THE LAST CORRIDOR ON the eighth floor of the New Interior Building leads the occasional visitor along some hundred yards of green and gray floor tiles and past dozens of closed doors. Near the end the tiles give way to a short section of wall-to-wall carpeting and another door whose glass panel reads:

On this quiet day in early summer the reception room, furnished with file cabinets and a medium-sized walnut desk, was occupied only by a medium-sized but notably lucious secretary. Her name was Lois Merton. She had long green eyes and long red hair and various other desirable attributes. She believed that being Mr. Clay's private secretary was better than having a job in the White House. She finished sorting and reading the morning mail, retouched her lips, and waited for him to call.

In the inner office, Rufus Clay sat with his feet on the desk and digested the Wall Street Journal. He was tall, spare and if, like Lois, you fancied craggy features and a broken nose, tolerably good looking. Presently he tossed the paper into the out basket, lowered his feet to the floor and yelled for his secretary.

Over the year or so that she had worked for him, he had thought about her a good deal. She had become nearly a state of mind, and this was dangerous for an eligible bachelor. She was ornamental, intelligent and remarkably efficient; more ambitious for him than he was for himself. So he treated her always with careful casualness. She came in with the mail and a cup of coffee.

"Thanks," he said. "What's on the fire?"

"Here's what you'll want to look at first, and here's the rest. The two on top are from Mr. Peterson about the new budget. There's a memo down from the secretary's office with a clipping from a Los Angeles paper. It's about unicorns and it's very critical of the bureau."

"The unicorn is a mythical beast," Rufus muttered.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing. I was just quoting. They probably have them in Los Angeles. What else?"

"A letter from Senator Hess."

"Um. Addressed personally to the director, isn't it?"

"Yes, but since we don't know when Dr. Tate will be back, I thought you'd want to handle it."

Rufus knew that Dr. Tate wouldn't be back for six weeks. There was no holding him when he got into the Mayan jungles looking for feathered serpents and such. Lois knew it, too. She was well informed by the office grapevine, assisted as it was by a small Delphic oracle secreted in a broom closet. But neither of them admitted the knowledge.

"You're right. If it's congressional, we'd better move on it. What's itching the senator?"

"Wood goblins, sir."

"Doesn't sound very important. What's the trouble?"

"They're eating up the new turnip crop."

"This bothers somebody?"

"The turnip farmers. It appears that most of the senator's constituents are turnip farmers."

"That may account for Senator Hess. Is that the works?"

"Yes, sir."

"OK. Give me an hour to digest this budget thing, then we'll tackle some dictation. Ask Dr. Gilman to come in at eleven."

For the hour, Rufus dutifully immersed himself in the peculiar world of budgets. Once he paused to light a cigarette and wonder again, as he so often did, how he had gotten into demonology. He didn't care for demons. Incubi and succubae left him cold. Elves, the senseless little idiots, were a bore. Even mermaids. They looked well enough in black and white photographs, but their skins were a sickly green, and out of water they gasped like asthmatics. Could responsibility for mermaids be transferred to Fish and Wildlife Service? Probably not.

Rufus had had every intention of being an electronics engineer. The lucky fellows had little to worry about but glitches. But when he had finished school, electronics engineers had been a dime a dozen, and he took what came. Once in demonology he had risen rapidly through the ranks until now, still in his early thirties, he was second to the director. He was good at his job.

Through with the mail, he called Lois and dictated until eleven. The letter to Senator Hess, after several versions, pointed out, first, that the bureau admired the senator for his sagacity in detecting an incipient problem; second, that the bureau had been aware of the problem and had already undertaken an analysis; and third, that there was not really any problem which wouldn't take care of itself. It was always well to give Congress a choice of answers.

Promptly at eleven Dr. Gilman knocked hesitantly and came in. He subsided into a chair and gave a jerky nod, but did not speak. Rufus hardly knew Ray Gilman, even after ten years in the bureau, even during the period when they had been on the same echelon. That wasn't remarkable. Gilman, with a few of his fellows, had always been immured in Taxonomy Branch, more concerned with the color of a dragon's spines than with the economic depredations of the deadly lizard. He was sllght, somewhat stooped, and uneasy with humans, much more at home with the gentler super-naturals.

