 THE LAST SUPPER by T. D. HOM This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. THE LAST SUPPER by T. D. HOM Hampered as she was by the child in her arms, the woman was running less flutely now. A wave of exaltation swept over Galdron, drowning out of the uneasy feeling of guilt at disobeying orders. The instructions were mandatory and conceased. No capture must be attempted individually. In the event of sighting any form of human life, the ship must be notified immediately. All small craft must be back at the landing space, not later than one hour before takeoff. Anyone not so reporting will be presumed lost. Galdron thought uneasily of the great seas of snow, and ice-sweeping and inexorably toward each other since the earth had reversed on its axis in the great catastrophe of millennium ago. Now, summer and winter alike brought paralyzing gales and blizzards, heralded by the sleety snow in which the woman's skin-clad feet had left the tracks which led to discovery. His trained anthropologists' mind speculated avidly over the little they had gotten from the younger of the two men found nearly a week before, nearly frozen and half-starved. The older man had succumbed almost at once. The other, in the most primitive sign language, had indicated that of several humans living in caves to the west. Not only he and the other had survived to flee some mysterious terror, Galdron felt a throb of pity for the woman and her child, left behind by the men no doubt as a hindrance. But what a stroke of fortune that there should be left a male and female of the race to carry the seed of terror to another planet. And what a triumph if he, Galdron, should be the one to return at the eleventh hour with the prize. No need of calling for help. This is no armed war-party. Galdron, with the most defenseless being in the universe, a mother-burned with a child. Galdron put on another burst of speed. His previous shouts had served only to the spur the woman to greater efforts. Surely there was some magic word that had survived even the centuries of illiteracy, something equivalent to the bread and salt of all illiterate peoples, cupping his hands to his mouth. Food, food! Ahead of him the woman turned her head, leaped lightly in mid-stride and went on, slowing a little but still running dodgedly. Galdron's pulse leaped. He yelled again, food! The instant that his foot touched the yielding surface of the trap, he knew that he had met defeat. At his body crashed down on the fire-sharpened stakes, he knew too the terror from which the last men of the human race had fled. Above him the woman looked down, her teeth gleaming wolfishly. She pointed down into the pit, spoke exultantly to the child. Food! said the last woman on earth. The end. End of The Last Supper by T. D. Hom. Please visit LibriVox.org Reading by Greg Marguerite The Risk Profession by Donald E. Westlake The men who did dangerous work had a special kind of insurance policy. But when somebody wanted to collect on that policy, the claims investigator suddenly became a member of The Risk Profession. Mr. Henderson called me into his office my third day back in Tangiers. That was a day and a half later than I'd expected. Roving claims investigators for Tangiers Mutual Insurance Corporation don't usually get to spend more than 36 consecutive hours at home base. Henderson was jovial but stern. That meant he was happy with the job I'd just completed and that he was pretty sure I'd find some crooked shenanigans on this next assignment. That didn't please me. I'm basically a plain living type and I hate complications. I almost wished for a second there that I was back on fire and theft in greater New York. But I knew better than that. As a roving claim investigator I avoided the more stultifying paperwork inherent in this line of work and had the additional luxury of an expense account nobody ever questioned. It made working for a living almost worthwhile. When I was settled in the chair beside his desk, Henderson said, That was good work you did on Lunit Ged. Saved the company a pretty pence. I smiled modestly and said, Thank you, sir. And reflected to myself for the thousandth time that the company could do worse than split that saving with the guy who made it possible. Me, in other words. Got a tricky one this time, Ged, said my boss. He had done his back patting. Now we got down to business. He peered keenly at me, or at least as keenly as a round-faced, tiny-eyed fat man can peer. What do you know about the risk-profession retirement plan? He asked me. I've heard of it, I said truthfully. That's about all. He nodded. Most of the policies are sold off-planet, of course. It's a form of insurance for non-insurables. Spaceship crews, asteroid prospectors, people like that. I see, I said unhappily. I knew right away this meant I was going to have to go off Earth again. I'm a 1G boy all the way. Gravity changes get me in the solar plexus. I get G-sick at the drop of an elevator. Here's the way it works, he went on. Either not noticing my sad face or choosing to ignore it. The client pays a monthly premium. He can be as far ahead or as far behind in his payments as he wants. The policy has no lapse clause. Just so he's all paid up by the target date. The target date is a retirement age, 45 or above, chosen by the client himself. After the target date, he stops paying premiums, and we begin to pay him a monthly retirement check. The amount determined by the amount paid into the policy, his age at retiring, and so on. Clear? I nodded, looking for the gimmick that made this a paying proposition for good old Tangier's Mutual. The double RP, that's what we called around the office here, assures the client that he won't be reduced to panhandling in his old age should his other retirement plans fall through. For belt prospectors, of course, this means the big strike, which may be one in a hundred find. For the man who never does make that big strike, this is something to fall back on. He can come home to earth and retire with a guaranteed income for the rest of his life. I nodded again, like a good company man. Of course, said Henderson, emphasizing this point with an upraised chubby finger. These men are still uninsurable. This is a retirement plan only, not an insurance policy. There is no beneficiary other than the client himself. And there was the gimmick. I knew a little something of the actuarial statistics concerning uninsurables, particularly belt prospectors. Not many of them lived to be 45, and the few who would survive the belt and come home to collect the retirement wouldn't last more than a year or two. A man who's spent the last 20 or 30 years on low-G asteroids just shrivels up after a while when he tries to live on earth. It needed a company like Tangier's Mutual to dream up a racket like that. The term uninsurables to most insurance companies means those people whose jobs or habits make them too likely as prospects for obituaries. To Tangier's Mutual, uninsurables are people who have money the company can't get at. Now, said Henderson importantly, we come to the problem at hand. He ruffled up his up-to-now neat in-basket and finally found the folder he wanted. He studied the blank exterior of this folder for a few seconds, pursing his lips at it, and said, one of our clients under the double-RP was a man named Jeff McCann. Was, I echoed. He squinted at me, then nodded at my sharpness. That's right, he's dead. He sighed heavily and tapped the folder with all those pudgy fingers. Normally, he said, that would be the end of it. File closed. However, this time, there are complications. Naturally, otherwise he wouldn't be telling me about it, but Henderson couldn't be rushed and I knew it. I kept the alert look on my face and thought of other things while waiting for him to get to the point. Two weeks after Jeff McCann's death, Henderson said, we received a cash return form on his policy. A cash return form? I'd never heard of such a thing. It didn't sound like anything Tangier's Mutual would have anything to do with. We'd never return cash. It's something special in this case, he explained. You see, this isn't an insurance policy. It's a retirement plan and the client can withdraw from the retirement plan at any time and have 75% of his paid-up premiums return to him. It's, uh, the law in plans such as this. Oh, I said. That explained it. A law that had snuck through the World Finance Code Commission while the insurance lobby wasn't looking. But you see the point, said Henderson. This cash return form arrived two weeks after the client's death. You said there weren't any beneficiaries, I pointed out. Of course, but the form was sent in by the man's partner, one Ab Carpin. McCann left a hand-written will bequeathing all his possessions to Carpin. Since according to Carpin, this was done before McCann's death, the premium money cannot be considered part of the policy, but as part of McCann's cash on hand. And Carpin wants it. It can't be that much, can it? I asked. I was trying my best to point out to him that the company would spend more than it would save if it sent me all the way out to the asteroids. A prospect I could feel coming and one which I wasn't ready to cry Hosanna over. McCann died, Henderson said ponderously, at the age of 56. He had set his retirement age at 60. He took out the policy at the age of 34 with monthly payments of 50 credits. Figure it out for yourself. I did, in my head, and came up with a figure of 13,200 credits. 75% of that would be 9,900 credits. Call it 10,000 credits even. I had to admit it. It was worth the trip. I see, I said sadly. Now, said Henderson, the conditions, the circumstances of McCann's death are somewhat suspicious. And so is the cash return form itself. There's a chance of forgery? One would think so, he said, but our handwriting experts have worn themselves out with that form comparing it with every other single scrap of McCann's writing they can find. And their conclusion is that not only is it genuinely McCann's handwriting, but it is McCann's handwriting at age 56. So McCann must have written it, I said, under duress, do you think? I have no idea, said Henderson complacently. That's what you're supposed to find out. Oh, there's just one more thing. I did my best to make my ears perk. I told you that McCann's death occurred under somewhat suspicious circumstances. Yes, I agreed. You did. McCann and Carpen, he said, have been partners, unincorporated, of course, for the last 15 years. They had found small, rare metal deposits now and again, but they had never found that one big strike all the belt prospectors waste their lives looking for. Not until the day before McCann died. Aha! I said. Then they found the big strike. Exactly. And McCann's death? Accidental. Sure, I said. What proof have we got? None. The body is lost in space, and law is few and far between that far out. So all we've got is this guy Carpen's word for how McCann died, is that it? That's all we have so far. Sure, and now you want me to go on out there and find out what's cooking and see if I can maybe save the company with a thousand credits. Exactly, said Henderson. The copter took me to the spaceport west of Cairo, and there I boarded the good ship Demeter for Luna City and points out. I loaded up on G-sickness pills, and they worked fine. I was sick as a dog. By the time we got to Atronic City, my insides had grown resigned to their fate. As long as I didn't try to eat, my stomach would leave me alone. Atronic City was about as depressing as a Turkish bath with all the lights on. It stood on a chunk of rock a couple of miles thick, and it looked like nothing more in this world than a welder's practice range. From the outside, Atronic City is just a derby-shaped dome of nickel-iron, black, and kind of dirty-looking. I suppose a transparent dome would have been more fun, but the builders of the company cities in the asteroids were businessmen, and they weren't concerned with having fun. There's nothing to look at outside the dome but chunks of rock and the blackness of space anyway. And you've got