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Dr. Colles took a good look around his office. It had never seemed so cramped and grubby before. Once again he found himself wondering if he ought not to get out of test construction and evaluation—way out—into some more lucrative field of psychology. Not many clients paid so well as Melchior Enterprises; in plain fact, none of them had. Not by a long shot. And his work for them was about over now, anyway. A competent personnel man like Taylor could carry on the tests without the constructionist. There was something about Taylor … smooth, knowing … without too much eagerness, he considered asking the young man to send him follow-up reports on how the psychopaths turned up by the special test were responding to treatment. Of course, some of them were bound to reject treatment. And they couldnt be obliged to accept, either, worse luck. Well, that wasn’t his responsibility. He didn’t even know who was doing the therapy. They looked at each other through the falling snow, and suddenly there was a perfect instantaneous understanding between them. Ed made an awkward, half-frozen little bow, moving backward. The great creature stood motionless, merely watching, and then Ed did a strange thing: He held out his hands, palms up, gave a wry grin—and ducked quickly around the outcropping of rock and began a plunging, sliding return down the way hed come. In spite of the harsh, snow-laden wind, bitterly cold, he was perspiring. I wont say tears came to my eyes— I knew just how far he would go to help. I said goodbye to him and Braun led me up the marble steps. The place was crowded with neat soldiery. We were joined by the hotel manager and two coppers. We went up to the top storey and I was shown my suite. Three rooms and a bathroom. Quite a nice little shack, although somewhat Teutonically furnished. It was elegant, but there was the smell of loot about it. You kept wondering which bit of furniture covered the bloodstains where theyd bayonetted the Countess and her kids one morning. Hitchcock separated the four sets of papers and laid them on the desk—the one of the scientist-candidate and three containing the scores Floppers had made. He tried to compare the records, glancing randomly from one set to another. But all four were confusingly similar, and the complex mass of numbers, plus and minus signs, and symbols meant nothing to him. "Isnt any," he said cheerfully. He guided her to the sofa and they sat down. His hairy knee stuck up through the torn cloth.I thought youd see it on TV or something. It was still light outside, and enough light came through the window above my head for me to read by. I was just reaching for a fresh cigarette, when I looked up and saw it on the foot of my bed. The edge of my hand was touching the golf club, and with a single motion I swept the club over and down, struck it a savage and accurate blow, and killed it. That was what I referred to before. Whatever kind of a man I am, I react as a man does. I think that any man, black, white or yellow, in China, Africa or Russia, would have done the same thing. The twenty minutes went quickly enough; at the end of that time, Cliff knew exactly what he had to do. He had even come to believe that it might work. Radiation, bah! Weve found low-grade ore on every planet I’ve discovered so far, and this one’ll be no different. Now how about that flag? Let’s get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque. It took me by surprise to get another Ministry postcard two weeks later, requesting my presence once more at the Sexual Health Center. This time it was in the afternoon, and the nurse ushered me into the doctors other surgery with a little more respect. There was a tiny holding of the breath and it made me more expectant. THE DISTORTION Rideout noted it, too.Its too noisy to converse here, he said loudly. “Suppose you come along with me to my farm. I can damn well use a drink while I listen to what you have to say.” An orange sweater, I said, Al-orange. I knew you werent listening and asked you how an orange sweater would go with- Close your eyes. Muller didnt look back. It isn’t easy, he admitted, walking along almost jauntily. “But some people do it the first time through. We’ve even had some Floppers do it.” I am a sexiatrist, actually, not a doctor. Now come and look in this glass container. This allowed, we have no way of guessing what variations in mankind itself could make a more efficient creature with greater survival characteristics. A third eye in the back of our heads, for instance, would be a lifesaver in this age of the galloping pedestrian. On a world where the air is thick, the beings would need extremely small mouths and nostrils to cut down on intake. If the air is thin, they would need mouths and nose vents like barn doors. There were also some stories of special interest by established authors, which did not, one way or another, get mentioned inside: Miriam Allen de Fords The Expendables, Chad Oliver’s “End of the Line,” Edgar Pangborn’s “Wogglebeast,” all fromF&SF; William F. Temple’s “The Legend of Ernie Deacon” and James H. Schmitz’s “The Pork Chop Tree,” fromAnalog; Lloyd Biggie, Jr.’s “Pariah Planet” and Theodore L. Thomas’ “Manfire,” fromWorlds of Tomorrow, Gerald Pearce’s “Security Syndrome,” fromIf, and Richard Wilson’s “Harry Protagonist, Brain-Drainer,” fromGalax/;“Don’t Touch Me, I’m Sensitive,” by James Stamers, in Gamma; “The Casting Couch,” by Lewis Kovner, in Rogue; Florence Engel Randall’s “The Watchers,” inHarper’s; and stories fromall over by Frank Herbert:“Committee of the Whole”(Galaxy),“The GM Effect”(Analog),“Greenslaves”(Amazing). Hector LeGrande! So Madame Gioconda had been more desperate than he thought.* * * * MOON DUEL He missed Bs nod as he skimmed on soles to the exit, grabbed a small bundle hanging (one of fifteen) from the fourth hook along, slid down the greasy slide under ground ten metres to a fuel-cell-lit cavern, pressed a luminous button in the wall, watched a lit symbol passing a series of marks, jumped into the low car as it ground round the corner, and curled up foetus wise. His weight having set off the cardoor mechanism, the car shut, slipped down and (its clamps settling on H’s body) roared off down the chute..
