When a great many impossible things have happened to a man within a very short time there comes a jumping-off place. The man jumps outside himself and continues to survive by examining the whole thing from outside, with a sort of awed detachment. It was this way with Web.
"I am nuts," he kept saying to himself, insistently, as he rolled down the landing net and came up with a thump against the door below. But he did not feel nuts. His mind had been numbed and dulled at the edges, but for some reason now outside it he was thinking very clearly. For the disappearance of everybody there was no explanation, but for the appearance of the naked man there had to be. The suspicion which he had first heard back at the base, over many a beer, was truth to him now, because he had to believe his eyes or go mad. And there was only one thing the naked man could be. An alien. A thing from another world, as the movies put it. A thing with cunning and science. A thing that had destroyed Falk.
Now think, he said to himself carefully, bolting the door behind him. You are no match for them. You don't know how many of them are out there or what they have. Maybe this is the first time they know you are alive and somehow they missed you when they got Falk. So get out.
GET OUT.
He raced through the station, heading for the escape pod. He had to get down to Earth. With what coherence he could muster, he had to tell somebody about this, although it did not yet make any sense. But it would, it would, it would have to. The naked man had been a man, yes, but he had white round marble eyes and a knifelike, inhuman nose. If they were on Earth, his kind could be found.
Web lowered himself into the escape pod, strapped himself down and pressed the button. The pod shot down from the station, down and away, and a great orange flame spread out from its bow. It lost speed quickly, steadily, as the rockets pushed it back. After a while the flames died out. The pod began to fall.
IV
Just as Ivy could feel the ability to move returning, the old men came for her. She realized with despair that they knew quite well how long the paralysis would last. They helped her to her feet and walked her out of the building. Their hands were dry and raspy and surprisingly strong.
Outside it was late in the morning and the sun was high. She was on the side of a mountain, looking down into a peaceful valley. They led her around the low building into a shaded area farther up the mountain, where she saw several more buildings, much smaller than the first. The first, she thought, was a clearing house.