"THIS WORLD IS OURS!"

"He must die. It will look like an accident."

"Shouldn't we take him back with us?"

"We are far from through here. Don't tell me you are developing a sympathy for these miserable creatures?"

"Impossible. I merely assumed he might be of some further value in our great crusade."

"He must die."

Max Field was listening at the door. He moved back so he could breathe again. Those dozens of little wounds in his chest and on his arms and neck stung like fire. His amiable young features were tense but resigned. This was the end, period....

Outside the little cabin an owl hooted. It was a lonely sound. But it was a familiar earth sound, and it brought a lump to his throat.

If only there was some way to outwit them. But he had thought of everything; apparently so had they. That window, for instance, was shuttered and bolted from outside. A sudden noise would bring them in here in no time. The back wall was up against a cliff. There was no outside door in this room.

He was supposed to be drunk, befuddled. But he hadn't drank any of the champagne. In that, at least, he had outwitted them. He was to die. No question about that. The only question remaining was—how.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled out the little notebook he'd been, at odd moments, scribbling the whole story in. Force of habit, perhaps. Max was a science fiction writer. He flipped through the pencilled pages. Worth money, this story. He smiled ironically. Yet who would read it, much less believe it.

Somebody might, he decided. He would hide it somewhere in this room. Maybe slip it through a crack in the flooring, a few pages at a time.

He pulled out a stub of pencil and added that final shuddery scene. Alice. Alice....

Outside, the owl hooted.

It started, as so many stories do, with my phone ringing. I was eating cigarettes and pounding out a cover novel for Gizmo. If there is anything that gripes me where I live it is some joker calling me up when I'm busy producing and—

"Hello. Yeah. This is Max Field, the science fiction writer. And while we're on that subject, I happen to be—"

"I am Wallace Starr." It was a funny voice. Funny-strange. It sounded a little like rubbing two pieces of sandpaper together.

"Really?"

I pushed out my current Camel and sneaked in a few pecks at the old Underwood. So sandpaper-voice was Wallace Starr. Maybe I was supposed to turn handsprings.

"You don't know me," the heckler went on, "but I am very familiar with you and your work. I have an important project in mind. A new monthly science fiction magazine to be called Orion. I need a good assistant editor. You were suggested."

"Orion," I said.

"Yes. My book will feature a completely new approach. We will buy only the best material, and each story will concern itself with the constellation Orion and its various systems. All material will be correlated to this end. How does this strike you?"

"You won't find it so easy pinning the best writers down to Orion," I grinned. "Writers like Swain and St. Reynard and Ric Planter like elbow room."

"Orion is vast and complex. One hundred and seven solar systems, to be exact. That should provide ample elbow room."

I whistled. "Ought to. But what's the idea?"

"Novelty, Mr. Field. I have studied the imaginative magazines closely and it occurs to me that they are already beginning to specialize. One of them uses highly technical stories, another adheres to stories of other planets in this system. Orion will link each story with all the others in it. Instead of a hundred interpretations of the life patterns of Orion we shall have but one. Of course casual stories we buy will have to be revamped to fit in."

"That's where I come in," I guessed.

"Exactly. But don't you feel that we will wind up with a fascinating pseudo-history of Orion, and that such a magazine would create a furore with its realistic slant?"

"I guess so."

It tasted like my first olive. But Wallace Starr was obviously burning with enthusiasm. He sounded just a little like a crackpot. A rich crackpot, maybe.

"It will be hard work, Mr. Field. But rewarding. Are you prepared to accept my proposition?" He spoke like a man who means business.

I hesitated. It is well-known that the mortality rate among new fiction magazines is high. I had writing contracts to fill, I was doing okay. Editing a monthly is a full-time job.

"About salary—" I hinted.

He named a figure that made my hair curl. What could I say but, "When do we start, Boss?"

Starr wasn't like any editor I've known. He wasn't like an editor at all. He wasn't much like anybody I've known. Which puts him in a class all by himself. He was brown and thin and had peculiarly big eyes, like a grasshopper's.

He spent so much money getting started I figured he wasn't long for this racket. But he did have a knack and the first couple issues, while not wildly successful, went over well.

One morning he called me into his office. From the tone of that dry voice of his I knew I was in for it.

