Woman from another planet

by Frank Belknap Long

And if his mind was being manipulated, if the alien city dwellers were—

Loring straightened, cold sweat breaking out on his forehead, his eyes darting to the entrance. The entrance was darkening again. A shadow had fallen across it, partly blotting out the radiance from outside the building.

It was not a massive shadow and he knew that it could not have been cast by the flylike creature moving about in the darkness. It was an advancing, not a retreating shadow, and it was very slender. It cut off a portion of the light for only a fraction of the time it had taken the insect to pass from the glow into the darkness. It was accompanied by footsteps, quick, uncertain and a brief flurry of movement. Then the slender intruder was inside the building, silhouetted against the glow a few feet from the entrance.

NINE

"Janice!"

Loring spoke her name in a choked whisper, as if an instrument of torture had been applied without warning to his flesh and was slowly crushing every bone in his body. He whispered her name twice, and then his voice broke and he could only stare, gripped by a fear so tormenting that it completely shattered all of his defenses.

He was unable to move or think clearly. If the aliens had chosen that moment of shock to attack nothing could have saved him, for he was incapable of resistance. But they did not attack. It was almost as though they themselves had been caught off guard, checkmated by the very violence of his emotions. Perhaps they had not known that a man in love may lose all concern for his own safety and redouble it in another direction, transfer it to someone whose life is infinitely more precious to him. Perhaps that total forgetfulness of self was so alien to their thinking that they were unable to make instant and effective use of it as a weapon.

Janice's voice broke the stillness, calling out to him in a frightened appeal. "David! David! Where are you? I was too worried about you to wait any longer. When you didn't come back—"

She swayed a little and moved a few steps closer to him, as if groping for something tangible to guide her in the darkness. Then he was at her side, stilling her trembling with the firmness of his embrace, murmuring reassurances.

"What I just said was a lie, David," Janice whispered, holding on to him as if she would never let him go. "Your mind was made up, so I had to pretend I wasn't going to follow you. Now there's nothing you can do about it, is there, darling?"