“Well,” I said, “you invited it, my dear.”

  She gave me an odd look. “They’ve locked their door,” she said, “but you can hear them talking.”

  I paused outside the room, listening. There was a low mumble from it, but I could not make out any words.

  A couple of hours later I was sitting in my own room, trying to read. Except for the lamp, I was in darkness. Warm summer air blew through the open window, stirring the curtains. I was so absorbed in Housman—a strangely right poet for today—that I didn’t notice the door open. She was at my side before I knew she was there.

  “Dave,” she said.

  I looked up, startled. The lamplight threw her against night, all shadow and shimmering glows. She wore a robe over her pajamas, sheath-like around her slim form. My heart began to thump.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “Come along, Dave.” There was a queer, strained note in her voice, and her eyes were frightened. “I want you to—hear something.”

  “Hm?” I got up, thinking more of the way her long loose hair tumbled over her shoulders than of anything else. “What’s up? Are your neighbors telling dirty jokes?”

  “No, this isn’t funny.” She caught my arm with tensed fingers. “I’ve been—listening in on them. Using that ear trumpet. I meant to do that all along, just as a gesture. I didn’t think it would mean anything.”

  I scowled. “That could be a dangerous hobby, Kit.”

  “Listen, won’t you?” She stamped her foot, and her voice was a sudden fierceness. “They’re talking in there, and it isn’t in any language I ever heard. Not English or Portuguese or—anything!”

  “So they talk Martian,” I shrugged. “What of it?”

  “Damn it, Dave,” she cried, “I was in Comcenter!” Lowering her voice again: “I had to get a working knowledge of linguistics. I can follow half a dozen human languages, and Vannzaru and three other Martian dialects, and recognize most of the others. This isn’t any of them. It doesn’t even sound like them!”

  She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door. I followed, suddenly unsure and wondering. “Some special, artificial language?” I muttered.

  We entered her room. Alice was sleeping in a crib, whimpering a little. Briefly, I wondered what the child’s dreams were like. Kit took the ear trumpet off her bed. She had tied it to a broomstick, and slipped my bath hose over the narrow end. “Here,” she whispered. Sweat glistened on her forehead. “Here, use it for yourself.”

  Decision. I went to the window, and my right hand edged the stick along the wall until the trumpet was just under the guest-room window. My left hand brought the hose up to my ear. I listened.

  “Tahowwa shab-hu gameel weijhak.”

  “Shakheer! Kesshub umshash woteeha.”

  I felt coldness along my spine, and muttered a curse. It was not only that the grunting and sibilant noises were strange to me. It was the rhythm of them, the low rise and fall, the whistling overtones and the rattle and gurgle beneath. I wondered if any human or Martian throat could form those syllables.

  In any case—those were not the voices of Robert Hale and Dzuga ay Zamudring!

  Slowly, I withdrew the trumpet. My hands were shaking. Kit and I looked at each other for a long and silent time.

  “Who are they?” she gasped after a moment. “What are they?”

  Alice moaned in her sleep. The old grandfather clock ticked noisily in the night stillness.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered.

  She came close to me, and I drew her against my breast. She was trembling so hard that her teeth rattled in her head. “We’ve got to find out,” she forced through stiff lips.

  “How?” I stood holding her, thinking with a brain that seemed frozen. “We can’t go to Regelin, you know how he’d react, and there isn’t anyone else.”

  “We can get proof.” Her tones were wild. “We can convince the Martians—”

  “How do you know this isn’t some secret gadget of theirs?” I demanded. “It’s got to be that.”

  “We have to know,” she mumbled. “Alice here, and those—creatures—in the next room—”

  I kissed her, blindly and harshly, and she clung to me in the same search for comfort. “We can’t do anything,” I said. “Not a thing. We’re helpless. But I’ll stay here tonight.”

  “Dave—”

  I went back into my own room, got my automatic, and returned to hers. We locked the door, and I sat by her bedside, holding her hand, till she dropped off into a restless sleep. Those voices had been too unnerving for me to think of anything but defense—now. I sat all night in the chair, sometimes dozing and coming to with a jerk. About midnight, the yellow square of luminance on the lawn snapped out; the strangers had turned off their light. I wondered if they slept.

