had made and set out to put things right. I told the UN people everything I knew. Had a hard time convincing them but finally did. They were decent enough not to have me locked away somewhere. Even filled me in a bit concerning your difficulties down home. But making a clean breast of it was still not enough for me. I wanted to help recover the thing. You had just returned to the States, and I figured that they would try for you again. So I decided to keep an eye on you till they did, then spike their guns on the spot. I got onto your trail at Hal's and followed you as far as the Village, but I lost you in a bar there. Didn't catch up with you again till you were back home. You know the rest.'
'Yes. Another small mystery resolved. Then you were hired in the hospital, too?'
'Correct. Ted here said that if I was that concerned about the way things were going, I might as well save some wasted motion and get paid for it, too. On the books, though, I am an XT-mineralogist.'
'It seems to me,' I said, addressing all of them, 'that my being brought here tonight represents more than the mere avoidance of a couple of thugs. I would guess that you have something else in mind, only just beginning with the telepathic probe.'
'Nor would you be incorrect,' said Ragma. 'However, since it is all contingent on the results of the analysis, it would be an exercise in redundancy to detail the various hypotheses which may have to be discarded.'
'In other words, you are not going to tell me?'
'That pretty well sums it up.'
Before I could submit my resignation or comment on any of a number of likely subjects that had occurred to me, I was distracted by a movement from across the room. Doctor M'mrm'mlrr was stirring again.
We all watched as he raised his snaky appendages and began his setting-up exercises. Stretch, relax ... Stretch, relax ...
Two or three minutes of this-it was kind of hypnotic-and I realized that he was stalking me again, only with a much greater delicacy than he had previously employed.
I felt the touch again, within my head, as an unnatural stirring beneath my basal thoughts. Only this time there was no accompanying pain. It was just a sort of dizzy feeling and a sense of process not unlike the awareness of something being done under a local anesthetic. I guess that the others had somehow been made aware of this also, for they maintained their positions and their silence.
All right. If M'mrm'mlrr was going to be a little more civilized about it, he could have my cooperation, I decided.
So I sat there and let him rummage about.
Then, quite abruptly, he must have come across the big switchboard somewhere down there and pulled a plug, because I blacked out, instantly and without pain. Blink.
Blink again.
Weary, thirsty and with a feeling of having been broken down and reconstituted incorrectly, I raised my hand to rub my eyes and glimpsed the face of my watch as I did so. Then I swung it up and listened for ticks. As I already suspected, it was still tossing them off. Ergo ...
'Yes, about three hours,' said Ragma.
I heard Paul snore, snort short, cough and sigh. He had been dozing in the armchair. Ragma was sprawled on the floor, smoking. M'mrm'mlrr was still upright and stirring. Nadler was nowhere in sight.
I stretched, unkinking muscle after muscle, hearing my frame creak like a floor that has been walked on overmuch.
'Well, I hope that you learned something useful,' I said.
'Yes, I would say that we have,' Ragma replied. 'How do you feel?'
'Wrung out.'
'Understandable. Yes. Very. You were something of a battleground for a while there.'
'Tell me about it.'
'To begin with,' he said, 'we have located the starstone.'
'Then you were right? Everyone was? I had the knowledge-somewhere?'
'Yes. The memory should even be accessible now. Want to try for it yourself? A party. A broken glass. The desk ... '
'Wait a minute. Let me think.'
I thought. And it was there. The last time that I had seen the star-stone ...
It was the bachelor party I had given for Hal the week before his wedding. The apartment was crowded with our friends, the booze flowed, we made a lot of noise. It went on till around two or three in the morning. All in all I would have to say that it was an effective party. At least, it seemed that everyone went home laughing and there were no injuries.
Except for one small accident of my own.
Yes. A glass was elbowed off a side table, shattered. It was empty, though. Nothing to mop up. And it was right near the end of things. People were saying good night, leaving. So I left the pieces where they had fallen. Later. Manana maybe.
Still, I knew that I had had too much to drink, could guess how I would feel the next morning and what I would doubtless do.
I would growl and curse and bid the day depart. When it persisted, I would roll out of bed, stagger off to the kitchen to put the coffee over-my first act on any day-then lumber back to the bathroom for standard maintenance while it brewed. Invariably barefoot. Certainly not remembering that my path was strewn with shards. At least for a brief while I would not remember.
So I fetched the wastebasket from beneath the desk, got down into a hunker and began policing the area.
Naturally, I cut myself. I leaned too far forward at one point, lost my balance, extended a hand to maintain it and located another shard as my palm struck the floor.
I began bleeding, but I wrapped my handkerchief around it and continued with the cleanup. I knew that if I stopped right then to take care of my hand I would be tempted to let things go afterward. I was very sleepy.
So I got up all the pieces that I could see and wiped over the area with damp cocktail napkins. That done, I returned the wastebasket to its usual spot and dropped back into the desk chair because it was right there and I wanted to.
I unwrapped my hand and it was still bleeding. No sense doing anything at all until my thrombin earned its keep. So I leaned back and waited. My eyes did rest for a moment on the model of the star-stone we used for a paperweight. In fact, I reached out and turned it slowly, deriving a certain semisober satisfaction from the shifting light patterns it displayed. Then I stretched out my arm full length on the blotter because my head was heavy and it occurred to me that my biceps would do nicely for a pillow. Resting that way, eyes still open, I continued to play with the stone, feeling a small regret at having gotten blood on it, then deciding that it was all right, as it made for amusing contrasts here and there. Goodbye, world.
It was a couple of hours later that I awoke, thirsty and possessed of a few muscle aches from the way I had been sleeping. I got to my feet, headed for the kitchen, where I drank a glass of water, then passed back through the apartment, switching off lights. When I got to my bedroom, I undressed slowly, sitting on the edge of the bed, letting my clothes lie where they fell, crawled in and did the rest of my night's sleeping properly.
And that was the last time I had seen the star-stone. Yes.
'I remember,' I said. 'I have to hand it to the doctor. It comes back now. It was misted over by booze and fatigue, but I've got it again.'
'Not just beverage and fatigue,' Ragma said.
'What else, then?'
'I said that we had found the stone.'
'Yes, you did. But no memories on that count have been shaken loose for me. I just recall the last time that I saw it, not where it went.'
Paul cleared his throat. Ragma glanced at him.
'Go ahead,' he said.
'When I worked with that thing,' Paul told me, 'I had to proceed along lines that were somewhat less than satisfactory. I mean that I was not about to knock a piece off a priceless artifact for purposes of analysis. Aside from purely aesthetic reasons, it might be detected. I had no idea as to how detailed any alien analyses of its
