Page:Beyond Fantasy Fiction Volume 1 Issue 1 (1953-07).djvu/124

 does daylight kill me, as you can see. All that is superstition. Superstition! Do you know that my grandfather died with a white ash stake through his heart?” His beard tilted angrily. “Believe me, we variants have more to fear from the ignorant and superstitious than they from us. There are so many of them, and so few of us.”

Craig said, “You won’t touch me again!”

“Ah, but I must.”

“I’m still strong enough to fight you off.”

“But not strong enough to get at the food if I choose to prevent you.”

Craig shook his head. “I’ll throw myself overboard!”



“That I cannot permit. Now, why not submit to the inevitable? Each day, I will supply you with your ration of food; each night, you will supply me with mine. A symbiotic relationship. What could be fairer?”

“Beast! Monster! I will not—”

Hofmanstahal sighed, and looked out over the tossing sea. “Monster. Always they say that of us; they, who feed off the burned flesh of living creatures.”

T WAS the face of his father, stern and reproving, that Craig always saw before him during those long nights in the lifeboat. His father, who had been a Baptist minister. When the lifeboat