The Secret of Life

Suddenly the other flame-person knotted itself into Conrad’s sword and began to pull. It was talking to him, Conrad realized—that buzzing was a kind of talk.

Come on, Conrad, it was saying,it’s time to get you out of here. People are going to recognize you from TV, and your next powers are going to use up so much of your crystal-energy that ...

Conrad braced himself and refused to budge. Just then, four or five spotlights focused on him and the scout ship pilot.

“DON’T MOVE OR WE’LL SHOOT!” Cops—squad cars full of cops.

Oh, #*!%, buzzed the other flame-person.I give up. It swooped back to the red-flashing spacecraft and, as suddenly as it had come, the UFO tumbled back up into the sky.

WOZZZZ.

Conrad’s bright sword flexed in exultation. Conrad’s human body sighed in relief. The big dog lay there on the ground before him, cut right in two. With the same automatic motion that he’d used before, Conrad raised up his stick of light and slid it down into his spine. Like a sword-swallower. Click. He felt whole again. Good and—

Fly, thought Conrad.Shrink! Nothing doing. He pocketed the crystal and raised both hands high as if to surrender. The cop cars were about twenty yards off—they couldn’t get any closer, with Conrad in here among the gravestones. Each gravestone cast a dark shadow. It was obvious what to do.

Conrad twitched his left hand and dived down to the right. In a shadow. Good. He scuttled backward, shifted to a new shadow, scuttled further. Further. Bright lights, dark shadows. Someone fired a shot, someone screamed not to. There were more cops, circling up on Conrad’s position from behind.

“WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED!”

Cops in front of him, cops behind him. By now, they’d lost track of exactly where he was, here in a patch of shadow behind one of ten thousand identical gravestones.If only I looked like a cop.

The crystal twitched in his pocket, and then Conrad felt his clothes shifting, felt the flesh of his features crawl. All right!

“He’s not over here!” called cop-voiced Conrad, getting to his feet. He could change his face!Third Chinese brother!

“I’m going to check over by the wall!” His handcuffs jingled, and his pistol slapped against his leg. The other officers wandered this way and that.

There was a low stone wall around the cemetery. Conrad found a spot with no people close by and rolled himself over the wall.Mr. Bulber , he thought, as he dropped out of sight.I want to look like Mr.

Bulber.

When he got back to his feet, he was a nondescript guy in his early thirties—a carbon copy of his Swarthmore physics teacher, Mr. Bulber. Mr. Bulber had the virtue of being very normal-looking: prim mouth, neatly parted dark hair, horn-rimmed glasses, charcoal-gray suit ...

More and more people were coming to see what was up, but no one noticed “Mr. Bulber” walking off.

As he walked, Conrad drew out his wallet and took a peek. Money in there, good, and, even better, IDs withCharles Bulber on them.

Conrad started walking along Route 42. But where to? Probably the cops or someone had gotten footage of him dueling with the other flame-person—which meant that his old cover was thoroughly blown. Plenty of people in Louisville would recognize Conrad Bunger from the pictures. He wasn’t going to be able to look like his old self anymore at all. It was time to get out of town.

Some teenagers threw a beer can at him from a passing car. Of course. Whowouldn’t throw a beer can at Mr. Bulber, all neat and square in his charcoal-gray suit? He’d want to pick a new body-look before long; but, for now, this was good and i

Conrad could feel the crystal in his pants pocket. It was smaller than it had been just a few minutes ago.

Strange. He was going to have to get rid of the crystal. Holding it in the Z.T. for that long had somehow energized it—one of its functions seemed to be that of a radio beacon. It had to be the crystal that had enabled the flame-people to home in on him like that.

And what did they want from him anyway? Apparently they thought he wasn’t doing too good a job here—they wanted to abort his mission. But unless he was actually holding the crystal, it was too hard for them to find him.Well, fine , thought Conrad,I don’t want them to find me.

A battery.The crystal was like a battery. His stick of light, after all, had to be living offsomething . The power for his reality-altering wishes had to come fromsomewhere . Such magical power would involve a higher form of energy than anything that humble human meat could provide.

Conrad reached into his pocket and fingered the crystal anxiously. When he was a kid it had been as big as his fist—though, of course, childhood memories were always inaccurate about size. In any case, last night, the crystal had definitely been the size of a big, homemade ice cube. But now—now that he’d had flying, and shrinking, and face-changing—now that he was the third Chinese brother—now the crystal was only the size of a matchbox.

The crystal was Conrad’s energy source, but it was also a kind of transmitter to the flame-people. Unless he wanted them to come back and get him, he was going to have to get rid of it. But where would it be safe? Some cops sped past on Route 42. Conrad felt a big pulse of stress. If the pigs got hold of his crystal, it would be all over. If the flamers found him again, it would be all over. What to do?

Why not just take Mrs. Larsen’s advice? Why not give the crystal back to Mr. Skelton? Conrad began walking faster.

The highway traffic made a lot of noise, but he kept having a feeling he was hearing thatZZZZOW from before. He glanced anxiously up at the sky, looking for a tumbling pattern of five red lights. Maybe as long as he didn’t actuallyhold the crystal, the flame-people couldn’t find him. But maybe not. In any case, the sooner he got to Skelton’s, the better.

Five more minutes’ walking down 42, and Conrad came to the Esso station at the corner of Drury Lane.

Skelton’s was about three miles down Drury Lane, down past where the Bungers’ house had been.

Three miles ... a good half hour’s walk. Conrad looked up at the sky once again. This was taking too long. Drury Lane didn’t have the heavy traffic that Route 42 did, he’d be a sitting duck for the flame-people’s scout ship. Should he phone Hank from the Esso station’s telephone?

Just then a yellow VW bumped up to one of the gas pumps. That looked like Sue Pohlboggen’s car, and in it was ... Dee Decca. Yes!

Conrad hurried over and stuck his head in her window. “Hi, Dee, it’s Conrad. Can you give me a ride down the road real quick?”

She was so surprised at his new Mr. Bulber-face that it took her a minute to understand what he was saying.

“Conrad Bunger?”

“Yeah, it’s me, Dee, it really is. We got high in the country together today, right? All is One, right?” He walked around to the passenger side and got in.

“I’m really just the same person you’ve always known, Dee.” His Mr. Bulber-voice was firm and manly, with a faint Boston accent.

“Yes, ma’am?” It was the gas station attendant, leaning down for Dee’s request. Conrad held his breath for what seemed an eternity.

“I just remembered something,” said Dee finally. “I’ll come back for gas in a little while.” They putt-putted out of the station and onto Drury Lane.

“Thanks, Dee.”

“Where to, spaceman?”

“You remember old Cornelius Skelton? Who has the farm?”

“Sure. I saw him on the seven o’clock news. That was you, too, wasn’t it, Conrad?”

“Yeah. It’s a mess. The crystal is what attracted the other alien—the one I was fighting. He ... it ...

was trying to get me to leave Earth. I’ve got to ditch the crystal with Skelton and go underground.”

The warm summer night slid past. “What did you come down to Earth for in the first place, Conrad?