VACANT WORLDVACANT WORLD
 
This story was a Three-way collaboratIonCyril myself, and Dirk Wylieand was 
originally published under Dirk's name. Dirk was a founding Futurian, and a 
long-time friend of mine (We met as freshmen at Brooklyn Technical High School, 
when we were both twelve.) Like most fans and nearly all Futurians, Dirk wanted 
to be a professional writer. He had talent. He was good at a kind of science 
fiction nobody seems to write any more: quixotic adventure, I suppose you would 
call it; the kind of thing That Percival Christopher Wren invented with Beau 
Geste. In science fiction it exists, among others, in the stories of C. L. 
Moore, notably the Jirel of Joiry and Northwest Smith series. I think the 
chances are good that we might now be saying "in the stories of Dirk Wylie" if a 
war hadn't come along just as he was hitting his stride. Dirk enlisted early. 
Like Cyril, he served In The Battle of the Bulge and, like Cyril, he ultimately 
paid for it with his life. Neither was wounded by enemy fire. What Dirk did was 
injure his back in a truck. It began to mend, then worsened and tuned into 
tuberculosis of the spine, and he died of it at the age of twenty-nine. 
 
I. Return from Venus
 
"Happy New Year," Marvin said bitterly. "Shuddup!" growled Camp, trying to chuck 
a weightless book at him. "Him" was the talking lizard, tentatively christened 
petrosaurus parlante veneris, and generally sworn at as Marvin. Camp sorely 
regretted the day he had ever taught the little creature to talk; now its 
jeering, strangely booming voice was never still. He would have stuffed it if he 
had had the courage to kill it first, but in many ways August Camp was a 
sensitive man. 
Marvin silenced, except for his eternal, sarcastic chuckle, Camp turned again to 
his log book. "Final entry," he wrote. "September 17, 1997. Approximately one 
hundred thousand kilometers from Earth at the present time, 10:17:08 A.M. I 
shall set the robot pilot for Newark Landing Field, wavelength IP twelve, and 
the Third Venus Expedition will be over." 
He locked the manuals and swung a cover over their multiple pins and contacts, 
and threw the switch that would put the ship under the guidance of the Newark 
beam. A space-sphere couldn't be landed easilynot, at least, without outside 
assistance. There were nearly one million factors too many, all of them 
interacting, which had vital bearing on the dynamics of the particular vessel 
trying to ease itself to the seared pave of the field.
At the Newark port there were monstrous machines that would shudder into action 
as soon as his flares were detectedcomputators which would grind out the 
formulae of his descent, using a strange, powerful mathematics all their own. No 
human mind could do that unaided, nor could Camp's ship accommodate even the 
immense charts that were the summarized and tabulated knowledge of the 
computators and the men who operated them.
Camp dragged himself along a line over to the small, unshuttered port and swiped 
a patch of frost from its center, using a patch of waste for the job; even at 
that his hand was chilled and numbed by the frightful cold of the thick glass. 
He stared through the port at the meager slice of Earth that he could see, old, 
half-forgotten memories crowding his brain, and his muscles tensed at the 
thought of seeing people once more. The first thing he would do, he decided, 
would be to head for Manhattan and walk up and down Broadway as long as he 
could. 
No more loneliness. No more talking to oneself or to a brainless lizard.... 
Camp had started, not alone, but with two companions, One had died on the trip 
out to Venus three years ago, lost in spacethat had been Mandenand the other, 
Gellert, had disappeared from their stockaded camp on the cloudy planet; for two 
years Camp had been alone, doing the jobs of three men and doing them remarkably 
well. It had been difficult, of course, but ... 
... it was not supposed to be a joy ride. And things were just as tough, in a 
relative way, on Terra. The cycle of murderous wars just completed had left 
great, leprous areas of poisoned land scabbing the Earth's surface. Oil pools 
were empty and coal beds depleted; clean, fertile ground was at a minimum. A new 
source of supply had to be found. 
Camp was not the first of the interplanetary travellers; in the late Sixties 
Soviet Russia had been seized by a passion for exploration of the other worlds. 
Most of their huge ships had failed in one way or another, with appalling loss 
of life, but one had managed to reach the moon. The period that followed the 
next successful flights was one of feverish lunar exploration and even madder 
scrambling for concessions when it was found that the moon was rich in the 
materials needed on Earth. As might have been foreseen, this soon produced 
another war. 
The conflict was of short duration, and men once more looked to the stars. A 
new, more powerful propellant had been developed during the war, and using this 
fuel, an expedition managed to reach the cloud-wrapped surface of Venus. A 
second expedition soon followed, and a third, of which Camp was a member. 
The results of Camp's investigations had exceeded his wildest hopes. Venus, 
while too young a world to have much (if any) coal or oil, was still rich in 
minerals and cellulose organisms; the industrial processes of Terra could easily 
be adapted to employ cellulose fuels. The ground was swampy, for the most part, 
and contained a high percentage of a sort of peat. That constituted the 
principal source of danger to potential colonists; a fire in a Venusian peat-bog 
would kindle a blaze that might sweep hundreds of square miles. 
Then too, there wasn't a drop of drinkable water to be had on the planet. But 
with distilling apparatus, and fuel to be had for the mere digging of it, what 
problem was that? 
Camp muttered in annoyance as he blotted the page he was working on, and he 
crumpled the sheet and tossed it into a corner. The slight motion lifted him 
from his seat and sent him drifting across the cluttered cabin. He cursed 
absently at the inconveniences of weightlessness, and hauled himself back to his 
former position. He looked up suddenly. There was something wrong! 
