"Well, on Tuesday--or was it Wednesday?--no, it must have been Tuesday
because that was the day after I flew over to Hartford--I was down by
the hothouse and I found the most unpleasant thing beside the path." She shuddered. "I've been dreaming about it ever since." "What was it?" Bjornson urged. "Oh, a--I guess it must have been a rabbit once. One of the wild ones. Only it was nothing except some fur and some bones. Not decayed,
Hjalmar, you understand, just gone. I can't imagine what had happened
to it." "Better see a mental hygienist," the Captain advised after a pause. "Nightmares can be very serious." "I suppose so. I really dread going to sleep." *       *       *       *       *

The next morning, very early, Amy turned on the fluor with unsteady
fingers. What a horrid dream it had been! She could hardly believe that
it hadn't been real and that she was safe and sound in her own bedroom
after all. Outside, the noise that had wakened her--the jagged, unearthly
caterwauling of a couple of tomcats promenading in the moonlight--came
again. Ordinarily it was a noise Amy disliked very much--the poor
things always sounded as if they were in deadly agony--but now she
was glad to hear it. Heavens, if it hadn't been for those cats crying
and waking her up, she might still be asleep and dreaming. Dreaming
about--about--_blood_....

She turned the ceiling selector to "summer sky," lay back on her
pillow, and tried to relax. It was her favorite of all the ceilings
her bedroom had, so lovely and calm and blue, and right now she needed
something lovely and calm. One thing was sure, she wasn't going to
stand this much longer. She didn't believe in pampering herself, but,
if she had that dream once more she was going to take Bjornson's advice
and see a mental hygienist. She'd think about something pleasant. Amy tried to fix her mind on her
gardening, on how well her plants were doing, but it wasn't a success. When she tried to keep her thoughts on her Venusian Rambler (why did
they call it a Rambler?--it was turning into a large, stocky, compact
bush more like an outsized Camellia than anything else Amy Dinsmore
could think of), they kept veering back to her dream and all that--all
that--

Well, then she'd think about Robert. She was a lucky woman to have
a nephew like him. She'd worked out several menus, all the things
he liked best, but she wished she could think of something a little
different. There were so few kinds of meat, when everything was said
and done. Lamb and beef and musk ox and bollo and pork. And she always
thought bollo was stringy and tough. Gradually Amy's nerves began to quiet. The cats had grown quiet too,
except for an occasional outburst that sounded like lightning made
audible. Her thoughts drifted lazily from Robert to her soap carving. After a while she went to sleep.... The morning was sunny and bright, and she felt almost ashamed of
herself for having let a dream affect her so seriously. She had
finished her matutinal inspection of the hothouse and the succulent
growing-shed and had started back to the house when she came on a
bundle lying by the hothouse wall. At first she didn't recognize it for
what it was, and stooped over it, poking at it with a stick. After an instant she straightened, nauseated, remembering where she had
last seen that ginger-colored fur. The bundle was the not very bulky
remains--bones, and some patches of hide--of a cat. Hadn't there been
some pieces of white fur too?--of two cats. She'd better call Hjalmar. It might be dangerous. There must be some
wild animal living near her hothouse, a lynx or ferret or wildcat or
stoat. Mrs. Dinsmore wasn't strong on zoology, but she knew exactly
what sort of an animal she had in mind--something lithe and dark and
blood-thirsty. Goodness. It was quite frightening. On the other hand, Robert would be in port in a couple of days. If
she asked Hjalmar to help her, he'd either make an enormous masculine
fuss over it (she still remembered the time she'd asked him to put up
a towel rack for her and he'd arrived with a set of socket wrenches, a
hand electric drill, four pairs of pliers, and a portable arc welding
outfit) or he'd pooh-pooh and pish-tush her into silence. Either way,
it wouldn't be satisfactory. She'd wait for Robert; Robert was so
comforting. If only she didn't have more of those dreams! *       *       *       *       *

Despite her apprehensions, her next night's slumber was profound and
sweet. She hadn't felt so rested and refreshed in weeks. She put the
somni-spray (maybe if she'd thought to use it before she wouldn't have
had those horrid nightmares) back in the closet and decided that she'd
do some soap carving after breakfast. She felt in the mood for it, and
Robert would be disappointed if she didn't have something new to show
him that she'd carved since he had last been in port. Besides, she
might be able to think of the special dish she wanted to make for him
while she was working: she'd found from experience that some of her
best culinary ideas came to her while she was making a statuette or
plaque out of soap. The meal concluded, she got out her set of modeling knives and a couple
of cakes of soap. Soap was rather hard to get, since most people used
synthetic detergents nowadays, but she knew a little store in Perth
Amboy that carried it. This last batch had a lovely texture. Amy rotated the living room on its axis until the light was exactly
right, and then sat down in front of her carving desk. What should she
make? A statuette? A plaque? A plaque in low relief, a plaque of a
flower. Somehow, she didn't want to think about animals right now. She had sketched in the conventionalized Hermodactylus and was
beginning to pick it out carefully from the background when it occurred
to her that she hadn't been down to the hothouse this morning to see
her plants. Why, that would never do, she mustn't neglect them, it was terribly
important. Important. (Her head hurt; how dizzy she felt!) She'd better
go at once, she'd better ... go.... Cake of soap in one hand, knife
in the other, panting a little, Amy set out toward her plants in a
stumbling run. She was half-way to the hothouse before it occurred to her to question
the impulse which had taken her incontinently from her carving and
set her in blind motion toward the hothouse, and by then it was too
late. She was no longer a free agent in any sense of the term. The
mental grip which had taken the rabbit and the cats to their death
had tightened on her inescapably. Remote from her body, in a glassy
paralysis of fear and impotence, Amy watched her feet moving briskly
down the path. Oh, if she could only cry out, call Hjalmar! She felt the muscles of
her throat straining, but no sound came. And now she was standing
before the hothouse, and her hand had opened the door. The Rambler was waiting for her. Very slowly, like a man flexing his
arm, it reached out one of the stocky branches toward her.