Stranger in a Strange Land

your warrant? Let's see your credentials-this is an outrage!"
                Berquist said soothingly, "Don't be difficult, sweetheart. We don't really want you; we just want him. Behave yourself and they might go easy on you."
                She kicked at his shin. He stepped back nimbly, which was just as well, as Jill was still barefooted. "Naughty, naughty," he chided. "Johnson! You find him?"
                "He's here, Mr. Berquist. And naked as an oyster. Three guesses what they were up to."
                "Never mind that. Bring him here."
                Johnson reappeared, shoving Smith ahead of him, controlling him by twisting one arm behind his back. "He didn't want to come."
                "He'll come, he'll come!"
                Jill ducked past Berquist, threw herself at Johnson. With his free hand he slapped her aside. "None of that, you little slut!"
                Johnson should not have slapped her. He had not hit her hard, not even as hard as he used to hit his wife before she went home to her parents, and not nearly as hard as he had often hit prisoners who were reluctant to talk. Up to this time Smith had shown no expression at all and had said nothing; he had simply let himself be forced into the room with the passive, futile resistance of a puppy who does not want to be walked on a leash. But he had understood nothing of what was happening and had tried to do nothing at all.
                When he saw his water brother struck by this other, he twisted and ducked, got free-and reached in an odd fashion for Johnson.
                Johnson was not there any longer.
                He was not anywhere. The room did not contain him. Only blades of grass, straightening up where his big feet had been, showed that he had ever been there. Jill stared through the space he had occupied and felt that she might faint.
                Berquist closed his mouth, opened it again, said hoarsely, "What did you do with him?" He looked at Jill rather than Smith.
                "Me? I didn't do anything."
                "Don't give me that. What's the trick? You got a trap door or something?"
                "Where did he go?"
                Berquist licked his lips. "I don't know." He took a gun from under his coat. 'But don't try any of your tricks with me. You stay here-I'm taking him along."
                Smith had relapsed into his attitude of passive waiting. Not understanding what it was all about, he had done only the minimum he had to do. But guns he had seen before, in the hands of men on Mars, and the expression on Jill's face at having one aimed at her he did not like. He grokked that this was one of the critical cusps in the growth of a being wherein contemplation must bring forth right action in order to permit further growth. He acted.
                The Old Ones taught him well. He stepped toward Berquist; the gun swung to cover him. Nevertheless he reached out-and Berquist was no longer there. Smith turned to look at his brother.
                Jill put a hand to her mouth and screamed.
                Smith's face had been completely blank. Now it became tragically forlorn as he realized that he must have chosen wrong action at the cusp. He looked imploringly at Jill and began to tremble. His eyes rolled up; he slipped slowly down to the grass, pulled himself tightly into a foetal ball and was motionless.
                Jill's own hysteria cut off as if she had thrown a switch. The change was an indoctrinated reflex: here was a patient who needed her; she had no time for her own emotions, no time even to worry or wonder about the two men who had disappeared. She dropped to her knees and examined Smith.
                She could not detect respiration, nor could she find a pulse; she pressed an ear against his ribs. She thought at first that heart action had stopped completely, but, after a long time, she heard a lazy tub-dub, followed in four or five seconds by another.
                The condition reminded her of schizoid withdrawal, but she had never seen a trance so deep, not even in class demonstrations of hypnoanesthesia. She had heard of such deathlike states among East Indian fakirs but she had never really believed the reports.
                Ordinarily she would not have tried to