KID STUFF By WINSTON MARKS _Practice makes perfect in some cases--but not in this eerie instance!_ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Infinity Science Fiction, November 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Why me? Why, out of 300 billion people on earth, why did they have to pick on _me_? And if it had to happen, why couldn't it have happened before I met Betty and fell in love with her? You see, Betty and I were to be married tomorrow. We _were_ to have been married. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, indeed! What a ghastly thought that is! How can I explain to Betty--to anyone! I can't face her, and what could I say on the telephone? "Sorry, Betty, I can't marry you. I'm no longer--quite human." Quit joking, Kelley! This is for real. You're sober and awake and it did happen. Marrying Betty is out of the question even if she'd have you the way you are. You're not _that_ two-faced! Quit standing in front of the mirror, naked and shaking, looking for scars, counting your fingers and toes. You've taken a hundred inventories, and it always comes out wrong. And it always will, unless ... unless _they_ come back. But that's hopeless. They'd never find me again. Not out of all the people on earth. Besides, they didn't seem to give a damn. No more than a kid gives a damn what happens to a lump of modelling clay when he gets bored squeezing it into this shape and that. Where did they come from? Or, judging from their "talk," _when_ did they come from? And would it do me any good if I knew? * * * * * I was sitting there in my bachelor apartment, drinking a can of beer and trying to work a crossword puzzle to get sleepy. I wasn't especially jittery like the groom is always supposed to be on the eve of his wedding. Just wide awake at midnight, wanting to get sleepy so I could get some real rest when I went to bed. Just sitting there trying to think of a two-letter word for "sun-god." And that made me think of the gold in Betty's hair when the sun was on it at the beach. And pretty soon I was just staring into space, aching for Betty, wishing the next twelve hours of my life would vanish and we could be together, heading for our little cottage at the lake. Staring into space.... Then it wasn't just space. There were these two big ball bearings in front of me, about three feet in diameter, if you could say they had a diameter. They looked like ball bearings because their surfaces were shiny, mirrorlike steel. But they had unevenly spaced, smooth bumps. Something like the random knobs on a potato, so they weren't really round at all.