"What's all this?" he buzzed, rattling a manuscript in front of me. From the cheap yellow paper I knew it was the lead novelette of the forthcoming issue. Ric Planter was one of our top writers and also a very bad boy. Ric loved to put an editor on the spot, bless his little pointed head.

"Didn't he change that ending?" I asked. The tic in my left eye started up. I had never had this twitch until the first time I saw Starr. I think it was something about those eyes of his. Every time I looked at him....

"He changed it all right!" Starr hissed. "He turned the Kiriki into villains. When their benevolent plan to spread patterned contentment throughout the circle of outer planets was just taking hold he had the semi-civilized Green Ones rise up and destroy their power by smashing their means of telepathic communication."

"How could he do that?" I clucked.

"Supersonic wave interrupter of some kind."

I hadn't meant that, and somehow I couldn't help grinning. Trust Ric to latch on to the Kiriki vulnerable point. The Kiriki, as Starr had outlined them, were highly communal. Like our ants, only very much more advanced. They depended on this intricate pattern of inter-communication, mind with mind, for their very existence, since each Kiriki was by birth fitted to perform only one basic function in their communal society. Their ingenious "Army of Patterned Contentment" was helpless, when reduced by the adaptable Green Ones to individuals.

"Will you please stop laughing," Starr rasped. "This hack writer of yours has outraged the history of an ancient, noble race!"

"I didn't get a chance to read his revision," I defended myself. Starr had grabbed it off my desk as he went through. "I told Planter the Kiriki were good guys, not bad guys."

"Good guys, bad guys!" Starr cried. "How naive can we be. Let us hope that our readership is on a different intelligence level, otherwise our great plan will fail miserably."

It was the way he said it, and I don't think he meant to. He was mad and the fact that my dialog had lapsed to comic book levels gave him the idea, perhaps, that I was too dumb to worry about. There had been other hidden meanings behind other things he'd said or done. My subconscious mind was working on it.

"What plan is that?" I ventured mildly.

"Never mind! Get busy on this—this libel."

My left eye twitched. "Okay. I'll change it myself. I know Planter's style. By the way, when am I getting that secretary you promised me? My desk's flooded. I need a girl bad."

"Ah, yes." It was supposed to be a smile, I guess. "Very soon. Meanwhile, kindly fill out this form."

I took it without comment and went back to my office. This made altogether the fifth form Starr had dreamed up for me to fill out. Must be some weird complex he had, wanting to know what color socks I prefer and if my mother kept goats.

Anyhow, I grinned, as I grabbed up the phone and dialed Ric Planter's number, it gave Starr ideas for my Christmas presents for the next twenty years.

"Yeah," Ric's sleepy voice yawned. "It's me. What a head."

I passed the beef on to him, good.

"Shut up, Max," he yawned. "I was just having a little fun."

"Fun-schmun. It's my job!"

"Come off it, Maxie. Okay. Tell you what. The first outline you sent me about the Kiriki and their habits isn't nearly complete enough. Have that boss of yours dream up a more complete dossier, just for little ole me. I like those Kiriki, they're such smug, heartless devils."

"Listen, Starr's hot for them. He'll buy anything glorifying the Kiriki. They're his little dream-babies."

"Sure, sure. Here's what you do, Maxie. Get Starr to make me out a complete dossier on them, but complete. You know me. I like to use the little out of the way touches like what color they paint their toenails. I'll give him some stuff that will curl his eyebrows. Okay?"

"No more tricks?"

"Cross my cast-iron heart."

"Okay, Ric. But remember, Ric rhymes with tic."

"How's that?"

"Never mind."

The moment Alice walked in my office I knew she was for me. I guess every guy has a girl all built up in his imagination, a girl who is and has everything he likes. Alice Corey was mine. Soft blue eyes, lots of brown wavy hair, a little well-shaped nose, and let's just say the rest of her was well-shaped, too. It was all there, including a lot of hard to define details of speech and manner that were exactly right. Maybe it was chemical, or maybe it just added up to every dream I'd ever had about my ideal girl.

"My name is Alice Corey," she said, with soft violins in the background. "I understand you need an editorial secretary." She went on briskly, when I found myself speechless, "I worked two years with Tower Periodicals in London and—"

"You're hired," I said.

"But those other girls waiting outside?"

"Would you please inform them that the job's filled—Alice?"

