The viewpoint of the teleo sender changed as the two red beings soared away from their victims and angled slowly up the street. Peter reached out to switch off the scanner, and froze. The girl felt his muscles tense abruptly, looked back at the scene. The Invaders were floating up the sloping side of a tall, pure white structure that dominated the rest. "That's the Atlas building," she said unbelievingly. "Us!" "Yes." Silently, they counted stories as the two beings rose. Forty-five ... forty-six ... forty-seven ... forty-eight. Inevitably, they halted. Then they faded slowly. It was impossible to say whether they had gone through the solid wall, or simply melted away. The man and woman clung together, waiting. There was a thick, oppressive silence, full of small rustlings and other faint sounds that were no longer normal. Then, very near, a man screamed in a high, inhuman voice. The screamed dwindled into a throaty gurgle and died, leaving silence again. Peter's lips were cold with sweat. Tiny nerves in his face and arms were jumping convulsively. His stomach crawled. He thrust the girl away from him and started toward the inner room. "Wait here," he mouthed. She was after him, clinging to his arms. "No, Peter! Don't go in there! _Peter!_" But he pushed her away again, woodenly, and stalked forward. There was a space in the middle of the room where machinery had been cleared away to make room for an incompleted setup. Peter walked down the narrow aisle, past bakelite-sheathed mechanisms and rows of animal cages, and paused just short of it. The two red beings were there, formless bodies hazy in midair, the distorted, hairless skulls in profile, staring at something outside his range of vision. * * * * * Peter forced himself forward another step. Little Harry Kanin, Lorelei's assistant, was crumpled in a corner, half supported by the broad base of an X-ray chamber. His face was flaccid and bloated. His glazed eyes, impassive yet somehow pleading, stared at nothingness straight ahead of him. The Invaders ignored Peter, staring expressionlessly down at Kanin. In a moment Peter realized what they were doing to him. He stood, paralyzed with horror, and watched it happen. The little man's body was sagging, ever so slowly, as if he were relaxing tiredly. His torso was telescoping, bit by bit; his spread legs grew wider and more shapeless, his cheeks caved in and his skull grew gradually flatter. When it was over, the thing that had been Kanin was a limp, boneless puddle of flesh. Peter could not look at it. There was a scream in his throat that would not come out. He was beyond fear, beyond agony. He turned to the still-hovering monsters and said in a terrible voice, "Why? Why?" The nearest being turned slowly to regard him. Its lips did not move, but there was a tiny sound in Peter's brain, a thin, dry whispering. The scream was welling up. He fought it down and listened.