Not until they were inside the room, and the door locked behind them, did either Connor or Paley say another word. Birrel's glance darted around. The room, an ice-cold concrete cubicle, had nothing in it at all but a hospital table on which lay a long something covered by a sheet. From it came a strongly chemical smell. He felt a wave of relief. So that was why he had been brought here with all the hush-hush--to identify a dead someone? It was the only possible explanation-- "Six weeks ago," Connor was saying, "near one of our most secret atomic depots, a prowler was challenged. He tried to escape. He was shot and instantly killed." He said then, "All right, Paley. Uncover him." Paley went to the table. He took hold of the white sheet. His hand trembled a little, and there were sudden beads of sweat on his forehead despite the freezing cold of the room. He looked as though he did not want at all to carry out the order. Connor's harsh breathing was loud. Birrel wondered why they were so affected. Surely not by the sight of a dead man--they, even more than he, had seen plenty of dead men in the war years. The sheet was pulled halfway back. A naked man lay on the table, his dark eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. He was fairly young, black-haired, with faintly swarthy skin and a blocky, undistinguished face. He looked vaguely familiar.... With a shock, Birrel realized that the dead man looked not unlike himself. Not a twin-like resemblance, but still, a strong resemblance. He looked up quickly to Connor. He was amazed by the expression in Connor's heavy face. The lines in it had deepened. His half-narrowed eyes stared almost hauntedly at the dead man. Paley had moved back from the table, and there was a strain in his gray face as he looked across the body at them. "He was a spy," Connor said. "There's no doubt about that at all. And a very skillful one, to get into that guarded area." Birrel asked, "From what country?" Connor looked at him. He said, "From no country. You see, we ran a post-mortem on him, and--" He stopped. He looked as though he didn't want to say what he was going to say, as though he had to force himself against a whole lifetime's beliefs and thinking, to say this thing. "He wasn't an Earth man at all. He was from somewhere else. Some other world." CHAPTER II Birrel still couldn't take it in. Two hours had passed, and he sat in Connor's office, listening, arguing, still not believing. Paley was there, hunched as though half asleep in a chair in the corner. There was another man there, a young man named Garlock, with glittering eyeglasses and teeth and a sharp voice. But Connor did most of the talking. "I _know_ it's fantastic," he said, for the tenth time. "But it's so." "But he looks human--," Birrel said, again.