all this cheap iron floating around in the vicinity and all a dome supposed to do is keep the air in. Besides, though the belt isn't as crowded as a lot of people think, there is quite a lot of debris rushing here and there, bumping into things, and a transparent dome would just get all scratched up, not to mention punctured. From the inside, Atronic City is even jollier. There's the top level, directly under the dome, which is mainly parking area for scooters and tuggers of various kinds, plus the office shacks of the assaer's office, the entry authority, the industry troopers, and so on. The next three levels have all been burned into the bowels of the planetoid. Level two is the Atronics plant, and a noisy plant it is. Level three is the shopping and entertainment area, grocery stores and clothing stores and movie theaters and bars. And level four is housing, two rooms and kitchen for the unmarried, four rooms and kitchen plus one room for each child for the married. All of these levels have one thing in common, square corners painted olive drab. The total effect of the place is suffocating. You feel like you're stuck in the middle of a stack of packing crates. Most of the people living in Atronic City work, of course, for international Atronics Incorporated. The rest of them work in these service occupations, running the bars and grocery stores and so on that keep the company employees alive and relatively happy. Wages come high in the places like Atronic City. Why not? The raw materials come practically for free. And as for working conditions, well, take a for instance. How do you make a vacuum tube? Fiddle with the innards and surround it all with glass? And how do you get the air out? No problem, boy. There wasn't any air in there to begin with. At any rate, there I was at Atronic City. That was as far as Demeter would take me. Now, while the ship went on to Ludlum City and Chemisint City and the other asteroid business towns, my two suitcases and I dribbled down the elevator to my hostelry on level four. Have you ever taken an elevator ride when the gravity is practically non-existent? Well, don't. You see, the elevator manages to sink faster than you do. It isn't being lowered down to level four. It's being pulled down. What this means is that the suitcases have to be lashed down with the straps provided and you and the operator have to hold on tight to the hand grips placed here and there around the wall. Otherwise, you'd clunk your head on the ceiling. But we got to level four at last and off I went with my suitcases and the operator's directions. The suitcases weighed about half an ounce each out here and I felt as though I weighed the same. Every time I raised a foot, I was sure I was about to go sailing into a wall. Local citizens eased by me, their feet occasionally touching the iron pavement as they soared along and I gave them all dirty looks. Level four was nothing but walls and windows. The iron floor went among these walls and windows in a straight line bisecting other streets at perfect right angles and the iron ceiling 16 feet up was lined with a double row of fluorescent tubes. I was beginning to feel claustrophobic already. The Chalmers Hotel, named for an Atronix vice president, had received my advance registration, which was nice. I was shown to a second floor room. Nothing on level four had more than two stories and was left to unpack my suitcase as best I may. I had decided to spend a day or two at Atronix City before taking a scooter out to Ab Carpens' claim. Atronix City had been Carpens and McCann's home base. All of McCann's premium payments had been mailed from here and the normal mailing address for both of them was GPO, Atronix City. I wanted to know as much as possible about Ab Carpens before I went out to see him and Atronix City seemed like the best place to get my information. But not today. Today my stomach was very unhappy and my head was on sympathy strike. Today I was going to spend my time exclusively in bed, trying not to float up to the ceiling. The mapping and registry office, it seemed to me the next day, was the best place to start. This was where prospectors filed their claims, but it was a lot more than that. The waiting room of the M&R was the unofficial club of the asteroid prospectors. This is where they met with one another, talked together about the things that prospectors discuss and made and dissolved their transient partnerships. In this way, Carpens and McCann were unusual. They had maintained their partnership for 15 years. That was about 60 times longer than most such arrangements lasted. Searching the asteroid chunks for rare and valuable metals is basically pretty lonely work and it's inevitable that the prospectors will every once in a while get hungry for human company and decide to try a team operation. But at the same time, work like this attracts people who don't get along very well with human company. So the partnerships come and go and the hatreds flare and are forgotten and the normal prospecting team lasts an average of three months. At any rate, it was to the mapping and registry office that I went first. And since that office was up on the first level, I went by elevator. Riding up in that elevator was a heck of a lot more fun than riding down. The elevator whipped up like mad. The floor pressed against the soles of my feet and it felt almost like good old earth for a second or two there. But then the elevator stopped and I held on tight to the hand grips to keep from shooting through the top of the blasted thing. The operator, a phlegmatic sword, gave me directions to the M&R and off I went, still trying to figure out how to sail along as gracefully as the locals. The mapping and registry office occupied a good sized shack over near the dome wall next to the entry lock. I pushed open the door and went on in. The waiting-room was cozy and surprisingly large, large enough to comfortably hold these six maroon leather sofas scattered here and there on the pale green carpet, flanked by bronze ashtray stands. There were only six prospectors here at the moment, chatting together in two groups of three and they all looked alike, grizzled, ageless, woodery-eyed, their clothing clean but baggy. I passed them and went on to the desk at the far end behind which sat a young man in official gray, slowly turning the crank of a microfilm reader. He looked up at my approach. I flashed my company identification and asked to speak to the manager. He went away, came back, and ushered me into an office which managed to be spartan and sumptuous at the same time. The walls had been plastic-painted in textured brown. The iron floor had been lushly carpeted in gray and the desk had been covered with a simulated wood coating. The manager, a man named T. King, went well with the office. His face and hands were spare and lean but his uniform was immaculate, covered with every curlicue the regulations allowed. He welcomed me politely but curiously and I said, I wonder if you know a prospector named Ab Carpin. Carpin? Of course. I called J. F. McCann, pity about McCann. I hear he got killed. Yes, he did. And that's what you're here for, eh? He nodded sagely. I didn't know the belt boys could get insurance, he said. It isn't exactly that, I said. This concerns a retirement plan and, well, the details don't matter, which I hoped would end his curiosity in that line. I was hoping you could give me some background on Carpin and on McCann, too, for that matter. He grinned a bit. You saw the men sitting outside? I nodded. Then you've seen Carpin and McCann, exactly the same. It doesn't matter if a man's thirty or sixty or what. It doesn't matter what he looked like before he came out here. If he's been here a few years, he looks exactly like the bunch you saw outside there. That's a appearance, I said. What I was looking for was personality. Same thing, he said. All of them, close-mouthed, antisocial, fiercely independent, incurably romantic. Always convinced that the big strike is just a piece of rock away. McCann, now, he was a bit more realistic than most. He'd be the one I'd expect to take out a retirement policy. A real pence-pinsher, that one. Though I shouldn't say it as he's dead, but that's the way he was. Brighter than most belt boys when it came to money matters. I've seen him haggle over a new piece of equipment for their scooter or some repair work or some such thing, and he was a wonder to watch. And Carpin, I asked him. The prospector, he said, as though that answered my question. Same as everybody else. Not as sharp as McCann when it came to money. That's why all the money stuff in the partnership was handled by McCann. But Carpin was one of the sharpest boys in the business when it came to mineralogy. He knew rocks you and I never heard of, and most times he knew them by sight. Almost all of the belt boys are college grads. You've got to know what you're looking for out here and what it looks like when you've found it. But Carpin has practically all of them beat. He's sharp. Sounds like a good team, I said. I guess that's why they stayed together so long, he said. They complimented each other. He leaned forward, the inevitable prelude to a confidential remark. I'll tell you something off the record, mister, he said. Those two were smarter than they knew. Their partnership was never legalized. It was never anything more than a piece of paper. And there's a bunch of fellas around here mighty unhappy about that today. Jaffe McCann is the one who handled all the money matters. Like I said, he's got IOUs all over town. And they can't collect from Carpin? He nodded. Jaffe McCann died just a bit too soon. He was sharp and cheap, but he was honest. If he'd lived, he would have repaid all his debts, I'm sure of it. And if this strike they made is as good as I hear he would have been able to repay them with no trouble at all. I nodded somewhat impatiently. I had the feeling by now that I was talking to a man who was one of those who had a Jaffe McCann IOU in his pocket. How long has it been since you've seen Carpin? I asked him, wondering what Carpin's attitude and expression was now that his partner was dead. Oh, Lord, not for a couple of months, he said. Not since they went out together the last time and made that strike. Didn't Carpin come in to make his claim? Not here, over to Chemisant City. Near East M&R to the strike. Oh, that was a pity. I would have liked to have known if there had been a change of any kind in Carpin since his partner's death. I'll tell you what the situation is, I said, with a false air of truthfulness. We have some misgivings about McCann's death. Not suspicions, exactly. Just misgivings. The timing is what bothers us. You mean because it happened just after the strike? That's it, I answered frankly. He shook his head. I wouldn't get too excited about that if I were you, he said. It wouldn't be the first time it's happened. A man makes the big strike after all and he gets so excited he forgets himself for a minute and gets careless. And you only have to be careless once out here. That may be it, I said. I got to my feet knowing I'd picked up all there was from this man. Thanks for your cooperation, I said. Any time, he said, he stood and shook hands with me. I went back out through the chatting prospectors and crossed the echoing cavern that was level one, aiming to rent myself a scooter. I don't like rockets. They're noisy as the dickens. They steer hard and drive erratically. And you can never carry what I would consider a safe emergency excess of fuel. Nothing like the big, steady G interplanetary liners. On those, I feel almost human. The appearance of the scooter I was showed at the rental agency didn't too much to raise my opinion of this mode of transportation. The thing was a good ten years old. The paint scraped and scratched all over its egg-shaped, originally green-colored body. And the windshield, a silly term, really, for the front window of a craft that spends most of its time out where there isn't any wind, was scratched and pockmarked to the point of translucency