Camhorn's stout companion said thoughtfully, "You believe the birdlike creature you saw arrived by the same route?" "Yes, sir," Dowland said, turning to him. "I think that was simply an accident. It may have been some kind of wild animal that blundered into the contact area and found itself here without knowing what had occurred." "And you feel," the other man went on, "that you yourself were passing near that contact point in the night at the time you seemed to be smelling a swamp?" Dowland nodded. "Yes, sir, I do. Those smells might have been an illusion, but they seemed to be very distinct. And, of course, there are no swamps on the mesa itself." * * * * * Camhorn said, "We'll assume it was no illusion. It seems to fit into the general picture. But, lieutenant, on what are you basing your opinion that Paul Trelawney was a captive of these beings for some time?" "There were several things, sir," Dowland said. "One of them is that when Miss Trelawney regained consciousness in the hospital she didn't remember having made an attempt to get away from me." Camhorn nodded. "That was reported." "She made the attempt," Dowland went on, "immediately after she had taken off her radiation suit to avoid being choked in the dust storm on the way down from the mesa. That is one point." "Go ahead," Camhorn said. "Another is that when I discovered Paul Trelawney early in the morning, he was wearing his radiation suit. Judging by his appearance, he had been in it for hours--and a radiation suit, of course, is a very inconvenient thing to be in when you're hiking around in rough country." "He might," the stout man suggested, "have been afraid of running into a radioactive area." Dowland shook his head. "No, sir. He had an instrument which would have warned him if he was approaching one. It would have made much more sense to carry the suit, and slip into it again if it became necessary. I didn't give the matter much thought at the time. But then the third thing happened. I did not put that in the report because it was a completely subjective impression. I couldn't prove now that it actually occurred." Camhorn leaned forward. "Go ahead." "It was just before the time periods separated and the creature that was approaching Miss Trelawney and myself seemed to drop through the top of the mesa--I suppose it fell back into the other period. I've described it. It was like a fifty-foot gray slug moving along on its tail ... and there were those two rows of something like short arms. It wasn't at all an attractive creature. I was frightened to death. But I was holding a gun--the same gun with which I had stopped another of those things when it chased me during the night. And the trouble was that this time I wasn't going to shoot." "You weren't going to shoot?" Camhorn repeated.