She continued softly, "We don't know what the Chtorr are like inside-that's why we want you here. You're supposed to be a scientist. We're hoping you'll tell us. The Chtorr seem to be pretty well armored or segmented or something. Bullets don't have much effect on them-and a lot of good men died finding that out. Either they don't penetrate the same way, or the Chtorrans don't have vital organs that a bullet can disrupt-and don't ask me to explain how that one's possible, because I don't know either. I'm just quoting from the reports.

"We do know, though-from unfortunate experience-that to shoot at a Chtorran is to commit suicide. Whether they're intelligent or not-as some people think-makes no difference. They're very deadly. Even without weapons. They move fast and they kill furiously. The smartest thing to do is not to shoot at them at all.

"Duke wanted to rescue that child-probably more than you realize-because he knew what the alternative to rescue was. But when Louis saw Chtorr in the woods, Duke had no choice-he didn't dare go after her then. They'd have read him halfway down the hill. He'd have been dead before he moved ten meters. Probably the rest of you too. I don't like it either, but what he did was a mercy.

"That's why he passed the binoculars; he wanted to be sure he wasn't making a mistake-he wanted you and Shorty and Larry to double-check him. If there was the slightest bit of doubt in any of your minds, he wouldn't have done what he did; he wouldn't have had to-and if I thought Duke had killed that child unnecessarily, I'd have him in front of a firing squad so fast he wouldn't have time to change his underwear."

I thought about that. For a long moment.

Dr. Obama waited expectantly. Her eyes were patient. I said, suddenly, "But Shorty never looked at all."

She was surprised. "He didn't?"

"Only the first time," I replied. "He didn't look when we saw the child and he didn't look to confirm it was Chtorr."

Dr. Obama grunted. She was writing something on a note pad. I was relieved to have her eyes off me even for a moment. "Well, that's Shorty's prerogative. He's seen too many of these-" She finished the note and looked at me again. "It was enough that he saw the enclosure. But it's you we're concerned with at the moment. You have no doubt, do you, that what you saw was Chtorr?"

"I've never seen a Chtorran, ma'am. But I don't think this could have been anything else."

"Good. Then let's have no more of this nonsense." She pushed the report across the desk. "I'll take your signature on the bottom line."

"Dr. Obama, if you please-I'd like to know why it was necessary to kill that little girl."

Dr. Obama looked startled again, the second time since the interview began. "I thought you knew."

I shook my head. "That's what this whole thing is about. I don't. "

She stopped. "I'm sorry ... I really am sorry. I didn't realize - No wonder I couldn't sandbag you. . . ." She got up from her desk and crossed to a filing cabinet. She unlocked it and pulled out a thin folder-it was lettered SECRET in bright red-then returned to her seat. She held the folder thoughtfully in her hands. "Sometimes I forget that most of what we know about the Chtorr is restricted information." She eyed me carefully. "But you're a scientist-"

She was flattering me, and we both knew it. Nobody was anything anymore. To be accurate, I was a student on leave, temporarily contracted to the United States Armed Services, Special Forces Operation, as a full-time exobiologist.

"-so you should be entitled to see these things." But she still didn't pass them over. "Where are you from?" she asked abruptly.

"Santa Cruz, California."

Dr. Obama nodded. "Nice town. I used to have some friends just north of there-but that was a long time ago. Any of your family still alive?"

"Mom is. Dad was in San Francisco when it-when it-"

"I'm sorry. A lot of good people were lost when San Francisco went under. Your mother still in Santa Cruz?"

"I think so. Last I heard, she was helping with the refugees."

"Any other relatives?"

"I have a sister near L.A."

"Married?"

"Yes. She's got a daughter, five." I grinned at the thought of my niece. The last time I had seen her, she had been barely beyond the lap-wetting stage. I went sad then, remembering. "She used to have three. The other two were boys. They would have been six and seven."

Dr. Obama nodded. "Even so, she's very lucky. So are you. Not many people had that many members of their family survive the plagues." I had to agree with her.

Her face went grim now. "Have you ever heard of a town called Show Low?"

"I don't think so."

"It's in Arizona-it was in Arizona. There's not much left of it now. It was a nice place; it was named after a poker game-" Dr. Obama cut herself short; she laid the folder on the desk in front of her and opened it. "These pictures-these are just a few of the frames. There's a lot more-half a disk of high-grain video-but these are the best. These pictures were taken in Show Low last year by a Mr. Kato Nokuri. Mr. Nokuri apparently was a video hobbyist. One afternoon he looked out his window-he probably heard the noise from the street-and he saw this. " Dr. Obama passed the photographs across.

I took them gingerly. They were color eight-by-tens. They showed a small-town street-a shopping center-as seen from a third-story window. I flipped through the pictures slowly; the first showed a wormlike Chtorran reared up and peering into an automobile; it was large and red with orange markings on its sides. The next had the dark shape of another climbing through a drugstore window; the glass was just shattering around it. In the third, the largest Chtorran of all was doing something to a-it looked like a body-

"It's the last picture in the bunch I want you to see," said Dr. Obama. I flipped to it. "The boy there is only thirteen."

I looked. I almost dropped the picture in horror. I looked at Dr. Obama, aghast, then at the photograph again. I couldn't help myself; my stomach churned with sudden nausea.

"The quality of the photography is pretty good," she remarked. "Especially when you consider the subject matter. How that man retained the presence of mind to take these pictures I'll never know, but that telephoto shot is the best one we have of a Chtorran feeding."

Feeding! It was rending the child limb from limb! Its gaping mouth was frozen in the act of slashing and tearing at his struggling body. The Chtorran's arms were long and double-jointed. Bristly black and insectlike, they held the boy in a metal grip and pushed him toward that hideous gnashing hole. The camera caught the spurt of blood from his chest frozen in midair like a crimson splash.

I barely managed to gasp, "They eat their-their prey alive?"

Dr. Obama nodded. "Now, I want you to imagine that's your mother. Or your sister. Or your niece."

Oh, you monster- I tried not to, but the images flashed across my mind. Mom. Maggie. Annie-and Tim and Mark too, even though they were seven months dead. I could still see the boy's paralyzed expression, the mouth a silent shriek of why me? startlement. I could see that expression superimposed on my sister's face and I shuddered.

I looked up at Dr. Obama. It hurt my throat to swallow. "I-I didn't know."

"Few people do," she said.

I was shaking and upset-I must have been white as a scream. I pushed the pictures away. Dr. Obama slid them back into the folder without looking at them; her eyes were studying me. She leaned forward across her desk and said, "Now, about that little girl--do you have to ask why Duke did what he did?"

I shook my head.

"Pray that you never find yourself in the same situation-but if you do, will you hesitate to do the same thing? If you think you will, take another look at the pictures. Don't be afraid to ask; any time you need to remember, come to my office and look."