t type.

"You understand your mission, Newton?" the voice asked. "You are to
establish yourself on Earth. In time you will receive instructions. Then
you will attack. You will not see us, your masters, again until the
atmosphere has been sufficiently chlorinated. In the meantime, serve us
well."

He stumbled out toward the docks, then looked about for Mary Ann. He saw
her at last behind the ropes, her lovely face in tears.

Then she saw him. Waving frantically, she called his name several times.
Pembroke mingled with the crowd moving toward the ship, ignoring her.
But still the woman persisted in her shouting.

Sidling up to a well-dressed man-about-town type, Pembroke winked at him
and snickered.

"You Frank?" he asked.

"Hell, no. But some poor punk's sure red in the face, I'll bet," the
man-about-town said with a chuckle. "Those high-strung paramour types
always raising a ruckus. They never do pass the interview. Don't know
why they even make 'em."

Suddenly Mary Ann was quiet.

"Ambulance squad," Pembroke's companion explained. "They'll take her off
to the buggy house for a few days and bring her out fresh and ignorant
as the day she was assembled. Don't know why they keep making 'em, as I
say. But I guess there's a call for that type up there on Earth."

"Yeah, I reckon there is at that," said Pembroke, snickering again as he
moved away from the other. "And why not? Hey? Why not?"

Pembroke went right on hating himself, however, till the night he was
deposited in a field outside of Ensenada, broke but happy, with two
other itinerant types. They separated in San Diego, and it was not long
before Pembroke was explaining to the police how he had drifted far from
the scene of the sinking of the _Elena Mia_ on a piece of wreckage, and
had been picked up by a Chilean trawler. How he had then made his way,
with much suffering, up the coast to California. Two days later, his
identity established and his circumstances again solvent, he was headed
for Los Angeles to begin his save-Earth campaign.

* * * * *

Now, seated at his battered desk in the shabby rented office over
Lemark's Liquors, Pembroke gazed without emotion at the two demolished
Pacificos that lay sprawled one atop the other in the corner. His watch
said one-fifteen. The man from the FBI should arrive soon.

There were footsteps on the stairs for the third time that day. Not the
brisk, efficient steps of a federal