  Dawn was cold and gray over the wide, empty fields. I waited till I heard Dzuga and Hale go downstairs before venturing out myself. Kit stirred, opening shadowed eyes to mine, and I bent over and kissed her cheek. “They’re gone now, darling,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”

  She smiled drowsily and turned over.

  I washed, shaved, and went downstairs myself. Hale and Dzuga were still at breakfast. The—human—greeted me with a sly wink. “Good morning, Mr. Arnfeld,” he said cheerily. “You seem tired.”

  I gulped the scalding chicory which Mrs. Hoose gave me.

  “I couldn’t help noticing that your bedroom door was open and your bed hadn’t been slept in,” went on Hale. He winked at me. “Ah, some people are lucky.”

  “Mr. Hale, if you please,” said Dzuga with affronted rigidity.

  I looked at them. They were so perfect, the gross well-fed man and the gaunt, almost prudish Martian. Every last detail, every curve of cheek and glitter of eye, the dress, the voice, the manner. I wondered if I had dreamed those mutterings in the night.

  No—I hadn’t done that. My head still felt hollow from weariness, the stolen ear trumpet still lay up in Kit’s room, and Hale had noticed I’d not slept in my own bed.

  “We will be gone all day, I imagine, Mr. Arnfeld,” said Dzuga. “We must lock our room and ask that under no circumstances be it opened, under penalty of the espionage statute. There are important documents in it.”

  “Of course,” I said dully.

  I was out on the lawn, soaking in the bright early sunlight, when Kit joined me. She sat down and laid a hand in mine.

  “Dave,” she said, “we’ve got to break in there.”

  “And get shot as spies?” I asked. “Don’t be silly. This is some Martian secret. Forget it. We’ll trade rooms tonight.”

  She smiled and rumpled my hair. “You’re such an old-fashioned gentleman, Dave,” she said. “You’re almost a Martian yourself.”

  “That room,” I said, “is to be left strictly alone. Savvy?”

  She lowered her eyes. “Yes, master,” she said demurely.

  I worried about her for a while. We were both fighters of a kind, I supposed, but my spirit was the careful, slogging sort, war had been a trade to me, based on calculated odds; hers was buoyant, almost gay, often reckless. She had sloughed off her terror of the night like a cast skin. But she behaved herself ’til well after lunch. Then my own tiredness caught up with me and I went to take a nap.

  I came back to consciousness and sat blearily up. The sunlight had a late-afternoon quality, I must have slept for hours. A look at Kit’s whitened face brought me out of bed with a violent surge.

  “You haven’t!” I groaned.

  She nodded. “I had to. Nobody else is around. Come on, come quickly, you have to see this.”

  I slipped on a robe and followed her. My mouth was dry, and sweat prickled my body. But it was too late now. I could only try to repair the damage.

  A skeleton key from the museum had easily turned the ancient lock. Inside, the room looked utterly normal, the beds neatly made, nothing disturbed. But a Martian-type trunk was on the floor, and Kit opened it. I saw a few changes of clothes, it looked harmless enough.

  “There’s no shaving kit,” she told me in a flat voice. I thought of Hale’s blue jowls. “Maybe he lost his razor,” I said. “Or maybe he just carries it with him, or—”

  She opened the upper compartment, below the lid. It was filled with papers. I took the sheaf out and went through it, careful to keep the items in order. Lists, notes, maps—but the uncial writing was not one that Earth or Mars had ever known. Shakily, I restored the bundle and lifted the folded clothes.

  On the bottom of the trunk lay two—pistols? I didn’t know. They were massive, stubby things of blued steel, stamped with a strange symbol, and they didn’t fit my hand very well. They wouldn’t fit a Martian’s, either.

  “What are they?” she breathed.

  “These? Weapons, I suppose.” I laid them back.

  “No—they. The strangers.”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head, slowly. “Do the Martians have allies from—outside?”

  “Allies who look and act exactly like our two races?” She hissed it with a note of anger.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  We replaced everything, closed the trunk, and locked the door behind us. I put on some clothes, and then we went downstairs and into the living room to return the skeleton key.