"No, please stay, Lois," Rufus Clay said. "Take some rough notes of what Dr. Gilman has to tell us. Smoke, Ray?"

"Thank you, I don't indulge."

"I'd forgotten," said Rufus. "I asked you to drop in to brush me up a little on goblins, specifically, wood goblins. I think you're rather specialized in them."

Dr. Gilman looked alarmed. "Specialized? Oh, no. Well, hardly. Only to a degree, that is. Goblins and some of the related sprites."

"Yes, of course. Can you give me a quick rundown on the characteristics of the American wood goblin?"

"Well, let me see. Height, thirty inches or so. Weight, fifteen pounds average. Exo-skeleton, of course. Heads globular. The carapace is brittle and easily broken, but if they are injured, they can usually repair themselves. Afterward they may be rather deformed."

Rufus interrupted. "How on earth could you tell?"

The levity was not appreciated. "I have seen some pitiful cases. Color, green or brown to nearly black. Eyes mounted on short stalks and move independently. At a distance they may seem smaller than they are because they walk with a stooped posture. On the other hand, they can jump distances up to forty feet. But you surely know all this."

"Please keep going. You mustn't overestimate my knowledge of wood goblins. We handled a case on hobgoblins a couple of years ago, but they're not the same thing."

"I should say not. An unfortunate similarity of terms for two quite different species. I take it the bureau has some special interest in wood goblins at this time."

"Yes, we'll get to that. What do they eat?"

"Oh, my goodness, whatever the poor things can get. They used to eat a lot of grundles, but there aren't many anymore."

"Come to think of it, I haven't seen a grundle for years. Nasty, squirmy little things. What else?"

"They like fireflies, but mostly they have to eat vegetables. Potatoes, you know, turnips, squash, parsnips and so on. They don't like spinach."

"Neither do I."

"Oh, you should eat it," said Gilman. "It's very good for you. If the goblins would only eat more greens, they'd be healthier--"

"They're not healthy?"

"Not very. A wood goblin should live twenty years and reproduce for sixteen. Some of them don't."

"Um. Tell us about the reproductive cycle."

Dr. Gilman glanced embarrassedly at Lois, but turned his eyes on the floor and continued bravely. "Well, they reproduce very much like humans, but having hard shells, they rattle rather while they ... while they are about it. It's dangerous to approach a pair while they are rattling."

Rufus laughed. "It's dangerous to approach even one at the best of times. I ran over one once."

"Oh, dear. What happened?"

"It was just at dusk, and one of them jumped right in front of the car. It sounded like driving through a pile of dry bones. I got out and walked back, and it was sitting in the road putting itself together again. It glared at me and I got out fast, but l had a headache for the next three days."

"Yes, that's how it is when they hate you, but you can make friends with them."

"I'd as soon make friends with a tarantula. You were talking about their reproduction."

"Ah, yes. Well, they have four pups to a litter, one litter a year."

"For sixteen years. Good lord. Have we any idea how many there are in the country?"

Gilman shook his head regretfully. "A census is badly needed. Some years back they were nearly wiped out by DDT, you recall, but they have acquired immunity and are making a nice comeback."

"Too nice, I'm afraid," Rufus said. "We have a letter from Senator Hess. They've become a nuisance in his state."

"Oh, dear," said Dr. Gilman.

"So how can they be controlled?"

"That I would not know."

"Have they any natural enemies? If goblins eat grundles, what eats the goblins?"

Dr. Gilman's lips compressed to a stubborn line.

"You know I can consult the literature, Ray. It will be in the journals."

Gilman appeared to be undergoing inner turmoil. At last he said, "Trolls." The word cost him an effort.

"Anything else?"

"Silver bullets, of course, but goblins are difficult to shoot. They can go invisible for limited periods."