"Oh, my God!" he gasped. His continued lack of weight meant that the sphere was 
still falling free, that for some reason Newark had not taken over control. He 
yanked the shell from the robot and peered intently at its intricacies; it was 
not in operation. Hastily he checked the device for faulty connections in any of 
its delicate grids, and turned away unsatisfied. As far as he could tell the 
receiver was in perfect condition. 
Fifty thousand kilometers to fall ... 
Then the observatories had not seen his signals, rockets that exploded with a 
ground-shaking detonation.... But why not? Had another war begun in his absence, 
to make mysterious explosions a matter of slight notice? If he only had a 
radio.... Newark! Newark! Why don't you take over, Newark? 
One thousand ... 
Should he unlock the manuals? Was he adept enough to jockey the huge 
space-sphere to a safe landing? Perhpas he would gun the motors too much, to 
find himself a scant hundred meters from the surface with his tanks drained to 
the dregs. Or he might keep his jets open too long, and send a destructive 
backwash into his motors. 
Newark! Where are you, Newark? 
Nine hundred kilometers ... a thin whistle keened through the ship as it plunged 
through the first fringes of atmosphere. 
He unlocked the manuals and touched a switch. The grating beneath his feet 
quivered in sympathy with the awakened motors, and weight suddenly returned to 
him as the sphere's shrieking descent was checked by the powerful jets. He could 
see, from his place at the C-panel, almost all of North America, rapidly 
increasing in size as he watched. He shot a swift glance through another port. 
The sky was still black, but already more than half of the stars whose shifting 
configurations he had come to know were gone, their feeble emissions filtered 
out by the thin blanket of air which had been interposed. 
He cut the jets, and again the ship fell free; this was by far the cheapest 
means of descent, in terms of fuel. He fired a short burst from a secondary jet 
to clear a slowly drifting lake of cirrus clouds far below, and the Great Lakes 
suddenly appeared beneath him. He closed a firing switch in sudden panic at the 
thought of making a submarine landing. The space-sphere had been designed to 
float, if necessary, but he had packed the buoyancy tanks with specimens and 
samples, depending on the Newark beam to land him safely. 
The explosions of the steering-jet veered the sphere northward, well over the 
Canadian border, and the ship dropped again. 
One hundred kilometers ... 
Like a dancer he tiptoed the vessel up and down, balancing it nicely and 
precisely on a blast, with a minimum of fuel expenditure, but dropping, always 
dropping, to the surface. 
He snatched a hasty look at his altimeter. Only a couple of kilometers now, he 
thought, and prayed that the exactly-measured fuel would last out this moment of 
terrible need. He cut the jets again, knocked the legs from under the sphere, 
and fell in a last wild plunge. 
He strained his eyes, staring intently at the altimeterat the little spot of 
light creeping steadily toward a red line on the dial. They met! And Camp, his 
fingers quivering on a half score of firing-keys, kicked over a foot lever that 
opened the jets to their fullest capacity, and pressed the keys. The rockets 
flamed with their utmost, ravening power, and the smooth rush of the sphere 
jolted to a shuddering halt as it danced uncertainly at the tip of the column of 
hellfire. 
He had stopped flat about one hundred meters from the ground, he observed. 
Swifter, then, than was compatible with absolute safety, he reduced the power of 
the blast, bit by tiny bit, and the sphere settled rapidly into the incandescent 
pit its fiery breath had dug. The jets coughed, picked up again ... and ceased 
altogether ... and the sphere settled easily into the impalpable ash of the pit. 

 
II. Village of Silence
 
"Son of a ... !" Camp whispered, and in any other circumstances it would have 
been a curse. He lit a cigarette, watching the blue-gray smoke twist in slow, 
fantastic whorls across the cramped cabin, and wondered what he should do now. 
He absently released the lock that controlled the loading-port of the sphere, 
and watched idly as a small motor drove the heavy panel open to the air. A beam 
of sunlight, the first in three years, cut across the cabin, causing Marvin to 
chuckle with alarm. Camp tossed a black cloth over the reptile's cage. Marvin 
would keep, he thought, until it was discovered just what sunlight would do to 
the pallid little creature. 
He finished his cigarette and flipped the butt through the open port. Years on 
another gravity and weeks in space had not spoiled his aim, he thought happily. 
Some things a man kept forever, once he'd acquired them. 
Camp began to tap his foot impatiently. Then he began to count. Before he 
realized it, ten minutes had passed, and still there were no high-pitched voices 
babbling outside, no white, excited faces peering through the port, no visitors 
to his crater to welcome him as befitting a returned hero. 
Almost angrily he strode to the lip of the port's shelving door and vaulted to 
the top of the parapet of charred, powdered earth his landing had flung up. He 
had come down, he saw, near the shore of a fairly large body of water, a lake 
somewhere near Lake Superior, from what he'd been able to see during the 
descent. To his right was the water; to his left a concrete highway, and, a 
kilometer or two along the road, he saw the slick ferroconcrete structures of a 
town. But over all the country in his sight, there was not a single person to be 
seen, nor any sign of life. 
He took a few steps toward the highway, stopped uncertainly, and returned to the 
space-sphere. He rummaged out a pack of cigarettes and matches, and stood for a 
moment balancing a heavy automatic in his palm. With a laugh at his own 
adolescent ideas he tossed the pistol back to its place and climbed once more 
from the crater. Something wriggled in his pocket. 
"What the devil?" Camp asked of the empty air, and fished an eel-like Marvin 
from his white coverall. 
"Women!" gloated Marvin, leering at Camp in idiot affection. "Lead me to 'em!" 
Camp strode across the grass to the white streak of the highway. "You be good," 
he commanded, stuffing the lizard back into his pocket, "or I'll send you to bed 
without any sugar. We're going to call on the deacon." 
The walk was a dismal and seemingly interminable keeping to the left of the 
concrete pavement, expecting any moment to be hailed by the klaxon of a 
five-decker bus roaring past. Camp plodded steadily toward the village, glad 
even for the slight company of Marvin. 
