He sat there, absently eating his soup and staring ahead at the console. He noted he was beginning to get used to the harsh outlines it presented in this space. Suddenly he realized there was a red light on the board. He put the bowl of soup carefully on the deck and went over to the transmitter where a loop of tape was endlessly repeating itself, apparently broadcasting. He could not remember having inserted it. The empty spool lying beside the transmitter read AUTOMATIC DISTRESS CODE. He understood all the words, all right, but put together they didn't seem to make any sense. AUTOMATIC DISTRESS CODE. What would it be for? Why would such a thing be broadcast? If you were in distress, you surely knew it without transmitting it. He shook his head. Things were very bad with him. He was profoundly disturbed by his loss of control. Performing all sorts of meaningless actions without volition.... And now, with this tape, he had not even been conscious of the act, could not remember it. He went back to the control chair and finished his bowl of soup. Thinking about it, his meaningless activities had all been centered around one thing, this odd transmit-receive apparatus, this radio. He had looked at it before, and he realized it was very carefully constructed, and complicated. The wiring itself confused him. And more than that, he could not determine any possible use such a thing might have. Thinking about it gave him the same prickly sensation at the back of his neck as when he thought about the nonsense words in the songs he knew. "Wife." Things like that. He rubbed the back of his neck hard, until it hurt. He realized his headache had almost gone away when he secured the ports, but now it was coming back again. Another light flashed on the console, and a melodic "beep--beep" began to sound from somewhere behind the panel. Automatically he reached forward and flipped a switch, and the "beep--beep" stopped. Without surprise, he noticed it was the switch marked Receive. So. When the light flashed and the "beep--beep" sounded he was supposed to throw that Receive switch. Presumably, then, he should receive something. Was that right? He looked around the control room, but nothing happened. Just on the edge of his consciousness there was a faint sussuration, but when he turned his attention to it, it disappeared. There was no sound. But when he thought of something else, it came back again. It was like an image caught in the corner of his eye. There was nothing there, but sometimes you thought you caught just a flash of something out of the corner of your eye. Like this afternoon.... He shuddered at the recollection. In all his life, he could not remember anything that had driven him into such pure panic as the loathsome invisible touches he had felt. What kind of creatures were these? This was Earth. This was his home, it was where he belonged, and he couldn't remember anything about invisible....