ansport plane carrying
Coburn and Janice, however. On the plane, Janice was fearful and pressed
close to Coburn, and he found it an absorbing experience and was moved
to talk in a low tone about other matters than extra-terrestrial
Invaders and foam suits and interstellar travel. Janice found those
other subjects surprisingly fitted to make her forget about being
afraid.

Elsewhere, the people who stayed awake did talk about just the subjects
Coburn was avoiding. The convoy carrying Coburn to tell what he knew had
been attacked. By a plane which was definitely not made or manned by
human beings. The news flashed through the air across continents. It
went under the ocean over sea beds. It traveled in the tightest and most
closely-guarded of diplomatic codes. The Greek government gave the other
NATO nations a confidential account of the Bulgarian raid and what had
happened to it. These details were past question. The facts brought out
by Coburn were true, too.

So secret instructions followed the news. At first they went only to
highly-trusted individuals. In thirty nations, top-ranking officials and
military officers blindfolded each other in turn and gravely stuck pins
in each other. The blindfolded person was expected to name the place
where he had been stuck. This had an historical precedent. In olden
days, pins were stuck in suspected witches. They had patches of skin in
which there was no sensation, and discovery of such areas condemned them
to death. Psychologists in later centuries found that patches of
anaesthetic skin were typical of certain forms of hysteria, and
therefore did not execute their patients. But the Invaders, by the fact
that their seemingly human bodies were not flesh at all, could not pass
such tests.

There were consequences. A Minister of Defense of a European nation
amusedly watched the tests on his subordinates, blandly excused himself
for a moment before his own turn came, and did not come back. A general
of division vanished into thin air. Diplomatic code clerks painstakingly
decoded the instructions for such tests, and were nowhere about when
they themselves were to be tested. An eminent Hollywood director and an
Olympic champion ceased to be.

In the free world nearly a hundred prominent individuals simply
disappeared. Few were in position to influence high-level decisions.
Many were in line to know rather significant details of world affairs.
There was alarm.

It was plain, too, t