"We all are." She said it quietly, and with her simple words I knew for the first time that I was not alone in my terror of the unknown. We were all afraid. I put my arm around her shoulders. Her long light hair tingled on the back of my hand. I loved her very much, and so I tormented myself. "I've been thinking of Jerry Wolfe, and of how alone he must have felt. He didn't have six pals behind him when the first alien fouled his view." "Poor old Jerry," she said. "You were engaged to him, weren't you?" "Yes, back in prehistoric times, before Jennifer Tregennis caught him. Jennifer was one of _them_, you know." "Yes, I know. D'you still love Jerry?" "How do you mean? Of course I do." I didn't say anything. She went on after a moment. "But I'm not in love with him, if that's what you're driving at. Good heavens, Will, do you see me as a moony widow-in-name-only? I've got more sense than that." My heart lifted. I patted her on the back. "Come along young Marion. Let's go plan strategy with the troops." We went up the stairs to our sitting room, and I stood before the six of them and took the reins into my hands. I had a job to do. CHAPTER V "It comes to this, then," said Alec. "You mean to go and mingle with the enemy, and try to discover weak spots in 'em, eh?" "I don't see any other way to begin. We've been scratching for a plan ever since we first heard of the usurpers; and nobody's come up with one, for the good reason that we have nothing to go on. Oh, granted we know we can kill their worldly bodies and send them home. But I hardly think we're going to do nothing but roam the countryside killing off puppets for the next thirty years." "Remember what Jerry told me--that once one of them was sent back to his own dimension, he could evidently still communicate with those who were left here? That the aliens who're attached to human bodies exist in both dimensions equally?" "Yes, Alec, I was thinking of that a few minutes ago. It means that under no circumstances can I let any one of them discover I can see them; for even if I killed him here, he could go around his silver-lined dimension telling all his pals about me. It means working in the dark, from behind, anonymously. It means I've got to be circumspect as Satan. We all have to be circumspect." "Beg pardon, sir," put in Johnson, "but when do the rest of us have a try at warping our eyeballs?" "You don't, Sergeant," I said flatly. "What d'you mean, we don't?" cried Alec. "Of course we do." "No, son, not for a while, anyhow. It's a hundred to one, or a million, more likely, to one, that we couldn't duplicate the exact injuries again. We can't blind anyone else now. One of us seeing them may be enough--or if he isn't, then half a dozen might not be any better."