Rufus Clay stood up and let Dr. Gilman make his escape.

"Not very helpful," he told Lois. "Trolls are dangerous, and l haven't got any anyway. You might give Miss Stickney a call and ask her to dig out a few references on goblin control."

Lois went to the library herself and came back burdened with books, journals and a few Xeroxed pages. For her own interest and to nurture a hunch, she had drawn a thin volume titled Trolls and Trolloids of the Fjord Country, written by one Nils Gunderson. This she took with her to the cafeteria, and read assiduously until one.

The afternoon was largely taken up with a visitor from G. E. who was scheduled to demonstrate a device for detecting warbs in the woodwork, and, what with one thing and another, it was Tuesday before the goblins got another hearing. A private showing of films on goblins was put on in the big conference room. Lois slipped in quietly and sat in the back row. The first film was overexposed, the sound track was full of noise, and for the most part you couldn't see the goblins for the trees. The other had been made by the Disney Studios, and the camera work was superb, but the goblins talked instead of hissing and made bad puns. Neither cast any light on control methods.

Later, with becoming diffidence, Lois reminded Rufus Clay that he had mentioned trolls.

"Evidently they're pretty effective," he told her. "A troll can eat up twenty or thirty goblins in a night. There haven't been any goblins in Scandinavia for a generation. But we haven't got any trolls."

"We could rent some. There's the Department of Demonology in Oslo where we might get them, maybe even on a loan basis."

He thought about that. "It's a possibility. But they are dangerous. They eat people. That's well recorded."

"Not very often," she said.

He grinned. "No, once is enough."

"And there are good spells to confine them."

"How come you know so much about trolls?"

"My grandfather was Norwegian. He told me a lot about them." Her grandfather had, in fact been Boston Irish, but a small lie was allowable if it served a good purpose.

"Um. I wonder how long it would take to get them over here."

"If they have them in stock, maybe no more than a week. BOAC will carry supernaturals on charter flights if you take a special policy with Lloyds."

"They're too big for air transport. We couldn't afford it."

"Trolls are hollow behind. They look awful in front, but if you walk around behind one, you see it's nothing but a shell."

"True," he said. "You mean you could stack them up on the plane like paper cups. If you knocked them out first, of course. It's a good suggestion, Lois. Locate the Oslo address, will you, and the name of the right man, and we'll get off a cable of inquiry."

The expenditure was such as should have been authorized by Director Tate, but there was no possibility of getting in touch with him. Rufus scowled at the cost estimates and went ahead. And Operation Gobble got off to a good start.

They had eighty-four trolls. By shifting a number of people Rufus was able to put seventy field agents on temporary duty in the southeastern states, and each man held responsibility for one troll. The spares were confined in a small demonarium in Bethesda.

For six days the campaign proceeded without a hitch. One by one, areas of about ten square miles would be enclosed with the Norwegian spell, and a troll would be delivered by helicopter. There were not many residents who had to be evacuated, since the areas were largely wooded, and very few who objected. Public relations had done a good job. Two nights sufficed for a ninety-nine percent cleanup. The hissing of goblins diminished, and nearby farmers began to have some hope for their crops.

Rufus posted Lois's name for an Employee Suggestion Award and said he didn't know how he could get along without her.

She blushed demurely, by holding her breath, and whispered, "35-26-36."

"What's that?"

"A spell. It's supposed to bring a girl luck."

"Um. There seems to be a bit of trouble near a town called Stonedike, in Virginia. Troll Number 38 has gotten rather out of hand. Have you heard about it?"

"A little. They say that Agent O'Hare has let it escape."

"That doesn't worry me. O'Hare will scoop it up soon enough. Unfortunately, he pushed the panic button and got the local authorities in on the act. A couple of our people are on the way to back him up, but I think I'll run down myself this afternoon. It's not far, and I'm curious to see what the trouble is. Want to go along? I know you're interested in trolls."

She admitted her interest, agreed to be ready in an hour, and scooted for her apartment to change into something more provocative than she allowed herself in the office.

