All this I saw, but its significance escaped me. I was still thinking fuzzily. My head ached with an almost unbearable pressure and my limbs still felt heavy. The third warning creak brought me fully awake, and I knew that someone was creeping along the narrow hall toward me. I could see nothing in the darkness and there was no sound of breathing or of stealthy feet. But the complaining floor was a voice too familiar to be missed. It could mean only one thing.
I waited tensely, straining every sense. Nothing moved. I began to make out shadowy shapes as my eyes adjusted to the dark. Doubts attacked me. Could this be it after all—the mind's final breaking point? The self-created monster in the darkness?
At last full understanding came. No. I was not insane. The pills had merely proven my sanity. They had done their job after all. The danger now was real. Everything that I had been ready to dismiss as the delusions and hallucinations of a sick mind—all of it was real. And now—
He attacked.
In the instant I knew that I was rational and whole, I was able to move, rolling to the side. A giant figure crashed onto the bed where I had lain. I could hear his hoarse, quick breathing, no longer held in silence. I spun away from him. A huge hand caught at my arm, but I broke free. Still rolling, I tumbled onto the floor. As he pulled himself off the bed, I staggered to my feet. The room reeled around me. The effects of the drug had not fully worn off. I tried to take a step toward the hall and it was like walking through deep water, my steps slow and sluggish. I could see the man towering above me as he leaped off the bed. A great hand grabbed at my suit as I fell away, and the fabric tore. I stumbled, off balance, unable to control the loose flopping of my arms and legs. A fist slashed at me and glanced off my cheek. Even the slashing blow was so powerful that it smashed me backwards, half-stunned, to crash against the wall beside the bed. I went down heavily. My cheekbone felt as if it had been pulverized.
Panic came. The relief which had first soared in me at the knowledge that I was a sane man was lost now in the bitter realization that I had discovered the truth too late. There was no way I could survive this giant's attack. But who was he?
A huge hand plucked me from the floor and flung me down on the bed. He was bending over me then, his hands clutching at my throat. His breath whistled through his open mouth. He shifted, bringing up his thickly-muscled leg to pin me under him. With the desperation of fear and the blind urge to survival, I twisted wildly. One free hand raked at his eyes. He gave a bellow of rage and pain and pulled away, pawing at his face. I wrenched away from the loosening grasp of the hand which still gripped my throat.
I broke past him. It was an immense effort to drag my heavy thighs forward, straining for speed. In the fleeting seconds it took me to stumble to the doorway, I seemed to live an eternity of effort and jumbled thoughts. This was the alien—it must be! No subtleties now, no clever tricks of the mind—just brute force. And I had a vivid picture of Lois Worthington as she must have looked with her neck snapped like a brittle twig. I knew that I would not get away, that this was the end of all my running.
My hand, catching the door frame, brushed against a switch and the room suddenly blazed with light. Over my shoulder I saw him charging after me—saw the shock of black hair, the powerful shoulders and arms, the thick features twisted now in fury. Mike Boyle!
For an instant the light blinded him. And in that moment, out of the confusion and shock of recognition, I had time to feel a surge of disbelief. He couldn't be the one! I knew this slow, arrogant mind. And if he could control me as the alien had, why hadn't he stopped me now from trying to get away?