'I like it,” she said. “You're a professor. That's the way you're supposed to be. Are you absentminded, too?'
'Well, actually, you know, that depends more or less on the nature of... What was the question again?'
She laughed again, and they stood silent for a while, listening to the water and smelling the clean breeze coming off the lake. Gideon began to think about putting his arm around her. Did people still do that on first dates? Or did they run right off to bed, and only put their arms over each other's shoulders when they were better acquainted?
'Chilly?” he asked when he saw her shiver. “Would you like to get a nightcap at the bar?'
'I don't like bars very much.'
'I don't either,” he said with sincerity. “I have some Scotch in my cottage, though, right across the lawn.'
She looked at him for a long second. “I think maybe the bar would be better this time.'
As they turned from the lake, she smiled and took his arm. “I need a chance to practice up on my karate.'
After the soft, cool lakefront, the bar was a shock, full of happy, noisy people, mostly in their fifties and sixties. Even the walls were crowded: elk, antelope, and deer heads peered down from every flat space with lustrous, ruminant eyes. There was a monstrous salmon over the bar and even a small bear, seemingly frozen in midstep with one foot raised as it was padding over the top of the upright piano.
They found a free table in a corner and sat down. The laughter and closeness had made them suddenly shy with each other, and they were still searching for something to talk about when Gideon's brandy and Julie's Grand Marnier came.
'I'm going to practice, you know,” Julie said. “I intend to beat your rock-skimming record, even if my vertebrae are funny.'
'It's not that they're funny,” Gideon said brightly, working hard to reawaken the conversation, “it's just that their relationship to the sternum...” He put down his brandy snifter abruptly. “Holy cow, do you know where your seventh thoracic vertebra
'I'm not sure. Have I lost it?'
'No, I'm serious,” he said. “It's just about the middle of the back, at the thickest part of the rib cage.'
'That's fascinating, but I have the feeling I'm missing something.'
'Julie, the seventh thoracic—the one the spear point was in—it's here...” He groped over his right shoulder with his left hand, and under his left arm with his right hand, but he couldn't reach it. “Let me palpate yours,” he said, leaning toward her.
'Professor Oliver! Is that legal in a public place?'
'Damn it, Julie—'
'Yes, sir,” she said quickly, putting down the liqueur and turning so he could reach her back.
His sure fingers quickly found the familiar prominence of the lowest cervical vertebra at the base of her neck, then the first thoracic, and the second. After that the back muscles made the spines harder to feel, but he worked his way carefully down, counting aloud, until he pressed the seventh.
'There!'
'Ouch.'
'You see, it's right in the middle of your thorax.'
He took his hand from her spine and leaned back in his chair. “In order for a spear to penetrate the front of the seventh thoracic vertebra, it would have to enter here.” He placed his middle finger in the center of his chest.
'That would smart, all right.'
'Not for long. I'd be dead at once. But that's not what I'm thinking of,” he said, his eyes thoughtful.
She pushed his brandy across the table to him and waited for him to go on, her own eyes more serious now.
'Look,” he said, his hand at his chest again, “that spear would have had to go through the thickest part of the sternum and probably cut through a couple of sternocostal ligaments. And that would have been after severing the pectoralis tendons.'
He sipped his brandy without tasting it. His eyes looked inward, seeing the chest cavity behind his hand. “Then it would have gone through the middle of the heart, clean through the whole thing—and the heart is one hell of a tough hunk of muscle. And then after that—we won't even consider the veins and nerves and esophagus—it penetrated nearly an inch into a living vertebra.'
'That's a lot of work for a bone spear point to do,” she said.
He nodded. “And remember, Eckert was a big guy, with thick bones and muscles. Julie, I don't see how anyone could throw a spear with that much force. A razor-sharp, perfectly balanced metal spear, maybe, but not that crude bone point.'
'How about if it was an arrow after all? Would it have more power if it had been shot from a bow?'
'Yes, but it's too big for an arrow point. The shaft would have to be five feet long, and thick, to balance it.'
'What about a crossbow?'
Gideon brightened momentarily, then shook his head. “That might give it the necessary force, but I think the point's too big for a crossbow, too. But I don't know anything about them; we can ask John.'
'Ugh,” Julie said, and shivered suddenly.