They were out of Washington by early afternoon and made excellent time as far as Charlottesville. The skies were a satisfactory shade of blue, and Rufus's car was a pleasure to ride in. Away from the office he was more relaxed and asked her questions about herself, even volunteered an anecdote about his two years in the army. This was more like it.

Stonedike was far from the arterial highways. They got briefly lost before they found the town and were presently halted at a roadblock. A cadaverous young man stepped out and waved a flag at them. "Road's closed, mister. Got to go back to the crossroads."

"Why?"

"Some trouble down that-away. Government fellas won't let you get through."

Rufus flipped open his wallet and passed it out the window.

"You're one of them, huh? Guess you know what you're doing. You'll find them at Culver's Mill, 'bout half a mile. They're waiting for the dawgs."

Half a dozen men were standing in a group at the next hilltop. Agent O'Hare recognized them and waved. There were two other demonology men Lois had seen once or twice, a local sheriff with a shiny star-shaped badge and a pistol at his hip, a youthful state trooper, a fat man named Culver (though there was no mill to be seen), and Dr. Gilman.

Rufus raised his eyebrows. "Didn't know you were here, Ray."

Ray Gilman looked flustered. "I thought I might be ... that I might help in some way. I'm on annual leave."

"I see. Where do we stand, O'Hare?"

"He's somewhere in those woods yonder, no question of that. How he ever broke through the spell is a mystery to me. There's something not quite right about T-38."

"What's not right?"

"These whistles that were supposed to bring them to heel. T-38 never came the way he should. Fought the whistle every step of the way. We've been whistling our lungs out ever since he broke away. No go."

O'Hare put the device which looked like a recorder to his lips and blew. A mournful note like a sick owl echoed through the woods. They cocked their heads and listened, but there was no response.

"You see how it is? I'll say this, for him, he sure eats up goblins. He'd be fat as a pig if he wasn't hollow behind."

"I wonder," Rufus said, "if he could be a mutation. They often do, you know. Mutate. You're waiting for dogs?"

"Sheriff Stump, here, has sent off a couple of deputies to bring a pack of hounds. They use them around here for coon hunting, mostly, but they sometimes tree a demon of one kind or another."

The sheriff spat. "Ought to be an open season," he said.

Lois, on the outskirts of the group was ill at ease. To have the boss come down from Washington suggested criticism. To have his secretary along was added embarrassment. She turned away and strolled down the road, where Ray Gilman was pacing slowly, head down, and hands clasped behind his back. His unhappiness about the operation was evident. Rufus called after her.

"Lois, are you protected?"

"I've memorized three spells," she called back. "I'm OK."

Beyond the crest of the hill the road dipped into a shallow valley where, through a break in the trees, a small stream was visible. A stone bridge, only wide enough for one-lane traffic, crossed it. Lois paused and stared at the bridge.

The Gunderson book had said that many trolls lived under bridges. The men had probably thought of it, but it wouldn't hurt to look. Dr. Gilman was no longer in sight. He must have turned off onto a path. It would be a sort of personal triumph if she should discover T-38. She went on, walking more briskly.

On the bridge she stopped and stamped a foot, but it made no sound on the macadam. On the farther bank a narrow track led down to the water's edge. Muttering a short spell which was supposed to prevent runners in sheer panty hose, she scrambled down.

The sun was close to setting, and it was shadowy under the bridge, but after a moment she could see him. He crouched in a deep pool and stared back at her, his slit pupils as expressionless as a basilisk's. What she could see of him was a whitish, greenish, gray, streaked with mud and slime. He blinked. His gash of a mouth opened and a black tongue flicked back and forth. Water dripped from his raised talons, and it was so silent she could hear the drops fall. For a second she felt unreasonable terror, just because T-38 looked so much more ominous than the pictures in the books. Then she pronounced the spell that made trolls follow you and backed slowly up the bank.

On the road she waited until she was sure he was coming, then turned back toward the hilltop. Behind her the troll had emerged and taken one uncertain giant step. She had a ridiculous inclination to run, but held her pace to a walk, looking over her shoulder now and then to make sure he was following.

