place for a session of hollering about eight."

iss Noble's scorn needed no vizer to carry it over the wire in full force. "I'm not going to budge out of this house until after the director's meeting and then only if the shops stop all delivery service. This time I'm not taking any chances. Life is too much of a bore to have to put up with it for another eighty years even for your marvelous singer who would probably go and get rejuvenated just as I got to enjoy him. And nothing could induce me to listen to an evening of your stories for the nine hundredth time. If there's one thing I'm thankful for in this scatter-brained age, it's the marriage dissolution law that's got me free from your anecdotes after three separate terms of fifty years each."

"Now, Barbara, was it that bad?" Roland Harris sounded distressed.

"Do you really think I could be honestly grateful to the Corporation for a hundred and fifty years of listening to that disgraceful old thing about the Martian, the Venusian, and the robot?"

"Well, if you feel that way about it, I'll keep my discoveries to myself. I hope your fancy hallway keeps you safe till you rot."

"It's doing all right," replied the old woman smugly. "I have a young pup down there right now cooling his number thirteens and waiting to pretend to interest me in some new face paint and hair gik. My electric eye set and vizer are less repulsive than your skunk oil and twice as effective."

"They're not going to stop me from having a good time while I last, anyhow. I think they're through with me for today; and I'm going to hear Jeery Wade, anyhow. He'll make up a hooting good song about all this when I tell him."

"Take care of yourself, Rod ... goodbye," said Miss Noble, almost concernedly.

She dropped the phone into its cradle, rose, and went back to the vizer screen, switching on the speaker as she sat down. Only then did she notice that the screen was entirely dark except for a vague sliver of gray.

"Are you still there, young man?" she asked the microphone.

There was silence from the speaker. The hammer on each bar of the long metal xylophone of the electric eye signal hung motionless.

"He's gone ... and left the front door unlatched too. And I thought he was persistent." She was disappointed. "He owes me four more minutes of fun."

She got up slowly and started for the door. "That curly hair stuff is new since my last sixties, too. I wonder if it would work on white hair ... I'd better go down and close the door. Can't have just anybody coming into one's house."

he descended the stairs, opened the door from the front room, then took one step forward into the hall. Before she could interpret the soft bump of the salesman's bare feet as they struck the floor, she was encircled by his strong arm; and the hiss of the anesthetic gun was loud in the small area of the hall. Limply she sagged against his arm.

The hissing of the gun stopped. The young man slipped it into his pocket and, turning, thrust the inner door wide open with his now free hand. Entering the tidy front room, he kicked the door shut behind him and gulped in the good air before he headed for the back of the house, cradling the small body easily in his arms. Failing to find there what he was looking for, he went up the narrow white-railed stairway to the second floor. Across the landing, the gleam of porcelain showed through a half-open door.

He laid his burden carefully on the vari-colored braided rug by the tub and began to draw a warm bath, testing the temperature frequently with his hand. When water reached the overflow outlet, he turned off the tap and sprinted