I had to deal with the boss about Alice. He didn't like her. She was too pretty, he thought. Couldn't be efficient. He went over her background with a fine-tooth comb. He found fault with most everything about her. But I stuck to my guns. He had his Kiriki. Alice was mine and I was damned if I would leave her out of my sight. She filled my working hours with golden sunshine and my nights with platinum dreams.

What's more, she was efficient. And she would work until twelve the night before a deadline without a murmur. She was diffident about having dinner with me, first, but as time went by we spent many an evening together, strolling in the park listening to the carousel or sipping chocolate sodas at Howard Johnson's. Alice didn't talk much, but she was a good listener. I must have told her everything I had ever thought or done during those evenings.

I was in such a sublime spin these days I forgot to worry about Wallace Starr's peculiarities. The questions that had sprouted in my subconscious began to fade. I did what I was told. So, strangely, did Ric Planter. I supplied him with a detailed outline which Starr made up about the Kiriki. That wasn't enough so we sent him another, with even more details.

He kicked through with story after story about the Kiriki. Big dramatic stories, and in each one the Patterned Contentment boys were built up higher than in the last.

Starr purred like a kitten. He raised Planter's word-rates and my salary.

Orion caught on.

The fans loved the idea of a pseudo-history of a whole constellation of systems. The Kiriki, with their breathtaking crusade of contentment, sweeping over system after system until finally it outdistanced Orion and tentacled out from their home system into deepest space.... It captured the imagination. Where would it end?

Eventually we hit Life magazine, with a big spread. The slicks went after Ric Planter, but Starr had him tied up with an iron-clad contract. After all, the conception was Starr's. And I could see why he wouldn't let Planter hit the slicks. Because he could not dictate their policies. Only in Orion could he manipulate the strings from behind. The Kiriki were his babies and they must follow his pattern.

The night before our anniversary issue went to press it happened.

I had left Alice on her doorstep, just off the Drive. It was almost midnight, a blazing hot July night. Everybody and his dog was out for a breather. The Drive was alive with young lovers, old lovers, and dog lovers.

It hit me. In my hurry to get away from the office I had neglected to check with Starr about a last minute cover change. Starr hadn't been in all day. The printers would be closing the forms first thing in the morning and I had let the change go through without Starr's okay. Starr never came in until eleven.

I found a Whalen Drug Store and phoned Starr. No answer. I called the operator and found out the line was temporarily out of order.

On impulse, I snagged a cross-town bus. I had never been to Starr's, never been invited or particularly wanted to visit him. He lived in a loft not far from Third Avenue.

It was an ordinary type building of ancient vintage. It would never cop an Oscar for beauty, nor did it smell from Chanel No. 5. I made my way up in the half-dark from one landing to another without enthusiasm. I don't know just what it is about musty office buildings, after they've been darkened and bedded down for the night; it isn't anything calculated to cheer. Six flights, and no elevator after eight.

I could see right away that Starr loved to be alone. Most of the upper-floor offices were empty. My mind snagged hold of some creepy ideas as I mounted those stairs. I thought about Starr's odd ways, his odd voice, for that matter. As if he had a machine down in his throat, a talking machine designed by a clever somebody who had once heard a human voice. About how hepped Starr was on the Kiriki, how painstakingly he had drawn them. He talked about them as if they were real. Of course, being a science fiction writer myself, I understood that brand of wackiness, or thought I did.

I rapped on his door.

There was light pushing out under his door so I knew he must be there. It was noisy inside, which was why he hadn't heard me. I bent my ear closer. What a noise! It sounded like a bullfrog-grasshopper duet.

I banged on the door again. No answer.

I tried the doorknob. It turned. I was half in when I stopped cold. This I did not believe. Put it on a book jacket and label it Edd Cartier and I'll buy it.

I blinked to make it go away but it wouldn't. I whimpered. So it was—what my mind had been half-suspecting for months, and laughing at itself even as it suspected—it was true!

The Thing at the machine was a giant insect. Ten feet high, at least. It was brown-green and had lots of claw-like appendages. The most terrible thing about it was its familiarity. I had surveyed it critically on half a dozen of our cover originals.

I had quibbled with our artists about it. Not horrible enough, I had said. Well, it was. It was horrible....

