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  Grey undipped the leads. This time, Fallada helped him to transfer the body back onto the trolley. Grey wheeled it out. A moment later, he returned with the body of the girl. He removed the sheet and they lifted it onto the bench. She was wearing a tweed skirt under the nylon smock. A pair of tights hung loosely around one foot.

  Carlsen asked: “Who was she?”

  “A waitress from an all-night transport café. She lived only a few hundred yards from her work.”

  Without ceremony Grey pulled up the skirt. Underneath, the girl was naked. Carlsen observed the bruises and scratches on her thighs. Grey clipped one electrode to the soft flesh inside her thigh, and the other to her lower lip. Fallada leaned forward. Suddenly, Carlsen was aware of his tension. The needle of the meter climbed slowly and stopped at .002. Grey said: “It’s dropped two thousand milli-amps in seven hours.”

  Fallada reached out and pressed the switch; the blue light came on. When the hum faded, there was absolute silence. As slowly as the minute hand of a watch, the needle climbed to 8.3. After another minute, it was clear that it would stay there. Fallada said: “Now,” and switched off the machine. Almost immediately, the needle of the lambda meter began to drop. Fallada and Grey looked at one another, Carlsen noticed that Grey was sweating.

  Fallada turned to Carlsen. He said quietly: “You understand?”

  “Not quite.”

  “It will take only about ten minutes for her artifical life field to disappear. She cannot hold a life field.”

  Grey was watching the needle. He said: “I’ve seen ruptured life fields before, but never anything as bad as this.”

  Carlsen said: “But what does it mean ?”

  Fallada cleared his throat. He said: “It means that whoever killed her sucked the life out of her so violently that it destroyed her capacity to hold a life field. You could compare her to a tire with a thousand punctures, so that it can no longer hold air.”

  Carlsen found he had to overcome a strong inner resistance to ask his next question. “Are you sure there’s no other way it could have happened?”

  Fallada said sombrely: “I know of none.”

  There was a silence. Grey said: “What happens now?”

  Fallada said: “Now, I think, the hunt begins all over again.” He laid a hand on Carlsen’s elbow. “Let us go back to my office.”

  Grey asked: “What do you want me to do?”

  “Continue the tests. I would like to know whether the pressure on her throat was enough to kill her.”

  Back in the office, Carlsen took up his half-finished drink. Fallada dropped into the chair behind bis desk. He pressed the switch of the telescreen. A girl’s voice said: “Yes, sir?”

  “Get me Sir Percy Heseltine at Scotland Yard.”

  He turned to Carlsen. “This is what I expected. I must admit to feeling a certain grim satisfaction to know that I am right.”

  “But are you sure you’re right? Look, I saw what happened to young Adams. She drained all the life out of him, and he turned into an old man. Did you see the body?” Fallada nodded. “Now, this girl doesn’t look in the least like that. She looks to me like the victim of an ordinary sex attack. Surely there could be some other explanation for this ruptured life field?”

  Fallada shook his head. “No. You do not understand. To begin with, it is not a question of a ruptured life field. What is ruptured is whatever holds the life field. No one knows exactly what that is — I even know biologists who think that man has a nonmaterial body as well as a physical body, and that the life field is a function of the atoms of this body — as magnetism is a function of the atoms of a magnet. Think of the flesh of an orange. The juice is held in tiny cells —”

  The telescreen buzzed. He said: “Hello?”

  The secretary said: “I’m afraid the Commissioner isn’t in at present, sir. He’s in Wandsworth. He should be back in about half an hour.”

  “Very well. Tell his secretary that I’ll be coming over there in half an hour. Say it’s urgent.” He rang off. “Now, where was I?”

  “An orange.”