by years of exposure to the asteroid dust. The rental agent was a sharp-nosed thin-faced type who displayed this refugee from a melting vat without a blush, and still didn't blush when he told me the charges. Twenty credits a day plus fuel. I paid without a murmur. It was the company's money, not mine, and paid an additional ten credits for the rental of a suit to go with it. I worked my way awkwardly into the suit and clamored into the driver's seat of the relic. I attached the suit to the ship in all the necessary places and the agent closed and spun the door. Most of the black paint had worn off the handles of the controls, and insulation peaked through rips in the plastic siding here and there. I wondered if the thing had any slow leaks and supposed fatalistically that it had. The agent waved at me, stony-faced. The conveyor belt trundled me outside the dome and I kicked the weary rockets into life. The scooter had a tendency to roll to the right. If I hadn't kept fighting it back, it would have soon worked up a dandy little spin. I was spending so much time juggling with the controls that I practically missed a couple of my beacon rocks, and that would have been just too bad. If I'd gotten off the course I had carefully outlined for myself I'd never have found my bearings again, and I would have just floated around amid the scenery until some passer-by took pity and towed me back home. But I managed to avoid getting lost, which surprised me, and after four nerve-wracking hours I finally spotted the yellow-painted X of a registered claim on a half-mile thick chunk of rock dead ahead. As I got closer I spied a scooter parked near the X and beside it an inflated portable dome. The scooter was somewhat larger than mine, but no newer and probably even less safe. The dome was very colored from repeated patching. This would be the claim, and this is where I would find Carpin sitting on his property while waiting for the sale to go through. Prospectors like Carpin are freelance men, working for no particular company. They register their claims in their own names and then sell the rights to whichever company shows up first with the most attractive offer. There's a lot of paperwork to such a sale and it's all handled by the company. While waiting, the smart prospector sits on his claim and makes sure nobody chips off a part of it for himself, a stunt that still happens now and again. It doesn't take too much concentrated explosive to make two rocks out of one rock, and a man's claim is only the rock with his X on it. I set the scooter down next to the other one and flicked the toggle for the air pumps, then put on the fishbowl and went about unattaching the suit from the ship. When the red light flashed on and off, I spun the door, opened it, and stepped out onto the rock, moving very cautiously. It isn't that I don't believe the magnets in the boot soles will work. It's just that I know for a fact that they won't work if I happen to raise both feet at the same time. I clumped across the crude X to Carpin's dome. The dome had no viewports at all, so I wasn't sure Carpin was aware of my presence. I wrapped my metal glove on the metal outer door of the lock, and then I was sure. But it took him long enough to open up. I had just about decided he'd joined his partner in the long sleep when the door cracked open an inch. I pushed it open and stepped into the lock, ducking my head. The door was only five feet high and just as wide as the lock itself, three feet. The other dimensions of the lock were height, six feet six, with one foot. Not exactly room to dance in. When the red light high on the left-hand wall clicked off, I wrapped on the inner door. It promptly opened. I stepped through and removed the fishbowl. Carpin stood in the middle of the room, a small revolver in his hand. Shut the door, he said. I obeyed, moving slowly. I didn't want that gun to go off by mistake. Who are you? Carpin demanded. The M&R man had been right. Ab Carpin was a dead ringer for all those other prospectors I'd seen back at Atronic City. Short and skinny and grizzled and ageless. He could have been forty and he could have been ninety, but he was probably somewhere the other side of fifty. His hair was black and limp and thinning, ruffled in little wisps across his wrinkled paint. His forehead and cheeks were lined like a plowed field and were much the same color. His eyes were wide apart and small, so deep set beneath shaggy brows that they seemed black. His mouth was thin, almost lipless. The hand holding the revolver was nothing but bones and blue veins covered with taut skin. He was wearing a dirty undershirt and an old pair of trousers that had been cut off raggedly just above his knobby knees. Faded slippers were on his feet. He had good reason for dressing that way. The temperature inside the dome must have been nearly ninety degrees. The dome wasn't reflecting away the sun's heat as well as it had when it was young. I looked at Carpin and despite the revolver and the tense expression on his face he was the least dangerous looking man I'd ever run across. All at once the idea that this antisocial old geezer would drive or the imagination to murder his partner seemed ridiculous. Apparently I spent too much time looking him over because he said again, Who are you? And this time he motioned impatiently with the revolver. Stanton, I told him, Ged Stanton, Tangier's Mutual Insurance. I have identification but it's in my pants pocket, down inside my suit. Get it, he said, and move slow. Right you are. I moved slow as per directions and peeled out of this suit, then reached into my trouser pocket and took out my ID clip. I flipped it open and showed him the card bearing my signature and picture and right thumbprint and the name of the company I represented, and he nodded satisfied and tossed the revolver over onto his bed. I got to be careful, he said. I got a big claim here. I know that, I told him. Congratulations for it. Thanks, he said, but he still looked peevish. You're here about Jeff's insurance, right? That I am. Don't want to pay up, I suppose. That doesn't surprise me. Blunt old men irritate me. Well, I said, we do have to investigate. Sure, he said. You want some coffee? Thank you. You can sit in that chair there. That was Jeff's. I settled gingerly in the cloth and plastic fold away chair and pointed at, and he went over to the kitchen area of the dome to start coffee. I took the opportunity to look the dome over. It was the first portable dome I'd ever been inside. It was all one room, roughly circular, with a diameter of about fifteen feet. The sides went straight up for the first seven feet, then curved gradually inward to form the roof. At the center of the dome, the ceiling was about twelve feet high. The floor of the room was simply the astroidal rock surface, not completely level and smooth. There were two chairs and a table to the right of the entry lock, two fold away cots around the wall beyond them, the kitchen area next, and a cluttered storage area around on the other side. There was a heater standing alone in the center of the room, but it certainly wasn't needed now. Sweat was already trickling down the back of my neck and down my forehead into my eyebrows. I peeled off my shirt and used it to wipe sweat from my face. Warm in here, I said. You get used to it, he muttered, which I found hard to believe. He brought over the coffee and I tasted it. It was rotten, as bitter as this old hermit's soul. But I said, Good coffee, thanks a lot. I like it strong, he said. I looked around at the room again. A conference of home, eh? Pretty ingenious arrangement. Sure, he said sourly. How about getting to the point, mister? There's only one way to handle a blunt old man. Be blunt right back. I'll tell you how it is, I said. The company isn't accusing you of anything, but it has to be sure everything's on the up and up before it pays out any ten thousand credits. And your partner just happening to fill out that cash return form just before he died. You've got to admit it's a funny kind of coincidence. How so? He slurped coffee and glowered at me over the cup. We made this strike here, he said. We knew it was the big one. Jaffe had that insurance policy of his in case he never did make the big strike. As soon as we knew this was the big one, he said, I guess I don't need that retirement now, and sat right down and wrote out the cash return. Then we opened a bottle of liquor and celebrated, and he got himself killed. The way Carpens said it, it sounded smooth and natural. Too smooth and natural. How did this accident happen anyway, I asked him. I'm not one hundred percent sure of that myself, he said. I was pretty well drunk myself by that time, but he put on his suit and said he was going out to paint the ax. He was falling all over himself, and I tried to tell him it could wait till we'd had some sleep, but he wouldn't pay any attention to me. So he went out, I said. He nodded. He went out first. After a couple minutes I got lonesome in here, so I suited up and went out after him. It happened just as I was going out the lock, and I just barely got a glimpse of what happened. He attacked the coffee again, noisily, and I prompted him, saying, What did happen, Mr. Carpin? Well, he was capering around out there, waving the paint tube and such. There's a lot of sharp rock sticking out around here. Just as I got outside, he lost his balance and kicked out and scraped right into some of that rock and punctured his suit. I thought his body was lost, I said. He nodded. It was. The last thing in life chief ever did was try to shove himself away from those rocks. That and the force of air coming out of that puncture for the first second or two was enough to throw him up off the surface. It threw him up too high, and he never got back down. My doubt must have showed in my face because he added, Mr., there isn't enough gravity on this place to shoot craps with. He was right. As we talked, I kept finding myself holding unnecessarily tight to the arms of the chair. I kept having the feeling I was going to float out of the chair and hover around up at the top of the dome if I were to let go. It was silly, of course. There was some gravity on that planetoid, after all, but I just don't seem to get used to Lo G. Nevertheless, I still had some more questions. Didn't you try to get his body back? Couldn't you have reached him? I tried to, Mr., he said. Old J. McCann was my partner for fifteen years, but I was drunk, and that's a fact. And I was afraid to go jumping up in the air for fear I'd go floating away too. Frankly, I said. I'm no expert on low-gravity asteroids, but wouldn't McCann's body just go into orbit around this rock? I mean, it wouldn't simply go floating off into space, would it? It sure would, he said. There's a lot of other rocks out here, too, Mr., and a lot of them are bigger than this one and have a lot more gravity pull. I don't suppose there's a navigator in the business who could have computed J.Course in advance. He floated up, and then he floated back over the dome here and seemed to hover for a couple of minutes, and then he just floated out and away. His isn't the only body circling the sun with all these rocks, you know. I chewed a lip and thought it all over. I didn't know enough about asteroid gravity or the conditions out here to be able to say for sure whether Carpon's story was true or not. Up to this point I couldn't attack the problem on a fact basis. I had to depend on feelings now. The hunches and instincts of eight years in this job, hearing some people tell lies and other people tell the truth. And my instinct said, Ab Carpon was lying in his teeth. That dramatic little touch about McCann's body hovering over the dome before disappearing into the void, that sounded more like the embellishment of fiction than the circumstance of truth. And the string of coincidences were just too much. McCann just coincidentally happened to die right after he and his partner made their big strike. He happens to write out the cash return form just before dying. And his