"My God, but it's creepy," Camp said confusedly. There were not, he suddenly 
realized, even birds or animals to be seen, not an insect buzzing stridently. 
The town seemed asleep in the warm September sunshine, as quiet as a peaceful 
Sunday morning; here and there a gay-striped, orange-and-black awning flapped 
listlessly in the gentle breeze, and autos were parked in thin lines along the 
curbs. 
But the awnings were torn and flapped by the wind's tugging fingers, and the 
bleaching cars stood on flat tires, rusting away where they were parked. 
Camp strode along the main street of the village, searching, hunting, looking 
through the windows of the little specialty shops and the larger general stores, 
some of them empty and gaping like blind eyes where old-fashioned glass had 
shattered or fallen out. The stores were unlocked, all of them, indicating that 
whatever had befallen the populace had occurred during the daytime, and though 
Camp opened several doors, yet some undefined fear kept him from entering any of 
the shops. Dust was thick on the floors, eddied into drifts and strange designs 
by vagrant winds, yet in the food stores meats and fruits seemed solid and sweet 
enough beneath their vacuum-exhausted glass housings. 
He hurried to the other side of the street, looking nervously over his shoulder 
as he went, to a print shop whose sign read, "The Meshuggeh Junction, 
Advertiser." He poked tentatively at the door. Like all the others he had tried, 
it swung open beneath his touch, and its hinges protested loudly in the thick 
silence. 
An ancient Goss power press was the chief feature of the press-room, dwarfing a 
single monotype, and racks of fonts and job presses for smaller work. And in the 
rolls of the Goss was a stream of paper midway between blank and finished page. 
It seemed to Camp that the operator of the Goss had had barely time enough to 
shut off the power before hewent away. 
Camp forced himself to bend over and read the date of the paper in the press. It 
was the issue of the "Advertiser" for Monday, May 22, 1995... and today, the 
stunned Camp thought, is Wednesday, the seventeenth of September, 1997! 
He feverishly scanned what little of the paper was made up, finding no clue to 
the nightmare he was experiencing. He stepped from the shop, at last, and stood 
blinking for a moment in the bright afternoon sunshine. 
Then he heard the silence ... what silence! Silence deep and unbroken, unending, 
terrifying... silence blanketing a world! He whirled suddenly and shouted, 
flinching as the echo bounced eerily back from the nearby hills. He went on down 
the street, looking around at every step. He felt that if he could turn quickly 
enough, he would see somebody peering stealthily over a window-sill or around a 
door. His hurried pace turned into a run. 
"You're crazy, Camp," Marvin jeered from his pocket. 
Camp found himself at the village docks. There were boats moored there, the 
gay-bannered cruisers and motor-yachts of vacationers who had been there for the 
spring fishing and camping when itwhatever unimaginable thing the single 
syllable impliedhappened. 
Only the larger and newer craft, those with the duraloy hulls so popular before 
Camp had left for another planet, were still afloat, and all of these, he soon 
discovered, needed repairs of one sort or another before they would run. He 
finally chose, after thorough inspection, a sturdy cabin cruiser. Its tanks were 
slopping-full of oil, but Camp wasn't quite sure how good this would be after 
its two-year ripening. He drained the tanks accordingly, and refilled them from 
sealed cans he had found. 
He started the motors, grimacing as thick clouds of black smoke vomited from the 
twin exhausts and backfire popped sharply once or twice, indicating vital need 
of a tune-up. 
He worked grimly and silently, the only sounds breaking the heavy quiet being 
the clicking of his tools and the strident buzz of a battery charger. Dimly 
apparent in the back of his mind was an awareness of inimically circling 
shadows, of a vague menace watching him as he worked, and he shivered 
uncontrollably. 
At last it was too dark to continue the repairs. He straightened his aching back 
and tossed his wrench aside, wiping a gob of grease from his face with a bit of 
waste. He stepped into the darkness of the battery-room, a darkness relieved 
only by the spasmodic, cold, blue flickering spark of the charger. The door 
closed behind him. 
Camp pried one eye open a terrific trifle and yawned. Halfway through the yawn 
he sat bolt-upright, his heart pounding against his ribs like a frightened steam 
hammer, and stared about the small, bare room. 
"Well?" a jeering voice demanded, and Camp jumped. Memory returned to him with a 
rush. 
Unwilling, in his unfamiliarity, to leave the batteries charging all night, he 
had turned off the charger; finding this couch in an adjoining room, the gas 
station had seemed as good a place as any to bed down for the night. And the 
voice? Marvin, of course. 
He had but to connect a starter-wire or so and clean up the resultant mess in 
the motor-well of the cruiser, and carry a few cases of canned food aboard. A 
map he had found indicated that this was Lake Nipigon, in Ontario. Nipigon, he 
knew, connected with Lake Superior; once in the Great Lake he could head for 
Isle Royale and the town of Johns. Why he decided on his old summer home he 
didn't know, but familiar surroundings would be better than the terrifying 
stillness of this deserted, unknown village. He carefully steered through the 
maze of moored and awash craft before him, and once out in the lake, set the 
course for the mouth of the Nipigon River and left it up to the automatic 
steering gear.... 
The Nipigon River opened up into Lake Superior, and a large islandIsle Royale, 
by his maploomed ahead, its bays offering comfortable harbor for his small 
craft. Camp paralleled its shore, searching for recognizable landmarks. At last 
he spotted the old, familiar buoy, and on the island, just over a clump of 
trees, the red roof of the hotel he had patronized in the old days. He put in to 
shore and tied up at the dock. 