It was busy with that machine, making noises into a cone and twisting dials and knobs with its many appendages. The noises it made were carefully inflected. Speech, in fact. It was talking into the cone, which absorbed the sounds, and transmitted them—where?

My shoes were glued to the floor.

The Thing finished talking, snapped off the machine, turned. It saw me.

It yelled and tried to duck out. It moved in a blur. Seven pairs of claws flexed out and grabbed for me. Some of the weaving cilea touched me. I screamed at the sting, like a dozen raking barbs, tearing my clothes and me.

I made the hall, yelling.

But I couldn't reach the stairs. It got me. It pinned me over the elevator shaft. I bent back further and further so those tentacles couldn't rake my face. Those criss-cross insect eyes were cold as ice, emotionless. The barbs made ready to tear me to rags.

I shrieked and let myself fall. First I didn't think to save myself. Better a clean jolting death than those hundreds of needle-like cilea. But my hands grabbed involuntarily for something. They caught the cable, clung to it.

It was greasy. I went down fast. I wrapped my legs around it, which helped a little, straining to hold back. When I hit bottom I think every tooth in my head jarred loose. My legs collapsed under me like rubber. For a minute I blacked out.

The buzzing over my head snapped me up. I was a goner if I didn't move, but fast. Sobbing, I wrenched my legs to a crouching position, and leaped down off the elevator. I dove for the front door. Then I was outside, gulping air, running like billy-hell for the Lexington subway.

I didn't know what else to do, so having put half of Manhattan between me and It, I telephoned Alice. I needed the sound of her voice. I needed her to stop me from shuddering. My tic was slowly jerking my jaw out of alignment.

She listened patiently while I dumped in dimes.

"Max," she asked when I had finished. "Are you sure you haven't been eating benzedrine tablets?"

"No! And I'm not drunk!"

"Where are you now?"

"Some joint in Harlem."

"How long have you been in there?" She sounded suspicious.

"Alice!" I groaned. "If you could only see me! My suit's ripped in a dozen places. I'm all greasy where I slid down the cable and my hands are burned raw. I hurt."

"Poor boy," she soothed. She was silent for a moment, then became her briskest self. "Listen, Max. We have to consider every possibility. This might be a self-hypnotic illusion brought on by overwork. Remember, you've seen these things on many covers and interiors, too. You've lived fictionally with the Kiriki for a year. Consider that—"

"Nuts!" I yelled. "I'm going to the police!"

"And spend the night in the drunk tank?" Alice queried severely. "Just who do you think will believe your story?"

"I can take them to this loft."

"Think, Max! What will they find? Nothing! Even if it is true, do you imagine this—this Kiriki is going to be caught like a fish in a barrel? He has been spotted. Obviously, he will leave the loft at once."

She was so right, and I knew it. I groaned.

"Who or what is this Thing?" Alice asked, but it was plain she only half-believed my story.

"That's easy," I said bitterly. "I should have caught on months ago. It's Wallace Starr. Starr is a Kiriki."

Having better sense than to go home, I rented a cheap room on 125th Street. I didn't sleep much. I paced and ate cigarettes. Very early next morning I woke up a cleaner on Third Avenue and bought a cheap uncalled-for suit out of his window. It was the most uncalled-for suit I ever did see, but it fit pretty well and made me decent.

A quick coffee and I went up to the office. I had given Alice strict orders not to come to work until I phoned her. I didn't want her mixed up in this. Starr hadn't liked her from the first. Maybe he figured she might catch on to him better than me.

I picked up a manuscript from the slush pile, called Challenge of the Slime People. The phone made me jump.

"Morning, Maxie. This is Ric Planter."

"Ric," I found myself blurting. "The most terrifying thing has happened!"

"Invasion of Kiriki, no doubt."

Planter had that way. You wanted to wring his neck. Somehow, the way he said it, made me backtrack. I didn't want to get the horse laugh from him and all fandom. For the first time I asked myself, could Alice be right? Could it have been an illusion?

"Listen, Ric, how does this sound for a plot? Suppose an alien, but alien, culture from the stars decides it wants to take over our system. They don't want to just drop in on us. They dislike physical warfare because it isn't orderly. Also they don't want to kill any of their numbers, or their potential slaves. Also a sudden alien invasion might drive humans completely off their rocker.

