He flinched in expectation. But nothing happened. There was no insidious fingering in his brain. A thought developed within him. _Do the Things sleep when their hosts sleep?_ Kent Knight looked thoughtfully at Sammy's bald head and at the crooked beak of a nose. _If they did, maybe Man could win after all._ _It_ chuckled. The suddenness of it plunged Kent Knight back into despair. But then his mind rallied, and he was chuckling himself. _It_ wasn't inside him. _Its_ presence wasn't strong enough. * * * * * Kent turned slowly, and the heart died within him. Bob Mallory, green eyes haunted, stared at him over the bore of an atomic pistol. "I don't know what awful power you have, Knight," his lips twisted painfully, "but it sure played hell with me. I was going to give you a break, but now...." Mallory pushed at the white stud, bringing the atomic gun to full power. "Don't you feel _It_?" Knight asked desperately. "Don't you feel the Thing in your mind?" "I feel nothing, Knight, except that you should be exterminated. Somewhere you have picked up the power to inflict agony by the touch of your hand. I can't let you take it to Earth as I know you're planning to do." "Mary Jo," Knight said sharply. "Mary Jo." For a moment, the haunting look was gone from the green eyes, and Mallory's lips twisted in a smile. The tense fingers on the atomic gun relaxed. In that instant, Knight acted. _Sorry, mind_, he said under his breath, _but we can take care of the Thing. It isn't talking to Bob._ He seized Mallory by the pistol arm, and thought desperately, _Bob, for the love of Mary Jo, remember the left-handed salute._ He caught Mallory's thought, a frightened, anxious thing. _Something's wrong! Something's wrong. I feel it. What is it?_ Kent Knight felt _It_ flow into him, saw Mallory's puzzled face, apologized to his mind and braced himself against the pain. He kept his eyes fixed upon Mallory's face, saw puzzlement spread over it, and laughed at the raging Thing. He would have thought that _It_ could match the previous hurt, but the pain this time.... * * * * * The sound of his own sobs still was echoing in his ears when he awakened. His whole body ached, but his mind was numb and only partially felt the signals. He opened his eyes, and there was Sammy. "Hello," Sammy said matter-of-factly. "I do hope you had a pleasant sleep while I battled over your body." "It wasn't a pleasant sleep, Sammy. But what do you mean, battled over my body?" "Exactly that, my good man," Sammy reported. "They moved us all to the SP ship, taking us to Earth for observation. Earth! Just imagine it, Kent. For the first time in three years, we'll be seeing home." He upended his bottle, his adam's apple bobbing. "And I can obtain some honest-to-gosh Earth whiskey. No more of this stuff I've been distilling myself. Oh joy, oh rapture."