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His duties were not limited to the search for the lab escapees, but that case constantly worried hi other work He was unable to put the Banodyne affair out ofonly four or five hours of rest a night He could not tolerate failure

No, in truth, his attitude wasfailure His father, having started life dirt-poor and having built a successful business, had inculcated in Leious belief in the need to achieve, to succeed, and to fulfill all of one’s goals No matter how much success you had, his dad often said, life could pull the rug right out froent "It’s even worse for a black htrope over the Grand Canyon He’s up there real high, and it’s sweet, but when hedrop into an abyss An abyss Because failurepoor And in a lot of people’s eyes, even in this enlightened age, a poor miserable failed black er" That Was the only tirown up With the conviction that any success he achieved was merely a precarious toehold on the cliff of life, that he was always in danger of being blown off that cliff by the winds of adversity, and that he dared not relent in his detere

He wasn’t sleeping well, and his appetite was no good When he did eat, the estion His bridge gaone to hell because he could not concentrate on the cards; at their weekly get-togethers with Walt and Audrey Gaines, the Johnsons were taking a beating

He knehy he was obsessed with closing every case successfully, but that knowledge was of no help in ht, and e e are is when life throws us such a surprise that it’s like hitting a plate-glass ith a baseball bat, shattering the grip of the past

So he stared out at the blazing July day and brooded, worried

Back in May, he had surht have been picked up by soiven a home It was, after all, a handsome anience to anyone, its appeal would be irresistible; it would find sanctuary Therefore, Le down The Outsider A week to locate The Outsider, he had thought, and perhaps a month to lay hands on the retriever

He had issued bulletins to every animal pound and veterinarian in California, Nevada, and Arizona, urgently requesting assistance in locating the golden retriever The flyer claimed that the animal had escaped fro an i, the bulletin claimed, would mean the loss of a million dollars of research ht seriously inancies The flyer included a photograph of the dog and the information that, on the inside of its left ear, it bore a lab tattoo: the nu the flyer requested not only cooperation but confidentiality Thehad been repeated every seven days since the breakout at Banodyne, and a score of NSA agents had been doing nothing but phoning animal pounds and vets in the three states to be certain they remembered the flyer and continued to keep a lookout for a retriever with a tattoo

Meanwhile, the urgent search for The Outsider could, with some confidence, be confined to undeveloped territories because it would be reluctant to show itself And there was no chance that soh to take ho a trail of death that could be followed

Subsequent to the e east of Yorba Linda, the creature had fled into the unpopulated Chino Hills Fro into the eastern end of Los Angeles County, where its presence was next pinpointed, on June 9, on the outskirts of seeles County Animal Control Authority had received nuarding wild-animal attacks on dohter was the work of a deranged hts, more than a score of Diamond Bar’s domestic animals had been torn to pieces, and the condition of the carcasses left no doubt in Lem’s mind that the perpetrator was The Outsider

Then the trail went ice-cold forcampers at the foot of Johnstone Peak, on the southern flank of the vast Angeles National Forest, reported seeing so they insisted was "from another world" They had locked themselves in their van, but the creature had tried repeatedly to get in at the so far as to smash a side ith a rock Fortunately, the pair kept a 32 pistol in the van, and one of the it off The press treated the ca news the happy-talk anchorpersons got a lot ofcouple On a map, he traced the thinly populated corridor of land by which The Outsider could have gone from Diamond Bar to the area below Johnstone Peak: over the San Jose Hills, through Bonelli Regional Park, between San Dimas and Glendora, then into the wilds It would have had to cross or go under three freeways that cut through the area, but if it had traveled in the deep of night, when there was little or no traffic, it could have passed unseen He shifted the hundred ence into that portion of the forest, where they continued their search in civilian dress, in groups of three and four

He hoped the campers had hit The Outsider with at least one shot But no blood was found at their caht evade capture for a long tieles National Forest was discouragingly ie as the entire state of Delaware," Cliff Soames said after he had measured the area on the wall map pinned to the bulletin board in Lem’s office and had calculated the square miles Cliff had come from Delaware He was relatively new to the West and still had a newco at this end of the continent He was also young, with the enthusiaserously opti had been radically different frohtrope or at risk of having his life destroyed by just one error, by a single failure Sometimes Lem envied him

Lem stared at Cliff’s scribbled calculations "If it takes refuge in the San Gabriel Mountains, feeding on wildlife and content with solitude, venturing out only rarely to vent its rage on the people living along the periphery of the preserveit ht never be found"

"But reand has the ability to find it"

"So we think"

"And could it really tolerate a wild existence? I e, but it’s also smart Maybe too sed country"

"Maybe," Le to give us another fix on it," Cliff predicted

That was June 18

When they found no trace of The Outsider during the next ten days, the expense of keeping a hundred rew insupportable On June 29, Lem finally had to relinquish the Marines that had been put at his disposal and send them back to their bases

Day by day, Cliff was heartened by the lack of develop to believe that The Outsider had suffered a ain

Day by day, Leloom, certain that he had lost control of the situation and that The Outsider would reappear in aits existence known to the public Failure

The only bright spot was that the beast was now in Los Angeles County, out of Walt Gaines’s jurisdiction If there were additional victiht not even learn of theain, to remain out of the case

By Thursday, July 15, exactly two months after the breakout at Banodyne, almost one month after the campers had been terrorized by a supposed extraterrestrial or sfoot, Lem was convinced he would soon have to consider alternate careers No one had blaone The heat was on him to deliver, but it was no worse than the heat he had felt on other big investigations Actually, some of his superiors viewed the lack of developht as did Cliff Soames But in his most pessimistic moments, Leuard working the night shift in a warehouse, demoted to the status of ain his office chair, facing the , staring gri summer day, he said aloud, "Damn it, I’ve been trained to deal with human criitive frohtmare?"

A knock sounded at his door, and as he swiveled around in his chair, the door opened Cliff Soaht "The Outsider," he said "We’ve got a new fix on itbut two people are dead"