Quite suddenly Camp realized that he'd only a very sketchy breakfast and no 
lunch, and that he was hungry. He slung Marvin into a pocket again and said, 
"Come on, Marvin. We're off to see the wizard." 
Marvin snuggled into a comfortable ball and sleepily corrected. "Lizard ... 
petrosaurus parlante veneris ." 
Camp soon found Broadway, the central avenue of the town, and wandered 
disconsolately past dusty alleys and snug little homes, all silent and dead. 
There was a cafeteria ahead, the only one the town boasted, and he listlessly 
entered, wondering vaguely if he should take one of the checks protruding from 
the dispenser. 
He stepped behind the long counter, feeling singularly guilty, and saw plastic 
containers of milk stacked up by the score. He took one, broke the seal, and 
drained it. It was warm, of course, but pure, though the cream had formed a 
solid chunk at the top of the container; the sterile milk would not sour under 
any conditions or range of temperature once it had been imprisoned behind its 
translucent shell. A vacuum-trap container yielded a slice of cake, marbled with 
pink and green streaks, to his questing fingers. He bit into it and found it 
sound and firm, but powder-dry in his mouth. He set the slice down unfinished 
and coughed. 
Repressing his resurgent panic with a distinct effort he walked slowly from the 
grave-quiet cafeteriait was too spooky, that place which should have resounded 
with the clatter of knife and fork and plate quiet with the stillness of a 
deserted tomb, too spooky even for a ghostand headed down the street to the 
public library. He had thought to find some hint, some clue to the disappearance 
of every living thing, but the library's doors were locked, and he walked on. 
Far down the street something flickered ... and again. Camp stared stupidly, 
waiting for a recurrence of the flash of motion. "Red," he said vaguely. "Red 
fabric." Had it been a banner of some sort, writhing under the caress of the 
afternoon breeze? No, he thought not. He quickened his pace. The flash had 
seemed to come from the door of a bookshop ... 
Cautiously Camp trotted to the other side of Broadway. The windows of the shop 
were smudged and dirty; he strained his eyes to peer past the streaky glass into 
the dark interior. 
"Must have imagined it," he mumbled. 
And then the door of the shop opened, and a girl stepped out to the bright 
sidewalk. 
 
III. Girl Alone
 
Camp's eyes bulged dangerously. He knew her! "LoisLois Temple!" he exclaimed, 
and ran across the street. 
He grabbed her shoulders, shouting incoherent, near-hysterical questions at her, 
almost unsettled by his joy and relief at finding another human being. But she 
stared blankly at him, and yetno! There was such a concentration of intense 
life in her eyes that for a moment he felt almost as though he had received a 
physical blow. Her eyes, for all that, were uniquely vacuous, and yet they 
seemed as penetrating as a powerful fog-light. Her lips worked slightly, as 
though she were reading an extraordinarily difficult passage in some obscurely 
written book, and Camp felt, as he later phrased it, as though someone were 
stirring his brains with a stick. Then her taut, white face relaxed, and she 
murmured, "August Camp!" 
"Yeah," he babbled. "I just got back from Venus; came down on the other side of 
the border, by Lake Nipigon. But there was nobody there. There's nobody at all! 
Lois, what's happened?" 
"August Camp," she said once more, as though to reassure herself. "One morning, 
two years ago, I woke up and found that everybody was gone. I've been alone ever 
since." 
"Isn't anybody left?" 
She shook her head, sending amber-colored ringlets tumbling about her pale face. 
"I've tried to work the telephones and a transmitting set I found," she said, 
"and there is never any answer." 
He stared at her, suddenly noticing that she was dripping wet. "What the devil 
happened to you?" he demanded, indicating her soaked clothing. 
"Fell in the lake." 
Camp was puzzled by her costume. It was somewhat the same as the gown she had 
worn when last he'd seen herbut there was a subtle difference. It had been at a 
party then, the party for the Expedition members, and her dress had been 
fashionably modest. The lines of her present frock were the same, he saw, but 
the intent was somehow different. The dress was backless, and moreover, dipped 
sharply in front, baring more of her neck and slim, shapely shoulders than was 
strictly proper for the afternoon. The skirt apparently reached her ankles, but 
as she turned a trifle he saw that it was slit from hem to thigh. 
"I landed in Canada," he repeated, "near Meshuggeh Junction. I wasscaredby the 
silence, and promoted myself a boat and buzzed over here to Johns. It's awfully 
odd that I should find the one person left on my first attempt." 
The girl's attractive lips twitched in a smile. 
"I don't understand it myself. Did you say that you came over by boat? There's 
not a single piece of machinery turning on the Earth today; all the generators 
have stopped. They've run out of fuel or broken down, or something." 
Camp fished a flat case from the breastpocket of his coverall and popped a 
cigarette between his thin, crooked lips. "Odd,' he commented. "My boat started 
easily enough after a minor overhaul, considering that the oil was all of two 
years old. Wonder the stuff didn't thicken or gum up." 
"Your boat's a Diesel?" she asked irrelevantly. 
Camp cast a covert glance at her. Her eyes were wide and staring; she looked far 
from well. There was a strange note to her low voice, a note ofeffort, he 
thought. That, her odd, lonely survival, her inexplicable, though quite 
agreeable clothinghe decided to ask her.... 
"Lois ... I want you to tell me whatever you can about this." 
"Yes?" she said, with white, even teeth flashing in a smile that he had 
remembered through all his three years of voluntary exile. 
"I want you to tell me how you happened to keep aliveor here, ratherthough 
everyone else has vanished. Tell me that, and how you managed to survive the 
past two years." This, he thought with some satisfaction, was a fair test. 
He watched her face closely as she began to answer. Thenagain that sensation of 
physical force, that feeling of mind-muddling probing that he'd experienced a 
few minutes before ... and the girl slumped to the ground like a devitalized 
zombie. "Damn me for a stupid, thoughtless ass!" Camp swore, and felt her Pulse. 