  “Ah, yes. I was saying that if you allowed an orange to dry out, and then left it to soak in water for a day, it would regain its old shape, would it not? But if you crushed the juice out of the orange in a vice, nothing could make it return to its old shape. All the cells would be ruptured. It is the same with a living body. If it dies normally, the life field takes several days to disperse. Even if death is due to violence, it still takes a fairly long time, because most of the cells remain intact. The body is like an orange with a bad bruise, but dehydration still takes a few days. Now, that girl’s cell structure had been destroyed like the orange in the vice. And there is no normal way in which this could happen. Unless she was burned to a cinder, or fell from the top of this building.” He paused to empty his glass. “Or was cut into pieces by a train.”

  “But would a train have destroyed the structure?”

  “No, I was joking. But it would have made sure that no one bothered to take a lambda reading.” He crossed to the cupboard. “Would you like another drink? It is early, but I think I deserve it.” Carlsen emptied his glass and held it out. For several moments, neither of them spoke. Carlsen observed that although he had drunk two whiskies, he still felt cold sober, without even a glow of exhilaration.

  Fallada said: “Tell me something. Did you really believe she was dead?”

  Carlsen shook his head. “No, I didn’t believe it. And if you want to know the truth, I didn’t want to believe it.” He felt himself flushing as he said it. Again, it had cost an effort to force himself to say the words.

  If Fallada was surprised, he showed no sign of it. “Was she so attractive?”

  The desire not to go on was so strong that he was silent for almost a minute. He said finally: “It’s difficult to explain.”

  “Would you say, for example, that she had some hypnotic effect?”

  Carlsen felt angry with himself for feeling so embarrassed. He said, stumbling over the words: “You know, it’s… difficult… I mean it’s strange how hard it is to talk about it.”

  Fallada said quickly: “But it’s important to talk about it. This is something I want to understand.”

  “Okay.” Carlsen swallowed. “Did you ever read a poem called ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ when you were at school?”

  “No, but I know the legend. My mother was born in Hamelin.”

  “Well, in the poem, the piper leads all the kids away into the side of a mountain. And they all follow him willingly. Only one gets left behind because he’s lame. And he describes what the music seemed to promise… something about… I can’t remember the words exactly, but a joyous land where everything is new and strange. A marvellous, ideal kind of place where mince pies grow on trees and the rivers are made of ice cream soda.” He swallowed a drink, feeling the dry heat burning his cheeks and ears. ” That’swhat it was like.”

  “And can you describe what she seemed to promise?”

  “Well… nothing. In that sense. But it was the same kind of thing — a kind of vision of an ideal woman, if you like.”

  “The Ewig-weibliche? ”

  Carlsen looked blank; Fallada explained: “Goethe’s eternal-feminine principle. He ends his Faust: ‘The eternal feminine draws us upwards and on.’ ”

  Carlsen nodded. He was now experiencing a strange sense of relief. “That’s it. That’s true. I suppose Goethe must have met a woman like this. The kind of thing you dream about as a child. You look at your sister’s friends, and you think they must be goddesses. When you’re older, you get more realistic and you think women aren’t like that at all.”

  Fallada said softly: “But the dream remains.”

  “Yes, the dream. And that’s why I couldn’t believe it. Dreams don’t just die like that.”

  “There is only one thing you must remember.” He waited until Carlsen looked up from his glass. “This creature was not a woman.” As Carlsen made an impatient gest
ure, he went on quickly: “I mean that these creatures are totally alien to everything we mean by human.”

  Carlsen said stubbornly: “They’re human oid.”

  Fallada said sharply: “No, not even that. You forget that the human body is a highly specialised piece of adaptation. A quarter of a billion years ago, we were fishes. We developed arms and legs and lungs to move about on land. It is a million-to-one chance that creatures from another galaxy could have evolved along the same lines.”

  “Unless conditions on their planet were similar to earth.”

  “Possible, but unlikely. We now have a pathologist’s report on the bodies of the three aliens. Their digestive systems are identical to those of human beings.”

  “So?”

  Fallada leaned forward. “They live by draining the life of other creatures. They don’t need food.”

  Carlsen shook his head. “I suppose so. But… I don’t know. We just don’t know, do we? We don’t really know a damn thing — not one single definite fact.”