body just happens to float away so nobody can look at it and check Carpon's story. But no matter what my instinct said, the story was smooth. It was smooth as glass and there was no place for me to get a grip on it. What now? There wasn't any hole in Carpon's story. At least none that I could see. I had to break his story somehow and in order to do that I had to do some nosing around on this planetoid. I couldn't know in advance what I was looking for. I could only look. I'd know it when I found it. It would be something that conflicted with Carpon's story. And for that I had to be sure the story was complete. You said McCann had gone out to paint the X, I said. Did he paint it? Carpon shook his head. He never got the chance. He spent all his time dancing up till he went and killed himself. So you painted it yourself. He nodded. And then you went on into Atronic City and registered your claim. Is that the story? No. Kemosint City was closer than Atronic City right then. So I went there. Just after Jayfe's death and everything, I didn't feel like being alone any more than I had to. You said Kemosint City was closer to you then, I said. Isn't it now? Things move around a lot out here, Mr. He said. Right now Kemosint City's almost twice as far from here as Atronic City. In about three days it'll start swinging in closer again. Things keep shifting around out here. So I've noticed, I said. When you took off to go to Kemosint City, you didn't make a try for your partner's body then? He shook his head. He was long out of sight by then, he said. That was ten, eleven hours later when I took off. Why's that? All you had to do was paint the X and take off. Mr. I told you I was drunk. I was falling down drunk. And when I saw I couldn't get it Jayfe and he was dead anyway. I came back in here and slept it off. Maybe if I'd been sober I would have taken the scooter and gone after him. But I was drunk. I see. And there just weren't any more questions I could think of to ask. Not right now. So I said, I've just had a shaky four hour ride coming out here. Mind if I stick around a while before going back? Help yourself, he said, in a pretty poor attempt at genial hospitality. You can sleep over if you want. Fine, I said. I think I'd like that. You wouldn't happen to play cribbage, would you? He asked with the first real sign of animation I'd seen in him yet. I learned fast, I told him. OK, he said, I'll teach you. And he produced a filthy deck of cards and taught me. After losing nine straight games of cribbage, I quit and got to my feet. I was at my most casual as I stretched and said, OK, if I wander around outside for a while, I've never been on an asteroid like this before. I mean a little one like this. I've just been to the company cities up to now. Go right ahead, he said. I've got some polishing and patching to do anyway. He made his voice sound easy and innocent, but I noticed his eyes were alert and wary, watching me as I struggled back into my suit. I didn't bother to put my shirt back on first, and that was a mistake. The temperature inside an atmosphere suit is a steady 68 degrees. That had never seemed particularly chilly before, but after the heat of that dome, it seemed cold as a blizzard inside the suit. I went on out through the airlock and moved as briskly as possible in the cumbersome suit. While the sweat chilled on my back and face, and I accepted the glum conviction that one thing I was going to get out of this trip for sure was a nasty head cold. I went over to the X first and stood looking at it. It was just an X, that's all, shakily scrawled in yellow paint with the initials JA, scrawled much smaller beside it. I left the X and clumped away. The horizon was practically at arm's length, so it didn't take long for the dome to be out of sight, and then I clumped more slowly, studying the surface of the asteroid. What I was looking for was a grave. I believed that Carpin was lying, that he had murdered his partner, and I didn't believe that Jaffe McCann's body had floated off into space. I was convinced that his body was still somewhere on this asteroid. Carpin had been forced to concoct a story about the body being lost because the appearance of the body would prove somehow that it had been murder and not accident. I was convinced of that, and now all I had to do was prove it. But that asteroid was a pretty unlikely place for a grave. There wasn't dirt I was walking on. It was rock, solid metallic rock. You don't dig a grave in solid rock, not with a shovel. You maybe can do it with dynamite, but that won't work too well if your object is to keep anybody from seeing that the hole has been made. Dirt can be padded down. Blown-up rock looks like blown-up rock, and that's all there is to it. I considered crevices and fissures in the surface, some cranny large enough for Carpin to have stuffed the body into. But I didn't find any of these either, as I plotted long, being sure to keep one magneted boot always in contact with the ground. Carpin and McCann had set their dome up at just about the only really level spot on that entire planetoid. The rest of it was nothing but jagged rock, and it wasn't easy traveling at all, maneuvering around with magnets on my boots and a bulky atmosphere suit cramping my movements. And then I stopped and looked out at space and cursed myself for a ring-tailed baboon. McCann's body might be anywhere in the solar system, anywhere at all, but there was one place I could be sure it wasn't, and that place was this asteroid. No. Carpin had not blown a grave or stuffed the body into a fissure in the ground. Why not? Because this chunk of rock was valuable. That's why not. Carpin was in the process of selling it to one of the major companies, and that company would come along and chop this chunk of rock to pieces, getting the valuable metal out, and McCann's body would turn up in the first week of operations if Carpin were stupid enough to bury it here. Ten hours between McCann's death and Carpin's departure for Kemosan City, he'd admitted that already. And I was willing to bet he'd spent at least part of that time carrying McCann's body to some other asteroid, one he was sure was nothing but worthless rock. If that were true, it meant the mortal remains of Jeff McCann were now somewhere, anywhere, in the asteroid belt. Even if I assumed that the body had been hidden on an asteroid somewhere between here and Kemosan City, which wasn't necessarily so, that wouldn't help at all. The relative positions of planetoids in the belt just kept on shifting. A small chunk of rock that was between here and Kemosan City a few weeks ago, it could be almost anywhere in the belt right now. The body. That was the main item. I more or less counted on finding it somehow. At the moment, I couldn't think of any other angle for attacking Carpin's story. As I clopped morosely back to the dome, I nibbled at Carpin's story in my mind. For instance, why go to Kemosan City? It was closer, he said, but it couldn't have been closer by more than a couple of hours. When I understood it, Carpin was well known back on Atronic City. It was the normal base of operations for he and his partner, and he didn't know a soul at Kemosan City. Did it make sense for him to go somewhere he wasn't known after his partner's death, even if it was an hour closer? No. It made a lot more sense for a man in that situation to go where he's known, go someplace where he has friends who'll sympathize with him and help him get over the shock of 15 years standing, even if going there does mean traveling an hour longer. And there was always the cash return form. That was what I was here about in the first place. It just didn't make sense for McCann to have held up his celebration while he filled out a form that he wouldn't be able to mail until he got back to Atronic City. And yet the company's handwriting experts were convinced that it wasn't a forgery, and I could pretty well take their word for it. Mulling these things over as I tramped back toward the dome, I suddenly heard a distant bell ringing way back in my head. The glimmering of an idea. Not an idea yet, but just the hint of one. I wasn't sure where it led, or even if it led anywhere at all, but I was going to find out. Karpin opened the doors for me. By the time I'd stripped off the suit, he was back to work. He was cleaning the single unit, which was his combination stove generator and sink and garbage disposal. I looked around the dome again, and I had to admit that a lot of ingenuity had gone into the manufacture and design of this dome and its contents. The dome itself, when deflated, folded down into an oblong box three feet by one foot by one foot. The lock itself, of course, folded separately into another box, somewhat smaller than that. As for the gear inside the dome, it was functional and collapsible, and there wasn't a single item there that wasn't needed. There were the two chairs and the two cots and the table, all of them fold away. There was that fantastic combination job Karpin was cleaning right now, and that had dimensions of four feet by three feet by three feet. The clutter of gear over to the left wasn't as much of a clutter as it looked. There was a Geiger counter and automatic spectrograph, two atmosphere suits, a torsion densimeter, a core-cutting drill, a few small hammers and picks, two spare air tanks, boxes of food concentrate, a paint tube, a doorless Jimmy John, and two small metal boxes about eight inches square. These last were undoubtedly carpins and McCann's pouches, where they kept whatever letters, money, address books, or other small bits of possessions they owned. Back of this mound of gear against the wall stood the air ready to itself. In this small enclosed space there was everything a man needed to keep himself alive. Everything except human company. And if you didn't need human company then you had everything. Just on the other side of that dome there was a million miles of death in a million possible ways. On this side of the dome life was cozy, if somewhat spartan and very hot. I knew for sure I was going to get a head cold. My body had adjusted to the sixty-eight degrees inside the suit, finally. And now was very annoyed to find the temperature shooting up to ninety again. Since Carpin didn't seem inclined to talk and I would rather spend my time thinking than talking anyway, I took a hint from him and did some cleaning. I noticed a smeared spot about the nose level on the faceplate of my fishbowl. And now was as good a time as any to get rid of it. It had a tendency to make my eyes cross. My shirt was sodden and wrinkled by this time anyway, having first been used to wipe sweat from my face and later been rolled into a ball and left on the chair when I went outside. So I used it for a cleaning rag, buffing like mad the silvered surface of the faceplate. Faceplates are silvered, not so the man inside can look out and no one else can look in, but in order to keep some of the more violent rays of the sun getting through to the face. I buffed for a while and then I put the fishbowl on my head and looked through it. The spot was gone. So I went over and reattached it to the rest of the suit and then settled back in my chair again and lit a cigarette. Carpin spoke up. Wish you wouldn't smoke. Makes it tough on the conditioner. Oh! I said. Sorry. So I just sat, thinking morosely about nonforged cash return forms and coincidences and likely spots to hide a body in the asteroid belt. Where would one dispose of a body in the asteroids? I went back through my thinking on that topic and I found holes big enough to drive Carpin's claim through. This idea of leaving the body on some worthless chunk of rock, for instance. If Carpin had killed his partner and I was dead sure he had, he'd planned it carefully and he wouldn't be leaving a chance. Now, an asteroid isn't worthless to a prospector until that prospector has landed on it and tested it. Carpin might know that such-such an asteroid was nothing but worthless stone, but the guy who stops there and finds McCann's body might not know