A quick contraction of muscles shattered my illusion that I had conquered the fear. Unless both of the aliens would be there for the kill. I forced myself to examine the possibility rationally. The older one, the leader, did not want them to be together unless it was absolutely necessary. And why should they believe that handling me would require two superior minds? One would be enough. No, the young one would be alone, the junior partner, who wouldn't admit being unable to eliminate me without difficulty.
The reflection stirred me to a fresh sensation, a stubborn, smoldering anger.
22
There was a local stop less than a half-mile south of the Beachcomber Trailer Lodge. I made no move. The train slid smoothly along its single overhead rail once more. Seconds later, when I guessed that we had traveled less than a mile, I rose, walked quickly to the end of the car and jabbed the emergency stop signal. While the few sleepy passengers in the car were staring at me, startled, the train came to one of its gently quivering sudden stops. I stepped on the floor panel just inside the narrow emergency exit. A door slid open. Damp, salt-smelling ocean mist swirled in through the door. Dropping quickly to the floor, I eased myself over the edge. For several seconds I hung by my arms in mid-air outside the car, my hands gripping the door sill. In the thick mist I couldn't see the ground below. From inside the car someone shouted. The emergency door started to close and I dropped.
Falling through space I endured a slowly turning moment of panic. I had misjudged the distance! Then I hit the ground with a jarring force that seemed to unhinge my jaws. I tumbled and rolled, slamming finally to a stop against a solid wall of earth. Breathless and dazed, I lay peering up at the train. The emergency door opened again and a uniformed man stood framed in the oblong panel of yellow light some fifteen feet overhead. He muttered angrily. Although he appeared to be looking directly at me, I was sure that he couldn't see me. After a moment he drew back inside. The door closed. After a brief interval the train eased into motion, humming softly as it gathered speed. The last car vanished abruptly and I was alone in the thick black silence. I could feel a throbbing in my left arm. Something wet trickled into the crook of my elbow and I realized that the still-fresh cut had re-opened.
Painfully I pushed myself erect. Now I could hear the noisy clamor of the surf nearby. The mist curled and eddied around me, dense patches giving way to open gaps through which I caught the wet reflection of pavement. I tried to orient myself. The monorail was on the inland side of the beach highway. I would probably have to follow the road back to Laurie's trailer community. I had intended to come up to it along the beach, but in this fog there was little chance that I would find or recognize her trailer group.
I set off along the road. There was no traffic at all. When I had been walking for ten minutes I began to realize that I had underestimated the train's speed. I had overshot the Beachcomber Lodge by more than I had thought. Still I didn't regret the decision not to get out at the station. There, I would have been too vulnerable, making a public announcement of my arrival. At least now I had the faint possibility of surprise.
From the edge of the road I could barely make out the lighted signs which spelled out the names of the different trailer parks, their letters hardly distinguishable blurs in the mist. This wasn't like the dream, I thought, unable to disguise a quick surge of relief. Everything had been clear in the dream. I walked on slowly, cautiously, feeling the damp cold steal through the fabric of my coverall and jacket. And at last, winking at me from a flat hollow of the beach, I saw the sign: BEACHCOMBER TRAILER LODGE.
I stopped. Trying to open my mind to every impulse, I stood motionless, thinking of nothing, waiting and listening. There was only the steady, rhythmic roll and crash of the ocean beating against the edge of the land. There was no foreign whisper of sound, no strange vibration of thought. Nothing out of the ordinary. Yet I felt danger around me like a physical presence. Some unfathomed ear of the mind heard and telegraphed its message to the taut nerves of my body. I began to tremble. It's the cold, I thought angrily, gritting my teeth to stop their chattering. It's this damned cold wet fog.
Moving now in a crouch, I turned and retraced my steps to a point a hundred yards north of the Beachcomber's sign. There I scrambled down the incline from the road to the lower level where trailers huddled close like motionless animals hiding in the protective mist. I made my way carefully among them until I reached the empty strip of beach fringing the ocean. Here the roar of the waves was almost deafening, magnified in the darkness and the silence of the night. Dimly, I could make out the white foam boiling up the wet slope toward me. I had to fight down the cringing panic, holding my mind closed like a steel trap against the invasion of memory, against the terror of the dream whose vivid details crowded forward, demanding to be seen and heard and felt.