate business. And I couldn't blast off by rocket; they'd pick up my jets on gamma scanners. I had to wink in right here; or else sit on the moon and wait for them to blast me."

"Which wouldn't have been a bad idea," he said angrily.

She reddened slightly. "Unfortunately, in taking on another creature's form and personality pattern, I'm forced to duplicate that creature's emotions. And, in this form, I'm afraid I agree with you." She lowered her eyes unhappily and stubbed out the cigaret.

Ken softened his voice slightly, feeling as if he were speaking to Marcia's twin. "Well, what're you going to do about it?"

She put her elbows on her knees, her chin on her palms, stared at him, and shook her head thoughtfully. "I don't know, Ken. I've submerged the sphere, and we're below the lake. But they'll find it anyway. And blast it. They're more interested in the sphere than they are in me. Because if they destroy it I'm stuck here. And that's all they want—to make certain I don't go back to my system and in filtrate them."

"Why don't you just leave again?" he muttered.

"I told you. No time to plot a five-space course. They'll be here in a few days—and they'd catch me in a gamma scanner if I used rocket blast off."

"Blast off anyway!" he said stubbornly.

She caught her breath, then frowned. "Suicide? To keep them from blasting this area? No—bluntly, no. Examining your thinkwoman's neural patterns, I don't think she'd have done it either."

"She was atypical," he growled. "Neurotic."

The alter-Marcia nodded. "I agree. Incidentally, she'd have been miserable if she'd lived. Are you interested in knowing why?"

"Some other time," he grunted.

"I'll tell you anyway," she said, winning a frown from Ken, who saw another habit of his ex-wife therein. "She stayed in emotional babyhood. She wanted passivity, to be dominated by parent-images. Subsconsciously she knew it, and consciously told herself it wasn't so. And she tried to prove it wasn't so by sophistication, by pseudo-aggression, by dominating others. Then you broke her defense."

"How?" he grunted.

MARCIA'S GHOST watched him peculiarly. "You left her in the face of her threats, you let her divorce you, you invited her here with her husband—which shocked her thoroughly and ruined her pride. You refused her, and you refused to be dominated. You dominated her, you frightened her—although I helped some there—and she still loved you. So—she gave up her defense, and admitted to herself that she wanted to play the submissive child, not the domineering parent."

"But why do you say she'd have been miserable?"

"Because from now on she'd identify you with her parent. She'd expect to be bullied, ordered around, dominated—as proof of the identity. And when you didn't do it, she'd do something to make you do it—fits of temper, tantrums, unfaithfulness."

"How do you know all this?" he snapped.

She shrugged. "Why shouldn't I? I absorbed the neural patterns, her memory. I remember her experiences as if they happened to me. But I have the advantage of being able to look at them objectively."

Ken shifted uneasily, feeling the heat in his face. "All of her memories?"

She smiled tightly. "All of her memories, Kennie. Would you like me to tell you all about Phil?"

He shuddered and dragged his face through his hands. "No, thanks. Suppose we just talk about what you intend to do about this mess."

"Give me another cigaret, then."

Ken pitched her the pack. "I shouldn't have picked up her habits too," she said as she lit one. Then she eyed him brazenly. "Since you suggest suicidal bravery, suppose I teach you the rocket controls and let you blast the sphere off while I stay here on earth."

Ken spent the next thirty seconds staring at her and cursing softly. She rewarded him only with a quizzical smirk.

"It was your idea," she went on. "After all, it's your race, not mine. I'm sorry and all that, but I've got no intention of sacrificing myself for them. Why don't you do it?"

He cursed her again, feeling the blind rage of impotence. But seeing his thoughts, she was able to hit at his sorest spots.

"Sign of your immaturity," she murmured. "Just like Marcia's. You identify me with a parent and expect me to make sacrifices that you won't make." Then she added quickly. "Uhuh! Psuedo-aggression!"