  Fallada said patiently, like a professor coaching a backward student: “I think we have a few facts. For example, we are fairly certain that the girl on the railway line was killed by one of these creatures, whatever they are. We also know that the fingerprints found on her throat belonged to a man called Clapperton.” He paused; Carlsen said nothing. “That suggests two possibilities. Either that Clapperton was acting in obedience to the vampires, or that one of them had gained possession of his body.”

  It was what Carlsen had known he was going to say; nevertheless, it made his scalp prickle, and a wave of coldness ran over his body. He started to speak, but his voice stuck hi his throat. His heart was suddenly beating painfully.

  Fallada said gently: “We both recognise this as a possibility, in which case it is also possible that these things are indestructible. But that doesn’t mean they are incapable of making mistakes. For example —”

  The sharp buzz of the telescreen interrupted him. He pressed the reply key.

  “The Commissioner of Police to speak to you, sir.”

  “Put him through.”

  Carlsen was sitting on the far side of the desk, so could not see the Commissioner’s face; the voice was clipped and military.

  “Hans, glad I caught you. There’s been a new development. We’ve found the suspect.”

  “The racing driver?”

  “Yes. I’ve just been to see him.”

  “Alive?”

  “Unfortunately not. In the Wandsworth mortuary. His body was fished out of the river this afternoon.”

  “So there had been no post-mortem yet?”

  “Not yet. But I’d say it’s a clear case of suicide after committing a murder. So from our point of view, the case is closed.”

  Fallada said: “Percy, I want to see that body.”

  “Yes, of course. Any… er… particular reason?”

  “Because I’d like to take a bet he didn’t die by drowning.”

  “Then you’d lose it. I watched them pumping the water out of his lungs.”

  Fallada shook his head incredulously. “Are you sure?”

  “Quite certain. Why? I don’t understand you…”

  Fallada said: “I’m coming over there to see you now. Will you be there in half an hour?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m bringing Commander Carlsen too.”

  Fallada rang off. He stood up, sighing and massaging his eyes. “That is unbelievable. I would have staked a thousand pounds that he was dead before he entered the water.” He crossed to the window and stared out, his hands deep in his coat pockets. “When the screen rang, I was about to say that they had made a mistake in choosing Clapperton. He is too well-known. Consequently, he is of no use to them. So he has to die.”

  “Well, you were right.”

  Fallada grunted. “Perhaps… We must go now.” He pressed the communication button and told his secretary: “Order a cab to pick me up in front of the Ismeer Building in five minutes. And tell Norman to expect another body for examination.”

  The high-speed elevator took twenty-five seconds to carry them to the ground floor, a mile below. There was no sensation of movement; only a momentary lightness. Fallada stood without speaking, his head sunk on his chest.

  As they left the air-conditioned coolness of the Ismeer Building, the air of the city poured over them like warm water. The spring day was as hot as midsummer. Many of the dark-suited men had removed their jackets. Women had taken advantage of the sun to try out the latest fashion: transparent dresses over brightly coloured underwear. There was a gaiety about the crowd that made it hard to believe in vampires.

  The tiny battery-powered cab was waiting by the pavement. Carlsen was about to climb in when he heard the voice of the robot news-vendor: “New Stranger sensation. New Stranger sensation…” The changing neon sign in front of it read: “Spaceman describes Mary Celeste of space…” Carlsen slipped a coin into the machine and took the Evening Mail.

  There was a photograph on the front page that he recognised as Patricia Wolfson, wife of the captain of the Vega. She was holding two children by the hand.

  In the cab, Fallada leaned forward, trying to read over his shoulder. Carlsen said: “It looks as if Wolfson went aboard the Stranger after all.”

  Fallada leaned back. “Read it aloud, would you?”

  “ ‘Only one hour before receiving an order forbidding all further exploration of the Stranger, Captain Derek Wolfson and a three-man team entered its control room. This was revealed today in an exclusive interview by Mrs Patricia Wolfson, the spaceman’s wife. Mrs Wolfson talked to our reporter at the London International Spaceport.

