"You realize that you're probably as big a liability with us as you were trying to find us?"

I grunted. "I could always blow my brains out."

"That's no solution and you know it."

"Then give me an alternative."

Phillip shrugged. "Now that you're here, you're here. It's obvious that you know too much, Steve. You should have left well enough alone."

"I didn't know well enough. Besides, I couldn't have been pushed better if someone had slipped me--" I stopped, stunned at the idea and then I went on in a falter, "--a post-hypnotic suggestion."

"Steve, you'd better come in and meet Marian. Maybe that's what happened."

"Marian?" I said hollowly.

"She's a high-grade telepath. Master of psi, no less."

My mind went red as I remembered how I'd catalogued her physical charms on our first meeting in an effort to find out whether she were esper or telepath. Marian had fine control; her mind must have positively seethed at my invasion of her privacy. I did not want to meet Marian face to face right now, but there wasn't a thing I could do about it.

Phillip left his pump and waved for me to follow. He took off in his jeep and I trailed him to the farmhouse. We went through a dim area that was almost the ideal shape for a home. The ring was not complete, but the open part faced the fields behind the house so that good privacy was ensured for all practical purposes.

On the steps of the verandah stood Marian.

Sight of her was enough to make me forget my self-accusation of a few moments ago. She stood tall and lissome, the picture of slender, robust health.

"Come in, Steve," she said, holding out her hand. I took it. Her grip was firm and hard, but it was gentle. I knew that she could have pulped my hand if she squeezed hard.

"I'm very happy to see that rumor is wrong and that you're not--suffering--from Mekstrom's Disease," I told her.

"So now you know, Steve. Too bad."

"Why?"

"Because it adds a load to all of us. Even you." She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, then said, "Well, come on in and relax, Steve. We'll talk it out."

We all went inside.

On a divan in the living room, covered by a light blanket, resting in a very light snooze, was a woman. Her face was turned away from me, but the hair and the line of the figure and the--

#Catherine!#

She turned and sat up at once, alive and shocked awake. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes with swift knuckles and then looked over her hands at me.

"Steve!" she cried, and all the world and the soul of her was in the throb of her voice.

XII

Catherine took one unsteady step towards me and then came forward with a rush. She hurled herself into my arms, pressed herself against me, held me tight.

It was like being attacked by a bulldozer.

Phillip stayed my back against her headlong rush or I would have been thrown back out through the door, across the verandah, and into the middle of the yard. The strength of her crushed my chest and wrenched my spine. Her lips crushed mine. I began to black out from the physical hunger of a woman who did not know the extent of her new-found body. All that Catherine remembered was that once she held me to the end of her strength and yearned for more. To hold me that way now meant--death.

Her body was the same slenderness, but the warm softness was gone. It was a flesh-warm waist of flexible steel. I was being held by a statue of bronze, animated by some monster servo-mechanism. This was no woman.

Phillip and Marian pried her away from me before she broke my back.

Phillip led her away, whispering softly in her ear. Marian carried me to the divan and let me down on my face gently. Her hands were gentle as she pressed the air back into my lungs and soothed away the awful wrench in my spine. Gradually I came alive again, but there was pain left that made me gasp at every breath.

Then the physical hurt went away, leaving only the mental pain; the horror of knowing that the girl that I loved could never hold me in her arms. I shuddered. All that I wanted out of this life was marriage with Catherine, and now that I had found her again, I had to face the fact that the first embrace would kill me.

I cursed my fate just as any invalid has cursed the malady that makes him a responsibility and a burden to his partner instead of a joy and helpmeet. Like the helpless, I didn't want it; I hadn't asked for it; nor had I earned it. Yet all I could do was to rail against the unfairness of the unwarranted punishment.

Without knowing that I was asking, I cried out, "But why?" in a plaintive voice.

In a gentle tone, Marian replied: "Steve, you cannot blame yourself.

Catherine was lost to you before you met her at her apartment that evening. What she thought to be a callous on her small toe was really the initial infection of Mekstrom's Disease. We're all psi-sensitive to Mekstrom's Disease, Steve. So when you cracked up and Dad and Phil went on the dead run to help, they caught a perception of it. Naturally we had to help her."

I must have looked bitter.

"Look, Steve," said Phillip slowly. "You wouldn't have wanted us not to help? After all, would you want Catherine to stay with you? So that you could watch her die at the rate of a sixty-fourth of an inch each hour?"

"h.e.l.l," I snarled, "Someone might have let me know."

Phillip shook his head. "We couldn't Steve. You've got to understand our viewpoint."

"To heck with your viewpoint!" I roared angrily. "Has anybody ever stopped to consider mine?" I did not give a hoot that they could wind me around a doork.n.o.b and tuck my feet in the keyhole. Sure, I was grateful for their aid to Catherine. But why didn't someone stop to think of the poor benighted case who was in the accident ward? The bird that had been traipsing all over h.e.l.l's footstool trying to get a line on his lost sweetheart. I'd been through the grinder; questioned by the F.B.I., suspected by the police; and I'd been the guy who'd been asked by a grieving, elderly couple, "But can't you remember, son?" Them and their stinking point of view!

"Easy, Steve," warned Phillip Harrison.

"Easy nothing! What possible justification have you for putting me through my jumps?"

"Look, Steve. We're in a precarious position. We're fighting a battle against an unscrupulous enemy, an undercover battle, Steve. If we could get something on Phelps, we'd expose him and his Medical Center like that. Conversely, if we slip a millimeter, Phelps will clip us so hard that the sky will ring. He--d.a.m.n him--has the Government on his side. We can't afford to look suspicious."

"Couldn't you have taken me in too?"

He shook his head sadly. "No," he said. "There was a bad accident, you know. The authorities have every right to insist that each and every automobile on the highway be occupied by a minimum of one driver. They also believe that for every accident there must be a victim, even though the damage is no more than a bad case of fright."

I could hardly argue with that. Changing the subject, I asked, "but what about the others who just drop out of sight?"

"We see to it that plausible letters of explanation are written."

"So who wrote me?" I demanded hotly.

He looked at me pointedly. "If we'd known about Catherine before, she'd have--disappeared--leaving you a trite letter. But no one could think of a letter to explain her disappearance from an accident, Steve."