He dressed himself in clothing he had left from an earlier time when he had been larger. Then he went out and rode the subways to the clothing store he had visited the previous day.

There, he re-outfitted himself completely and rode back, feeling vaguely nauseous as the car jounced and swayed. He noted that his hands looked dry and rough. When he rubbed them, flakes of dead skin fell off like dandruff.

After he left the subway he walked on until he came to the Sarzannos' apartment building. The woman who opened the door was not Joe's mother, Rose, however.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"I'm looking for Joe Sarzanno," he said.

"Nobody here by that name. Must be someone who moved out before we moved in."

"So you wouldn't know where they went?"

"No. Ask the manager. Maybe he knows." She closed the door.

He tried the manager's apartment, but there was no answer. So he made his way home, feeling heavy and bloated. The second time that he yawned he was abruptly fearful. It seemed too soon to be going back to sleep. This transformation was more puzzling than usual.

He put a fresh pot of coffee on the stove and paced while he waited for it to percolate. While there was no certainty that he would awaken with a special power on each occasion, the one thing that had been constant was change. He thought back over all of the changes he had undergone since he had been infected. This was the only one where he had seemed neither joker nor ace, but normal. Still…

When the coffee was ready, he sat down with a cup and became aware that he had been scratching his right thigh, halfconsciously. He rubbed his hands together and more dry skin flaked off. He considered his increased girth. He thought of all the little twinges and creaks, of the fatigue. It was obvious that he was not completely normal this time, but as to what his abnormality actually constituted, he was uncertain. Could Dr. Tachyon help him? he wondered. Or at least give him some idea as to what was going on?

He called the number that he had committed to memory. A woman with a cheerful voice told him that Tachyon was out but would be back that afternoon. She took Croyd's name, seemed to recognize it, and told him to come in at three. He finished the pot of coffee; the itching had increased steadily all over his body as he sat drinking the final cup. He went upstairs and ran the water in the bathtub again. While the tub was filling he undressed and studied his body. All of his skin now had the dry, flaky appearance of his hands. Wherever he brushed himself a small flurry occurred.

He soaked for a long while. The warmth and the wetness felt good. After a time he leaned back and closed his eyes. Very good…

He sat up with a start. He had begun dozing. He had almost drifted off to sleep just then. He seized the washcloth and began rubbing himself vigorously, not only to remove all of the detritus. When he had finished he toweled himself briskly as the tub drained, then rushed to his room. He located the pills at the back of a clothing drawer and took two of them. Whatever games his body was playing, sleep was very much his enemy now.

He returned to the bathroom, cleaned the tub, dressed. It would feel good to stretch out on his bed for a time. To rest, as Claudia had suggested. But he knew that he couldn't.

Tachyon took a blood sample and fed it to his machine. On his first attempt, the needle had only gone in a short distance and stopped. The third needle, backed with considerable force, penetrated a subdermal layer of resistance and the blood was drawn.

While awaiting the machine's findings, Tachyon conducted a gross examination.

"Were your incisors that long when you awoke?" he asked, peering into Croyd's mouth.

"They looked normal when I brushed them," Croyd replied. "Have they gown?"

"Take a look."

Tachyon held up a small mirror. Croyd stared. The teeth were an inch long, and sharp looking.

"That's a new development," he stated. "I don't know when it happened."

Tachyon moved Croyd's left arm up behind his back in a gentle hammerlock, then pushed his fingers beneath the protruding scapula. Croyd screamed.

"That bad, is it?" Tachyon asked.

"My God!" Croyd said. "What is it? Is something broken back there?"

The doctor shook his head. He examined some of the skin flakes under a miscroscope. He studied Croyd's feet next. "Were they this wide when you woke up?" he asked. "No. What the hell is happening, Doc?"

"Let's wait another minute or so for my machine to finish with your blood. You've been here three or four times in the past…"

"Yes," Croyd said.

"Fortunately, you came in once right after you woke up. Another time, you were in about six hours after you awoke. On the former occasion you possessed a high level of a very peculiar hormone which I thought at the time might be associated with the change process itself. The other time six hours after awakening-you still had traces of the hormone, but at a very low level. Those were the only two times it was evident."

"So?"

"The main test in which I am interested right now is a check for its presence in your blood. Ah! I believe we have something now."

A series of strange symbols flashed upon the screen of the small unit.

"Yes. Yes, indeed," he said, studying them. "You have a high level of the substance in your blood-higher even than it was right after awakening. Hm. You've been taking amphetamines again, too."

"I had to. I was starting to get sleepy, and I've got to make it to Saturday. Tell me in plain words what this damn hormone means."

"It means that the process of change is still going on within you. For some reason you awoke before it was completed. There seems to be a regular cycle of it, but this time it was interrupted."

"Why?"

Tachyon shrugged, a movement he seemed to have learned since the last time Croyd had seen him.

"Any of a whole constellation of possible biochemical events triggered by the change itself. I think you probably received some brain stimulation as a side effect of another change that was in progress at the time you were aroused. Whatever that particular change was, it is completed-but the rest of the process isn't. So your body is now trying to put you back to sleep until it finishes its business."

"In other words, I woke up too soon?"

"Yes."

"What should I do?"

"Stop taking the drugs immediately. Sleep. Let it run its course."

"I can't. I have to stay awake for two more days-a day and a half will do, actually."

"I suspect your body will fight this, and as I said once before, it seems to know what it's doing. I think you would be taking a chance to keep yourself awake much longer."

"What kind of chance? Do you mean it might kill me-or will it just make me uncomfortable?"

"Croyd, I simply do not know. Your condition is unique. Each change takes a different course. The only thing we can trust is whatever accommodation your body has made to the virus-whatever it is within you that brings you through each bout safely. If you try to stay awake by unnatural means now, this is the very thing that you will be fighting."

"I've put off sleep lots of times with amphetamines."

"Yes, but those times you were merely postponing the onset of the process. It doesn't normally begin until your brain chemistry registers a sleep state. But now it is already under way, and the presence of the hormone indicates its continuance. I don't know what will happen. You may turn an ace phase into a joker phase. You may lapse into a really lengthy coma. I simply have no way of telling."

Croyd reached for his shirt.

"I'll let you know how it all turns out," he said.

Croyd did not feel like walking as much as he usually did. He rode the subway again. His nausea returned and this time brought with it a headache. And his shoulders were still hurting badly. He visited the drugstore near his subway stop and bought a bottle of aspirins.