It came back to him as dreams rarely do: down to its last beastly detail. A dream of fear and peril—a running dream—and not a dream, after all. Uarnl. He looked at the corner of the room, at the colorful throw rug. It lay there under the sun, brighter than it had been, as if a pane of glass had been lifted from it.
After a while he got up and went to the door of Miss Kal's office. She looked up vaguely, concealing a small, resigned lizard under her jacket.
"Miss Kal," Joe said blindly, "do you have my morning papers?"
He took the facsimiles back to his desk, walking slowly, afraid to get there and sit down and open them. The nightmare; the first aborted attempt. Sarah and Kent—approaching him separately—yet similarly. Allies. Each had been confident that during the night Uarnl—had—
There was nothing else on the front sheets but the names Ih, Lof, Dir, and Uarnl and the story of their possessors' escape from Mars Detain. A power breakdown had weakened the energy barrier that kept their elusive minds, and hence their bodies, in confinement. By the time armed replacements could be sent to the Aarnians' isolated cell the beings had vanished. The guards had been strangled. Energy barriers had been set up at all space and canal ports. Other barriers had been formed into a hundred mile noose that was being carefully drawn in toward Detain.
Joe folded the last paper over the cruel three-eyed faces that seemed to mock him. He fumbled at the visiphone. Miss Kal was wiping her lips cheerfully.
"Miss Kal," Joe said, "get me Mr. Reader in Shipping." He leaned his elbows wearily on the desk and waited until Reader's puritanical face appeared on the screen.
"Yeah, boss?"
"Reader, has anyone consigned four large crates to go off-world tomorrow night?"
"Yeah," Reader replied promptly; "Mr. Kent. B-type mobile spacesuits. Had me alter the manifest this morn—"