She was alive, and her heartbeat was strong and regular; it seemed an ordinary 
faint, but he didn't dare take any chance. 
There was the awful possibility that the only other human being on the Earth 
might die! 
She had received a bad drenching when she had fallen into the lake, he thought; 
her skin was still wet. That, and the shock of their sudden encounter, must have 
taken heavy toll of her strength. He gathered her up in his strong armsshe was 
so like a little child!and carried her to the boat. 
As he set her down he thought vaguely that she must have lost weight. Her hair 
was a little longer, too, as he would have wished it to be. Altogether she was 
nearer to his ideal than she had been when last he saw her, and in no way had 
the certain privations of her solitude affected her beauty. 
He placed her gently in one of the small bunks, drawing the blankets up around 
her chin, and set canned broth heating on the incredibly tiny electric stove. He 
had noticed, during the trip over, that the generator seemed to be out of 
kilter, and he took this opportunity of repairing it. 
It was getting rather dark now, and working partly by touch, partly by the 
illumination of a droplight, he had jerry-rigged the cruiser's generator to 
operate satisfactorily. Fumbling a bit in the cramped space of the motor-well he 
reconnected the mechanism and started the motor. Tiny sparks inside the housing 
of the generator assured him that his work was serviceable, and he turned away 
satisfied. 
He stiffened as he heard a little moan from Lois's bunk. She must be coming to, 
he thought. A full-grown scream yanked him bodily from the hatch, and he skidded 
madly into the cabin. 
Lois was tossing feverishly in the narrow bunk, writhing in the nastiest 
convulsions Camp had ever seen. He grasped her wrist. 
"There, there," he crooned soothingly, smoothing the damp hair back from her 
sweat-slicked face. Her eyes opened wide, and she stared agonizedly at him. 
Another raw scream ripped her throat, and she clawed wildly at Camp's 
restraining grip. 
Insane or delirious, he thought. He muttered what he hoped to be calming words 
as he frantically rummaged through the lockers in search of a medicine kit, 
intending to give her a sedative. Looking back at her as her screams whispered 
away, he saw that her normally creamy skin was darkening. 
"What the hell?" he whispered. His quick mind, accustomed to instantly analyzing 
the split-second phases of Venusian botany, tore the situation apart and 
reintegrated it satisfactorily. Her spasms had begun when he started the motors. 
Was it possible that the stale oil in the fuel tanks had suffered a 
deterioration causing it to emit poisonous fumes? With an exclamation he hurried 
to the controls and switched off both motors. Almost at once the girl's moans 
were stilled and her wild tossings ceased, with no more movement than an 
occasional twitch of relaxing muscles. Her tawny eyes closed, and her breathing 
again became regular and effortless. 
If the motors were throwing off dangerous gases ... Camp dragged a mattress and 
blankets from the other bunk and fixed a fairly comfortable bed on deck, on the 
windward side of the twin motors and out of range of any potential fumes. 
Back in the cabin, he took Lois's wrist to check her pulse; she had fallen into 
a quiet, easy sleep. Pulse normal again, he thought, and thank God for that! 
Buther wrist was still wet! She'd had plenty of time to dry off since he had 
found her. Curiously he wiped away the film of moisture from her skin, and felt 
it again. Cold, rather, and not a little slimy. Nonot slimy, he decided, but 
slippery ... like a seal's smooth hide. 
With a baffled shake of his blond head he picked the girl up and easily carried 
her up the short ladder to the deck. Gently he deposited her on the mattress and 
returned to his work. 
The starter switch stared at him like a cold, unwinking, metallic eye. He 
petulantly stabbed the button. The motors purred again. 
And again the air was torn by that shrill scream! One desperate leap pulled Camp 
over the hatch coaming to the deck. For a split-second too long he stared at an 
empty mattressand out of the corner of his eye saw something slither over the 
side of the boat. He dashed to the rail and stared through gathering darkness 
into the water; there was nothing to be seen but a widening series of 
ripples.... 
The black night pressed closer upon him, and a chill wind sowed through the 
trees on the shore. But it was quietso very quiet! Then Marvin's raucous tones 
sounded, somewhere aboard the cruiser, pushing the heavy, menacing stillness 
aside and shaking Camp from his shocked immobility. 
Something had reached aboard the cruiserslipped aboard at a point not three 
meters from an alert, quick-nerved man whose existence had previously depended 
on his ability to scent danger ... something was out there now, chuckling 
inhumanly as it lugged the girl off to whatever doom had overtaken the rest of 
the Earth's teeming millions.... 
He was sure that he had seen a bit of the bright red skirt that the girl had 
worn, and a slim arm crooked over the side of the boat ... but something, he 
felt, was wrong, and he wished devoutly for the automatic he had left back at 
the space-sphere. 
Had the thing really abducted Lois? Somehow he doubted that the girl had been 
seized against her will. So close together had been her body and the thing's 
blurred form, he thought that they might have been fervidly embracing each 
other. 
 
IV. Twin Trouble
 
Camp stirred restlessly and awoke from a night filled with uneasy dreams. No 
solution of the preceding day's insane events had occurred to him while he 
slept, or if one had, he failed to recall it. Philosophically he turned on the 
stove and prepared for breakfast. He decided, after running an exploratory hand 
over his chin, to skip that day's shaving, and began to tumble through the 
cruiser's supplies, bringing to light a sealed tin of bacon. He opened it with 
the aid of a screwdriver, being unable to locate a can-opener, and carefully 
inhaled the aroma of the meat. He hadn't come several million kilometers to die 
of simple food poisoning. 
