I knew it, somehow, the moment I saw his eyes and hands. His eyes weren't Joe Arnold's blue eyes any longer. They were wet balls of shining black that took up half his face, and they looked hungry. His arms were straight out in front of him; his hands were splayed tensely about a foot from my face. The fingers were thinner and much longer than I could recall Joe's being, and they just _looked_ like antennae or electrodes or something, stretched wide-open that way and quivering, and I just _knew_ that they were picking up and draining off into Joe's body all the elation, the excitement, the warmth that I felt. I looked at him and wondered why I couldn't scream or move a muscle. "Guess I made a boo-boo," he said. He blinked his big black globes of eyes. "No harm done, though." His head had thinned down, just like his fingers, and now came to a peak on top. He had practically no shoulders. He smiled at me, and I saw long black hair growing on the insides of his lips. _What are you?_ I screamed at him to myself. Joe licked his hairy lips and folded those long inhuman hands in front of him. "It hurts like hell," he said in a not-human voice, "to be _slizzing_ you and then have you chill off on me that way, Jerry. But it's my own fault, I guess." * * * * * The door-bell rang--two soft tones. Joe got up and let in the other members of our Friday night poker group. I tried to move and couldn't. Fred raised his eyebrows when he saw Joe's face and hands. "Jerry isn't here yet? Relaxing a little?" Then he saw me sitting there and whistled. "Oh, you slipped up, eh?" Joe nodded. "You were late, and I was hungry, so I thought I'd go ahead and take my share. I gave him a big kick, and he really poured it out ... radiated like all hell. I took it in so fast that I _fluhped_ and lost my plasmic control." "We might as well eat now, then," Ray said, "before we get down to playing cards." He sat down across the table, his eyes--now suddenly enormous and black--eagerly on me. "I hate like hell waiting until you deal him a big pot--" "_No_," Joe said sharply. "Too much at one time, and he'd wonder what hit him. We'll do it just like always ... one of us at a time, and only a little at a time. Get him when he rakes in the loot. They never miss it when they feel like that." "He's right," Fred said. "Take it easy, Ray." He went over to the sideboard and began mixing drinks. Joe looked down at me with his black end-of-eggplant eyes. "Now to fix things," he said. ... I blinked and shook my head. "You owe me fifteen bucks!" I said. "Lord," Joe wailed, "did this gonif just take me!" Ray groaned sympathetically from the chair across the table, where he'd been watching the slaughter. "And how!" Joe pushed fifteen blue chips at me. I began stacking them. "Well, that's life," I grinned. Then I shook my head again. "It's the damnedest thing...."