Then prove it! Come here, and prove it!"

She cried again at that, as he pulled her down with him. But slowly
her crying quieted.

He awoke slowly, with sun-light streaming in the windows, and reached
for her. He owed her more apologies than one, though he wasn't too
sorry about most of it. She had proven herself human. And virginally
so. Her complete surrender still left something warm inside him,
where only the madness and the fear had been before.

Then he jerked upright, as he found her gone. He cursed himself for a
fool, and listened for a stir and bustle from the kitchen, but there
was none.

* * * * *

He was getting used to dressing with a feeling of dire pressure
driving him on. He finished rapidly, and yanked the bedroom door open,
just as he heard the outer lock click. She was coming in with a bottle
of cream and a package of sausage as he reached the kitchen, and there
was a smile tucked into the corner of her mouth.

And this time, he knew she wouldn't have betrayed him. Yet the fear
increased in him. He darted past her as she leaned to kiss him,
heading for the door. The room seemed to quiver. The hall was filled
with a faint golden haze!

He had to get out! He jerked backwards, caught her hand, and pulled
her. "Ellen! We've got to get out!"

It was a half-articulate shout, and she resisted, but he began
dragging her after him. Something fumbled at the lock, and a key
slipped into it. The door opened.

Hawkes didn't know what kind of an alien he expected. He knew that men
could never have thrown him to the moon and back, not in another
thousand years. It had to be a monster.

But he should have known that monsters here came in human form--they'd
have to.

The fear rose to a shriek in his brain, and then died down as the
human form entered. It was too normal--too familiar. A medium-sized
man, dressed in a suit as inconspicuous as his own, wearing a silly
little mustache that no outland monster should ever wear.

The creature jumped in, slamming the door behind it. "Stay there! You
can't risk it outside now! We've got to--"

Hawkes hit the figure with his shoulder, in the best football fashion
he could muster. It could try--but it couldn't keep him and Ellen here
to be burned in their heat-ray bath, or treated to whatever alien
torture they had in mind. He felt his shoulder hit. And he knew he'd
missed. It was an arm that he struck against, and the arm brought