Keren returned his smile, her eyes like a moonless night. "If you don't come back, I'll kill the Earth girl inside." She threw back her head, hair swirling at her pale throat like the flow of black oil. "Now kiss me--and go." It was a choice; Keren's life or Dorothy's. If he got the ship and Keren ran for the woods, his guns would have to find _her_ before they turned on the house. Then he could bargain with Sade by radio. "I'll owe you a thousand kisses," he said, opened the door, and darted out into the sunlight. Then it was raining red heat as liquid fire spurted around his pounding legs. A bare twenty yards ahead, the cruiser waited, glinting silver in the sun. His pants leg caught fire and he could feel its blistering heat, fanned by the wind, as he streaked across the gravel. Then he saw it too late. A sheen of crimson in the air. Streaks of red, painted on nothing. _Johnny's blood!_ Flame from the guns behind him sizzled on the invisible glass as Norman, unable to check the piston power of his legs, crashed into the invisible wall of what had been Johnny's prison. His forehead hit the glass with a hollow ring. Clutching the wall with both hands, he slid down to the gravel and into darkness for his second failure that afternoon. Roughly, they dragged him back to the house. But he wasn't out. Through the searing pain in his head he had fought back to consciousness as the patrolmen touched him. His mind limped through the pain, trying to figure out what to do now as they dragged him into the big front room and dropped him on the floor. "Imbeciles! Careless fools!" The voice opened Norman's eyes, banished the throbbing in his head as he struggled to his feet. But the two patrolmen locked his arms behind him. "How did he get out!" The fat man glared from Norman to the patrolmen. Swart stood beside him. "There were only two keys to that room," Swart suggested. Sade's florid face paled, then his button eyes flickered with the cold cruelty of a wild animal. "Find Keren," he said softly. "Bring her to my laboratory." Rick's eyes showed helpless fury as his arms tightened in the patrolmen's grasp. "Keren had nothing to do with it," he said. "I picked the lock." Sade reached out and slapped his face repeatedly with his open palm. Hands clamped behind him, Norman took it, barely feeling the stinging blows, their impact light under the impact of what he saw. "Yes! It's real!" Sade halted his slapping and, laughing like a fiend, rolled up his sleeves. He held his hands up close before Norman's eyes. Norman shuddered, staring at Sade's right hand. Slightly smaller, ghastly white but firm, where the stump of Sade's right arm had been was now flesh. Blood coursed through the bulging veins, a pale hand extended pudgy fingers. * * * * *