treatment, be made as good as new.
Would you be so good as to return it to me, now, please?"

The eyes, though tiny, seemed not unkind, and the alien stood silent.
She was moved by his pleas.

"Mac--that's my husband--has it," Alice said. "I saw Dobie here with
it and put it under a milk pail and when Mac saw it he said he'd take
care of it." She hoped she was making sense.

"Do you know where it is?"

"I don't know where Mac put it."

"Would you find it for me, please? I'll wait."

* * * * *

Alice agreed and, wondering what Mac would say if he came home and
found the hand gone, started looking for it. But surely Mac would
understand about the hand, she thought. I'll explain to him the
urgency of it, that one of the aliens needs it to live and be useful.

She looked in the obvious places, in the storeroom just off the
kitchen, in the cellar, then in the house itself, in Mac's room and
through his things, and even in the attic, though she knew it couldn't
be there. She became frantic then, paced by the alien's necessity for
his hand, and did not bother to straighten things up after she looked.
It simply couldn't be in the house. But where else? She went out and
told the alien she could not find it but that she would look in the
barn.

In the end she could find it nowhere and when she told the alien he
seemed as disappointed as she.

"I have seen you searching," he said. "I want to thank you for your
trouble."

"I'm awfully sorry," she said. "I don't know where Mac could have hid
it. When he comes home I'll ask him."

"I'll wait for him," the alien said. "It's imperative we have the
hand. It is the only thing standing in the way of our leaving your
planet. Your husband will know where it is and return it to us."

"I'm sure he will," she said, hoping she was right but knowing how
stubborn Mac could be. Then she got to worrying about what would
happen if he would refuse and as she went back to the house with Dobie
at her side she was overcome with the shakes.

She did not get her composure back until she had drunk a cup of
steaming hot coffee. Then she looked at the clock, saw it was eleven
and that she had spent nearly two hours looking for the hand. She saw,
too, that the figure was still in the yard, standing there motionless,
like something carved out of stone.

Her husband drove in at mid-night and it seemed an eternity between
the time the engine stopped and he ente