inhabited two bodies at once. It was
eerie. The other body did nothing. It only breathed and waited. Someone
at the hidden base from which he had come wore one of the children's
belts and patiently waited to eavesdrop on any communication that might
be made by similar devices.

* * * * *

Soames waited for morning. Very early, again with closed eyes and with
his body made comfortable so that he felt no distinct sensation from it,
he pressed the end of the miniature instrument. He saw writing of the
kind the children used for memoranda about their English lessons. He
released the turn-on switch, which was probably the head of a pin. He
turned on a light. He opened a notebook. Its first page showed two
sketches. One was of the runner of a boy-made air-sled. Fran had
sketched it for Soames on the plane headed for New York and the
disastrous broadcast. The other was a sketch of a boy on stilts. Soames
had drawn that for Fran. Nobody but Soames would have looked at such
drawings for Fran to see through his eyes. They were at once a call and
an identification of Soames as a person using a device like a tiny
copper firecracker, with the head of a pin where a fuse would belong.

He turned on the device again while looking at the sketches. He felt
that he shared the physical sensations of two other bodies, no, three.
He was momentarily convinced of a third. All three now kept their eyes
tightly closed. All three saw only through his eyes, saw rough sketches
which would have meaning only to two. Soames felt that he heard a
smothered noise which only he would have known was a suppressed giggle.

Then he felt one of the other bodies shaking hands with itself. That
would be Fran, acknowledging the message of the drawings that only
Soames would know about. He shook hands with himself for Soames to
experience. Then he patted his knee as one would pat a dog, and
scratched his knee as one scratches a dog, as he did with Rex on
Antarctica. He had identified himself. There was the stirring of another
of the bodies with which Soames was linked. That would be the security
officer, wearing a belt which brought him these sensations. He could
have no idea, however, who was communicating with whom, and pattings and
scratchings would have no meaning at all. He could only know that the
weird experience stopped when someone shook hands with himself and that
was all.

But Soames rose and dressed with many forebo