Lynn said, ‘Don’t move. I’ve got a blaster here. We’ll just wait for the scientists to get here one by one. One by one we’ll X-ray them. One by one, we’ll monitor them for radioactivity. No two will get together without being checked, and if all five hundred are clear, I’ll give you my blaster and surrender to you. Only I think we’ll find the ten humanoids. Sit down, Breckenridge.’

They both sat.

Lynn said, ‘We wait. When I’m tired, Laszlo will spell me. We wait.’

Professor Manuela Jiminez of the Institute of Higher Studies of Bue- nos Aires exploded while the stratospheric jet on which he traveled was three miles above the Amazon Valley. It was a simple chemical explosion but it was enough to destroy the plane.

Dr Herman Liebowitz of M. I. T. exploded in a monorail, killing twenty people and injuring a hundred others.

In similar manner, Dr Auguste Marin of L’Institut Nucleonique of Montreal and seven others died at various stages of their journey to Cheyenne.

Laszlo hurtled in, pale-faced and stammering, with the first news of it. It had only been two hours that Lynn had sat there, facing Breckenridge, blaster in hand.

Laszlo said, ‘I thought you were nuts, Chief, but you were right. They were humanoids. They had to be.’ He turned to stare with hate-filled eyes at Breckenridge. ‘Only they were warned. He warned them, and now there won’t be one left intact. Not one to study.’

‘God!’ cried Lynn and in a frenzy of haste thrust his blaster out toward Breckenridge and fired. The Security man’s neck vanished; the torso fell; the head dropped, thudded against the floor and rolled crookedly.

Lynn moaned, ‘I didn’t understand, I thought he was a traitor. Nothing more.’

And Laszlo stood immobile, mouth open, for the moment incapable of speech.

Lynn said wildly, ‘Sure, he warned them. But how could he do so while sitting in that chair unless he were equipped with built-in radio transmission? Don’t you see it? Breckenridge had been in Moscow. The real Breckenridge is still there. Oh my God, there were eleven of them.’

Laszlo managed a hoarse squeak. ‘Why didn’t he explode?’

‘He was hanging on, I suppose, to make sure the others had received his message and were safely destroyed. Lord, Lord, when you brought the news and I realized the truth, I couldn’t shoot fast enough. God knows by how few seconds I may have beaten him to it.’

La zlo said shakily, ‘At least, we’ll have one to study.’ He bent and put his fingers on the sticky fluid trickling out of the mangled remains at the neck end of the headless body.

Not blood, but high-grade machine oil.

Pâté de Foie Gras

I couldn’t tell you my real name if I wanted to, and, under the circumstances, I don’t want to.

I’m not much of a writer myself, so I’m having Isaac Asimov write this up for me. I’ve picked him for several· reasons. First, he’s a biochemist, so he understands what I tell him; some of it, anyway. Secondly, he can write; or at least he has published considerable fiction, which may not, of course, be the same thing.

I was not the first person·to have the honor of meeting The Goose. That belongs to a Texas cotton farmer named Ian Angus MacGregor, who owned it before it became government property.

By summer of 1955 he had sent an even dozen of letters to the Department of Agriculture requesting information on the hatching of goose eggs. The department sent him all the booklets on hand that were anywhere near the subject, but his letters simply got more impassioned and freer in their references to his ‘friend,’ the local congressman.

My connection with this is that I am in the employ of the Department of Agriculture. Since I was attending a convention at San Antonio in July of 1955, my boss asked me to stop off at MacGregor’s place and see what I could do to help him. We’re servants of the public and besides we had finally received a letter from MacGregor’s congressman.

On July 17, 1955, I met The Goose.

I met MacGregor first. He was in his fifties, a tall man witha lined face full of sus 1c10 . I went over all the information he had been given then asked pohtely 1f I might see his geese.

He said, ‘It’s not geese, mister; it’s one goose.’

I said, ‘May I see the one goose?’

‘Rather not.’

‘Well , then,I can’t help you any further. If it’s only one goose then there’s Just somethmg wrong with it. Why worry about one goose? Eat it.’

I got up and reached for my hat.

He said, ‘Wait!’ and I stood there while his lips tightened and his eyes wnnkled and he had a quiet fight with himself. ‘Come with.’

I went out with him to a pen near the house, surrounded by barbed wire, wtih a locked ga to it, and holding one goose – The Goose.

‘That’s The Goose,’ he said. The way he said it I could hear the capitals.

I stared at it. It looked like any other goose, fat self-satisfied d short-tempered.

MacGr gor said, ‘And here’s one of its eggs. It’s been in the incubator. Nothmg happens.’ He produced it from a capacious overall pocket ere was a queer strain about his manner of holding it.

I frowned. T ere was something wrong with the egg. It was smaller an more sphencal than, normal.

MacGregor said, ‘Toke it.’

I reached out and took it. Or tried to. I gave it the amount of heft an egg hke that ought to deserve and it just sat where it was I had tot harder and then up it came.

Now I knew what was queer about the way MacGregor held it It we1g ed nearly two pounds.

I stared at i as it lay there, pressing down the palm of my hand and MacGregor gnnned sourly. ‘Drop it,’ he said.

I just looked at him, so he took it out of my hand and dropped it himself.

It hit soggy. It didn’t smash. There was no spray of white and yolk It Just lay where It fell with the bottom caved in.

I picked it up again. The white eggshell had shattered where the egg a struck. Pieces of It had flaked away and what shone through dull yellow m color.

My hands trembled. It was all I could do to make my fingers work, but I got some of the rest of the shell flaked away, and stared at the yellow.

I didn’t have to run any analyses. My heart told me. I was fac·e to face with The Goose!

The Goose That Laid The Golden Eggs! My first problem was to get MacGregor to give up that golden egg. I was almost hysterical about it.

I said, ‘I’ll give you a receipt. I’ll guarantee you payment. I’ll do anything in reason.’

‘I don’t want the government butting in,’ he said stubbornly.

But I was twice as stubborn and in the end I signed a receipt and he dogged me out to my car and stood in the road as I drove away, following me with his eyes.

The head of my section at the Department of Agriculture is Louis P. Bronstein. He and I are on good terms and I felt I could explain things without being placed under immediate obseration. Even so, I took no chances. I had the egg with me and when I got to the tricky part, I just laid it on the desk between us.

I said, ‘It’s a yellow metal and it could be brass only it isn’t because it’s inert to concentrated nitric acid.’