Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Space Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. COLLECTIVUM BY MIKE LEWIS ILLUSTRATED BY SMITH The Oren were one and their strength was legion. They had it all figured out, in their own parasitical, cold-blooded way. But they'd neglected one she-cat of a girl.... * * * * * He crossed the rickety bridge at sundown and saw the squat, fat fellow whipping the girl with a board. His mind leaped to a conclusion: _an Orenian prowler, convincing his victim to hold still_. He clubbed the fat fellow with a rock and toppled him over the seawall into the lagoon where he floated face-down. "Are you stung?" he asked the girl. She picked herself up weakly, and she was a gold-bronze beauty with a black mane of hair and long, narrow eyes. She shook her head to his question and whimpered slightly while she examined her bruises. "He was my husband," she explained. "Not an Orenian?" he gasped. She shook her head. "But he was going to kill me." Morgan shot a horrified glance at the body floating far out on the swift tide. Three sharks were circling lazily. He looked around for a boat, saw none. He swiftly estimated his chances of swimming out after the fat man and towing him in. The chances appeared to be nil. Nevertheless, he began stripping off his shirt. "Don't bother," said the girl. "He was stung last week." [Illustration] Morgan stared at her silently for a moment. She seemed not in the least perturbed. If the man had been stung by an Orenian, he was lost anyway. Ruefully, he rebuttoned his shirt. "I leapt to a bad conclusion." "That he was an Orenian? He would have been, soon. Besides--you _have_ to leap to conclusions nowadays, to stay alive." "You don't seem to worry." "I told you, he was going to kill me." "Why?" "Because--" She paused and stared out across the twilight water, gathering a slow frown. "Because he was crazy." Morgan's eyes flickered over her trim figure, and he thought--_maybe_. She had a trace of Seminole blood, he decided--with the quiet sultriness that it leant to her face. "I'm heading west," he announced. "To the cypress?" She cooly inspected his sturdy arms, clipped features, and the hatchet in his belt-rope. She nodded faintly to herself. "Want company?" He shrugged and turned half away. "It's okay with me." He set off down the road and she followed a few feet to the rear. "Florida coast's getting to be lousy with them," she called. "Orenians?" "Yeah. Whole truckload of them passed through yesterday. On their way to Miami, I guess. One man said he saw an airplane yesterday."