Helplessly, he checked the urge to kick her teeth out. He sat down again and put his face in his hands, remaining silent for a long time. "What will you do if I agree?" he asked dejectedly.

SHE SHRUGGED, and a note of sadness crept into her voice. "First I'd have to fulfill the code—in regard to Marcia's death. I'd impersonate her, take her place...."

"As Phil's wife?"

She nodded. "It would be rather distasteful, but maybe I could straighten up the mess." She looked up suddenly with an angry frown. "You're thinking I've got an obligation to you! You're crazy!"

He smirked. "She was coming back to me, wasn't she? You've already admitted it!"

She gave him as nasty a grin as he'd ever seen on Marcia's face during one of her nastier moments. "Yes, Kenny boy! She was. Would you like me to take her place for you? After what you know about me?"

Ken, who was conceiving a plan, nodded. "Yes, I would," he said firmly. "And in the precise way you predicted she'd behave in the future. Is that a part of your code? For all I know about it, you could lie about it and shrug it off. Do you live by your code, or just excuse yourself with it? The way we do with ours," he added hastily.

She whitened, seeing the nature of his plan. For a moment her eyes flared angrily. Then she stood up proudly. "My race was an honorable people. And we are so ancient that our ethical code has become a part of our biological nature. It's too bad you can't say the same. I'll honor my obligations. Do you insist that I fulfill her intention to return to you?"

He nodded solemnly, returning her stabbing glances, and knowing that she saw his slightly treacherous plan. If she, on the other hand, were lying about her race's moral stature, then the plan was worthless. Funny moral code, he thought, that would let her sit by while her enemy destroyed a million innocent people, but insisted that she pay for the life of one girl whose death had been more or less accidental.

"I find your ethics equally silly," she snorted. "But now, my husband—if that's what you will—I'm going to show you my natural form! Watch, Kennie, watch! And see if you still want me to fulfill...watch!"

HE TURNED his back quickly and covered his eyes. Cold fingers were dancing along his spine. Had he seen her skin change slightly? He refused to watch, lest the sight destroy his resolve. He gritted his eyes tightly together and tried to close his mind.

But her voice became a croak, "watch watch watch", became a grunt, became an adder's hiss. "Watch watch watch!" A wet voice, oozing up out of soft mush. He moaned and closed his ears, but the voice was breathing against the back of his trouser legs, from about the height of his knees. Then he felt the tendril touching his ankle—like the one that had tugged him from the lake—and he cried out in horror as he kicked at it and stumbled away.

"Is this the way you fulfill the obligation?" he shrieked. The tendril was entangled in his feet. He stumbled and fell headlong, still covering his face with his hands.

There was a long silence. Then he heard her footsteps again. A door opened. He glanced around to see the space witch rummaging through a small cabinet in the wall. She found a small phial with a needle attached, drove the needle into her arm, and squeezed the plastic sides of the bottle. The she closed the cabinet, rested her forehead against it and leaned there breathing heavily, as if awaiting the effect of the drug.

Ken climbed to his feet and sat down on the pedestal, staring at her and shivering. "All right!" he panted. "Come show me the rocket controls."

She looked around slowly, her eyes dull. "You expect me to come with you?"

He nodded. "I don't think the world would appreciate your talents."

"You realize, of course," she murmured, "that I could kill you, leave you here in the lake, and move out into your world without anyone's knowing the difference."

He nodded again. "And leave the sphere to be blasted by the other ship —along with a million people."

"Exactly." They locked calm glances for a moment.

"Well...are you going to show me the controls?"

SHE MOVED to the pallet and sat down again, in passive refusal or delay. He didn't remind her of her self-imposed obligation; yet he tried to trust in it. Trust a being such as this? She saw his thoughts and straightened slightly.

"My race was almost human once." He shrugged, but said nothing. It seemed hard to believe.