it. No. Carpin wouldn't leave that to chance. He would get rid of that body and he would do it in such a way that nobody would ever find it. How? Not by leaving it on a worthless asteroid and not by just pushing it off into space. The distance between asteroids is large but so's the travel. McCann's body floating around in the blackness might just be found by somebody. And that, so far as I could see, eliminated the possibilities. McCann's body was in the belt. I'd eliminated both the asteroids themselves and the space around the asteroids as hiding places. What was left? The sun, of course. I thought that over for a while. Rather surprised at myself for having noticed the possibility. Now, let's say Carpin attaches a small rocket to McCann's body, stuffed into its atmosphere suit. He sets the rocket going and off goes McCann. Not that he aims it toward the sun, that wouldn't work well at all. Instead of falling into the sun, the body would simply take up a long elliptical orbit around the sun and would come back to the asteroids every few hundred years. No. He would aim McCann back in the direction opposite to the direction of rotation of the asteroids. He would, in essence, slow McCann's body down, make it practically stop in relation to the motion of the asteroids, and then it would simply fall into the sun. None of my ideas it seemed were happy ones. If McCann's body were even at this moment falling toward the sun, it was just as useful to me as if it were on some other asteroid. But wait a second. Carpin and McCann had worked with the minimum of equipment. I'd already noticed that. They didn't have extras of anything, and they certainly wouldn't have extra rockets. Except for one fast trip to Kemosin City, when he had neither the time nor the excuse to buy a chateau rocket, Carpin had spent of his time since McCann's death right here on this planetoid. So that killed that idea. While I was hunting around for some other idea, Carpin spoke up again for the first time in maybe twenty minutes. You think I killed him, don't you? He said, not looking around from his cleaning job. I considered my answer. There was no reason at all to be overly polite to this sour old buzzard, but at the same time I am fairly the soft spoken type. We aren't sure, I said. We just think there are some odd items to be explained. Such as what, he demanded. Such as the timing of McCann's cash return form? I already explained that, he said. I know you've explained everything. He wrote it out himself, the old man insisted. He put down his cleaning cloth and turned to face me. I suppose the company checked the handwriting already and J.F. McCann is the one who wrote that form. He was so blasted sure of himself. It would seem that way, I said. What other odd items you worried about? He asked me in a rusty attempt at sarcasm. Well, I said, there's this business of going to Kemosint City. It would have made more sense for you to go to Atronic City where you were known. Kemosint was closer, he said. He shook a finger at me. That company of yours thinks it can cheat me out of my money, he said. Well, it can't. I know my rights. That money belongs to me. I guess you're doing pretty well without McCann, I said. His angry expression was replaced by one of bewilderment. What do you mean? They told me back at Atronic City I explained that McCann was the money expert and you were the metals expert. That's why McCann handled all your buying on credit and stuff like that. Looks as though you've got a pretty keen eye for money yourself. I know what's mine, he mumbled and turned away. He went back to scrubbing the stove coils again. I stared at his back. Something had happened just then and I wasn't sure what. He'd just been starting to warm up to a tirade against the dirty insurance company and all of a sudden he'd fold it up and shut up like a clam. And then I saw it. Or at least I saw part of it. I saw how that cash return form fit in and how it made perfect sense. Now all I needed was proof of murder, preferably a body. I had the rest of it. Then I could pack the old geezer back to Atronic City and get proof for the part I'd already figured out. I'd like that. I'd like getting back to Atronic City and having this all straightened out and then taking the very next liner straight back to Earth. More immediately I'd like to get out of this heat and back into the cool sixty-eight degrees of... And then it hit me. The whole thing hit me. And I just sat there and stared. They did not carry extras. Carpon and McCann they did not carry one item of equipment more than they needed. I sat there and looked at the place where the dead body was hidden. And I said, Well, I'll be a son of a gun. He turned and looked at me and then he followed the direction of my gaze. He saw what I was staring at and he made a jump across the room at the revolver lying on the cot. That was what saved me. He moved too fast, jerked his muscles too hard and went sailing up and over the cot and ricocheted off the dome wall. And that gave me plenty of time to get up from the chair, moving more cautiously than he had and get my hands on the revolver before he could get himself squared away again. I straightened with the gun in my hand and looked into the face white with frustration and rage. OK, Mr. McCann, I said. It's all over. He knew I had him, but he tried not to show it. What are you talking about? McCann's dead. Sure he is, I said. J.F. McCann was the money-minded part of the team. He was the one who signed all the loans and all the equipment bought on credit. With this big strike-in, J.F. McCann was the one who'd have to pay all that money. You're babbling, he snapped, but the words were hollow. You weren't satisfied with half a loaf, I said. You should have been. Half a loaf is better than none. But you wanted every penny you could get your hands on and you wanted to pay out just as little money as you possibly could. So when you killed Abcarpen, you saw a way to kill your debts as well. You'd become Abcarpen and it would be J.F. McCann who was dead and the debts dead with him. That's a lie, he said, his voice getting shrill. I'm Abcarpen and I've got papers to prove it. Sure, papers you stole from a dead man. And you might have gotten away with it too, but you just couldn't leave well enough alone, could you? Not satisfied with having the whole thing to yourself, you switched identities with your victim to avoid your debts. And not satisfied with that, you filled out a cash return form and tried to collect your money as your own air. That's why you had to go to Kemosin City, where nobody would recognize Abcarpen or J.F. McCann, rather than to Atronic City, where you were well known. You don't want to make too many wild accusations, he shouted, his voice shaking. You don't want to go around accusing people of things you can't prove. I can prove it, I told him. I can prove everything I've said. As to who you are, there's no problem. All I have to do is bring you back to Atronic City. There'll be plenty of people there to identify you. And as to proving you murdered Abcarpen, I think his body will be proof enough, don't you? McCann watched me as I backed slowly around the room to the mound of gear. I had no extra equipment, no extra equipment at all. I looked down at the two atmosphere suits lying side by side on the metallic rock floor. Two atmosphere suits. The dead man was supposed to be in one of those, floating out in space somewhere. He was in the suit right enough. I was sure of that, but he wasn't floating anywhere. A space suit is a perfect place to hide a body for as long as possible. The silvered face plate keeps you from seeing inside and the suit is naturally a sealed atmosphere. A body can rot away to ashes inside a space suit and you'll never notice a thing on the outside. I'd had the right idea, after all. McCann had planned to get rid of Carpens' body by attaching a rocket to it, slowing it down and letting it fall into the sun. But he hadn't had the opportunity yet to go buy a rocket. McCann was in a city where he could have bought the rocket on credit and he couldn't go to Chemisant City until the claim sale went through and he had some money to spend. And in the meantime, Carpens' body was perfectly safe, sealed away inside his atmosphere suit. And it would have been safe too if McCann hadn't been just a little bit too greedy. He could kill his partner and get away with it. Policemen on the belt are even farther apart and he could swindle his creditors and get away with it. They had no way of checking up and no reason to suspect a switch in identities. But when he tried to get his own money back from Tangier's Mutual Insurance, that's when he made his mistake. I studied the two atmosphere suits at the same time managing to keep a wary eye on Jeff McCann standing rigid and silent across the room. Which one of those suits contained Ab Carpens? The one with the new patch on the chest, of course. As I guessed, McCann had shot him and that's why he had the problem of disposing of the body in the first place. I prodded that suit with my toe. He's in there, isn't he? You're crazy. Think I should open it up and check? It's been almost a month. You know, I imagine he's pretty ripe by now. I reached down to the neck fastenings and McCann finally moved. His arms jerked up and he cried, Don't. He's in there, he's in there. For God's sake, don't open it up. I relaxed. Mission accomplished. Crawl into your suit, little man. I said, we've got ourselves a trip to make. The three of us. Henderson as usual was jovial but stern. You did a fine job up there, Ged. He said with false familiarity. Really brilliant work. Thank you very much, I said. I was holding the last piece of news for a minute or two, relishing it. But you brought McCann in over a week ago. I don't see why you had to stay up at Atronic City at all after that, much less ten days. I sat back in the chair and negligently crossed my legs. I just thought I'd take a little vacation, I said carelessly and lit a cigarette. I flicked ashes in the general direction of the ashtray on Henderson's desk. Some of them made it. A vacation, he echoed, eyes widening. Henderson was a company man, a real company man. A vacation for him was purgatory. It was separation from a loved one. I don't believe you have a vacation coming, he said frostily, for at least six months. That's what you think, Henny, I said. All he could do at that was blink. I went on, enjoying myself hugely. I don't like this company, I said. And I don't like this job, and I don't like you. And from now on I've decided it's going to be vacation all the time. Ged, he said, his voice faint. What's the matter with you? Don't you feel well? I feel well, I told him. I feel fine. Now, I'll tell you why I spent extra ten days at Atronic City. McCann made and registered the big strike, right? Henderson nodded blankly, apparently not trusting himself to speak. Wrong, I said cheerfully. McCann went to Chemisant City and filled out all the forms required for registering a claim. But every place he was supposed to sign his name, he wrote Ab Carpin, instead. Jaffe McCann never did make a legal registration of his claim. Henderson just looked fish-eyed. So I went on. As soon as I turned McCann over to the law at Atronic City I went and registered that claim myself. And then I waited around for ten days until the company finished the paperwork involved in buying that claim from me. And then I came straight back here just to say goodbye to you. Wasn't that nice? He didn't move. Goodbye, I said. End of This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Bologna Times. The Smiler by Albert Herndhometer. Have you ever written science fiction? Have your stories been rejected? Here in May, the reason. Your name? Cole, Martin Cole. Your profession? A very important one. I am a literary agent specializing in science fiction. I sell the work of various authors to magazine and book publishers. The Coroner paused to study Cole. To ponder the thin, Merthless smile. The Coroner said, Mr. Cole, this inquest has been called to look into the