Johnson explained quickly that the guard Zeke had shoved was dead. "It has to be straightened out, that's all, Zeke. Then things will be all right." Johnson saw the shape back there in the dim wet shadows under the wall, crouching, hardly distinguishable. He saw Zeke for what he was, a lost stranger, helpless, incomprehensible. Too bewildered now to understand, too weary to see anything, too anxious perhaps to care. Alien, sick, abominably unhappy, taken out of his knowledge, bitter in utter loneliness, his home so far away--so very far away. It moved toward him, rising up, rising taller, its undulating hugeness bending and swaying above the brush. It stood unsteady on its legs, its rubberoid flesh dripping and shining. Surrounded by the wet night, Johnson saw him as something cast out mysteriously by the sea on some alien shore to perish in the supreme disaster of loneliness. Zeke's body shivered all over suddenly. Johnson sucked in his breath, felt the quick sick emptiness. He turned. Shapes running, footsteps slipping and scrambling toward them out of the brush. The glint and shine of uniforms and guns. They had trailed him after all-- "Stop, don't move! We'll shoot!" "Don't!" Johnson yelled frantically. "For God's sake, listen." Zeke's grotesque body crashed backward and Johnson saw the bursts of orange flame flowering to horror in his brain. Shots blared flatly. Zeke went up, over the wall and was gone on the other side. Johnson scrambled into the brush. He felt the gun in his hand and he felt himself squeeze the trigger once, twice. He was screaming. "Stay back, you crazy fools! I'll shoot anyone I see moving in here!" "What's the matter with you--hey--that you, Johnson?" "He's flipped," someone shouted. "Johnson! You'll get yourself in a lot of trouble. You might kill somebody." "He's crazy," someone said. "You guys crawl back and go round into the hospital and round up the Martian." Johnson crawled along the wall on his hands and knees. He kept crawling and then, wedging himself between a tree trunk and the wall, edged up the wall, over it, and dropped to the other side. He ran across the grounds desperately looking for Zeke. He saw nothing on the grounds, no sign of anything or anybody. Then he saw Zeke up there in the gray drizzle, three stories up on the fire-escape platform. He didn't yell. He ran and then he felt the harsh wet cold of the metal as he climbed. He followed wet tracks down the floor of the hall, found a door. As he started to open it he saw the police come around the corner at the other end of the hall. They stopped when they saw him. Johnson heard laughter coming from beyond the door. The laughter got louder. The shrill, high, spontaneous and abandoned laughter of children. The police moved cautiously toward him. Johnson opened the door and went in, shut it quickly behind him. A nurse came over to Johnson, smiled at him.