e machinery.

Genarion stood with a gun in his hand. Aiming hastily, he pressed
trigger. The beam flashed and licked charred cloth and smoking leather
from Newlin's sleeve. There was an odd jangle from the invisible
machinery which gouged so tangibly into Newlin's body.

Instinctively, Newlin fired. He did not bother to aim. For him, such a
shot was point blank, impossible to miss.

Genarion staggered. Part of his body vaporized and hung in dazzling mist
as the projected images of light played over it.

Dazed, Newlin scrambled to his feet. He was sick. But the screen held
him. He stared, hypnotized. Images jigged and flowed in constant, eery
rhythms. They moved and melted and rearranged themselves in altered
patterns, without ever losing their identities or the illusion of
solidity. The scene was not part of Venus, or of any world Newlin had
seen. He had seen every planet or moon in the Solar system. But this was
different, alien, frightening.

And the screen was not really a screen at all, for the body of Genarion,
hideous in the distortion of death, lay halfway through its plane. And
it was changing, subtly, as he watched. It was no longer even a man,
totally unhuman, as alien as the world it lay partway in. The body
flowed, molten, hideous.

The screen was a surrealist painting, come alive, solid and real. And
the solid, physical body of Genarion was part of it. He was dead, but
real. His alien form was a bridge between two worlds, and now dead,
Genarion was alien to both of them.

It was madness. The madness of the screen communicated itself to Newlin.
Before his shocked eyes, Genarion's body began to steam and rise in a
cloud of vaporous, glittering crystals. Swiftly the haze dissipated. It
was gone, gone invisibly into the alien world. Whatever Newlin had
killed, it was not human, not a man.

Newlin turned and fled down the fairy stair-ladder.

He went through the still-open airlock doors and out into the screaming
night. Behind him alarms were ringing frantically. Now they would be
ringing in the stations of the Protection Police and call orders would
go out to the radio-equipped prowl cars. Police would converge swiftly.

Sound shattered the night stillness. From far away, coming closer, was
the shrill wail of a siren. Other sirens.

There was a harsh bleat of police whistles, near at hand. Newlin's
imagination quivered with the possibility of blaster beams thrusting at
his back. He fled.

The ala