  Regelin was there, waiting. One of his guards stood behind him with a cradled carbine. “Where have you been?” he asked, very softly.

  I held face and voice steady with an effort that seemed to drain me. “Upstairs,” I said. “Having a nap.”

  “I wondered—” He looked at my hand. “That is the skeleton key from your museum, isn’t it?” He spoke like a snapping whip.

  “I—”

  “We couldn’t unlock my door,” said Kit.

  “You have been in the guestroom.” It was not a question but a statement. “You have been spying.”

  Something collapsed within me. I’d had no training for this work, I’d bungled the job disastrously, and now I read death in his eyes. I stood there, saying nothing.

  “Yes, we have!” cried Kit. “And I’ll tell you what we found, too.”

  “I am not interested in gossip.” Regelin’s tone was ice and darkness. “You are under arrest.”

  “Listen!” she screamed. “It concerns Mars, too. Those things aren’t Martian, aren’t human!” She babbled the story in a shaking rush of words.

  I couldn’t read his face. He said thinly: “My oath obliges me to obey my superiors. I shall have to report this affair in detail.” With a flicker of gentleness: “I shall request clemency.”

  “You fool!” she raged. “You idiot!”

  Regelin turned to his guard. “Zurdeth agri.” Take them away.

  We were locked into Kit’s bedroom. She burst into weeping and held Alice close to her. I sat looking out at the dying day.

  “I’m sorry,” she gasped at last. “I got you into this.”

  “Never mind,” I said. “I’m glad you did.” Which was a lie, but worth it to see the comfort it gave her.

  There was a sentry under our window and one outside the door—no chance to escape. We sat holding hands while darkness thickened. It was about ten o’clock when the door opened and Regelin’s aide motioned us curtly to come. We went downstairs between the guards.

  Hale and Dzuga were seated in the living room, Regelin stood by the window, the four other Martians snapped to attention against the wall. Warm lamplight filled the place but it was very quiet.

  Dzuga finally turned to me. His face was impassive, and his voice was old and tired. “Sevni Regelin has told me an unpleasant story,” he said.

  “You shouldn’t’a done it.” Hale shook his head, and light glistened on his scalp. “You’re in bad.”

  “Under the occupation law, you are subject to death without trial,” said Dzuga. “We will take you to headquarters tomorrow. Possibly clemency can be arranged, but I doubt it.”

  “No.” Kit’s tone was small and dry. “Well never get there alive. You can’t let us tell the authorities. We’ll be found dead in a ditch.”

  “Mrs. Hawthorne, please—” said Regelin.

  “You too,” she told him. “We told you what we know. You’re coming along, aren’t you?”

  “I have been ordered to accompany you and give testimony,” he said.

  “You’ll never give it,” she answered.

  “Your conclusions are altogether fantastic,” said Dzuga. “Because we find it necessary to use codes, and have also some experimental models of weapons, you assume that—” He waved a hand and snapped an order in Vannzaru. Take them back upstairs. Lock them in till tomorrow.

  I swayed a little on my feet, and out of terror and despair I managed a jeering note. “Your character is slipping, Inspector,” I said. “No Martian aristocrat would send a prisoner hungry to bed if he could avoid it.”

  “We forgot,” said Hale. “We’ll send you some food.”

  A great steadiness came over me. All right, I had leaped to conclusions, built up a crazy structure of hypothesis, but—

  What did we have to lose?

  I measured distances with a fleeting, unnaturally clear glance. Four armed Martians standing, against the farther wall, but ignorant of English, not knowing what was being said and not expecting trouble; a single floor lamp three feet away, with Dzuga sitting four feet beyond that; French windows, six feet to my left, opening on the front lawn and darkness. And a spaceman develops fast reactions.

  I took a stride toward Dzuga. I whined, and was curiously aware, at the edge of my mind, of Regelin’s sudden contempt. “Sir,” I begged, “we were wrong. We’re nervous, had delusions—”

  “That will do,” he snapped.

