Editing The Puppet Masters (section)

==Plot==
[[File:Galaxy 195109.jpg|thumb|right|The opening installment of ''The Puppet Masters'' took the cover of the September 1951 issue of ''[[Galaxy Science Fiction]]'']]

In the summer of 2007, Earth is under attack. Slug-like creatures, arriving in flying saucers, are attaching themselves to people's backs, taking control of their victims' nervous systems, and manipulating those people as puppets. The Old Man, the head of a clandestine national [[security agency]] called the Section, goes to [[Des Moines, Iowa]], with Sam and Mary, two of his best agents, to investigate a flying saucer report, but much more seriously the ominous disappearance of the six agents sent previously. They discover that "the slugs" are steadily taking over Des Moines, but they cannot convince the US president to declare an emergency.

Sam takes two other agents and returns to Des Moines to get more evidence of the invasion. They fail and are forced to flee quickly, but in the confusion, a slug gains control of one of the agents. Back in Washington the team discovers the slug and captures it, but later it escapes and attaches itself to Sam, using Sam's skills and knowledge to make a clean escape.

While under control, Sam uses the Constitution Club—whose membership includes many important members of the city's political elite—to gain more hosts for the slugs. The Old Man captures him, takes him to Section's new headquarters, and later coerces Sam into allowing himself to be possessed by the slug again. Under drug-induced hypnosis, Sam reveals that the slugs come from [[Titan (moon)|Titan]], the sixth moon of [[Saturn]]. Later the Section exposes several possessed congressmen at a session of [[United States House of Representatives|Congress]], finally persuading the Congress that the United States is under attack. The law is passed requiring people to have bare backs to demonstrate that they are not carrying slugs.

The Army prepares a counterattack in the most heavily infested areas, planning to take over  most broadcast centers and reveal the truth to the local residents. Sam drives alone to [[Kansas City]] and discovers that the slugs now possess almost all residents. He returns to Washington too late to stop the operation, which fails; the invading soldiers are either killed or captured by the slugs.

Sam and Mary take a short leave, get married and have a happy honeymoon that is interrupted by a slug that seems to have been targeting Sam for repossession. They return to work and discover that people are now required to be practically naked as the slugs learned to attach themselves to other body parts. Together with the Old Man, they go to [[Pass Christian, Mississippi]], to inspect a flying saucer that had made a bad landing. Inside the alien ship, Mary is overwhelmed by repressed memories from the time she was a child on [[Venus]] and had been possessed by a slug. The slug had died from "nine-day fever", a deadly disease native to Venus.

Learning that the disease kills slugs faster than their human hosts, the authorities adopt biological warfare and release infected apes into enemy-held territory. Slugs possess the apes and then quickly transmit the disease to each other. Several carefully timed days later, thousands of volunteers are parachuted to administer the cure to those people whose slugs have died. Sam and the Old Man join the effort in [[Jefferson City, Missouri]].

The Old Man gets possessed by the last healthy slug in the city, captures Sam and escapes in an air-car heading to the [[Yucatán]], where the slug intends to restart its effort to conquer humanity. Sam manages to kill the slug and crash the air-car.

Some years later, Sam and Mary board a spaceship headed for Saturn to take the offensive. Sam expresses the hope that a way would be found to save the small elf-like hosts whom the slugs enslaved.