He lifted his dirty face, streaked with tears, to where he knew Earth must be circling its familiar old sun. He whispered, "Thing, all my life I have feared pain. Ever since I was a kid back on Earth and my pup dug his needle teeth in my hand, I have hated and feared it. "But peace at your price is not for me. If you don't mind," and Knight's full, almost sensual lips which loved pleasure so well twisted wryly as he spoke, "I'll take the pain." He got it.... * * * * * It was Sammy's hoarse breath, saturated with liquor fumes, that was his first sensation when he finally crawled wearily back the molten road from his hell of pain. His mind listened avidly, reaching out tenuous fingers, searching every nook and cranny of Kent Knight's brain, seeking out the Thing. The fingers grew surer, swifter as they worked through the brain, finding only pain. Then his desperate mind relaxed. Pain was something it understood; it could take care of that. Knight opened his eyes. Sammy's blood-flecked black ones, popping as usual from his flushed face, stared into his eyes from only inches away. "Cripes," muttered Knight. "Sammy, you're stinking drunk again!" Sammy pulled his face back far enough so Knight could focus his eyes. He rubbed a huge blunt paw on his shiny pate, transferred the paw to his broken nose, tried unsuccessfully to straighten the sharp curve it made to the right before he answered, very slowly and very distinctly. "You know, Kent, I do believe that you have made a highly astute and highly correct observation. I think, however, that you are guilty of an understatement when you say only stinking drunk. I have never in my binge-ridden life been as intoxicated as I am at this present moment." He waved his paw at Knight. "But, Kent, there is something very definitely wrong. Something is lousing up the usual beatific feeling I have after three quarts. Honest to gosh, Kent, I have been drinking for three days and three nights, but I can't go to sleep. I can't pass out. I can't get happy." He shook his bald head, and the wall-light made it gleam like a highly polished egg. "Hell, Kent," he exploded suddenly. "All I do is drink and, honest to gosh, it gets tiresome lifting and dropping a bottle all the time, day and night. But I can't stop. My mind keeps nagging at me to stay drunk. It's just like there was somebody in me with me." He was shaking his head like a puzzled child. Kent Knight sat up slowly, looked first at his feet, then wiggled them. They were healed all right. At last he looked at Sammy. _So_ they'd _got him, too. How many of the others have the parasites? And why has my Thing left me?_ Kent Knight stood up slowly, warily, fearing that the Thing would make his muscles flaccid, limp, uncontrollable by the wee bit of mind that still was his. He looked around the sleeping cubicle he shared with Sammy. He looked at Sammy's bald pate, the harried black eyes, remembering.