He was following, all right. He was closer.

The last rays of the sun threw his shadow, lurching and grotesque, along the road ahead of her. The shadow extended itself and a taloned hand descended, forcing her to her knees. Whatever other spells she might have used had fled her mind. She screamed.

Beyond the hilltop a dilapidated station wagon was disgorging a score of assorted hound dogs, grinning and thumping their tails at the prospect of a hunt. They yelped, bayed or howled, according to their natures. Lois's scream went unheard. The man in charge of the pack asked where the troll had last been seen and led them off in search of a print fresh enough to have an odor. Rufus looked around.

"Where's Lois?" he demanded, "and where's Ray Gilman?" Nobody knew.

With three protective spells at her command she should be in no danger from the troll, but these woods stretched for miles with few roads or farms. She could easily lose herself.

An eighth of a mile into the forest Dr. Gilman leaned breathless against a tree and peered through the green shadows. Although he had gone on field trips as a group member, he was not, himself, familiar with forest country, and he found it terrifying. There was no sound to be heard but the shrilling of insects. Hurrying, he had turned an ankle painfully, and he bore his weight on the other leg. After a minute of panting he gathered enough breath to call out in a thin voice, pitched deliberately high:

"Ula, ula, ula, ula." Then again, "Ula, ula, ula."

He waited anxiously.

The sound of the nearby locusts died away. Weeds and grasses rustled, and a goblin was looking straight at him. "Ula, ula," he said. "Good boy." Awkwardly he lowered himself to sit on the mossy ground. The goblin approached warily. More rustlings heralded the arrival of a whole swarm.

Although he professed a sympathy for goblins, most of Ray Gilman's experience of them had been under protected conditions, and he was uneasy. He knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to lead as many as he could out of this perilous situation where they were menaced by dogs, hunters, unsympathetic demonology men and an aberrant troll. He did not, however, have much idea how to go about it. Toward the west, away from the road and the cars, away from the dogs whose baying could now be heard faintly, lay comparative safety.

He was surrounded, now, by goblins, stooping, weaving their horny bodies back and forth, edging slowly forward with their eye stalks extended toward him. He pressed his back to the tree trunk and pushed himself upward. "Ula," he said once more and stumbled in the direction where the press of goblins was least.

Lois was between terror and despair, but she had not lost consciousness and she held to a thread of anger. She had tried at first to fight the troll, but she could have fought a ten-ton truck just as successfully. All the strength of her arms and shoulders could not bend back one of his clutching fingers by an iota. Her anger was sustained and multiplied by the fact that she was being carried, fireman fashion, over the shoulder of the giant troll, her legs clasped immovably across his chest, her head hanging down his back. It was ignominious and damnably uncomfortable. She could see that he was indeed hollow behind. Except for the great bulbous head, the creature from here was concave, of no thickness at all. It didn't affect his strength.

She racked her brain in vain for the missing spells, but they were cast in old Norse, strings of meaningless syllables of which she could not even remember the openings. She was reduced to pounding at the troll wherever she could reach. He paid not the slightest attention and pushed his way through the forest in pounding six-foot strides.

She was sorry that she had read some of what Dr. Gunderson had written about trolls. Of course she didn't know what this one was about. He might be simply trying to escape from all the spells which had hampered his every move since leaving Norway. On the other hand, once they had reached what he considered a safe and secluded place, he might have other ideas. Trolls fancied Norwegian princesses. She wasn't a princess, nor remotely Scandinavian, but she was female and probably they weren't fussy. It could be a fate worse than death. Well, maybe not worse, but rough.

Rufus Clay was becoming more alarmed by the minute. Halfway down the hill toward the stream he paused irresolute. At the bridge the dogs had picked up a good scent and started a baying that was both businesslike and nervous. They didn't like what they were being asked to hunt, the scent was too strange, but they were coming back toward him. They paused and eddied around an opening into the woods, then, led by the boldest bitch, disappeared under the overhang. He followed. The dogs were ranging out on both sides of the narrow path, wasting time without losing face. At a jog he made his way through the pack. The dogs were glad to be led.

