"As if it was looking down a microscope."
Silence.
From across the table, Henderson's red-haired wife spoke up. "You always were a strict empiricist, Doug. You never went in for any nonsense before. But this... It's too bad nobody else saw it."
"Of course nobody else saw it!"
"What do you mean?"
"The damn thing was looking at me. It was me it was studying." Douglas's voice rose hysterically. "How do you think I feel -- scrutinized by an eye as big as a piano! My God, if I weren't so well integrated, I'd be out of my mind!"
Henderson and his wife exchanged glances. Bill, dark-haired and handsome, ten years Douglas's junior. Vivacious Jean Henderson, lecturer in child psychology, lithe and full-bosomed in her nylon blouse and slacks.
"What do you make of this?" Bill asked her. "This is more along your line."
"It's your line," Douglas snapped. "Don't try to pass this off as a morbid projection. I came to you because you're head of the Biology Department."
"You think it's an animal? A giant sloth or something?"
"It must be an animal."
"Maybe it's a joke," Jean suggested. "Or an advertising sign. An oculist's display. Somebody may have been carrying it past the window."
Douglas took a firm grip on himself. "The eye was alive. It looked at me. It considered me. Then it withdrew. As if it had moved away from the lens." He shuddered. "I tell you it was studying me!"
"You only?"
"Me. Nobody else."
"You seem curiously convinced it was looking down from above," Jean said.
"Yes, down. Down at me. That's right." An odd expression flickered across Douglas's face. "You have it, Jean. As if it came from up there." He jerked his hand upward.
"Maybe it was God," Bill said thoughtfully.
Douglas said nothing. His face turned ash white and his teeth chattered.