She was unsurpassably young and vibrant, a temptress with sultry eyes and heaving bosom. Her lips were full, red and curving, her hair silvery blonde, her skin fair and smooth, unmarred by the tiniest blemish. She gave a little cry when he seized her. At the touch of his hands on her back and thighs a spasmed aliveness took possession of her and she writhed in his clasp with an ardor that drove the blood in torrents from his heart. Her lips were fire, her kisses a burning that dissolved the barrier of flesh where their tongues met in molten sweetness. Her body molded itself to his, pressing against the hard muscles of his chest and thighs. His own passion equaled hers for an instant and then surpassed it, and in the fierce, unrelenting masculinity of his embrace she became suddenly passive, content to surrender completely to his guidance. But in that very surrender there was a continuing wild responsiveness, a fervor that matched his own, as if she had been caught up in a wilderness of desire where bright bursts of lightning forked down and the trees were sheathed in flame. He had lifted her up and was carrying her toward the bed, the passion seething within him making him oblivious of his surroundings and blotting from his mind all thought of Janice, when his hand on the throbbing warm flesh of her thigh, just above the knee, encountered a startling coldness. An obstruction and a coldness--something solid and very hard which sent a shock through his arm when he touched it. For an instant his fingers tingled and he felt a sudden, very acute stab of pain, as if he had touched an open electric circuit. It was followed by a burning sensation, and a distinct mental shock, a feeling of blank bewilderment verging on horror. Suddenly the room became very real again, and he remembered that it was Janice's room, Janice's bed. A sickening sense of guilt and self-reproach swept over him. But only for the space of a dropped heartbeat. The obstruction beneath his hand was too mysteriously strange for even guilt to obliterate as an immediate, impossible-to-ignore threat to his sanity. The object was metallic and unmistakably disk-like. Beneath his exploring fingers its configuration dispelled all uncertainty as to its shape and it had the smoothness, the coldness, and the general feel of a metal object. It was about three inches in diameter and seemed to be embedded in the flesh of her thigh. There were no wires or prongs projecting from it. The shock had come from the disk itself, but there was no further shock as his fingers rested upon it. He found himself tugging at it, without quite knowing why he felt such a compulsive need to find out all that he could about it except that it filled him with alarm and foreboding.