"How will you be paying for this, sir?" asked the clerk behind the makeshift counter.

"Credit card," Peabody answered, smiling. Automatically he reached into his trouser pocket and placed the card on the counter.

"Very good, Mr. Gray," the clerk said. "Now, if you can show some other identification..."

He looked at the name on the card, Joshua Gray. But he was Orville Peabody. All of his cards said so. Warily he reached inside his pants pocket again.

Wait a second, he thought. He didn't keep anything inside his trousers pockets. His I.D. was in his jacket. And yet his hand had gone immediately for the card bearing the name of Joshua Gray. His fingers reached around a small booklet.

"That's it," the clerk said, opening up the passport to Peabody's picture. Below it was the name Joshua Gray. Peabody stared at it, uncomprehending. The clerk was motioning somewhere off to the right. "Your plane's boarding now, Mr. Gray." she said. "Have a pleasant trip."

"Thank you," Peabody said, fingering the strange passport and credit card. How had they gotten there? And why was he going to Canada? For a moment he panicked, sweat suddenly popping up on his brow and streaming cold from his armpits.

"Are you all right?" The clerk's face showed alarm.

"Yes, yes." Peabody drew a deep breath and irritably snatched up the identification. The moment of fear passed. Whatever had prompted him to use a false card he hadn't known to be in his possession was, he decided, nothing of his choosing. There were greater forces at work in him now, and it was not his place to question them. He was going to St. John's, Newfoundland, because that was where he knew he must go to live out the pulsing, unreachable message in his brain. He was to go there under a false name, because that was what the message had decreed. He knew also that, once in St. John's, he would discard the Joshua Gray passport and credit card and book passage on still another flight under his own name.