  “ ‘On Tuesday afternoon, Mrs Wolfson, together with her two children, spent five hours in the signal room at moonbase, and exchanged messages with her husband, who was more than a quarter of a billion miles away, in the explorer-ship Vega.

  “ ‘In a televised message lasting eight and a half minutes, Captain Wolfson described how his team entered the derelict through a massive new hole torn by a meteor since the Stranger was discovered last November. “If the hole had been a few yards higher, it would have totally destroyed the control deck,” Captain Wolfson told his wife.

  “ ‘According to Dr Werner Mass, the physicist who accompanied Wolfson, the instruments in the control room revealed a technology far ahead of anything on earth.

  “ ‘Captain Wolfson told his wife that the control room showed no sign of damage, but that papers and star maps were scattered over the floor. “The cabin looked as if it had been abandoned half an hour earlier,” commented Wolfson. But there was no sign of the living creatures who had been on the control deck. Wolfson told his wife: “It made me think of the mystery of the Mary Celeste .”

  “ ‘The documents in the cabin were printed on a material resembling thick paper impregnated with wax. This could provide a clue to the galaxy in which the Stranger originated.

  “ ‘Wolfson and his team were still aboard the Stranger when the Vega received the message from moonbase forbidding exploration of the derelict on account of radiation hazards.

  “ ‘Our space correspondent comments…’ ”

  Carlsen lowered the newspaper and held it over his shoulder. “Here, read it for yourself.”

  Fallada said: “I wonder who gave him permission to explore?”

  “Probably nobody. Wolfson’s the sort who does things without permission.”

  The cabdriver said: “Rather have my job than his.” It reminded them that they could not speak freely. They sat in silence for the next ten minutes, each absorbed in his own thoughts. Carlsen was thinking again of the disturbing beauty of the underwater paintings of the Stranger , and of its vast, cathedral-like spaces, and wondering how he could convey these to Fallada.

  Fallada said: ” Mary Celesteof space. Another journalistic cliché.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t stick.”

  At New Scotland Yard, the duty sergeant recognised them. �
��The Commissioner wants you to go up right away, sir. You know the way, don’t you?”

  In the lift, Fallada said: “I wonder what that means?”

  “What?”

  “Sounds like a new development. He knew we were coming anyway, so there was no reason to leave a message.”

  “This Mary Celeste story, I suppose.”

  The big, bald-headed man was waiting for them as they stepped out of the lift. He wore civilian clothes but carried himself as if they were a military uniform.

  Fallada said: “Sir Percy Heseltine, this is Commander Carlsen.”

  The big man’s grip was powerful. “Glad you’ve come, Commander. There’s a message for you, by the way. Bukovsky from Space Research wants you to contact him right away.”

  “Thank you. Is there a telescreen I can use?”

  “In my office.”

  They followed him into the big, anonymous office that overlooked the helicopter landing port on the roof. Heseltine pointed. “Use the one in my secretary’s office. It’s empty.”

  Carlsen left the door open. He had a feeling that whatever Bukovsky had to say would be for all of them. When he asked for Bukovsky, the operator said: “I’m sorry, sir. He isn’t available.” But when he gave his name, she said: “Oh, yes. He’s waiting for a call from you. We’ve been trying to contact you for the past hour.”

  A moment later Bukovsky appeared. He looked harassed and irritable. “Olof, thank heavens we’ve got you finally. We tried to get your home for an hour, but your wife was out.”

  “I’ve been with Dr Fallada.”

  “So I gather. Have you seen the papers?”

  “I saw that Captain Wolfson had been into the Stranger .”

  “Captain!” Bukovsky said grimly. “He’ll be lucky if he’s a second lieutenant by the time I’ve finished with him. As to that moronic wife of his… I can’t imagine what Zelensky was doing letting her into moonbase. And now on top of everything else, we’ve got a new problem. The Space Minister’s just been on to me, saying he wants every inch of the Stranger explored immediately.”