"Any race that stays in space a billion years will develop powers of biosimulation—as a way of adapting to different planets, varying gravities, climates, and so forth."

"Let's go to the controls. Get the ship out of here before dawn."

She eyed him nervously. "You know the consequences? They'll see us on the gamma scanurs. Then they'll connect a five-space channel between us and the sun." She gestured around at the walls of the room. "You'll live long enough to see them go white hot, then melt."

"Let's go."

She hesitated briefly, then set her face in hard lines. "No! I've changed my mind. I'm staying here."

He started toward her in anger; then she was holding him off with a small, innocent-looking weapon the size of a fountain pen.

"Ethics," he grunted, staring at it.

She kept it levelled at his chest, saying nothing, eyeing him coldly. He turned away and walked to the door, expecting death from behind. But she let him open it. A tiny cubicle lay beyond. Grill work in the ceiling told him that it was an airlock. He started into it.

"Better not," she said coolly. "The atmosphere in the rest of the ship is that of my home planet. You wouldn't like it, to say the least."

"Could it be changed?"

"Of course. But I don't intend doing it. And you don't know how." She smirked brightly. "I suggest you go on alone and leave me here, on earth."

Irritably, he slammed the door, glared at her. "I don't know which is worse—letting half of New England be blasted off the map, or wishing you on the world. But since it's my only choice..."

She laughed Marcia's laugh. "I assure you I'll behave myself."

"Like you've been doing?" he sneered.

"Not at all. Have you ever been alone?—for forty years?—completely alone? It's not pleasant. I'm gregarious—with any race. I can settle down and adapt to your social forms with no trouble at all. I'll even starve myself of the food-components that make biosimulation possible—a certain 'vitamin' you might call it; my race needs it—but I'll forego it so I can't change. My race is gone, Ken; I've got no home. I'm going to adopt yours. Have children, and—"

"Children!" he roared in horror.

"Why not? They'd be human, if I wanted them to be."

He shuddered, then said grimly, "Okay, let's get it over with."

SHE HOPPED off the pallet and moved to the door. "I'll get you a pressure suit so you can endure the air outside."

Then she was gone through the lock and he paced the floor restlessly. Pressure suit to fit a human? How could she have such a thing?

He stopped before the wall cabinet and stared at it. The hypo—food-components—that make biosimulation possible. He opened it and glanced at the several dozen phials—all identical. Then he began removing their caps and pouring the sticky yellow contents on the floor, expecting her to burst back into the room at any moment. But evidently the telepathic powers were limited to the immediate vicinity; he emptied the last bottle and closed the cabinet again.

He glanced at his watch. There was moisture in the case, but it hadn't stopped yet. Still four hours until dawn. It would be better to get the sphere away before the sun rose—for surely someone would come to investigate the freak storm.

She was a strange creature, he thought—the space witch. A personality half-alien, half-Marcia's. He was certain that her change of attitude, her decision to thwart her code, was due to Marcia's emotional patterns, not her own—if she had any that she could call her own.

Suddenly he heard her enter the lock again. Evidently she was undergoing the biosimulation process, to readapt to the change of atmospheres. The door opened, and she entered, carrying a spray gun, a hose, and a pressure cylinder. She stepped in the puddle of fluid, then glanced down at her feet.

Her face went chalk white. She moaned, and dropped the paraphernalia. Ken took advantage of her shock to slap the weapon from her hand. It belched a streak of blue fire that lanced past him and reddened the metal wall. He picked it up and backed away from her.

But she fell to her knees and began trying to suck some of the liquid up in one of the phials. She was mumbling in fright.

"Get back!" he growled, but she seemed not to hear him. He caught her shoulder roughly, and sent her spinning across the floor. Then he touched the weapon's firing stud, and played the blue lance over the puddle of liquid. It vaporized in a cloudy rush of steam.

"Now, where's the pressure suit?" he demanded of the wailing space witch.

