The stars returned. He was alone.

Douglas sank back against the seat. The car veered crazily and roared down the highway. His hands slid from the wheel and dropped at his sides. He caught the wheel again, just in time.

There was no doubt about it. Somebody was after him. Trying to get him. But no Communists or student practical jokers. Or any beast, lingering from the dim past.

Whatever it was, whoever they were, had nothing to do with Earth. It—they—were from some other world. They were out to get him.

Him.

But—why?

Pete Berg listened closely. “Go on,” he said when Douglas halted.

“That’s all.” Douglas turned to Bill Henderson. “Don’t try to tell me I’m out of my mind. I really saw it. It was looking down at me. The whole face this time, not just the eye.”

“You think this was the face that the eye belonged to?” Jean Henderson asked.

“I know it. The face had the same expression as the eye. Studying me.”

“We’ve got to call the police,” Laura Douglas said in a thin, clipped voice. “This can’t go on. If somebody’s out to get him—”

“The police won’t do any good.” Bill Henderson paced back and forth. It was late, after midnight. All the lights in the Douglas house were on. In one corner old Milton Erick, head of the Math Department, sat curled up, taking everything in, his wrinkled face expressionless.

“We can assume,” Professor Erick said calmly, removing his pipe from between his yellow teeth, “they’re a nonterrestrial race. Their size and their position indicate they’re not Earthbound in any sense.”

“But they can’t just stand in the sky!” Jean exploded. “There’s nothing up there!”

“There may be other configurations of matter not normally connected or related to our own. An endless or multiple coexistence of universe systems, lying along a plane of coordinates totally unexplainable in present terms. Due to some singular juxtaposition of tangents, we are, at this moment, in contact with one of these other configurations.”