THE WATCHERS
By ROGER DEE
It had taken him ten years to find them—to even convince
himself that they existed. Now Manson was ready to kill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories September 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He left his gyro on the dark lawn and circled the villa, carefully avoiding the wash of light from open windows. The blast gun lay snug and cold in his hand, and his thought ran bleakly: Here am I, Peter Manson, pacifist, idealist, reformer, preacher in print of tolerance and amity—about to kidnap a man whom I shall almost certainly kill before morning.
Tomorrow the telecast would list his madness with other insanities: sex murders, suicides, political drumbeatings for the coming holocaust of the inevitable Fourth War....
War.
"They're going too far," he said, half aloud. "Their routine meddlings were bad enough, but another war now might mean the end of everything."
He found the alien who called himself Leonard Havlik in a bright, book-lined study, packing a miscellany of papers into a brief case that bore his name in gold lettering. A secretary was helping, a slim girl with crisp, copper-colored hair and clear green eyes.