"Pretty vague," Bright of the Army said.
"This I'll grant you." Brent said. "Anybody for coffee?"
Nobody was for coffee so Marcia and the waiter retired and Brent said, "Vague, I'll grant you. But let's get on with it. Two days later, a man, in every way identical, was found lying in the street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was alive, but in a dying condition, and he succumbed on the way to the hospital. Cause of death, as in the first place, undeterminable. But the medics think it was some malfunctioning of the lungs.
"All in all, gentlemen, eight identical specimens have been picked up in various American cities. Five are dead, two more are now in a comatose condition, at last report, and may very well be dead at this time. One is still alive and relatively healthy...."
Alive and relatively healthy. The son-of-a-bitch! Hagen felt an odd senseless rage against the creature they'd picked up in a Chicago bar.
Ordinarily it would have been a simple bull-pen, night-court case—a loud-mouth drunk refusing to pay for a drink. But much of his talk, anent enemy invasion, internal destruction, and civilian chaos, had been a little too rough for the other barflies to swallow, and complaints had been made. Later, when Bureau men went around trying to get something tangible in the way of evidence, they found themselves dealing in frustration. The complainants had left without giving their names. The barkeep really hadn't heard anything. The actual charges had gone up in smoke. But by that time, Washington was very much interested. The man was questioned and it was the damnedest thing Hagen had ever gone through ...
"By identical," Jones of the Air Force said, "you of course mean—"
Brent's dark, knifelike eyes sliced out at Jones. "By identical, I mean just that."
Bright's throat bobbed as the astonishing implication came home to him. "Hell, man! You mean—"
"I mean these specimens do not merely bear a resemblance to each other. They were not just similar as to organisms and physical structure. They were all exactly alike; as alike as eight new cars of the same make and model lined up side by side ..."