I had got about fifty yards away it turned back and retreated into the
hut-like structure in the banyan tree. After that I watched the trees
warily as I passed them, but there were no other visitations of that
nature.

Scientists are reluctant to relinquish their so-called logic. As I
walked I tried to rationalize the creature, to explain it in the light
of current knowledge. That it had been alive was certain. Yet it was
not protoplasmic in nature. A plant, developed by mutation? Perhaps.
But that theory did not satisfy me for the Thing had possessed
intelligence, though of what order I did not know.

But there were the seven native girls, I reminded myself. My job was
to find them, and quickly, too.

I did, at last, find them. Six of them, anyway. They were sitting in a
row on the blue moss, facing one of the red blocks of stone, their
backs toward me. As I mounted a little rise I saw them, motionless as
bronze statues, and as rigid.

I went down toward them, tense with excitement, expectancy. Odd that
six native girls, sitting in a row, should fill me with such feeling.
They were so motionless that I wondered as I approached them, if they
were dead....

But they were not. Nor were they--in the true sense of the
word--alive.

I gripped one by the bare shoulder, found the flesh surprisingly cold
and the girl seemed not to feel my touch. I swung her around to face
me, and her black, empty eyes looked off into the far distance. Her
lips were tightly compressed, slightly cyanosed. The pupils of her
eyes were inordinately dilated, as if she was drugged.

Indian style, she squatted cross-legged, like the others. As I pulled
her around, she toppled down on the moss, making no effort to stop
herself. For a moment she lay there. Then with slow, puppet-like
motions, she returned to her former position and resumed that blank
staring into space.

I looked at the others. They were alike in their sleep-like
withdrawal. It seemed as if their minds had been sucked out of them,
that their very selves were elsewhere. It was a fantastic diagnosis,
of course. But the trouble with those girls was nothing a physician
could understand. It was psychic in nature, obviously.

I turned to the first one and slapped her cheeks. "Wake up!" I
commanded. "You must obey me! Waken--"

But she gave no sign of feeling, of seeing. I lit a match, and her eyes
focused on the flame. But the size of her pupils did not alter....

A shudder rack