death of one Sanford Smith who was found near your home with a gun in his hand and a bullet in his brain. The theory of suicide has been rather hard to rationalize. The Coroner blinked. You could put it that way. I would put it even stronger. The theory is obviously ridiculous. It was a weak cover-up. The best I could do under the circumstances. You are saying that you killed Sanford Smith? Of course. The Coroner glanced at his six-man jury, at the two police officers, at the scattering of spectators. They all seemed stunned. Even the reporters sent to cover the hearing made no move toward the telephone. The Coroner could think of only the obvious question. Why did you kill him? He was dangerous to us. Whom do you mean by us? We, Martians, who plan to take over your world. The Coroner was disappointed. A lunatic. But a lunatic can murder. Best to proceed, the Coroner thought. I was not aware that we have Martians to contend with. If I'd had the right weapon to use on Smith, you wouldn't be aware of it now. We still exercise caution. The Coroner felt a certain pity. Why did you kill Smith? We Martians have found science fiction writers to be our greatest danger. Through the medium of imaginative fiction, such writers have more than once revealed our plans. If the public suddenly realized that, the Coroner broke in. You killed Smith because he revealed something in his writings? Yes. He refused to take my word that it was unsaleable. He threatened to submit it direct. It was vital material. But there are many other such writers. You can't control. We control 90% of the output. We have concentrated on the field and all of the science fiction agencies are in our hands. This control was imperative. I see the Coroner spoke in the gentle tones one uses with the insane. Any writing dangerous to your cause is deleted or changed by the agents. Not exactly. The agent usually persuades the writer to make any such changes, as the agent is considered an authority on what will or will not sell. The writers always agree? Not always. This stubbornness is encountered. The agent merely shells the manuscript and tells the writer it has been repeatedly rejected. The Coroner glanced at the two policemen. Both were obviously puzzled. They returned the Coroner's look apparently ready to move on his order. The then, mirthless smile was still on Cole's lips. Moniacal violence could lie just behind it. Big Cole was armed. Better to play for time. Tried to quiet the madness within. The Coroner continued speaking. You Martians have infiltrated other fields also? Oh, yes. We are in government, industry, education. We are everywhere. We have, of course, concentrated mainly upon the ranks of labor and in the masses of ordinary everyday people. Some of these sources that we will draw our shock troops when the time comes. That time will be? Soon. Very soon. The Coroner could not forbear a smile. You'll find the science fiction writers more dangerous than the true scientists. Oh, yes. The scientific mind tends to reject anything science disproves. There was now a mocking edge where science can easily prove we do not exist. But the science fiction writer the danger from the imaginative mind cannot be overestimated. The Coroner knew he must soon order the officers to lay hands upon this madman. He regretted his own lack of experience with such situations. He tried to put a soothing, confidential note into his voice. You said a moment ago that if you'd had the right kind of weapon to use on Smith Cole reached into his pocket and brought out what appeared to be a fountain pen. This. It kills instantly and leaves no mark, whatever. Heart failure is invariably stated as the cause of death. The Coroner felt better. Obviously, Cole was not armed. As the Coroner raised his hand to signal the officers, Cole said, You understand, of course, that I can't let you live. Take this man into custody. The police officers did not move. The Coroner turned on them sharply. They were smiling. Cole pointed the fountain pen. The Coroner felt a sharp chill on his flesh. He looked at the jury, the spectators. They were all smiling, cold, thin, terrible smiles. A short time later, the NIST paper man found in his story. The afternoon editions carried it. Coroner Bell dies of heart attack. Shortly after this morning's inquest, which resulted in a jury verdict of suicide in the case of Sanford Smith, Coroner James Bell dropped dead of heart failure in the hearing room of the county building. Mr. Bell leaves a wife and end of The Smiler by Albert Hearnhunter. People when asked to define the ultimate in loneliness say it's being alone in a crowd. And it takes only one slight difference to make one forever alone in the crowd. Nobody at Huskins Haskell and Chapman Incorporated knew just why Lucilla Brown, G. G. Huskins secretary, came to work half an hour early every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Even G. G. himself, had he been asked, would have had trouble explaining how his occasional exasperated wish that just once somebody would reach the office ahead of him, could have caused his attractive young secretary to start doing so three times a week, or kept her at it all the months since that first gloomy March day. Nobody asked G. G. however. Not even Paul Chapman, the very junior partner in the advertising firm, who had displayed more than a little interest in Lucilla all fall and winter, but very little interest in anything all spring and summer. Nobody asked Lucilla why she left early on the days she arrived early. After all, eight hours is long enough. And certainly nobody knew where Lucilla went at 4.30 on those three days, nor would anybody in the office have believed it, had he known. Lucky Brown, seeing a psychiatrist? The typist would have giggled. The office boy would have snorted. And every salesman on the force would have guffawed. Even Paul Chapman might have managed a wry smile. A real laugh had been beyond him for several months, ever since he asked Lucilla confidently. Will you marry me? And she answered, I'm sorry, Paul, thanks, but no thanks. Not that seeing a psychiatrist was anything to laugh at in itself. After all, the year was 1962, and there were almost as many serious articles about mental health as there were cartoons about psychoanalysts, even in the magazines that specialized in poking fun. In certain cities, including Los Angeles, and certain industries, especially advertising, having an appointment with my psychiatrist was a perfectly acceptable excuse for leaving work early. The idea of a secretary employed by almost the largest advertising firm in one of the best known suburbs in the sprawling city of the Angels doing so should not, therefore, have seemed particularly odd. Nor would it have if the person involved had been any one at all, except Lucilla Brown. The idea that she might need aid of any kind, particularly psychiatric, was ridiculous. She had been born 22 years earlier in undisputed possession of a sizable silver spoon, and she was in addition bright, beautiful, and charming, with 20-20 vision, perfect teeth, a father and mother who adored her, friends who did likewise, and the kind of luck you'd have to see to believe. Other people entered contests. Lucilla won them. Other people drove five miles over the legal speed limit and got caught doing it. Lucilla out-distance them, but fortuitously slowed down just before the highway patrol appeared from nowhere. Other people waited in the wrong line at the bank while the woman ahead of them learned how to roll pennies. Lucilla was always on the line that moved right up to the teller's window. Lucky was not, in other words, just a happenstance abbreviation of Lucilla. It was an exceedingly apt nickname, and Lucky Brown's co-workers would have been quite justified in laughing at the very idea of her being unhappy enough about anything to spend three precious hours a week stretched out on a brown leather couch, staring miserably at a pale blue ceiling and fumbling for words that refused to come. There were a good many days when Lucilla felt like laughing at the idea herself. And there were other days when she didn't even feel like smiling. Wednesday, the 25th of July, was one of the days when she didn't feel like smiling, or talking, or moving. It had started out badly when she opened her eyes and found her staring at a familiar blue ceiling. I don't know," she said irritably. I tell you, I simply don't know what happens. I'll start to answer someone and the words will be right on the tip of my tongue, ready to be spoken. Then I'll say something altogether different. Or I'll start to cross the street and, for no reason at all, be unable to even step off the curb. For no reason at all," Dr. Andrews asked. Are you sure you aren't withholding something you ought to tell me? She shifted a little, suddenly uncomfortable, and then she was fully awake and the ceiling was ivory, not blue. She stared at it for a long moment, completely disoriented, before she realized that she was in her own bed, not on Dr. Andrews brown leather couch, and that the conversation had been another of the interminable imaginary dialogues she found herself carrying on with a psychiatrist, day and night, awake and asleep. Get out of my dreams," she ordered crossly, summoning up a quick mental picture of Dr. Andrews' expressive face, level gray eyes, and silvering temples, the better to banish him from her thoughts. She was immediately sorry she had done it, for the image remained fixed in her mind. She could almost feel his eyes as she heard his voice ask again. For no reason at all, Lucilla? The weathermen had promised a scorcher, and the heat that already lay like a blanket over the room made it seem probable the promise would be fulfilled. She moved listlessly, showering, patting herself dry, lingering over the choice of a dress her mother called urgently from the kitchen. She was long minutes behind schedule when she left the house. Usually she rather enjoyed easing her small car into the stream of automobiles pouring down Sepulveda toward the San Diego Freeway, jockeying for position, shifting expertly from one lane to another to take advantage of every break in the traffic. This morning she felt only angry impatience. She choked back on the irritated impulse to drive directly into the side of a car that cut across in front of her, held her horn button down furiously when a slow-starting truck hesitated fractionally after the light turned green. When she finally edged her Renault up on the on-ramp and the Freeway stretched straight and unobstructed ahead, she stepped down on the accelerator and watched the needle climb up to the illegal 65-mile limit. The sound of her tires on the smooth concrete was soothing and the rush of wind outside gave the morning an illusion of coolness. She edged away from the tangle of cars that had pulled on to the Freeway with her and momentarily was alone on the road with her rear-view mirror blank, the oncoming lanes bare and a small rise shutting off the world ahead. That was when it happened. "'Get out of the way,' a voice shrieked. "'Out of the way! Out of the way! Out of the way!' Her heart lurched, her stomach twisted convulsively and there was a brassy taste in her mouth. Instinctively she stamped down in the brake-pedal, swerved sharply into the outer lane. By the time she had topped the rise she was going a cautious 50 miles an hour to the far edge of the Freeway. Then and only then she heard the squeal of agonized tires and saw the cumbersome semi-trailer coming from the opposite direction rock dangerously, jackknife into the dividing posts that separated north and southbound traffic, crunch ponderously through them and crash to a stop, several hundred feet ahead of her and squarely a-thwart the lane down which she had been speeding 30 seconds earlier. The highway patrol materialized within minutes. Even so it was after eight by the time Lucilla gave them her statement, agreed for the umpteenth time with the shaken but uninjured truck driver that it was indeed fortunate she hadn't been in the center lane