"So here's what they do. They send down a secret fifth columnist. His job is to spread propaganda over the planet, to prepare humans for their advent, make them amenable to this alien culture. Of course he's to build them up in human minds, make them think their cosmic crusade is beneficent and noble. How would he start?"

"Buy a newspaper. Buy ten."

"Under ordinary circumstances, sure. But wouldn't it be hard to slyly mention what great guys the Whoziz are in a daily newspaper? Any comment about his home folks would stick out like a sore thumb. No. It would have to be something less obvious. How about him buying a science fic—"

A long thin shadow blotted the opaque glass door in front of me. The door opened. Wallace Starr stepped in.

"Shall I get to work on it?" Ric asked.

"Yeah. And make it good." I hung up.

Starr walked over to my desk. I picked up my letter opener.

"You might have told me," he preluded.

"What?"

"The changes naturally. I spent three hours at the printers last night. Didn't get home until after two."

He stalked into his office and slammed the door behind him. Then I phoned the printers.

"Lemme talk to Corky," I told the girl who answered.

"Mr. Corkendahl is not here," her Brooklynese voice trilled. "Mr. Corkendahl is home in bed, on account of he spent half the night rechanging some changes for Mr. Starr."

"Was Mr. Starr there last night?"

"Why yes."

"Sure?"

"Mr. Corkendahl informed me he was here until almost two. Mr. Corkendahl is not in the habit of prevaricating, Mr. Field."

I hung up in a daze. If Wallace Starr was definitely not in his loft apartment at twelve-thirty last night, then.... I rang up Alice. No answer. I rang her every fifteen minutes until she did.

"Where were you?" I demanded.

"Why, Max." She sounded piqued. "All right, I'll tell you. I was up at Wallace Starr's apartment."

"But he's here!"

"I know. I waited until he left. Then I went up to the loft. I told the janitor I worked for Mr. Starr and he let me in. I went over the place with a fine-tooth comb. Max, there's simply nothing there to get excited about. He's quite neat for a bachelor. Everything very prosaic and natural, except for that big amateur radio of his."

"Amateur radio?"

"You know. Amateur sending and receiving. Mr. Starr is a ham."

"H-ham?" I swallowed hard. "Alice, you're right. I'm going off my rocker."

"Just overwork," she protested, soothingly. "You take your science fiction too seriously. What you need is a nice vacation, away from the office and everything that even smells like work."

"I'll do it," I said meekly. Right then a thought hit me. It had been simmering in my mind for a long time. Now it exploded into words.

"Alice—let's make it a honeymoon!"

She gasped. "Max, are you sure you're well enough?"

"Am I? You're just what the doctor ordered to put me back on my rollers. Will you marry me, Alice? Please?"

"Yes, Max. Whenever you say."

We told nobody where we were going for our two weeks' honeymoon, least of all Starr. He grumbled for a while, then kicked through with a nice fat check for a wedding present, along with a bottle of good champagne. We hopped in a rented jallopy and headed north along the river.

There was a pale round moon overhead and as we got out of the city and night came on it brightened and made a glowing path on the water. After while we left the main road and headed into the Catskills. At last we dipped down into a deep little glen where there was a cosy two-room cabin I'd often rented before when I had a tough writing assignment that demanded absolute solitude.

There was no one within miles.

We unloaded the car like a couple of kids. I had practically bought out a delicatessen. Then Alice started fussing around the cabin, putting away my fishing tackle and hanging up some curtains and pictures she had picked up at Woolworth's. I kept on pinching myself to believe she had really married me and marveling how every little thing she did suited me perfectly.

"Hungry, darling?"

"You said it!" I made a tentative bite at her ear, grinning, but she eluded me teasingly.

I uncorked the champagne, managed to spill my first glass, then decided I was too hungry to bother with it now. We ate cold chicken and all kinds of fixings. Outside the night lay deep and warm. The moon shimmered on the evergreens.

I got up from my chair and went to Alice.

Now she wanted that kiss. She put up her lips.

I kissed her.

The world rocked.

A buzzing noise sounded behind me. It made my blood crawl, because it was familiar. I jumped back from Alice just in time.

"No," I moaned. "No—Alice!"

But it happened.

I imagine that I'm the only man who ever kissed his bride on their wedding night, then watched her turn into a monstrous bug before his eyes....

