The life watch

by Lester Del Rey

He was getting better at reading her glances, and he frowned as her eyes rested upon him. He liked Pat, but sometimes she—

She laughed. "Forget it, Bill. I was only ribbing you. You have about as much romantic appeal to me as my grandfather."

It was ten minutes later before he realized what a typical masculine human reaction to such a remark would have been. He frowned, while his mind chilled at the implications. How could he doubt any longer that the Aliens had caught him and done something to him—something drastic? He wasn't quite human, despite what the bones of his body had seemed to confirm.

And that could only mean that Hardwick's shield had never worked. He stopped short, and then reconsidered. The difficulty he had forcing his mind to think about tests for the lizards still spelled a taboo in his mind—and that indicated there might be a shield. It left him exactly where he was, except for the problem of what the Aliens wanted. If he could solve that, and defeat it....

Nothing they tried gave any positive result, though Pat thought that the variation in the female activity had been slightly more than normal when they'd tried the potassium salt solution around the males. They gave up late, and Norden went back to his bunk, and to the familiar pattern of lulling himself into a semi-conscious condition by the ritual of reviewing the day with his hands locked behind his head.

Then he swore. It was a pointless habit. He returned his arms to his side and held them rigid, while his head squirmed unpleasantly. Habits could be broken—and any compulsion he had as a result of whatever had happened to him was a luxury he couldn't permit himself.

There would be no recovery until he had overcome the taboos and filled all the gaps in his mind with useful things. Perhaps the Aliens had already succeeded. They might have decided somehow that he was the only man who could solve the problem, and had tampered just enough to make sure he'd fail, while keeping him competent enough to insure that no other man would replace him.

He yanked his arms down again, and started to turn over. Fifteen minutes later, he came out of a complete blackout with his hands at the back of his neck again and a queer feeling that his mind had remained active, with only his memory of its activities missing. His glance darted to the door, but it was still locked, and his clothes lay on the floor where he'd kicked them.

Apparently he hadn't moved from the bed while he'd been short-circuited from his memory, at least.

He thrust himself up from the bed in disgust, pulled on his clothes, and headed down the hall, back towards the laboratory. He passed the cubicle where General Miles should have been sleeping and noticed a trace of light shining under the door. For a second, he remembered the man's words—a spy who confessed would be treated as an honorable prisoner of war.