"Some sort of creature in it, wasn't there?" Knots flickered into being and vanished with bewildering speed. It seemed to him suddenly that more than twine was being manipulated, and more than empty air tied and loosed. As if the knots were somehow creating an influence, as an electric current along a twisted wire creates a complex magnetic field. "No," he said, and then made himself chuckle, "unless you count in a stray gargoyle or two." * * * * * Thunder ripped and crashed deafeningly. Lightning might have struck in the neighborhood. Tansy did not move a muscle in response. "That was a Lulu," he started to say. Then, as the thunder crash trailed off in rumblings and there was a second's lull in the rain, he heard the sound of something leaping heavily down from the front edge of the porch toward that part of the wall where the large low window was set. He got to his feet and walked toward the window, as if to look out at the storm. As he passed Tansy's chair he saw that her rippling fingers were creating a strange knot resembling a flower, with seven loops for petals. She stared like a sleepwalker. Then he was at the window, shielding her. The next lightning flash showed him what he knew he must see. It crouched, facing the window. The head was still blank and crude as an unfinished skull. In the ensuing surge of blackness, the sphere of alien thoughts expanded with instant swiftness, until it occupied his entire mind. He glanced behind him. Tansy's hands were still. The strange seven-looped knot was poised between them. Just as he was turning back, he saw the hands jerk apart and the loops whip in like a seven-fold snare--and hold. And in that same moment of turning he saw the street brighten like day and a great ribbon of lightning split the tall elm opposite and fork into several streams which streaked across the street toward the window and the stony form upreared against it. Then--blinding light, and a tingling electrical surge through his whole body. But in his mind's eye was indelibly traced the incandescent track of the lightning, whose multiple streams, racing toward the upreared stony form, had converged upon it as if drawn together by a seven-fold knot. The sphere of alien thoughts expanded beyond his skull at a dizzy rate, vanished. His gasping, uncontrollable laughter rose above the dying reverberations of the titan thunder blast. He dragged open the window, pulled a bridge lamp up to it, jerked the cover from the lamp so its light flooded outward. "Look, Tansy!" he called, his words mixed with the manic laughter. "Look, what those crazy students have done!" She _must_ be made to think it was a joke. "Those frat men, I bet, I kidded in class. Look what they dragged down from campus and stuck in our front yard. Of all the crazy things--we'll have to call Buildings & Grounds to take it away tomorrow."