THE VANISHER By MICHAEL SHAARA _He was expendable, this Web Hilton, this young officer with the strange heritage. And so it was that he was ordered out into space where he saw the uncovered stars, and met the naked alien, and became the first man in history to die more than once._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The two girls stayed to see the picture a second time and when they got out of the movie it was after midnight and raining and they couldn't get a cab. Louise bought a paper and put it over her head and ran off, laughing, in the direction of Albany Street. Ivy folded her kerchief and turned up Livingstone. She did not run. There was nothing wrong with rain, or with getting wet, and she enjoyed the coolness. She plunged her hands deeply into her coat pockets and did not bother to walk quickly at all. The night was very dark, made darker by the rain, which was heavy and full. But Ivy was unconcerned. She was a small-town girl, country bred, with three huge brothers who knew every man in the county. She had grown up with a strong belief in the natural goodness of things, of people, and although she was young and slim and extremely pretty she had no worry now of walking home in the dark. This was her home town. She had lived here all her life. She passed by huge bushes and under the great clutching branches of trees without thinking at all of the things which could, and did, lurk behind them. She turned up Elmwood Road with her mind at rest, filled with skirts and dances and taffy pulls. And her faith in people, as it turned out, was justified. For the long arm that reached out of the bushes, the darkness, and plucked her with a rush into a deep black silence, was an arm of flesh, and an arm of bone, but it was very far from human. * * * * * The door opened at the top of the ramp and the colonel peered cautiously inside. "Nobody here but us chickens," he said, sputtering in the rain, and the guard dropped the muzzle of the machine pistol and saluted. The colonel stomped in onto the concrete floor, grumbling. He was followed by an enormous lieutenant, an immense, looming, cliff-shouldered man well over six feet tall. The lieutenant had to duck coming through the door, cast a downward salute to the startled guard. The colonel moved out from under the lieutenant's dripping overhang, pointed a lean wet finger down the hall. "He here?" "Yessir," said the guard, eyeing the monstrous lieutenant with respect.