"You've destroyed me!" she shrieked. "I need that compound! Don't you understand? It's a vital food-substance for me!"

"Then you lied," he snapped. "You said you weren't going to use it."

"You fool!" she shrilled. "Now I can't even readapt to my own atmosphere! If I do, it'll deplete my system of the compound, and I can't get back to this form!"

"Good! Where's the pressure suit?"

SHE BACKED into a corner, sat hugging her shins and glaring at him. She set her jaw stubbornly and said nothing.

He glanced at the paraphernalia she brought with her. "You better play it my way, sister!" he snapped. "There's nothing else you can do. What's this stuff for?"

She sat there trembling for a time, hating him with her eyes. Then she climbed weakly to her feet. "Never mind that stuff'. It was to spray a membrane suit around you. But you won't need it. I'll have to change the atmosphere in order to get out of here myself." She crossed the room and entered the pressure lock. "Hold the door open for me," she said dully, "so the pumps won't start."

He jammed the door with his foot, and watched her jab several buttons on a control panel. The sphere began to vibrate, as giant pumps began working at the conditions beyond the airlock. "It'll be a few minutes," she muttered.

Ken waited nervously. Perhaps she was tricking him. Surely she wouldn't give up so easily. She gave him a nervous glance that seemed to confirm, his suspicion. "Stay out of my thoughts," he growled at her, but she sniffed derisively.

The pumps stopped. He held his breath as she swung open the door, expecting a choking gust of chlorine or methane, but the air was clean and clear. She led him out into a large central control room, whose walls were a solid array of instrument panels. She moved to the nearest section.

"Here's the five-space drive. You can see for yourself why there's no time to use it. All these settings have to be worked out first."

He stared over her shoulder and counted thirty-two calibrated dials and several sliding verniers. A heavy switch with a safety lock dominated the center of the panel. He touched it thoughtfully.

"No!" she snapped. "That cuts on the drive!"

"How long would it take to work out these settings?"

"Over a week. Too long."

"How about random settings?"

"No! Come on, I'll show you the rocket controls."

He followed her reluctantly, glancing back at the five-space drive. She stopped at another panel and began flicking switches.

"What're you doing?" he growled.

SHE SAID nothing for a time. Then he smelled faint smoke. She turned to grin at him triumphantly, and answered his question: "Burning out control wires, that's all. By the time they're fixed, it'll be too late. Well, Ken, shall we go to your cottage? Or would you rather just sit here. We should be getting the governor to evacuate this area."

He backed away, cursing softly. He went back to the fire-space panel and began twisting dials at random.

"No. You fool!" she screamed. "You'll dump us out of the universe. You'll have us out a billion light-years from nowhere."

"So what?" he grunted.

She started toward him, but he played the flame-lance across the floor just ahead of her. She stopped.

"No, Ken! Our food's limited—fuel, air everything."

"How limited?" He was still playing with the dials.

"Only about fifty years..."

He laughed mockingly. "You shouldn't have said that. That's just about my lifespan."

He jerked the switch. Then his knees sagged as a surge of force came up from beneath. His legs buckled beneath him, and the ship shook with an inner thunder. He sprawled to the floor and caught a glimpse of the space witch lying in a crumpled heap.

As a great weight pressed upon him and he felt consciousness slipping away, he wondered what she'd look like if she slept. The hissing voice, the tendrils?

Ken sat up, and realized he'd been unconscious for a time. The girl was still sprawled on the floor. He climbed to his feet and went to shake her lightly. After a moment she opened her eyes, staring around blankly.

"Kennie..."

For an instant she was Marcia. Then she caught herself and hissed rage at him: "Fool! Do you realize what you've done?"

He shrugged indifferently. She bounded to her feet and darted to a large screen. She twisted at a set of controls, but the screen remained dark. "We're still driving through five-space!" She turned to face him, green eyes flashing angrily.

