not ipso facto a member of the
extraterrestrial cabal but was its prisoner instead.

Visualizing the probable fate of a beautiful girl held captive by
aliens--and forced by them to train outlandish, half-remembered brutes
like the one behind the partition--rather strained Oliver's talent for
surmise, but at the same time moved him to the uneasy conviction that
it was his duty to rescue her in turn.

The thought that he might already be too late appalled him. The
slender blonde beauty of Perrl-high-C-trill-and-A-above was
distractingly fresh in his mind, the eager arpeggiation of her voice
an indelible memory. Recalling the smile she had given him in parting
stirred an internal warmth unguessed at before, an emotional ignition
certainly never kindled by his fiancee or family.

* * * * *

Orella Simms, Glenna, his Aunt Katisha!

Thought of his obligations brought him back to reality with a jar; the
appalling gulf between fact and fancy made clear to him with sudden
and shocking clarity the nonentity's role that had been played, and
must be played, all his life by Oliver Watts.

He was the perennial romantic introvert, dreaming impossible dreams
compounded of escape reading and frustration, grasping timorously at
any thread of adventure that might lead him to forget for the moment
the drab monotone of his existence. His mouth twisted wryly. There
was, of course, no fantastic alien plot incubating on the Furnay
estate, no sunsuited damsel in distress awaiting rescue at his inept
hands. He'd imagined the romantic aspects of the episode--the
"unearthly" tongue, the improbable beast. No one required, or ever
would require, anything of Oliver Watts except his Aunt Katisha and
Glenna, who demanded obedience, and Orella Simms, who expected
conformity.

As if on cue, the Watts family car swung off the highway and rolled
down the crushed shell driveway past the clinic. Oliver's Aunt Katisha
got out, leaving Glenna and Orella Simms to wait, and strode into the
clinic office.

"I see you've managed to spoil another one," she said acidly, pausing
long enough to retrieve the handkerchief Mr. Furnay's chauffeur had
lost earlier. "Moreover, I called twice this afternoon and found you
gone. Where?"

Oliver, as usual, weathered the storm in silence. Somewhere near the
end he managed to squeeze in the information that he had treated a
sick animal at the Furnay place--a saddle horse, he said, lying