and drove slowly the remaining miles to the office. The gray mood of early morning had changed to black. Now there were two voices in her mind competing for attention. I knew it was going to happen, the truck driver said. I couldn't see over the top of that hill. All I could do was fight the wheel and pray that if anybody was coming he'd get out of the way. She could almost hear him repeating the words, get out of the way, out of the way. And right on the heel of his cry came Dr. Andrew's soft query. For no reason at all, Lucilla. She pulled into the company parking lot, jerked the wheel savagely to the left, jammed on the brakes. Shut up! she said. Shut up! Both of you! She started into the building, then hesitated. She was already late, but there was something. Get out of the way. The way. For no reason at all, at all. She yielded to impulse and walked hurriedly downstairs to the basement library. That stuff I asked you to get together for me by tomorrow, Ruthie, she said to the gray-haired librarian. You wouldn't by any chance have already done it, would you? Funny you should ask. The elderly woman bobbed down under and popped back up with an arm-load of magazines and newspapers. Just happened to have some free time last thing yesterday. It's already charged out to you, so you just go right ahead and take it, dearie. It was 8.30 when Lucilla reached the office. When I need you, where are you? Gigi asked sourly. Learned last night that the top dog at corporation is in town today. So they've pushed that conference up from Friday to 10 this morning. If you'd been here early, or even on time, we might at least have gotten some of the information together. Lucilla laid the stack of material on his desk. I haven't had time to flag the pages yet, she said, but they're listed on the library request on top. I've seen ads for KK last year and three of premium offers. I stopped by sales on my way in. Susie's digging out figures for you now. Hmm, said Gigi. Well, so that's where you've been. You could at least have let me know. There was grudging approval beneath his gruffness. Say, how'd you know I didn't? said Lucilla, putting her purse away and whisking the cover off her typewriter. Happenstance, that's all. Just happened to go down to the library. For no reason at all. Withholding something. Get out of the way. The telephone's demand for attention overrode her thoughts. She reached for it almost gratefully. Mr. Huskins' office, she said. Yes. Yes, he knows about the ten o'clock meeting this morning. Thanks for calling anyway. She hung up and glanced at Gigi. But he was so immersed in one of the magazines that the ringing telephone hadn't even disturbed him. Ringing, the last thing she did before she left the office each night, was set so that the bell would not disturb Gigi if he worked late. So far today nobody had set it back to on. It's getting worse, she said miserably to the pale blue ceiling. The phone didn't ring this morning. It couldn't have, but I answered it. Dr. Andrews said nothing at all. She let her eyes flicker sidewise, but he was outside her range of eyes. I don't like having you sit where I can't see you," she said crossly. Freud may have thought it was a good idea, but I think it's a lousy one. She clenched her hands and stared at nothing. The silence stretched thinner and thinner, like a balloon blown big until the temptation to rupture it was too great to resist. There was no reason at all for me to slow down and pull over. You might be dead if you hadn't. Would you like that better? The matter-of-fact question was like a hand laid across Lucila's mouth. I don't want to be dead, she admitted finally. Neither do I want to go on like this, hearing words that aren't spoken and bells that don't ring. When it gets to the point that I pick up a phone just because somebody's thinking," she stopped abruptly. I didn't quite catch the end of that sentence, Dr. Andrew said. I didn't quite finish it. I can't. Can't or won't. Don't hold anything back, Lucila. You were saying that you picked up the phone just because somebody was thinking," he paused him. Lucila re-read the ornate letters on the framed diploma on the wall, looked critically at the picture of Mrs. Andrews, whom she'd met and her impish daughter, whom she hadn't, counted the number of pleats in the billowing drapes, ran a tentative finger over the face of her wristwatch, straightened a fold of her skirt, and could stand the silence no longer. She said wirly. The girl at Carrie Carton thought about talking to me, and I heard my phone ring, even though the bell was disconnected. G.G. thought about needing backup material for the conference, and I went to the library. The truck driver thought about warning people, and I got out of his way. So I can read people's minds, some of the time, anyway. Only there's no such thing as telepathy. And if I'm not telepathic, then she caught herself in the brink of time, and bit back the final word, fighting for self-control. Then what? The peremptory question toppled Lucila's defences. I'm crazy, she said. Speaking the word released all the others damned up behind it. Ever since I can remember things like this have happened, all at once in the middle of doing something or saying something, I'd find myself thinking about what somebody else was doing or saying. Not thinking, knowing. I'd be playing hide-and-seek, and I could see the places where the other kids were hiding just as plainly as I could see my own surroundings. I'd be worrying over the answers to an exam question, and I'd know what somebody in the back of the room had decided to write down, or what the teacher was expecting us to write. Not always, but it happened often enough so that it bothered me, just the way it does now when I answer a question before it's been asked, or know what the driver ahead of me is going to do a split second before he does it, or win a bridge game because I can see everybody else's hand through his own eyes, almost. Has it always bothered you, Lucilla? No. She drew the word out, considering, trying to think when it was that she hadn't felt uneasy about the unexpected moments of perceptiveness. When she was very little, perhaps. She thought of the tiny girl in the faded snaps of the old album, and suddenly, inexplicably, she was that self, moving through remembered rooms, pausing to collect a word from a boyish father, a thought from a pretty young mother. Reluctantly she closed her eyes against that distant time. Way back, she said, when I didn't know any better, I just took it for granted that sometimes people talk to each other, and that sometimes they passed thoughts along without putting them into words. I was about six, I guess, when I found out it wasn't so. She slipped into her six-year-old self, as easily as she had done the younger Lucilla. This time she wasn't in a house, but high on a hillside, walking on springy pine needles, instead of prosaic carpet. Talk! Dr. Andrews reminded her, his voice so soft that it could almost have come from inside her own mind. We were picnicking, she said, a whole lot of us. Somehow I wandered away from the others. One minute the hill was bright with sun, and the next it was deep in shadows, and the wind that had been merely cool cold. She shivered and glanced around expecting her mother to be somewhere near, holding out a sweater or a jacket. There was no one at all in sight. Even then she never thought of being frightened. She turned to retrace her steps. There was a big tree that looked familiar, and a funny rock behind it, half buried in the hillside. She was trudging toward it, moving under her breath when the worry thoughts began to reach her. Only a little creek so I don't think she should have fallen in. Not really any bears around here. But she never gets hurt. Creek. Bear. Twisted ankle. Dark. Cold. She had veered from her course and started in the direction of the road. But now they were coming from all sides and she had no idea at all which way to go. She ran wildly then, first one way, then the other, sobbing and calling. Lucilla. The voice sliced into the night and the dark mountainside and the frightened child were gone. She shuddered a little, reminiscently, and put her hand over her eyes. Somebody found me, of course, and then mother was holding me and crying. And I was crying too and telling her how all the different thought at once frightened me and mixed me up. She scolded me for telling fibs and said that nobody except crazy people thought they could read each other's minds. I see, said Dr. Andrews. I tried not to, of course. And any time you did it again or thought you did you blamed it on conscience or luck and had that nightmare again. Yes, that too. Tell me about it. I already have, over and over. Tell me again, then. I feel like a fool repeating myself, she complained. Dr. Andrews made no comment. Oh, all right. It always starts with me walking down a crowded street surrounded by honking cars and yelling newsboys and talking people. The noise bothers me and I'm tempted to cover my ears to shut it out. But I try to ignore it instead and walk faster and faster. Bit by bit the buildings I pass are smaller. The people fewer. The noise less. All at once I discover there's nothing around at all but a spreading carpet of grey-green moss, years deep and a silence that feels as old as time itself. There's nothing to frighten me, but I am frightened and lonesome. Not so much for people, but for a sound. Any sound. I learn to run back toward town, but there's nothing behind me now, but the same grey moss and grey sky and dead silence. By the time she reached the last word her throat had tightened until speaking was difficult. She reached out blindly for something to cling to. Her groping hand met Dr. Andrews and his warm fingers closed reassuringly around hers. Maybe the panic drained away, but she could think of nothing to say at all, although she longed to have the silence broken. As if he sensed her longing, Dr. Andrews said, You started having the dream more often, just after you told Paul you wouldn't marry him. Is that right? No, it was the other way around. I hadn't had it for months, not since I fell in love with him. Then he got a sign to that which tomorrow show and he started calling me lucky, the way everybody does, and the dream came back. She stopped short and turned on the couch to stare at the psychiatrist with startled eyes. But that can't be how it was, she said. The lonesomeness must have started after I decided not to marry him, not before. I wonder why the dream stopped when you fell in love with him. That's easy," Lucila said promptly, grasping at the chance to evade her own more disturbing question. I felt close to him, whether he was with me or not, the way I used to feel close to people back when I was a little girl, before, well, before that day in the mountains when Mother said, That was when you started having the dream, wasn't it? How did you know? I didn't know. How did you know? I didn't, not until just now. But, yes, that's when it started. I'd never minded the dark or being alone, but I was frightened when Mother shut the door that night because the walls seemed so, so solid, now that I knew all the thoughts I used to think were with me there were just pretend. When I finally went to sleep I began having the same dream night after night after night until finally they called a doctor and he gave me something to make me sleep. I wished they'd called me, Dr. Andrew said. What could you have done? The sleeping pills worked, anyway, and after a while I didn't need them any more because I'd heard other kids talking about having hunches and lucky streaks and I stopped feeling different from the rest of them, except once in a while. When I was so lucky it bothered me. And after you met Paul you stopped being too lucky and the dream stopped? No! Lucilla was startled at her own vehemence. No, it wasn't like that at all and you'd know it if you'd been listening. With Paul I fell close to him all the time, no matter how many miles or walls or anything else there were between us. We hardly