"The chances are a million to one that we'll dump in some intergalactic waste. We can't ever get back! And we probably can't even get to another galaxy. The drive requires the presence of a strong gravitic field to start with."

HE GRINNED sourly and looked around the control room. "I take it we're not on earth any more?"

"That's right! You've accomplished your purpose."

He sat down with a tired sigh. "Okay, baby. It's what I wanted. Now do your worst. Change into a jellyfish or something."

She glared at him briefly, then turned her back and marched toward a distant doorway.

"What're you going to do?" he snapped, fumbling for the weapon again.

"The only thing I can do!" she called back.

He shrugged and let her go. Her footsteps faded away in the corridor and he was alone. Alone for the next fifty years, he thought, in the emptiness of space, hopelessly lost. The sphere would have to be a world, a world haunted by a witch. Well, it was better than letting a million people die.

A faint shriek came to his ears. His scalp bristled, and he started toward the corridor, then stopped. The shriek had died, and there was silence. He sat down again. Might as well let her do whatever she wanted to, he thought.

Then he heard her coming back, stumbling along the corridor. He peered at her quickly, half expecting to see her in a nonhuman form. But she was still the dark-haired and slender girl—staggering toward him, white-faced, clutching the wall for support. Then she saw him, pushed herself from the wall, and darted toward him. In a moment she was shivering against his chest.

"Kennie! Kennie! How did we get here? O God! I must be losing my mind! I don't remember ...how did we get here? Where are we?"

Ken swallowed hard. Had the witch destroyed her own personality, her own consciousness? Maybe...

"I...I dragged you in here out of the lake," he told her nervously.

"Lake? Kennie! What lake? We were sitting on the living-room floor ...by the fireplace ...weren't we?" She pushed herself away and stared up at him in horror.

He felt on the verge of losing his grip. On the floor, by the fireplace! That could only be the day three years ago when he told her he was going to Europe.

"Kennie! Tell me what happened!" She was shaking him hard. "Did I faint or something? Did I? Tell me!"

"Tell you later, babe," he muttered. Then he glanced at her doubtfully, and guarded his voice. "Wonder where Phil is?"

NO COMPREHENSION came into her eyes. She shook her head. "Phil? Phil who? What're you talking about?"

He took her face in his hands and stared into her eyes for a long time, then said: "Hi, babe."

She grinned weakly, made an unvoiced "hi" with her lips, then hung her head sheepishly. "Kennie..."

"Yeah?"

"I guess I was being a little stubborn about...Europe. If it means that much to you, then go ahead. I'll wait. I didn't mean those awful things I said—honest."

"We'll talk about it later," he muttered nervously. Evidently, he thought, the space witch had done away with some of the flaws in Marcia's character. Suddenly he patted her hand. "You stay right here. I'll be back in a few minutes."

She nodded, and he hurried away. Somewhere in the sphere was Marcia's body. He had to get rid of it before Marcia found it. And he was smiling faintly as he began his search. Life wouldn't be so bad now, maybe. The new world was limited in size, but he'd done enough travelling in his day. And with Marcia in it, the world would be large enough.

The space witch watched him disappear through the doorway. Then she smiled sardonically. It had been easy convincing him. She chuckled to herself. Maybe she should allow herself to resume her normal shape while in his arms.

But the thought sobered her. If she did a thing like that, she'd probably be unable to resume Marcia's form —because he'd destroyed the compound. And in a few weeks, she wouldn't be able to do it. Her bodily supply of the substance would be diminished. "And it would be a dirty trick anyway," said the part of her that was Marcia.

The witch weighed her present position. She had spent forty years of isolation on the moon. It had been a terrible sort of loneliness. Now she at least had company. And with Marcia's memory, she remembered that he could be a very affectionate fellow when treated properly.

"I'll treat him properly," she murmured to herself, and pulled up her skirt to examine the still-unfamiliar human walking devices. She flexed the knee and wiggled the foot. "Not bad, not bad at all."