vorite, before I became an abstainer. To Pete, it looks
like soap. To you, it looks like a straight razor while, to Sacks, it
resembles a shoe. Does that give you any ideas?"

"Means we're all having hallucinations," I grunts.

"Exactly. Pete, was there anything else in the location where you found
this thing?"

"Nothing but some scrap tin."

"Show us."

* * * * *

So, the four of us wanders across the field and, sure enough, there was
this silly-looking object lying there. It was about eighteen or twenty
feet across, and two feet thick, and I nearly made a fool of myself. I
almost screamed when I saw six straight razors _crawling_ out of a hole
in its side.

The Professor whistled. "Grab them, boys. We want them."

Well, Sacks sacrifices one of his sacks, and we rounded up fifteen of
the useless things. We went back to the jungle, where the Prof explained
it.

"Look, fellows, suppose you were a being from another planet that wanted
to take over here. Suppose, further, that you were rather small and
relatively defenseless. To finish the suppositions, suppose you were a
positive telepath, with not only the ability to read minds, but also the
ability to create visual and tactile hallucinations. How would you
protect yourself?"

A light began to dawn, but I didn't say a word about it.

The Professor continued. "If you could do all this, you'd make yourself
look just as useless as possible. To Pete, you'd look like a bar of
soap, because he never uses the stuff. To Sacks, you'd look like a shoe,
because his dislike for shoes is evident in his mind. To Eddie, who is
proud of his beard, you'd look like a razor, while to me, you'd look
like a bottle of booze, because I dislike its effects intensely. In
other words, you would assume an imposture that would assure you'd never
be picked up, except by someone like Pete, who would see in you a
salable item, even though not a usable one. It may be, Pete, that you
have saved the world."

So, that's the story. We're all still on the Road, of course, but now we
are the "Commission for the Investigation of Extraterrestrial Invasion."
Congress named us as that, when we got the data to them.

Now, Mr. Mayor, you see our problem. Have your citizens seen anything
around that they don't want? If they have, we want to look at it.

--EDWARD G. ROBLES, JR.

Transcriber's Note:

This etex