Web bent down to look at the man. He wasn't dead, but he was out cold. Scared damn near to death. Web was amused, grinned once very swiftly. If this was a sample, these aliens weren't much. He picked up the old man, light and wispy as a bundle of leaves, and carried him under one arm into the big living room which opened off of the hall. He thought better of turning on a light, slumped the old man on a couch and sat down beside him. A street bulb outside the house threw a white soft glow of light into the room. That was enough to see by for his purposes. He moved over on the couch to a position from which he could see the door. And then, in darkness, he waited. It was several minutes before the old man moved. Web had time to think, to form a plan. The first thing that moved in Web's mind was a wonder of why in heck the old man should have fainted, and then it occurred to him that this thing here was alien, truly alien, and probably had a science so far beyond ours as to be impossible to comprehend. He would undoubtedly be long-lived. Web thought; could just as well be immortal. But anyway, no matter what else he was, it was pretty sure that he lived a long while, and death, any death, was a rare thing among his people. Hence the unusual, to an Earthman, fear of dying. It figured. Humans fear dying all right. But a lot of them face it every day as part of their jobs, because life on Earth must be something like a jungle compared to the germ-free, war-free, super-sanitary world of the future. Death to a man like this would be quite a fearful thing. And so the collapse. And a weapon for Web. He smiled in the darkness, cruelly, as the alien stirred. He would find out from this man whatever he wanted to know. Awake at last, with Web above him like a huge black mountain, the old man nearly fainted again. But he managed to recover slowly, in a state of really pitiful terror. He had known from the beginning that Web was not a Galactic--a Galactic would never have approached in person. The thought helped him to survive. But even then this Earthman was a barbarian, an unaccountable man with no scruples against killing, and Web was perfectly right about the fear of death. The alien talked. For a while he babbled, but then it began to make sense. He told about the coming extinction of his race, and the plan for interbreeding which would save it. He had been on Earth, he said, for several years, choosing specimens for test purposes. The tests had proved positive and the first step of selection was almost completed. He had been stationed as a real doctor with a real practice, so that he would have the opportunity of giving preliminary physical examinations and passing on the names of potentially acceptable candidates. And there were many doctors like him spread all over the world. Since the United States was by far the Earth's healthiest country of any size, most of the selecting had been done right here.