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all of it is as irrational as what you’ll hear.”
    The recording blared into the room, hurling out vehement invective.
    “That’s our bounder,” Wellford observed, amused. “It’s practically all he had to say to me too.”
    Radcliff skipped along the tape and settled next on:
    “They’re good, I tell you! The Valorians are good! You know they are! They’re here to save us! You’ve got to stop persecuting them! You’ve got —”
    Then more curses and vilification, all shouted out in a desperate, ranting voice.
    Radcliff cut off the recorder. “See what we’re up against? The man actually believes his Valorians are benevolent.”
    “He’s absolutely demented,” Wellford declared.
    “Did he say anything else about the plague?” Gregson asked.
    “Only that the Valorians, if given the chance, will lift the epidemic. But consider this, Greg: In the wake of the Valorian whom you chased this morning, three persons went Screamie.”
    After a moment Radcliff added, “I think it’s obvious that there is a definite connection between the Valorians and the plague—despite the fact that the epidemic broke out fourteen years before we became aware of the aliens’ presence.”

CHAPTER IV
    A week later, as November winds strengthened fall’s desolate grip on Manhattan and laced the East River with scudding whitecaps, Gregson settled down under a siege of frustrated inactivity, made even more tedious by Wellford’s sudden transfer to the Security Bureau’s London office.
    It was a period during which the Valorians seemed to have withdrawn to the unfathomable depths of space from which they had come, relinquishing Earth to its alternate agony of the Screamie epidemic.
    Prompt reaction by the Secretariat Building’s defenses to the assassination attempt had, of course, vividly demonstrated that Security Bureau Headquarters would not be caught unaware. And, in the interest of underscoring that point, the International Guard detail had been tripled while considerable heavy armament had been installed in the abandoned upper levels.
    That bureau headquarters had been fortified inconspicuously, Gregson supposed, was a matter of political prudence. For Congress was even now considering special legislation that would double United States appropriations to the international agency. And it just wouldn’t be wise to present American taxpayers with the image of a Security Bureau growing in resources and heavily braced against no apparent physical threat—an armed enclave.
    Gregson’s secretary appeared in the doorway. “There’s an urgent call on the comviewer—from Pennsylvania.”
    He flicked the switch and the frightened, tear-streaked face of a young, blond woman sprang onto the screen.
    “Helen! What is it?”
    “Oh Greg! It’s Uncle Bill! He’s just gone Screamie! I cant teach him! And we can’t get the Pickup Squad out here!”
    “Hasn’t he injected himself?”
    “No. He doesn’t have his hypo. And I can’t get one to him!”
    She turned to race from the room as her hand came up to snap off the comviewer switch. Just before the screen went dead, Gregson could hear Forsythe screaming in the background.
    Twice he tried to call back. But there was no answer. Then he dialed the Monroe County Isolation Institute several tunes before getting a response. He reported the seizure.
    By then his secretary was back in the doorway. “I’ve had Air Transport roll out a hopper. But Operations says regardless of the emergency, you’ll have to skirt the metropolitan area.”
    Once airborne, however, he sent the craft winging recklessly over Manhattan, above the bombed-out industrial section of New Jersey and on towards Pennsylvania.
    Bill Forsythe—a Screamer—unable to get help. And Gregson could only wonder to what extent he, himself, might be responsible. Even before the accident aboard Vega Jumpoff, Gregson had indulged the old man’s desire to remain on as a satellite engineer long after his reflexes had