Nine men are stranded on Europa with enough power to survive but too little food to await rescue. As their hope weakens, a mysterious shapeshifter moves among them, taking the form each man most desperately needs. She offers affection without rejection, companionship without conflict, and an escape from the fear waiting beyond the transparent walls of their shelter.
Bill Lutscher knows her comfort is manufactured from the private memories she reads inside his mind. Yet resisting her becomes almost impossible when she appears as Lois, the woman he left behind on Earth. Then Bill discovers that the alien can do far more than imitate human faces. She may be able to create the fuel that could carry the crew home—but she has no reason to help them leave her alone again.
The answer may lie with Kohnke, the expedition’s metallurgist and the one man whose broken thoughts the alien cannot understand. To her, his confusion resembles an intelligence beyond anything the others possess. Bill begins forming a desperate plan, but hiding it from a mind reader may be the hardest part.
Charles V. De Vet published more than fifty stories in science fiction magazines after making his debut with “The Unexpected Weapon” in the September 1950 issue of Amazing Stories. His fiction includes “Wheels Within,” “Infinity’s Child,” “There Is a Reaper…,” “Specimen,” and “Gramp.” He also collaborated with Katherine MacLean on “Second Game,” a 1958 Astounding story that became a Hugo Award finalist and was later expanded into a novel. “Lorelei,” first published in 1961, displays De Vet’s talent for placing an ingenious speculative idea inside an immediate human crisis.