had to talk at all because we seemed to know just what the other one was thinking all the time, listening to music or watching the waves pound in or just working together at the office. Instead of feeling odd when I knew what he was thinking or what he was going to say I felt good about it because I was so sure it was the same way with him and what I was thinking. We didn't talk about it there just wasn't any need to. She lapsed into silence again. Dr. Andrews straightened her clenched hand out and stroked the fingers gently. After a moment she went on. He hadn't asked me to marry him but I knew he would and there wasn't any hurry so perfect anyway. Then one of the company's clients decided to sponsor a series of fantasy shows on TV and wanted us to tie in the ads for next year with the fantasy theme. Paul was assigned to the account and Gigi let him borrow me to work on it because it was such a rush project. I had always liked fairy stories when I was little and when I discovered there were grown up ones too like those in Unknown Worlds and the Old Weird Tales I read them too. But I hadn't any idea how much there was until we started buying copies of everything there was on the newsstands and then ransacking musty little stores for back issues and ones that had gone out of publication until Paul's office was just full of teetery piles of gaudy magazines and everywhere you looked there were pictures of strange stars and eight-legged monsters and men in spacesuits. So what did the magazines have to do with you and Paul? The way he felt about them changed everything. He just laughed at the ones about spaceships and other planets and robots and things but he didn't laugh when he came across stories about, well, mutants and people with talents. Talents? Like reading minds, you mean? She nodded, not looking at him. He didn't laugh at those. He acted as if they were, well, indecent. The sort of thing you wouldn't be caught dead reading in public. And he thought that way too especially about the stories that even mentioned telepathy. At first when he brought them to my attention in that disapproving way I thought he was just pretending to sneer, to tease me because he, we knew they could be true. Only his thoughts matched his remarks. He hated the stories, Dr. Andrews and was just determined to have me hate them too. All at once I began to feel as if I didn't have him at all, and I began to wonder if I'd just imagined everything all those months I felt so close to him. And then I began to dream again and to think about that lonesome, silent world even when I was wide awake. Go on, Lucilla, Dr. Andrews said as she hesitated. That's all, just about. We finished the job and got rid of the magazines for a little while. It was almost as if those two weeks had never been except I couldn't forget that he didn't know what I was thinking at all, even when everything he did, almost made it seem as if he did. It began to seem wrong for me to know what he was thinking. Crazy, like mother had said and worse, somehow. Not well, not even nice, if you know what I mean. Then he asked you to marry him. And I said, no, even what I wanted oh, so terribly to say yes and yes and yes. She squeezed her eyes tight shut to hold back a rush of tears. Time folded back on itself. Once again the hands of her wristwatch pointed to 4.30 and the white-clad receptionist said bristly, Doctor, we'll see you now. Once again, from some remote vantage point, Lucilla watched herself brush past Dr. Andrews and crossed to the familiar couch, heard herself say, it's getting worse, watched herself move through a flickering montage of scenes from childhood to womanhood, from past to present. She opened her eyes to meet the man who sat patiently beside her. You see, he said, telling me wasn't so difficult after all. And then, before she had decided on a response, what do you know about Darwin's theory of evolution, Lucilla? His habit of ending a tense moment by making an irrelevant query no longer even startled her. Obediently she fumbled for an answer. Not much, just that he thought all the different kinds of life on earth today evolved from a few blobs of protoplasm that sprouted wings or grew fur or developed teeth, depending on when they lived and where. She paused hopefully but met with only silence. Sometimes what seemed like a step forward wasn't, she said, lacking her brain for scattered bits of information. Then the species died out like the saber-toothed tiger with those tusks that kept right on growing until they locked his jaws shut so he starved to death. As she spoke she remembered the huge beast as he had been pictured in one of her college textbooks. The recollection grew more and more vivid until she could see both the picture and the facing page of text. There was an irregularly shaped ink blot in the upper corner and several heavily underlined sentences that stood out so distinctly she could actually read the words. According to Darwin variations in general are not infinitesimal, but in the nature of specific mutations. Thousands of these occur but only the fittest survive the climate, the times, natural enemies and their own kind who strive to perpetuate themselves unchanged. Taken one by one the words were all familiar. Taken as a whole they made no sense at all. She let the book slip unheeded from her mind and stared at Dr. Andrews in bewilderment. Try saying it in a different way. You sound like a schoolteacher humoring a stupid child. And then because of the habit of obedience was strong I guess he meant that tails didn't grow an inch at a time the way the dogs got cut off but all at once. Like a fish being born with legs as well as fins or a baby saber-tooth showing up among tigers with regular teeth or one ape in a tribe discovering he could swing down out of the treetops and stand erect and walk alone. He echoed her last words and walk alone. A premonitory chill traced its icy way down Lucilla's backbone. For a second she stood on gray moss under a gray sky in the midst of a gray silence. He not only could walk alone he had to. Do you remember what your book said? Only the fittest survive, Lucilla said numbly. Because they have to fight the climate and their natural enemies and their own kind. She swung her feet to the floor and pushed herself into a sitting position. I'm not a a mutation. I'm not. I'm not. And you can't say that I am because I won't listen. I didn't say you were. There was the barest hint of emphasis on the first word. Lucilla was almost certain she heard a whisper of laughter but he met her gaze blandly, his expression completely serious. Don't you dare laugh she said nonetheless. There's nothing funny about about being able to read people's minds Dr. Andrews said helpfully you'd much rather have me offer some other explanation for the occurrences that bother you so is that it? I guess so. Yes, it is. A brain tumor or schizophrenia or anything at all that could maybe be cured so I could marry Paul and have children like everybody else like you. She looked past him to the picture on his desk. It's easy for you to talk. He ignored the last statement. Why can't you get married anyway? You've already said why? Because Paul would hate me. Everybody would hate me if they knew I was different. How would they know? It doesn't show. Now if you had three legs or a long bushy tail or outsized teeth Lucilla smiled involuntarily and then was furious at herself for doing so and at Dr. Andrews for provoking her into it. This whole thing is utterly asinine anyhow. Here we are talking as if I might really be a mutant and you know perfectly well that I'm not. Do I? You made the diagnosis, Lucilla and you've given me some mighty potent reasons for believing it. Can you give me equally good reasons for doubting that you're a telepath? The peremptory demand left Lucilla speechless for a moment. She groped blindly for an answer then almost laughed aloud as she found it. But of course I almost missed it even after you practically drew me a diagram. If I could read minds just as soon as anybody found it out he'd be afraid of me or hate me like the book said and you said too. If you believed it you'd do something like having me locked up in a hospital maybe instead of instead of what, Lucilla? Instead of being patient and nice and helping me see how silly I've been she reached out impulsively to touch his hand then withdrew her own feeling somewhat foolish when he made no move to respond. Her relief was too great however to be contained in silence. Way back the first time I came in almost you said that before we finished therapy you'd know me better than I knew myself. I didn't believe you maybe I didn't want to but I begin to think you were right lots of times lately you've answered a question before I even asked it sometimes you haven't even bothered to answer you've just sat there in your big brown chair and I've lain here on the couch and we've gone through something together without using words at all. She had started out almost gaily the words spilling over each other in their rush to be said but bit by bit she slowed down then faltered to a stop after she had stopped talking altogether she could still hear her last few phrases repeated over and over like an echo that refused to die. Answered before I even asked without using words at all without using words she could almost taste the terror that clogged her throat and dried her lips you do believe it and you could have me locked up only only fragments of thought splinters of words and droplets of silence spun into a kaleidoscopic jumble drifted infinitesimally and fell into an incredible new pattern understanding displaced terror and was in turn displaced by indignation she stared accusingly at her interrogator but you look just like just like anybody you expected perhaps three legs or a long bushy tail or teeth like that textbook tiger and you're a psychiatrist what else would you have talked to me like this across a grocery counter Lucilla or listened to me if I'd been driving a bus or filling a prescription would I have found the others in a bowling alley or a business office then there are others she let out her breath in a long sigh and voluntarily glancing again at the framed picture only I love Paul and he isn't he can't nor can Carol his eyes were steady on hers yet she felt as if he were looking through and beyond her for no reason at all she strained her ears for the sound of footsteps or the summons of a voice where do you suppose a little blob of protoplasm with legs came from Dr. Andrews asked and the third if that ape who found he could stand erect had walked lonesomely off into the sunset like a second rate actor on a late late show where do you suppose you'd be today he broke off abruptly and watched with Lucilla as the office door edged open the small girl who inched her way around it wore blue jeans and a ponytail rather than an organdy frock and curls but her pixie smile matched that of the girl in the photograph Lucilla had glanced at again and again you wanted me daddy she asked but she looked toward Lucilla I thought you'd like to meet someone with the same nickname as yours Dr. Andrews said do you want to meet her? lucky meet lucky hello the child said then her smile widened hello but I don't have to say it do I I can talk to you just the way I talk to daddy and Uncle Whitney and Big Bill hello yourself said Lucilla this time when the corners of her mouth began to tick upward she made no attempt to stop them of course you can darling and I can answer you the same way and you'll hear me Dr. Andrews reached for the open pack of cigarettes on his desk is this strictly a private conversation girls or can I get in on it too it's unpolite to interrupt daddy he's not exactly interrupting it was his conversation to begin with Dr. Andrews receptionist paused briefly beside the still open office door none of them heard either her gentle rap or the soft click of the latch slipping into place when she pushed the door shut nor did she hear them end of the sound of silence by Barbara Constance recording by Roger Maline