Those Who Watch

What now? Lock and seal the door again, first. Switch on the alarm. And then—

She checked ‹her daughter’s bedroom. Jill was still sound asleep. Kathryn adjusted the monitor so that it would vibrate her mattress and keep her from waking up for a while.

Into the bathroom now. She scooped things from the medicine cabinet, almost at random. Bandages, tape, scissors, quickheal, antiseptic spray, a bottle of paindamp, and seven or eight other things, stuffing them into the pockets of her robe. The man on her bed had not moved. She had to get that suit off him first. She searched for a zipper, a catch, a button, anything. She could find none. The fabric was smooth and unbroken. Kathryn pinched some of it between two fingers and tried to cut it, but it resisted the scissors as easily as if it had been a sheet of steel. She did not dare roll him over to search for the zipper that might be on the other side.

He stirred. “Glair?” he said clearly. “Glair?”

“Don’t try to move. You’ll be all right. Just lie still and let me help you.”

He subsided again. More anxiously now, Kathryn fumbled for a way to get the suit off him. But it was as snug as a second skin, and she despaired of the job until she noticed a tiny, almost imperceptible button at the throat. Pressing it did nothing, but when she twisted it gently to the left something beneath the surface of the suit appeared to yield, and then, quite rapidly, she found the suit opening of its own accord, splitting down a fissure line from head to foot. In moments it was open, and she could lift the upper half away to reveal the man within.

He was nearly naked, wearing only a rubbery yellow wrapping around his loins. His body was slim, very pale, hairless, and . . . beautiful. The word thrust itself unbidden into Kathryn’s consciousness. There was an almost feminine kind of beauty about him, a sleekness, a smoothness, a slenderness; his skin was virtually translucent. But even without removing the loincloth Kathryn knew he was undeniably male. Powerful muscles, flexing and coiling now in pain, lay beneath the ivory skin. His shoulders were wide, his hips narrow, his chest and belly flat and firm. He could have been a Greek statue come to life. Only the pain evident in his features, the streaks of blood on his chin, the distorted pose of his anguish-racked body, marred the Athenian serenity and symmetry of his form. How badly hurt was he, Kathryn wondered? She touched him gently, probing for the injuries. Hospital skills she had not used in many years flooded back from the vault of her memory. Her hands passed over his cool skin. She saw that his left leg was broken; it was only a simple fracture, though, and that troubled her. From the way the limb was bent and crumpled, there surely should be a jagged spear of bone thrusting through the skin, and yet the skin was whole. Could a bone snap that way, cleanly, while not penetrating the flesh? How could he have avoided a com-: pound fracture, with the leg askew like that?

She could not find any other fractures, though he was bruised in a dozen places. Doubtless there were internal injuries. That would explain the blood around his lips and chin. That blood, Kathryn saw plainly under the bright light of the bedroom, definitely had an orange tinge. She looked at it in disbelief, and at the twisted leg once again, and she examined the open suit on which he still lay, noticing the assortment of mysterious compartments and instruments along the suit’s i

She used a damp cloth to wipe away the blood on his face. He didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore. Hesitantly she put her hands to the broken leg, trying to guide it into place even though she knew she had no business setting a broken bone. To her amazement the limb yielded easily to pressure, as though it were nothing more than modeling clay, and with the slightest prod she succeeded in realigning it. The man on the bed grimaced; but now his leg was straight again, and Kathryn suspected that the two halves of the snapped bone were in line. He was breathing more easily, with his mouth open. Kathryn picked up the bottle of paindamp and allowed a few drops of the all-purpose anesthetic to slide between his lips. He swallowed.

He’d feel better now . . . assuming that a body like his responded to paindamp at all.

She realized that she had done about as much as she could do for him, just now. There were no external wounds that needed bandaging. He had stopped moaning, and appeared merely to be asleep. She looked worriedly at him. Sooner or later he would wake, and then what?

Kathryn brushed all those fears away. He would be more comfortable, she decided, without that old rubbery loincloth. He’d need to pass wastes, and he couldn’t very well do that with his middle encased in rubber. Nor did she see any kind of opening in the garment, which puzzled her all the more. He did pass wastes, didn’t he? She had to get it off him.

At the thought of it, that curious sexual throbbing surged through her again. Kathryn quirked her lips in anger. Before her marriage, as a nurse, she had handled male patients the way a nurse was supposed to handle them, as so much live meat, with no concern for their bodies. Yet now she utterly failed to recapture that dispassionate attitude. Had a year of chaste widowhood made her so eager to see a man’s body, she wondered? Or was it something else, a powerful attraction exerted only by this man in particular? Perhaps it was mere snoopiness, the desire to find out what was under there. If he did come from some other world—

Kathryn seized the scissors, placed them against his right thigh, slid them under the fabric, and tried to cut. She did not succeed. The undergarment was as tough as his spacesuit, and the blade bounded away from the resilient material.

She was sure she could roll the garment down, but she did not want to subject his injured leg to that much jouncing about. Perplexed, she searched for a hidden catch such as the outer garment had had, and as her hands slid up and down his hips she became so involved in what she was doing that she failed to notice he had returned to consciousness.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a pleasantly resonant voice.

Kathryn leaped back, panicky. “Oh — you’re awake!”

“More or less. Where am I?”

“In my house. Near Bernalillo. About twenty miles from Albuquerque. Does any of that mean anything to you?”

“A little.” He looked down at his leg. “Have I been unconscious long?”

“I found you about an hour ago. You were just outside my house. You… landed there.”

“Yes. I landed.” He smiled. His eyes were lively, probing, ironical. He was implausibly handsome with the artificial good looks of a movie star. Kathryn kept her distance. She was uncomfortably aware of the whiteness of his skin, of her own light nightgown and wrap, of the sleeping child in the next room. She began to wish she had not yielded to this wild impulse to bring him into her house. He said, “Where is the rest of your sexual group?”

“My sexual group?” — blankly.

He laughed. “Sorry. My stupidity. I mean, your mate. Your— husband.”

“He’s dead,” Kathryn murmured. “He was killed last year’ I live with my child.”

“I see.” He tried to get up, but clenched his teeth as soon as he moved his left leg. Kathryn went toward him and held out her hand.”

“No. Lie there. Your leg’s broken.”

“So it seems.” He forced a grin. “Are you a doctor?”

“I’ve had medical training. I was a nurse before I was married. Your leg will be all right, but you mustn’t put any weight on it for a while. In the morning I’ll phone a doctor and he’ll put it in a cast.”