He tapped his fingers on the desk, half irritated, half frightened.
It would be a shame, he thought, to kill a man like Sutton.
But it might be best.
Yes, he told himself, it might be for the best,
XVI
Clark said that he had died and Clark was an engineer. Clark made a graph and death was in the graph; mathematics foretold that certain strains and stresses would turn a body into human jelly.
And Anderson had said he wasn't human and how was Anderson to know?
The road curved ahead, a silver strip shining in the moonlight, and the sounds and smells of night lay across the land. The sharp, clean smell of growing things, the mystery smell of water. A creek ran through the marsh that lay off to the right and Sutton, from behind the wheel, caught the flashing hint of winding, moonlit water as he took a curve. Peeping frogs made a veil of pixy sound that hugged against the hills and fireflies were swinging lanterns that signaled through the dark.
And how was Anderson to know?
How, asked Sutton, unless he examined me? Unless he was the one who tried to probe into my mind after I had been knocked out when I walked into my room?