A frying pan was placed on the stove, and the bacon arranged in careful rows on 
the hot surface. He smiled almost happily as the cabin became filled with the 
crisp breakfast smell, and set coffee to boil. He had found that given a good 
morning meal, a man could tackle almost anything with a fair hope of success. 
His breakfast was set out soon, and he hungrily munched the crisp strips of 
bacon. Through a cabin port he could see Isle Royale and the town of Johns in 
the distance. He had cruised about a kilometer or so out before turning in, 
searching for any sign of whatever had taken Lois, recklessly exposing himself 
in the hope of drawing the thing from concealment. The past evening seemed like 
an unpleasant dream, until
A shadow darkened his plate, and he looked up. 
"You," he stated coldly, "are about the most irregular creature I've ever met." 
"Nuts!" Marvin lipped, and scuttled to the protection of the leg of his master's 
coverall. 
Lois smiled brightly, and sat down opposite the staring Camp. "Most men are 
irritable before breakfast," she said. "Finish your bacon, and maybe then you'll 
be in a better mood." 
Camp obediently speared a chunk of bacon, looked distastefully at it, and put it 
down again. 
"How did you get here?" he demanded. "And what the hell, if you'll pardon my 
language, happened to you last night?" 
She gestured vaguely. 
"Something grabbed me," she said. "Something fishy grabbed me when I was only 
half conscious, and dragged me overboard." 
"'Something fishy' is right!" Camp snorted. "For God's sake, what did the thing 
look like?" 
"I couldn't describe it," Lois said, and shuddered. "It had arms, and it weaved 
through the water " 
"Where'd it take you?" 
"On shore at Isle Royale, to a cove near Johns. When I came to I saw it watching 
me, and I ran for the lake and jumped in. It didn't follow meno, I don't know 
whyand I swam back to the boat and climbed on ... and here I am. Does that make 
sense, or bring the story up to date?" 
"Um," Camp said thoughtfully. "I guess so." He scratched his stubbled chin, 
wishing he had shaved after all. He looked again at his plate of bacon and 
tinned bread. "Here," he said, climbing to his feet, "I'll fix up some of this 
for you." 
"No," said the girl. "I don't want any." 
Camp frowned. What was wrong with her? He knew that she hadn't eaten for hoursa 
whole day, at least. 
"Nonsense," he said firmly. "You've got to eat something." He tossed some more 
bacon into the pan and turned the current high. In a moment or so the food was 
ready and sizzling. He slipped the strips into a plate and set it down before 
the girl. 
"There," he said. "Stow that away and maybe we'll get the sparkle back in your 
eyes. Very nice eyes, too." 
The girl looked wanly at the plate of food. "I really don't want any," she said 
faintly. "I'm afraid you won't be able to spare it." 
Camp glowered at her. "With the supplies of a whole world to be looted? Of 
course I'll be able to spare it," he persisted. "And anyway, it's cooked 
already. On moral grounds alone you should eat it; the stuff'll be wasted 
otherwise. I don't think I could comfortably manage more bacon myself." 
Lois smiled weakly, and stared blankly at the loaded plate. As though she were 
forcing herself to an unpleasant task she picked a bit of bacon and swallowed 
it. 
"No," she said suddenly. "I don't want to " and broke off. Her face was set in 
definite lines of disgust; the food seemed to have made her slightly ill. 
The baffled Camp removed the plate. "Okay,"' he said apologetically. "I'm sorry 
if there's anything wrong. Don't you like bacon?" 
"No," she replied, with evident relief. "Not bacon." 
"Then how about a string of sausages? Rich and racy, ground from happy hogs," he 
suggested with ill-advised humor. Lois retched daintily. 
"Not sausages," the girl answered, somewhat unevenly. "The thought of it makes 
me ill. I would like a drink of water, though." Camp poured a glass for her, and 
watched silently as she swallowed it in one quick gulp. "That was good," she 
smiled. "That took the edge off my appetite." 
Camp blinked. "Oh?" he said. "But you can't live on water!" 
Lois arched one thin eyebrow. "No? I can try." 
And again something seemed to click in place inside the man's mind. The 
preposterous contradictions of the whole damned, fantastic set-up seemed to 
point to some huge, shadowy, indistinct conclusion far off in the distanceand, 
he thought, he feared for his sanity. 
"Lois," he said firmly, "sit down." She obeyed, and he assumed a commanding 
posture above her. "Now," Camp went on, "what precisely is wrong with me or the 
worldor perhaps just you? I still don't know how you, of all the living things 
on Earth, survived whatever happened; I still don't know what it was that did 
happen; I don't know a single thing about your disappearance last night ... and 
I don't think you'd tell me the truth anyway." 
"But " she began. 
"None of that!" he snapped, and slammed his hand down hard on the tabletop. 
Marvin squeaked shrilly and scurried into Camp's pocket. 
"If I've guessed right," Camp intoned, "you've got some ungodly peculiar 
friends!" 
There was a faint scratching noise behind him. Camp whirled, his hard fists 
poised and ready for anything. 
Ready for anything but what he saw. For it was Lois there in the cabin's 
doorway. 
He shot one quick, unbelieving glance at the girl sitting quietly in the chair 
behind him, and then looked at her exact twin only two or three meters away. 
They were, he saw unbelievingly, alike in every detail. 
The two girls stared at each other in obvious confusion. It was plainly apparent 
to Camp that something had gone wrong with the plans of oneor both. 
"What the hell is this?" he growled helplessly. There was no answer. 
He strode to the cabin door and stood before it, blocking it with his broad 
shoulders. "Neither one of you two phonies gets out of here until I find out 
what's going on," he rasped. "You!" This to the second Lois. "Where'd you come 
from?" 
