"I appreciate your concern, Doctor. But I'm a homicide investigator. Planetary defense is not in my jurisdiction. I have to get permission just to go into Queens."

"But I have solved a homicide for you!"

"Doctor, the Warren case is under investigation by the competent authorities, which is us. We have a witness who positively identifies Doughboy leaving the scene at the right time."

"But the tissue samples-"

"Maybe he was growing them in a petri jar. I don't know, Doctor. Nor do I know the credentials of whoever identified this alleged swarmling tissue-"

" I assure you I am an alien biochemistry expert-"

"In several senses." He jerked slightly back from the receiver; perversely, he was starting to like this woman. "I'm not saying I doubt you, Doctor. But I can't just wave my hand and let your man walk free. That's up to the DA. Whatever you have, take to Doughboy's attorney and have him present it. And if you've really found more swarmlings, I'd suggest you take that up with General Meadows at SPACECOM." Who is Mark's father. "And one more thing, Doctor."

"What is that, Lt. Arrupe?"

"Get off this case or I'll chuck your ass in the joint. I don't need amateurs muddying the water."

Chrysalis looked at him with a face glass-clear and china bone. "Anything strange happening in Jokertown?" she drawled in that hermaphrodite British accent of hers. "Whatever makes you think anything strange might happen here?" He sat at one end of the bar, well away from the morning regulars. He wasn't exactly a stranger at the Crystal Palace. He never quite relaxed here, just the same.

"Not just Jokertown. This part of Manhattan, from Midtown south."

She set down a glass she was polishing. "You're serious?"

"When I say strange, I mean strange for jokertown. Not the latest outrage at jokers Wild. Not Black Shadow dangling some mugger from a streetlamp by his foot. Not even another bow-and-arrow murder by that maniac with his playing cards. Something out of what passes for the ordinary hereabouts."

"Gimli's back."

Tach sipped his brandy and soda. "So they say."

"What are you paying?"

He raised a brow.

"Dammit, I'm not just a back-fence gossip! I pay for my information."

"And are well paid. I've contributed my share, Chrysalis."

"Yes. But there's so much you don't tell me. Things that go on at the clinic… confidential things."

"Which shall remain confidential."

"All right. Goodwill in this mutant community is my stock in trade too, and you don't have to remind me how influential you are. But someday you'll go too far, you metal-haired little alien fox. "

He grinned at her. And was gone.

Tring. Tach winched one eye open. The world was dark but for the usual Manhattan light-haze and perhaps a little moonlight oozing in through open curtains, silvering the bare female rump upturned beside him on the maroon coverlet of his water bed. He blinked, gummily, and tried to remember the name of the person to whom the buttocks belonged. They were really outstanding buttocks.

Tring. More exigent this time. One of this world's most satanic inventions, the telephone. Beside him the glorious buttocks shifted slightly and a pair of shoulders came into view from behind a ridge of comforter.

Trrrr- He picked up the phone. "Tachyon."

"It's Chrysalis."

"Delighted to hear from you. Do you have any idea what hour of the night it is?"

"One-thirty, which is more than you knew. I've got something for you, Doctor darling."

"Whozat, Tach?" mumbled the woman at his side. He patted her rump abstractedly, trying to remember her name. Janet? Elaine? Blast.

"What is it?" Cathy? Candi? Sue? Chrysalis hummed a tune.

"What in the name of the ideal was that?" he demanded. Mary? Confound Chrysalis and her damned humming!

"A song we used to sing, back when I was at camp. `Johnny Rebeck.'"

"You called at one-thirty in the morning to sing me a campfire song?" Belinda? This was getting to be too much. "'And all the neighbors' cats and dogs will nevermore be seen/They've all been ground to sausages in Johnny Rebeck's machine."'

Tach sat up. "What is it?" the woman beside him demanded, petulant now, turning toward him a face masked with sleep and dark hair.

"You've got something."

"Like I told you, luv. Not Jokertown, but nearby. Around Division, next to Chinatown. Dogs and cats disappearingstrays, pets; people in these parts aren't too concerned with leash laws. And pigeons. And rats. And squirrels. Several blocks are just devoid of the usual urban wildlife. Jokes about oriental cuisine aside, I thought this might qualify as your strange event."

"It does." Ancestors, how it does! She purred. "You owe me, Tachyon."

He was swinging his legs out of bed, wishing for courtesy's sake he could remember this young woman's name to send her packing. "I do."

"And by the way," Chrysalis said, "her name's Karen."

"Doctor," Trips said through a cloud of his own breath, "do you have any idea what Brenda called me when I phoned her to come look after Sprout at this hour of the night?"

In the weeks he'd known Mark, it was the first time he had heard him voice a complaint of any sort. He sympathized. "I don't want to even imagine, dear Mark. But this is crucial. And I feel we have no time to waste."

Mark crumpled. "Yeah. You're right. Doughboy's got it a whole lot worse than anything I've ever known. I'm sorry, Doc. "

Tachyon looked at this man, a brilliant scientist whom personal demons had driven to batter himself into little more than a derelict, and honestly wondered. He stroked his arm. "No harm done, Mark."

Not far away the cars hissed over the Manhattan Bridge. They had here a dark side street in a none-too-prepossessing part of town, small shops and shadows and loan sharks and derelict manors, gray cramped buildings winking here and there with broken windows in the glow of a single fading streetlight. Not an hour to be abroad here, even without the prospect of otherworldy menace.

"This may just be a false alarm," Tach said. "When Chrysalis told me about the animal disappearances, it occurred to me that swarmlings need food, and unless this culture advances more quickly than any I've heard of, they could scarcely buy it at the A amp;P "

He stopped, faced his friend, gripped him by the biceps. "Understand this now, Mark. There may be nothing here. But if we've found what. we are looking for, we are going to be confronting a monster like something from a horror movie. But it's real. It's the enemy of every living organism on this planet, and it is utterly without compunction."

Mildly, Mark gestured up the block. "Does it look anything like that, man?"

Tach stared at him a moment. Slowly he swiveled his head right.

A figure stood on the corner at the end of the block nearer the overpass. A coat was stretched around it, a hat pulled low, but even muffled as it was there was no hiding that its proportions were never those of a normal human being.

"Excuse me a moment, man," Trips said. He pulled away, and holding hat on head ran from the apparition, rounding the corner with knee-swinging sole-slapping strides.

Coward! blazed up nova in Tach's breast, and then, But no, I cannot be so hard on him, for he is no fighter and this is a menace strange to his kind. He squared his shoulders, straightened his cravat, and turned to face the creature.

It took a swaying step forward, another. One foot made a sucking sound as it came off the asphalt. From the darkness behind it another figure lurched; clothed the same way, its outline different but clearly kindred. Ah, Benafsaj, you were right to doubt me. I never imagined there might be two. He readied his spirit for death.

"Doctor."

His head snapped round. A young woman stood beside him, dressed from throat to soles in black broken only by the sideways commas of a yin-yang design on her chest. The emblem was matched by a black mask which curved up from her left cheekbone across the right side of her forehead, leaving half her face bare. She was taller than he. Her hair was black and lustrous. What he could see of her face looked Oriental and breathtakingly beautiful.