  My hands closed on the floor lamp and I rammed it forward like a spear, into his face. Light exploded before us, and then darkness thundered over us. “The windows, Kit!” I bawled. “The windows!”

  Plunging forward, I hit a solid form in the gloom. Regelin! My fist smashed into his belly, and I heard him grunt. He twisted his arms about me, dragging me down.

  “Get out, Kit!” I yelled. “Get out!”

  Two flashlights snapped in the hands of guards leaping forward. They shone on horror. Dzuga wasn’t a Martian.

  Wasn’t anything!

  -5-

  He was slumped half-conscious across his chair, and his moaning was not that of human or Martian throat. In the flying glimpse I had, I saw that the black uniform was drawn tight over a suddenly thickened and shortened body, a pale soft skin. The head was muzzled, chinless, a fleshy crest rising on the skull-animal. The exploding lamp had burned that face, and the great colorless eyes looked out of a seared ruin.

  Then the light caught me, where I still struggled with Regelin, and a Martian voice barked an order I knew from the war. It was too late. I couldn’t get away. Slowly, Regelin and I released each others and I raised my hands.

  Someone clicked on the ceiling lamp. My eyes went to Kit, who had been grabbed by a Martian and had just now given up her kicking, biting, clawing fight. Her face was wild under the disheveled gold hair, and her breasts rose and fell in a swift gulping. It had been hopeless, that attempt of ours. But—

  We turned to look at the thing which writhed and whimpered in the chair. A soldier whispered a curse, another signed himself with the Double Crescent. Otherwise there was only our heavy breathing and the night outside.

  Hale stood forth, a little, baldish, pot-bellied man with a sudden iron calm on him. “This is unfortunate,” he said. “You have stumbled on a top state secret.”

  The door to the Martian wing began to open. They’d heard the racket in here and come to investigate. Hale snapped a command in Vannzaru, and the door closed again before they saw.

  “And you’re one of them too,” I said.

  He nodded. “Obviously.” With a smile that was drawn steel: “We are an—experimental model. Something from the Martian laboratories.”

  Regelin’s gaunt hand rested on his sidearm. “Don’t,” said Hale. “I am your superior officer.”

  The sevni snapped to attention.

  My mind was moving more swiftly than I had thought possible, cold and clear as lightning in the sky. “It won’t wash, Hale,” I said, and was dimly amazed at the evenness of my tone. “You’re no more Martian than I am.”

  His eyes narrowed, exactly as a man’s would. “You will go back to your room immediately,” he said.

  I turned to Regelin. “They talk between themselves in no language of this planetary system,” I said. “They keep notes in an unknown writing and weapons not of Martian make. If there really were such beings developed on Mars, they’d be a military secret of the first rank. They wouldn’t be allowed to gallivant over this planet where any accident might betray them.”

  “That will do!” snapped Hale. “Sevni, send these Earthlings back to confinement.”

  “If you do,” I told Regelin, “you’re selling out your own planet; and they’ll kill you into the bargain.”

  The guards stood with guns covering us, eyes flickering from one to another, waiting for orders.

  “Sevni,” said Hale, “remember your oath.”

  “Which was to be loyal to the Archate,” I said. “Not to aliens who have infiltrated it.”

  Regelin stood there, unmoving, for a century of minutes. His face was withdrawn, expressionless, but the golden eyes blazed. No one spoke. I looked at the thing called Dzuga ay Zamudring. It—no, he, the uniform had split and I could see he was male—was recovering himself, sat almost upright, breathing hard. He was hairless, his skin white, his eyes flat in the round theriomorphic face. There was a big braincase—though the head had changed shape too. Teeth and nails were almost gone, and he had seven stubby fingers on each hand, and the whole body gave an effect of rubbery bonelessness. He stood about as tall as I, but was broader, a square build.

  Finally Regelin sighed. His pistol came out, and he barked an order to the guards. They looked almost happy as their carbines swung to cover Hale and Dzuga.

  “You will regret this, Sevni,” said Hale.

  “I am going to contact headquarters,” said Regelin. “You and—your friend—are under arrest. So are you humans, though I’ll give you the run of the house and grounds till further notice. I am duty bound to report this.”