"Fromfrom Isle Royale," she faltered. "Something fishy grabbed me when I was 
only half " 
He stopped her with a choppy motion of one bronzed hand. "That's enough," he 
said curtly. He eyed the two girls angrily. 
"I don't know what's going on, or what your game is," he said, "but I'm going to 
give you one chance to talk before I put the screws on. One chance ... will you 
talk now, or shall I get tough?" 
No answer, except an apprehensive stirring. 
"Okay," he lipped. "I haven't forgotten what happened when I ran the generator 
last night. I'm going to turn it over now, and we'll see which one of you throws 
the first fit." 
A quick glance assured him that the cabin's two ports were too small to allow 
the passage of even the girl's slim bodies. He stepped outside, and slammed the 
door and bolted it. 
As soon as he had started the generator he raced back to the cabin. He knew that 
blue sparks must now be chasing themselves around the brushes of the generator, 
and he watched the girls carefully. 
And then ... both girls collapsed in horrible, writhing convulsions! 
Camp stared in horrified fascination at their frenzied, whipping contortions. 
Every theory of his was shot, now; he was certain that neither girl was Lois. 
But if neither one was the girl he knewwhat were they? 
Their struggles were pitiable, but Camp could be diamond-hard when the necessity 
arose. Grimly unheeding of their screams he waited for the next development. The 
discoloration he had seen last night spread simultaneously over the skins of the 
two sufferers, a rash that seemed to extend itself into a silky, dark-hued 
coating. 
"My God!" he cried thinly. The girls were meltinglosing their forms! Slumping 
into ovoid, tapering creatures that flopped about the floor, each whipping eight 
short tentacles in open discomfort. Suddenly, then, he knew. These creaturesit 
had been one of them which he had seen slip over the side of his boat last 
night, not carrying an unconscious girl but halfway transformed from human to 
monster! 
 
V. Restoration
 
"Gah!" Camp said feelingly. He tumbled backwards out of the suddenly cramped 
cabin and grabbed up the rifle. Marvin, in his pocket, protested sleepily at the 
sudden commotion. 
A metallic click accompanied the introduction of a cartridge into the chamber of 
the rifle, and Camp felt better. He peered cautiously into the comparative 
darkness of the cabin. 
A clear, curiously gentle voice seemed to sound in his brain. 
"Earthman," it said. "Turn off your motors. We will not harm you." 
Camp thought it over for a second, and switched off the motors, though not 
letting his hand stray too far from the starter button. 
"Who said that?" he demanded, suspiciously eyeing the two limply relaxed 
creatures. 
One of them oozed forward a trifle. "That's far enough!" Camp warned hastily. 
"I did," came that clear voice again. 
"Yeah?" Camp said. His hand hovered indecisively over the starter switch. "Start 
at the beginning of everything and tell me all about it." Cradling the rifle in 
the crook of his elbow he fished a cigarette from his pocket and applied the 
flame of a small briquet to its tip.... 
"The name of our race," the thing began, "would mean nothing to you. It is 
sufficient only to say that we have come from another dimensional plane 
coexistent with your Earth, bound in certain relationships with your world by 
natural laws. 
"We have always been a quiet, peaceable people, previously ignorant of death, 
for the world from which we come does not know that terrible phenomenon. Our 
science had overcome that, had passed beyond the point in the histories of all 
worlds whereat the vibrations of the mind gain dominance over matter; by a very 
small expenditure of effort we can mould any mass to serve our needs." 
Camp snorted blueish smoke. "Go on," he drawled amiably, settling the rifle into 
a more comfortable position. He felt an almost overwhelming desire to laugh. "Go 
on. I may as well tell you that you don't actually exist, that I'm only dreaming 
you, but go ahead anyway. What brought you to Earth, or shouldn't I ask that?" 
The creature's soft, wistful eyes regarded him steadily. "From another world 
alien to us," it continued. "They were a race of conquerors, and to us were as 
horrible as we must seem to you. They had weapons, and they conducted a swift, 
merciless war upon us. Most of my people were killed, since we could do no such 
thing as taking the lives of our foes, even to save our race from total 
extinction." 
The other alien being wriggled forward. When it "spoke," Camp was astounded to 
detect a difference of timber and expression in the tone of the telepathed 
words. 
"So," the thing said, continuing the rather one-sided conversation, "we left our 
world. The handfulliterallyof us that were left was rotated into this plane 
and onto this planet, whose existence the experiments of our scientists had led 
us to suspect. But ... our people could not live with yours. We are terrifically 
sensitive to certain types of electrical radiations, as you have seen, and the 
myriad power-operated machines which made things pleasant and comfortable for 
you would have meant our deaths." 
"Um," remarked Camp, and slapped Marvin's sharp little teeth away from his 
thigh. 
"I'm a lone cowhand," the small lizard announced, somewhat irrelevantly. Camp 
scowled. "So?" he prompted. "What then?" 
The thing hesitated, and looked at its companion. 
Then, "There is a third plane parallel with our own and this one, but it is a 
bleak world of eternal gloom, lit only by terrifying sheets of radiation from 
random stars which dip over its surface. To both your race and mine it would 
normally be uninhabitablein fact, we would be unable to survive there under any 
conditionsbut it was thought that all the inhabitants of Earth, all living 
things, could be placed under suspended animation and rotated into this plane. 
They would come to no harm, and would know absolutely nothing of what had been 
done to them. In time we would awaken them and bring them back to their home; we 
know, you see, that in ten years or so, as you measure time, our enemies will 
have destroyed themselves." 
Camp nodded slowly. "I see," he said thoughtfully. "You had a hell of a nerve, 
though, to do what you did, but I suppose you had some justification. I suppose, 
too, that I'm crazy, but I believe you. I'm willing to call the war off and play 
on your side." 
"Thank you," the creatures said together. 
