... and that last attack was a doozer! I wrecked a week's work looking for the little man who wasn't there. The urge to kill is becoming more intense. I want to destroy the author of my misery. Even though I am still a balanced personality--polite language for being sane--I can't take much more of this. I will not go mad, but I will go into the adrenal syndrome unless I can end this soon. Nothing I have done seems to help. For a while I was sure that the music tapes held the pressure back, but the enemy is used to them now. I am still working on the subspace beacon. The radio and most of the control linkages have gone into it. It looks like an electronicist's nightmare, but if the survival manual is right, it will work. It has to work! I dread the time when I shall have to cannibalize the recorder. Can't help thinking that Shakespeare was right when he wrote that bit about music soothing the savage breast. It may not soothe the enemy, for it isn't savage, but it certainly soothes me, even though there's something repetitive about it after a half a hundred playings. My breast's savage all right. Fact is, it's downright primitive when an attack starts. I can feel them coming now. I keep wondering how much longer I can last. Guess I'm getting morbid.... More nightmares last night. I drowned three times and a purple octopus gave me an enema. Woke up screaming, but got an idea from it. Funny that I never thought of it before. Water's the fountainhead of life, and there is no real reason for assuming my enemy is terrestrial. He could just as well be aquatic. I'll find out today--maybe. Just to be doing something positive--even thinking--makes me feel better.... * * * * * _Got it!_ I know where it is! And I know how to kill it. Fact is, I've already done it! Now there's no more pressure. God--what a relief! This morning I burned the meadow and cut down the nearest trees surrounding this clearing and nothing happened. I expected that. Then I checked the water. Nothing in the stream, but the pond was _green_!--filled almost to the edge with a mass of algae! A hundred-foot platter of sticky green slime, cohesive as glue and ugly as sin. It _had_ to be it--and it was. I never saw algae that cohered quite like that. So I gave it about fifty gallons of rocket juice--red fuming nitric acid--right in the belly. Then I sat down and let the tension flow out of me, revelling in its pain, laughing like crazy as it turned brown--and the pressure disappeared. No tension at all now. The place is as quiet and peaceful as the grave. I want to laugh and laugh--and run through the burned meadow and roll in the ashes so grateful am I for my deliverance.