The two-story Promethean Laboratory building still stood, and across the fence beyond some of the familiar houses were still there. King teetered toward one of them, back toward the laboratory, and then again toward the house. He let out two high-pitched barks, and cocked his ears, listening. There was no answering sound. A sick whine grew in his throat, until the wind suddenly shifted. The smell was stronger this time. It was wrong--incredibly wrong--but it was beyond mistake. Doc was here! And with the instinctive identification of wind direction, he knew it had to be the laboratory. The door was closed, but it snapped open with a groan of hinges as King hit it in full leap. He went rolling over and over across the floor of the littered hall, clawing against the stone tiles instinctively, while his mind rocked at the waves of human scent and the human voice that was beating into his ears! The smell was so strong to his unaccustomed nostrils that he had no directional sense; at first the echoes along the hollow corridors made it hard to locate the voice, also. He cocked his ears, studying it. It was wrong, like the smell--yet it was the voice of Doc! “... as wrong as before. It didn’t matter. It was better than starving like rabbits under the biocast. They were falling within minutes after the cable ...” King dove through the passage and into the room beyond. The voice went on without pause, coming from a box in front of him. And now the metallic quality under it and the lack of the random ultrasonic overtones of a real voice registered on him. It was only another false voice--another of the things men had, but which he had almost forgotten. Doc’s voice--without Doc! The sound dropped to the bottom of his awareness. King swung around the room. There was something in the scent that made his neck muscles tense, but he knew Doc was there. His eyes adjusted to the glaring light inside, while his nose tried to cut a trail through the thickness of the odors. Both senses located the source at the same time. Beside the big machine with the slow-spinning rolls of tape there was a bed covered with ragged blankets. A hand lay on the edge of the tape machine, twisted into the controls, and an arm led down at the figure below on the bed. King’s tail flailed the floor, and his legs doubled for the leap that would carry him into Doc’s arms. But the motion was never completed. The wrongness of the scent and the motionless figure was too great. The tail grew limp as he crouched to the floor, inching his way forward, his whine barely audible. He raised his nose at last to the other hand that lay dropping over the side of the bed, and his tongue came out. The hand was cool and stiff, and there was no response to welcome King’s caress.