"And as a friend," went on one of them, "we ask you not to use any equipment 
that would generate sparks or short radio waves if you can possibly help it. 
You've seen what it does to us." 
Camp stowed the rifle in a corner where it would be out of the way, but not too 
unhandy in case of need. These disturbing creatures, with their seal-and-octopus 
bodies and quiet mental voices, were spooky enough, and while they might be on 
the level, he thought, still it was best to take no chances. 
"Okay," he agreed, however. "Mind if I ask a favor in return? I'd rather you 
assumed human forms whenever you can, around me. It's a trifle disconcerting to 
find such lofty ideals and intellects in sucherunusualbodies." 
The two creatures blurred and expanded swiftly. Again they were twin Lois 
Temples. 
"Ahno," Camp said hurriedly. "Could one of you change to some other person? I 
hate to be such a bother, really, but ..." 
One of the girls said, "Think of a person; we can imitate his form." 
Camp searched his mind for friends, and smiled ruefully as he failed to 
correctly visualize a single person. When he looked up he gasped. 
"Hugo!" he exclaimed. "Hugo Menden!" 
"No," corrected the image. "His body idealized by you. I found this figure in 
the back of your mind, surrounded with much respect and sorrow. Who was Hugo 
Menden?" 
"A rather close friend of mine," Camp explained. "He died in space, while we 
were bound for Venus." His thoughts rambled for a moment. There was something 
buzzing around in his brain ... 
"Yeah," Camp said suddenly. "Look, I got an idea! Why don't you people go to 
Venus? I just got back from there, and I know it's approximately the same as 
Earth. Certainly it offered me no particular inconvenience, and should present 
none to you. Then you can return my people to their homes, and everybody will be 
happy. 
Manden's figure nodded gravely. "Splendid," he said simply. 
Camp's jubilant expression suddenly faded, and he looked comically woeful and 
downcast. 
"Yeah," he said dully. "Yeah, but I've only got one space-sphere, and that won't 
hold more than three or four of you. There was another ship at Newark, but that 
was dismantled for repairs or something before I left. Certainly I can't build 
one ... can't you people do something about it? You did say that you 
couldahmould any mass to suit your needs." 
"Not to that extent," Menden revised hastily. "By using the full power of all 
our minds, we might have, at one time; but now there are too few of us left. So 
few, I think, that one space-sphere will be quite large enough to carry us all. 
There are only twenty-seven of my race alive." 
Camp tossed his cigarette butt into the water and watched it hiss into black 
extinction. 
"Sure," he protested, "but even twenty-seven are too many to put in the ship. 
How are you going to manage it?" 
Menden smiled. "Simple," he told Camp. "We can put all but three or four in a 
state of suspended animation for the length of the voyage." 
But Camp was yet unsatisfied. "That's fine," he said. "That part's okay, but I 
just thought of something else. What, precisely, will you do about fuel?" 
"No," Lois told him. "The sphere can be moved by telekinesismind-power. Three 
of us can do it." 
Camp stood by a smooth-lined, waist-high machine, so-called by him though, as 
far as he could see, it had no moving parts whatsoever. At his side stood 
Menden, and shadowing the scene was the great, round bulk of the space-sphere. 
"Not very big,' commented Camp, indicating the odd machine. "How does the thing 
work?" 
Menden stepped forward and inserted a fist-sized ball, its surface dotted with 
an intricate pattern of perforations, into a socket in the device. 
"Its action is largely mental," he obligingly explained. "That small globe is a 
sort of matrix which has been impregnated with the proper thought patterns to 
set up the automatic operation." 
"Stop right there," Camp said. "I can see that it'd be too deep for me to 
understand." He cast a sidelong glance at his companion. "I'm kind of going to 
miss you and your people. You've taught me a couple of tricksbesides that 
little knack of levitationthat wouldn't have been developed by our science for 
a heap of years." 
Manden smiled slowly. "You, in return, have done a lot for us. You've given us a 
world where we can live in safety and perfect ease of mind. We would not have 
been happy here, Camp, knowing that we were mere usurpers. 
"Yeah," Camp mumbled. "I guess you're right." 
Menden, with Lois close behind him, hesitated a little. "Goodbye, Camp," they 
said simply, and as they hurried into the space-sphere Camp could see them 
slumping and blurring into their normal tentacled forms. 
The great sphere stirred uneasily, rose swiftly toward the zenith in a long, 
graceful sweep. It was uncanny, Camp thought, to see that tons-heavy mass dance 
lightly skyward unaided by the ravening, fiendishly hot rocket blasts. He sat 
down to wait. 
After a space of time, about five cigarettes later, he became aware of a growing 
tension in the air. The light breeze which had been playing with his hair as he 
sat there had died away, and the hot and oppressive atmosphere was unnaturally 
still. He shuffled his feet uneasily. 
The sky had darkened, and now bloated clouds, like the swollen bellies of 
poisoned alley cats, scudded past in a frightened cavalcade. The wind, too, had 
picked up again, and wailed through the nearby trees like a mournful banshee. 
Each individual hair on his body was standing erect, now, vitalized by the 
tension in the struggling, saturated atmosphere, and breathing was strangely 
difficult. 
He threw himself flat on the quivering ground, and felt easier. 
The machine that had been left was fairly blazing now, glowing angrily through 
its mantle of flame. Little whorls and specks of phosphorescence appeared, 
dancing like fireflies, danced and grew, solidifying as they grew. The explosion 
of the thunder expanded to the destruction of worlds, and the little specks of 
light increased in size. 
"People!" Camp muttered thickly. And people they were, and all the living things 
of Earth with them, replaced to the millimeter in the spots from which they had 
been so summarily plucked by a refugee race. 
Camp began to wonder how he would explain the loss of the space-sphere. 
 