What happened then happened in a blurring passage of seconds.
The grim-faced man came rushing across the purple-lighted stage; the thing that had been a woman went crashing, twitching, flailing at the rail, doubling over it, the spasmodic hitching flinging up its muscle-knotted legs.
A clawing fall.
Peggy lurched back in her chair and the scream that started in her throat was forced back into a strangled gag as the loopy came crashing down onto the table, its limbs a thrash of naked whiteness.
Barbara screamed, the audience gasped and Peggy saw, on the fringe of vision, Bud jumping up, his face a twist of stunned surprise.
The loopy flopped and twisted on the table like a new-caught fish. The music stopped, grinding into silence; a rush of agitated murmur filled the room and blackness swept in brain-submerging waves across Peggy's mind.
Then the cold white hand slapped across her mouth, the dark eyes stared at her in purple light and Peggy felt the darkness flooding.
The horror-smoked room went turning on its side.
Consciousness. It flickered in her brain like gauze-veiled candlelight. A murmuring of sound, a blur of shadow before her eyes.
Breath dripped like syrup from her mouth.
"Here, Peg."
She heard Bud's voice and felt the chilly metal of a flask neck pressed against her lips. She swallowed, twisting slightly at the trickle of fire in her throat and stomach, then coughed and pushed away the flask with deadened fingers.
Behind her, a rustling movement. "Hey, she's back," Len said. "Ol' Olive Oyl is back."
"You feel all right?" asked Barbara.
She felt all right. Her heart was like a drum hanging from piano wire in her chest, slowly, slowly beaten. Her hands and feet were numb, not with cold but with a sultry torpor. Thoughts moved with a tranquil lethargy, her brain a leisurely machine imbedded in swaths of woolly packing.
She felt all right.
Peggy looked across the night with sleepy eyes. They were on a hilltop, the braked convertible crouching on a jutting edge. Far below, the country slept, a carpet of light and shadow beneath the chalky moon.
An arm snake moved around her waist. "Where are we?" she asked him in a languid voice.
"Few miles outside school," Bud said. "How d'ya feel, honey?"
She stretched, her body a delicious strain of muscles. She sagged back, limp, against his arm.
"Wonderful," she murmured with a dizzy smile and scratched the tiny itching bump on her left shoulder. Warmth radiated through her flesh; the night was a sabled glow. There seemed—somewhere—to be a memory, but it crouched in secret behind folds of thick content.
"Woman, you were out," laughed Bud; and Barbara added and Len added, "Were you!" and "Olive Oyl went plunko!"
"Out?" Her casual murmur went unheard.
The flask went around and Peggy drank again, relaxing further as the liquor needled fire through her veins.
"Man, I never saw a loopy dance like that!" Len said.
A momentary chill across her back, then warmth again. "Oh," said Peggy, "that's right. I forgot."
She smiled
"That was what I calls a grand finale!" Len said, dragging back his willing date, who murmured, "Lenny boy."
"L.U.P.," Bud muttered, nuzzling at Peggy's hair. "Son of a gun." He reached out idly for the radio knob.
L.U.P. (Lifeless Undead Phenomenon)—This freak of physiological abnormality was discovered during the war when, following certain germ-gas attacks, many of the dead troops were found erect and performing the spasmodic gyrations which, later, became known as the "loopy's" (L.U.P.'s) dance. The particular germ spray responsible was later distilled and is now used in carefully controlled experiments which are conducted only under the strictest of legal license and supervision.
Music surrounded them, its melancholy fingers touching at their hearts. Peggy leaned against her date and felt no need to curb exploring hands. Somewhere, deep within the jellied layers of her mind, there was something trying to escape. It fluttered like a frantic moth imprisoned in congealing wax, struggling wildly but only growing weaker in attempt as the chrysalis hardened.
Four voices sang softly in the night.
"If the world is here tomorrow I'll be waiting, dear, for you If the stars are there tomorrow I'll be wishing on them too."
Four young voices singing, a murmur in immensity. Four bodies, two by two, slackly warm and drugged. A singing, an embracing—a wordless accepting.
"Star light, star bright Let there be another night."
The singing ended but the song went on.
A young girl sighed.
"Isn't it romantic?" said Olive Oyl.
JACK WILLIAMSON
The Happiest Creature
If your father read science fiction, he very likely counted Jack Williamson high among his favorite writers—as you very likely do today. Young enough to have served with the Air Force in the South Pacific in World War II, Williamson is old enough, and has been writing excellent science fiction stories often enough, to have attained an almost unique status as combination revered old master and bright new star. For more than thirty years his stories have been the delight of hundreds of thousands of readers. Such consistent loyalty demonstrates the existence of talent; such talent implies the ability to create so bright a bit as—
The collector puffed angrily into the commandant's office in the quarantine station, on the moon of Earth. He was a heavy hairless man with shrewd little ice-green eyes sunk deep in fat yellow flesh. He had a genial smile when he was getting what he wanted. Just now he wasn't.
"Here we've come a good hundred light-years, and you can see who I am." He riffled his psionic identification films under the commandant's nose. "I intend to collect at least one of those queer anthropoids, in spite of all your silly red tape."
The shimmering films attested his distinguished scientific attainments. He was authorized to gather specimens for the greatest zoo in the inhabited galaxy, and the quarantine service had been officially requested to expedite his search.
"I see." The commandant nodded respectfully, trying to conceal a weary frown. The delicate business of safe guarding Earth's embryonic culture had taught him to deal cautiously with such unexpected threats. "Your credentials are certainly impressive, and we'll give you whatever help we can. Won't you sit down?"
The collector wouldn't sit down. He was thoroughly annoyed with the commandant. He doubted loudly that the quarantine regulations had ever been intended to apply to such a backward planet as Earth, and he proposed to take his specimen without any further fiddlefaddle.
The commandant, who came from a civilization which valued courtesy and reserve, gasped in spite of himself at the terms that came through his psionic translator, but he attempted to restrain his mounting impatience.
"Actually, these creatures are human," he answered firmly. "And we are stationed here to protect them."