"Where Is Alice?"

Sometimes the solution to a mystery isn't out there but in here.

"The Memory of Mars."
By Raymond F. Jones (1915-94).
First appearance: Amazing Stories, December 1961.
Novelette (32 pages in PDF).
Online HERE.

The doctor can't believe it:

. . . "The woman you brought in here last night—your wife—is completely un-normal in her internal structure. Her internal organs cannot even be identified. She is like a being of some other species. She is not—she is simply not human, Mr. Hastings." . . .

. . . and neither can Mel:

. . . "It must not be Alice. But if that's the case, where is Alice?"

"That might even be a matter for the police," said Dr. Winters. "There are many things yet to be learned about this mystery." . . .

And then there are the dreams:

. . . THE nightmare came again that night. Worse than Mel could ever remember it. As always, it was a dream of space, black empty space, and he was floating alone in the immense depths of it. There was no direction. He was caught in a whirlpool of vertigo from which he reached out with agonized yearning for some solidarity to cling to.

There was only space.

After a time he was no longer alone.  . . .

Resources:
- Wikipedia's article about Jones is HERE, ably supplemented by The FictionMags Index HERE and the ISFDb HERE.

Several of Jones's stories were combined to make a movie.

Category: Science fiction