Time and Again

Sutton sat silently, staring across the room and seeing nothing.

There had been an apple tree at the gate and each year young Ash Sutton had eaten the apples when they were green and Buster had nursed him each time gently through the crisis and then had whaled him good and proper to teach him respect for his metabolism. And when the kid down the road had licked him on the way home from school, it had been Buster who had taken him out in the back yard and taught him how to fight with head as well as hands.

Sutton clenched his fists unconsciously, remembering the surge of satisfaction, the red rawness of his knuckles. The kid down the road, he recalled, had nursed a black eye for a week and become his fastest friend.

'About the trunk, sir,' said Wellington. 'You will want it delivered?'

'Yes,' said Sutton, 'if you please.'

'It will be here tomorrow morning,' Wellington told him.

The android picked up his hat and rose. 'I want to thank you, sir, for my client. He told me you would be reasonable.'

'Not reasonable,' said Sutton. 'Just fair. He took care of us for many years. He has earned his freedom.'

'Good day, sir,' said Wellington.

'Good day,' said Sutton. 'And thank you very much.'

One of the mermaids whistled at Sutton.

Sutton told her, 'One of these days, my beauty, you'll do that once too often.'

She thumbed her nose at him and dived into the fountain.

The door clicked shut as Wellington left.

Slowly, Sutton slit the letter open, spread out the single page:

Dear Ash — I went to see Mr. Adams today and he told me that he was afraid that you would not come back, but I told him that I knew you would. So I'm not doing this because I think you won't come back and that you will never know…because I know you will. Since you left me and struck out on your own, I have felt old and useless. In a galaxy where there were many things to do, I was doing nothing. You told me you just wanted me to live on at the old place and take it easy and I knew you did that because you were kind and would not sell me even if you had no use for me. So I'm doing something I have always wanted to do. I am filing on a planet. It sounds like a pretty good planet and I should be able to do something with it. I shall fix it up and build a home and maybe someday you will come and. visit me.

Yours,

Buster.

P.S. If you ever want me, you can find out where I am at the homestead office.

Gently, Sutton folded the sheet, put it in his pocket.

He sat idly in the chair, listening to the purling of the stream that gushed through the painting hung above the fireplace. A bird sang and a fish jumped in a quiet pool around the bend, just outside the frame.

Tomorrow, he thought, I will see Adams. Maybe I can find out if he's behind what happened. Although, why should he be? I'm working for him. I'm carrying out his orders.

He shook his head. No, it couldn't be Adams.

But it must be someone. Someone who had been laying for him, who even now was watching.

He shrugged mental shoulders, picked up the newspaper and unfolded it.

It was the Galactic Press and in twenty years its format had not changed. Conservative columns of gray type ran down the page, broken only by laconic headings. Earth news started in the upper left-hand corner of the front page, was followed by Martian news, by Venusian news, by the column from the asteroids, the column and a half from the Jovian moons…then the outer planets. News from the rest of the galaxy, he knew, could be found on the inside pages. A paragraph or two to each story. Like the old community personal columns in the country papers of many centuries before.

Still, thought Sutton, smoothing out the paper, it was the only way it could be handled. There was so much news…news from many worlds, from many sectors…human news, android and robot news, alien news. The items had to be boiled down, condensed, compressed, making one word do the job of a hundred.

There were other papers, of course, serving isolated sections, and these would give the local news in more detail. But on Earth there was need of galactic-wide news coverage…for Earth was the capital of the galaxy…a planet that was nothing but a capital…a planet that grew no food, allowed no industries, that made its business nothing but government. A planet whose every inch was landscaped and tended like a lawn or park or garden.

Sutton ran his eye down the Earth column. An earthquake in eastern Asia. A new underwater development for the housing of alien employees and representatives from watery worlds. Delivery of three new star ships to the Sector 19 run. And then:

Asher Sutton, special agent of the Department of Galactic Investigation, returned today from 61 Cygni, to which he was assigned twenty years ago. Hope of his return had been abandoned several years ago. Immediately upon landing a guard was thrown around his ship and he was in seclusion at the Orion Arms. All attempts to reach him for a statement failed. Shortly after his arrival, he was called out by Geoffrey Benton. Mr. Sutton chose a pistol and informality.

Sutton read the item again. All attempts to reach him…

Herkimer had said there were reporters and photographers in the lobby and ten minutes later Ferdinand had sworn there weren't. He had had no calls. There had been no attempt to reach him. Or had there? Attempts that had been neatly stopped. Stopped by the same person who had lain in wait for him, the same power that had been inside the room when he stepped across the threshold.

He dropped the paper to the floor, sat thinking.

He had been challenged by one of Earth's foremost, if not the foremost, duelist.

The old family robot had run away…or had been persuaded to run away.

Attempts by the press to reach him had been stopped…cold.

The visor purred at him and he jumped.

A call.

The first since he had arrived.

He swung around in his chair and flipped up the switch.

A woman's face came in. Granite eyes and skin magnolia-white, hair a copper glory.

'My name is Eva Armour,' she said. 'I am the one who asked you to wait with the elevator.'

'I recognized you,' said Sutton.

'I called to make amends.'

'There is no need…'

'But, Mr. Sutton, there is. You thought I was laughing at you and I really wasn't.'

'I looked funny,' Sutton told her. 'It was your privilege to laugh.'

'Will you take me out to dinner?' she asked.

'Certainly,' said Sutton. 'I would be delighted to.'

'And someplace afterwards,' she suggested. 'We'll make an evening of it.'

'Gladly,' said Sutton.

'I'll meet you in the lobby at seven,' she said. 'And I won't be late.'

The visor faded and Sutton sat stiffly in the chair.

They'd make an evening of it, she had said. And he was afraid she might be right.

They'd make an evening of it, and, he said, talking to himself, you'll be lucky if you're alive tomorrow.

X

Adams sat silently, facing the four men who had come into his office, trying to make out what they might be