Despite her apprehensions, her next night's slumber was profound and sweet. She hadn't felt so rested and refreshed in weeks. She put the somni-spray (maybe if she'd thought to use it before she wouldn't have had those horrid nightmares) back in the closet and decided that she'd do some soap carving after breakfast. She felt in the mood for it, and Robert would be disappointed if she didn't have something new to show him that she'd carved since he had last been in port. Besides, she might be able to think of the special dish she wanted to make for him while she was working: she'd found from experience that some of her best culinary ideas came to her while she was making a statuette or plaque out of soap. The meal concluded, she got out her set of modeling knives and a couple of cakes of soap. Soap was rather hard to get, since most people used synthetic detergents nowadays, but she knew a little store in Perth Amboy that carried it. This last batch had a lovely texture. Amy rotated the living room on its axis until the light was exactly right, and then sat down in front of her carving desk. What should she make? A statuette? A plaque? A plaque in low relief, a plaque of a flower. Somehow, she didn't want to think about animals right now. She had sketched in the conventionalized Hermodactylus and was beginning to pick it out carefully from the background when it occurred to her that she hadn't been down to the hothouse this morning to see her plants. Why, that would never do, she mustn't neglect them, it was terribly important. Important. (Her head hurt; how dizzy she felt!) She'd better go at once, she'd better ... go.... Cake of soap in one hand, knife in the other, panting a little, Amy set out toward her plants in a stumbling run. She was half-way to the hothouse before it occurred to her to question the impulse which had taken her incontinently from her carving and set her in blind motion toward the hothouse, and by then it was too late. She was no longer a free agent in any sense of the term. The mental grip which had taken the rabbit and the cats to their death had tightened on her inescapably. Remote from her body, in a glassy paralysis of fear and impotence, Amy watched her feet moving briskly down the path. Oh, if she could only cry out, call Hjalmar! She felt the muscles of her throat straining, but no sound came. And now she was standing before the hothouse, and her hand had opened the door. The Rambler was waiting for her. Very slowly, like a man flexing his arm, it reached out one of the stocky branches toward her. Amy saw that at the end of the branch, well hidden under the dark green, glossy leaves, was a slender, translucent, hollow thorn. It was about the size of the hypodermic needle the doctor had used when, in her last year's physical examination, he'd taken a sample of blood.