I leaped to the second floor entrance, feeling their eyes already on my back as I passed through it, and went loping for the nearest window, a tall square of moontouched glittering. I hurled the thing open, swung onto the sill, and launched myself into space without even looking at the ground. It rushed up at me. As naturally as a cat might have done it, I landed on toes and fingers. Then I was running.
No shouts broke out behind me. They had not seen my leap. I shed the jacket and cap as I ran. Then I remembered my coat, lying across the dead guard. No identification there—until they had time to check dry-cleaner's marks. I had an hour or two at least.
I headed for my hotel, a dingy, half-respectable pile on the edge of the downtown district. An hour to pack, and I would be on my way. There was something, or someone, calling to me from a great distance. I did not know what it was nor where.
My instincts would carry me to it. I wasted no time in wondering. I let my mind slip out of gear, put my whole energy into my traveling.
When I had run far enough, I found an owl cab and let it carry me the rest of the distance. It seemed oddly alien to me to trust to anything but my own powerful legs; but I forced myself to sit back and let the civilized habits of Bill Cuff take the upper hand. I would rest for a little while.
CHAPTER IV
As I stuffed things into my big battered Gladstone I found myself changing.
A cryptic statement, that, and one which requires explanation; yet how can I say just what it was like, this metamorphosis? At first I was the same creature that had crouched behind the false stalagmite and slain the guard, then had leaped from the second-story window to flee into the night. This was a—I was about to say a wholly physical being. That isn't true. There was brainwork of a sort behind its actions, but an alien brainwork. Could you understand the thoughts of an ape? Could you describe them if you did?
At any rate, I slid away from this physical being, imperceptibly, until Bill Cuff the prosaic pulpster seemed in the ascendant. Touching familiar things: my typewriter, sport shirts, cigarette lighter, a stack of manuscript—appeared to bring me back to what had all my life been normality.