For a moment he felt sorry for her. Apparently she was thanking him for the bed. Fat boy had evidently taken the best of everything and given her the crumbs of Lazarus. Such were the mores of chaos. But Morgan quit congratulating himself. He had chosen the floor because it looked cleaner than the bed. He was awakened before dawn by the rapid sputter of rain on the roof. It dribbled through several holes and spread across the floor. He sat up shivering. Shera was a glowing cigarette near the window. "Can't sleep?" he asked. "I'm scared," she answered. Faintly he could see her profile silhouetted against the pane. She was watching outside the cabin. "I've got a funny feeling--that something's out there." "Heard anything?" "Just a feeling." Morgan felt ice along his sides. "Shera--do you get hunches, feelings, intuitions very often?" His voice was hushed, worried. "Yeah." "Have you always?" "No--I don't think I used to." He was silent for a long time; then he hissed, "Are you _sure_ you haven't been stung recently?" Another brief silence. Then the girl laughed softly. A wave of prickles crept along his scalp. "I've got the shotgun in my lap, Morgan." * * * * * "How long?" he whispered in horror. "Six months." "_Six months!_ You're lying! You'd be fully depersonalized! You'd be in complete liaison with Oren!" "But I'm not. Sometimes I can feel when they're near. That's all." "But if it were true--your brain would be replaced by the parasite!" "I wouldn't know. Apparently it's not." Morgan couldn't believe it. But he sat stunned in the darkness. What was this thing in the cabin with him? Was she still human? He began inching along the wall, but a board creaked. "I don't want to shoot you, Morgan. Don't rush me. Besides--there's something outside, I tell you." "Why should _you_ worry about that?--if you've really been stung." "The first sting evidently didn't take. The next one might. That's why." "You weren't sick?" "During the incubation period? I was sick. Plenty sick." Morgan shook his head thoughtfully. If she had been through the violent illness of the parasite's incubation, she should now have one of the squeaking little degenerates in place of a brain. The fibers of the small animals grew slowly along the neural arcs, replacing each nerve cell, forming a junction at each synapse. There was reason to believe that the parasite preserved the memories that had been stored in the brain, but they became blended with all the other individualities that comprised Oren, thereby losing the personality in the mental ocean of the herd-mind. Was it possible that if one invader were out of mental contact with the herd-mind, that the individual host might retain its personality? But how could she be out of contact? "They're getting close to the door," she whispered. Morgan gripped his hatchet and waited, not knowing who would be the greater enemy--the girl or the prowlers.