Outside the owl hooted.

Max Field tossed aside his notebook and pounded his knee with his fist. God! To have seen that happen! To sweet little Alice!

His dream girl. But naturally. She had been too perfect, actually. She was designed for him, perhaps only a clever illusion clothed in flesh by his own imagination. At any rate she was the reason for him filling out all those forms. To discover just what he liked in every department. To give them a pattern for "Alice".

They were cute. Even to the point of having Starr pretend to dislike her. When Starr pretended to poke carefully into her background, that was enough to prevent Max from doing just that. Because actually she had no background. It was phony.

That phone call he had made to Corky. The girl who answered. That could have been Alice, using a heavy Brooklyn accent to cover her voice. She had been so convincing he hadn't bothered to check back later.

Now, the two of them were in the kitchen planning his death. "Science Fiction Editor Accidentally Killed in Mountain Retreat. Bride Stricken." Then the grief-stricken bride would carry on in his place. Orion was going great guns now. It really didn't need Max Field. And without him their propaganda machine could move forward all the faster—forward to the day when the Kiriki cosmic crusade moved down into this solar system. The Patterned Contentment boys would take over. Whose pattern? Kiriki, of course....

The kitchen door opened slowly. Max tensed.

It was—Alice.

She wore that clinging black lace negligee he had bought in an exclusive Fifth Avenue shop.

"Max."

He stood up stiffly, staring.

"Change, damn you! Change!"

"Why, Max," she pouted. "Don't you love me any more?"

It was intended to drive him nutty, maybe to suicide.

"You should have drunk the champagne," she said softly. "It would have been easier for you. Would you like a drink now?" She held out a glass.

All of a sudden he wanted that glass more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. Even Alice. It was the end of the line, the dropping off point. He couldn't take it any more. Not Alice—like that.

He walked over to her and took the glass. He lifted it to his lips.

Something slapped the glass out of his hand as the window behind them shattered inward. Alice flashed an angry glance at the face in the window, then moved quickly back into the kitchen.

"Ric!"

Max's bewilderment changed to sudden hope.

"Hurry!" Planter cried. "Get through this window!"

Max dove through while the writer yanked him by the elbows. Max was shivering and sweating at the same time. But the cool night breeze helped a little.

"W-where in the billy-hell did you—"

"Come from?" Ric finished. "Been on Starr's trail for weeks. Had this thing figured out for some time, even before you tipped me off on the phone that day. I followed Starr here. Been watching and waiting."

He was wearing a fish-basket and, incongruously, it was filled with bombs. He handed some to Max.

"Start heaving. Aim for the kitchen door before they close it."

He tossed a handful of the bombs into the room. Max followed suit. Inside, the bombs broke, letting out a pungent gas.

"What is it?"

"Insecticide," Ric grinned. "More potent than DDT. Those outlines Starr made out furnished the clews. It should do it."

"Won't they get out the kitchen door?"

"Uh-uh. I sealed it up proper. It and the window."

The door between the rooms slammed shut but not before half a dozen bombs had got through. Ric slammed the shutters too. They waited.

"If it doesn't kill them it'll put them to sleep for hours. Basically, from Starr's dossiers on the Kiriki, they have all the vulnerable points of our grasshoppers. And fire will destroy them utterly. I'm afraid we can't take chances, so this cabin will have to go. Match?"

They watched it burn down to the last slab of stilted-up planking. Max stared down at the two small charred remainders of the Kiriki advance guard and shuddered.

On the road back to New York, Max said: "Do you think they'll try it again?"

"The Kiriki? Not for a while. Like you said, they dislike war. They like it the easy way."

"Propaganda. Invasion of minds. Well, two can play at that. We'll keep Orion going—only we'll print the real story. We'll make men detest and despise the Kiriki so that any feelers they send down will send them hopping to the furthest end of space. Maybe we can get somebody started on that telepathic wave interrupter of yours, too. So if they do land we can cut them off from each other. We'll work on this reverse propaganda hard."

Max jerked his eyes back on the road and put his foot on the gas hard. Sure he would work, work to save his sanity, too.

It wasn't going to be easy to forget a lost dream—a dream that had lived and breathed and promised a lifetime of patterned contentment. It would take a lot of mental welding to hold back the horror of that kiss.

But he would try.