"No. No menace. No danger. I'm safe, I'm secure, I'm warm and loved...."
"Relax," said the alien. "Relax, and let me have full control again. You can sleep if you do. You can rest. I'll take care of you, trust in that."
"Yes. Sleep. Rest. No more running, hiding, fearing...." said Jerry Norcriss, the gray rat-mind in the invisible body of another rat much like himself....
"Come on with that flashlight, damn it!" Bob raged, leading the other three crewmen through the woods. Two of them carried rifles, one had a flamethrower, and Bob himself carried one of the new bazookas with a potent short-range atomic warhead. Ollie, the man with the light, hurried up to him with a quick apology.
"Okay, okay," Bob said. "But I've got to see this dial—Ah, yes. This is the way, all right. Come on. Ollie, keep that beam so it spills on the tracking-cone dial as well as on the earth. We don't dare risk losing our way. There are only seven minutes left until Contact is broken."
"Yes, sir. I'll keep it right on there," Ollie said. "But about the lieutenant—are you sure he won't—"
"That's what the stopwatch is for. We must strike just as Contact is being broken. Any sooner, and we kill Lieutenant Norcriss with the alien. Any later, and the alien kills us. The same way it did the others who came upon it."
"But what does it do? What does it look like?" Ollie persisted.
"Damn it, there's no time to talk now! Just keep that light steady, and hurry!"