A Communist plot. Some of the students were in a left-wing club. Some sort of Marxist study group. Maybe they had rigged up—
In the glare of the headlights something glittered. Something at the edge of the highway.
Douglas gazed at it, transfixed. Something square, a long block in the weeds at the side of the highway, where the great dark trees began. It glittered and shimmered. He slowed down, almost to a stop.
A bar of gold, lying at the edge of the road.
It was incredible. Slowly, Professor Douglas rolled down the window and peered out. Was it really gold? He laughed nervously. Probably not. He had often seen gold, of course. This looked like gold. But maybe it was lead, an ingot of lead with a gilt coating.
But—why?
A joke. A prank. College kids. They must have seen his car go past toward the Hendersons’ and knew he’d soon be driving back.
Or—or it really was gold. Maybe an armored car had gone past. Turned the corner too swiftly. The ingot had slid out and fallen into the weeds. In that case there was a little fortune lying there, in the darkness at the edge of the highway.
But it was illegal to possess gold. He’d have to return it to the Government. But couldn’t he saw off just a little piece? And if he did return it there was no doubt a reward of some kind. Probably several thousand dollars.
A mad scheme flashed briefly through his mind. Get the ingot, crate it up, fly it to Mexico, out of the country. Eric Barnes owned a Piper Cub. He could easily get it into Mexico. Sell it. Retire. Live in comfort the rest of his life.
Professor Douglas snorted angrily. It was his duty to return it. Call the Denver Mint, tell them about it. Or the police department. He reversed his car and backed up until he was even with the metal bar. He turned off the motor and slid out onto the dark highway. He had a job to do. As a loyal citizen—and, God knew, fifty tests had shown he was loyal—there was a job for him here. He leaned into the car and fumbled in the dashboard for the flashlight. If somebody had lost a bar of gold, it was up to him…
A bar of gold. Impossible. A slow, cold chill settled over him, numbing his heart. A tiny voice in the back of his mind spoke clearly and rationally to him: Who would walk off and leave an ingot of gold?
Something was going on.
Fear gripped him. He stood frozen, trembling with terror. The dark, deserted highway. The silent mountains. He was alone. A perfect spot. If they wanted to get him—
They?
Who?
He looked quickly around. Hiding in the trees, most likely. Waiting for him. Waiting for him to cross the highway, leave the road and enter the woods. Bend down and try to pick up the ingot. One quick blow as he bent over; that would be it.
Douglas scrambled back into his car and snapped on the motor. He raced the motor and released the brake. The car jerked forward and gained speed. His hands shaking, Douglas bore down desperately on the wheel. He had to get out. Get away before—whoever they were got him.
As he shifted into high he took one last look back, peering around through the open window. The ingot was still there, still glowing among the dark weeds at the edge of the highway. But there was a strange vagueness about it, an uncertain waver in the nearby atmosphere.
Abruptly the ingot faded and disappeared. Its glow receded into darkness.
Douglas glanced up, and gasped in horror.
In the sky above him, something blotted out the stars. A great shape, so huge it staggered him. The shape moved, a disembodied circle of living presence, directly over his head.
A face. A gigantic, cosmic face peering down. Like some great moon, blotting out everything else. The face hung for an instant, intent on him—on the spot he had just vacated. Then the face, like the ingot, faded and sank into darkness.
The stars returned. He was alone.
Douglas sank back against the seat. The car veered crazily and roared down the highway. His hands slid from the wheel and dropped at his sides. He caught the wheel again, just in time.
There was no doubt about it. Somebody was after him. Trying to get him. But no Communists or student practical jokers. Or any beast, lingering from the dim past.
Whatever it was, whoever they were, had nothing to do with Earth. It—they—were from some other world. They were out to get him.
Him.
But—why?
Pete Berg listened closely. “Go on,” he said when Douglas halted.
“That’s all.” Douglas turned to Bill Henderson. “Don’t try to tell me I’m out of my mind. I really saw it. It was looking down at me. The whole face this time, not just the eye.”
“You think this was the face that the eye belonged to?” Jean Henderson asked.
“I know it. The face had the same expression as the eye. Studying me.”
“We’ve got to call the police,” Laura Douglas said in a thin, clipped voice. “This can’t go on. If somebody’s out to get him—”
“The police won’t do any good.” Bill Henderson paced back and forth. It was late, after midnight. All the lights in the Douglas house were on. In one corner old Milton Erick, head of the Math Department, sat curled up, taking everything in, his wrinkled face expressionless.
“We can assume,” Professor Erick said calmly, removing his pipe from between his yellow teeth, “they’re a nonterrestrial race. Their size and their position indicate they’re not Earthbound in any sense.”
“But they can’t just stand in the sky!” Jean exploded. “There’s nothing up there!”
“There may be other configurations of matter not normally connected or related to our own. An endless or multiple coexistence of universe systems, lying along a plane of coordinates totally unexplainable in present terms. Due to some singular juxtaposition of tangents, we are, at this moment, in contact with one of these other configurations.”
“He means,” Bill Henderson explained, “that these people after Doug don’t belong to our universe. They come from a different dimension entirely.”
“The face wavered,” Douglas murmured. “The gold and the face both wavered and faded out.”
“Withdrew,” Erick stated. “Returned to their own universe. They have entry into ours at will, it would seem, a hole, so to speak, that they can enter through and return again.”
“It’s a pity,” Jean said, “they’re so damn big. If they were smaller—”
“Size is in their favor,” Erick admitted. “An unfortunate circumstance.”
“All this academic wrangling!” Laura cried wildly. “We sit here working out theories and meanwhile they are after him!”
“This might explain gods,” Bill said suddenly.
“Gods?”
Bill nodded. “Don’t you see? In the past these beings looked across the nexus at us, into our universe. Maybe even stepped down. Primitive people saw them and weren’t able to explain them. They built religions around them. Worshipped them.”
“Mount Olympus,” Jean said. “Of course. And Moses met God at the top of Mount Sinai. We’re high up in the Rockies. Maybe contact only comes at high places. In the mountains, like this.”
“And the Tibetan monks are situated in the highest land mass in the world,” Bill added. “That whole area. The highest and the oldest part of the world. All the great religions have been revealed in the mountains. Brought down by people who saw God and carried the word back.”
“What I can’t understand,” Laura said, “is why they want him.” She spread her hands helplessly. “Why not somebody else? Why do they have to single him out?”
Bill’s face was hard. “I think that’s pretty clear.”
“Explain,” Erick rumbled.
“What is Doug? About the best nuclear physicist in the world. Working on top-secret projects in nuclear fission. Advanced research. The Government is underwriting everything Bryant College is doing because Douglas is here.”
“So?”
“They want him because of his ability. Because he knows things. Because of their size-relationship to this universe, they can subject our lives to as careful a scrutiny as we maintain in the biology labs of—well, of a culture of Sarcina Pulmonum. But that doesn’t mean they’re culturally advanced over us.”