If trolls had acute noses, and certainly they were long enough to be of some use, or acute hearing, T-38 must have known he was about to overtake a swarm of goblins, but they were all about him before he broke stride. Perhaps the goblins which had once lived in Norway were remembered only as something good to eat. Goblins which surrounded you, crowding closer and closer with their eye stalks vibrating, goblins which hissed like pit adders, were perhaps something he had not reckoned with. Keeping firm hold of Lois, he gathered one up with his long left arm, cracked it like a walnut between his talons, and popped its head into his enormous mouth. The hissing rose to a crescendo.

The goblins knew this monster for an enemy. He had left enough of their headless bodies scattered through the woods last night. But the troll had dealt with them in isolated ones or twos. They had not previously outnumbered him fifty to one. They glared at him and hated him. He was insensitive to that. They charged, clambering up his legs, clinging to his body with their sticky pads. They avoided his hollow rear, which was as well for Lois. After a moment he dropped her. She landed more or less on hands and knees and looking down at the ground avoided seeing, so far as possible, the prancing, pouncing, maddened goblins, while she crawled away from the center of the melee. Inevitably she touched them and was ignored. A headless body came sailing through the air, thumped her on the back and splattered her with black blood. She wasn't aware of it as an individual happening. When her hand came in contact with a shoe, she failed to recognize it as such and snatched the hand away.

But it stayed a shoe. She looked up. Ray Gilman was shaking all over. His eyes stared. He seemed on the point of collapse. "It's awful," he moaned. "Do you know how to get out of here? I don't know the way and we've got to get out. This fight is awful."

She stood up and was annoyed to find herself shaking just as much. She looked back at the troll at the moment he was pulled down by the sheer weight of the goblins. They swarmed over him, but he was far from beaten. His arms continued to flail about, hurling goblins in all directions. Some of them were so badly damaged when they landed that they were out of the fight and could do no more than begin putting themselves together again, not always with their own parts. Others, even with an eye or an arm missing, scrambled back.

She heard shouting then, and the baying of dogs, and suddenly Rufus was there with his arm holding her up. He demanded to know whether she was hurt.

"I don't think I am, much," she said, "but I ache all over. Trolls are tough characters."

"This particular character is going to be shipped right back to Norway," he said. "He isn't trustworthy. In the meantime we'd better give him a hand or there won't be anything to ship back. Are you OK for a minute?"

She nodded.

"Gilman, what's the best spell to quiet these little horrors down? You must know that."

A quarter of ln hour before, Dr. Gilman would probably have been unwilling to answer that question. Now he was ready enough.

"Gulo rhus tebo. Taragolo." Though he pronounced the words in quavering, uncertain tones, their effect was immediate. The goblins, those of them that were left, sat down wherever they were. Their eye stalks drooped. They were strictly turned off.

T-38 got slowly to his feet and stood swaying and shaking his head as if there were water in his ears. O'Hare bleated on the whistle and the troll staggered toward him obediently.

The dogs were puzzled and unhappy. In a proper hunt they should have had the opportunity to chase their quarry up a tree, but the quarry was now going off with one of the hunters, and these goblins sitting in disconsolate heaps were no game. They smelled dreadful, and no self-respecting dog would attempt to bite one.

Rufus, turning back to speak to Lois, discovered her in crumpled disarray on the ground. She looked pathetically helpless. Her clothes were in shreds and tatters. There was a streak of blood on her face, and the one eye which he could see was turning black.

Forgetting the goblins, he grasped her wrists and hoisted her to his shoulder in a fireman's carry. She shifted a little, to spare a bruise in the area of her appendix and suppressed a desire to giggle, which would have been out of order in view of her state of pathetic unconsciousness. This fireman business seemed to be becoming a habit.

But Rufus's shoulder was much more comfortable than that of the troll, and from time to time he patted her bottom solicitously.

She stayed unconscious.