making a decision, she called her stockbroker and instructed him to sell Lunar Enterprises short.
He snorted. 'Allie, you're crazy. That reducing diet is weakening your mind.'
'You listen to me, Ed. When it is down ten points, cover me, even if it is still slipping. Wait for it to turn. When it rallies three points, buy into it again? then sell when it gets back to today's closing.'
There was a long silence while he looked at her. 'Allie, you know something. Tell Uncle Ed.'
'The stars tell me, Ed.'
Ed made a suggestion astronomically impossible and added, 'All right, if you won't, you won't. Mmm? I never did have sense enough to stay out of a crooked game, Mind if I ride along with you on it, Allie?'
'Not at all, Ed, as long as you don't go heavy enough to let it show. This is a delicate special situation, with Saturn just balanced between Virgo and Leo.'
'As you say, Allie.'
Mrs. Douglas got busy at once, happy that Allie had confirmed all her judgments. She gave orders about the campaign to destroy the reputation of the missing Berquist, after sending for his dossier and looking it over; she closeted herself with Commandant Twitchell of the Special Service squads for twenty minutes - he left her looking thoughtfully unhappy and immediately made life unbearable for his executive officer. She instructed Sanforth to release another of the 'Man from Mars' stereocasts and to include with it a rumor 'from a source close to the administration' that Smith was about to be transferred, or possibly had already been transferred, to a sanitarium high in the Andes, in order to provide him with a climate for convalescence as much like that of Mars as possible. Then she sat back and thought about how to nail down the Pakistan votes for Joseph.
Presently she got hold of him and urged him to support Pakistan's claim to the lion's share of the Kashmir thorium. Since he had been wanting to do so all along but had not, up to now, convinced her of the necessity, he was not hard to persuade, although a little nettled by her assumption that he had been opposing it. With that settled, she left to address the Daughters of the Second Revolution on Motherhood in the New World.
X
WHILE MRS. DOUGLAS WAS SPEAKING too freely on a subject she knew too little about, Jubal E. Harshaw, LL.B., M.D., Sc.D., bon vivant, gourmet, sybarite, popular author extraordinaire, and neo-pessimist philosopher, was sitting by his swimming pool at his home in the Poconos, scratching the thick grey thatch on his chest, and watching his three secretaries splash in the pool. They were all three amazingly beautiful; they were also amazingly good secretaries. In Harshaw's opinion the principle of least action required that utility and beauty be combined.
Anne was blonde, Miriam was red-headed, and Dorcas was dark; in each case the coloration was authentic. They ranged, respectively, from pleasantly plump to deliciously slender. Their ages spread over fifteen years but it was hard to tell off-hand which was the eldest. They undoubtedly had last names but Harshaw's household did not bother much with last names. One of them was rumored to be Harshaw's own granddaughter but opinions varied as to which one it was.
Harshaw was working as hard as he ever worked. Most of his mind was occupied with watching pretty girls do pretty things with sun and water - one small, shuttered, sound-proofed compartment was composing. He claimed that his method of literary composition was to hook his gonads in parallel with his thalamus and disconnect his cerebrum entirely; his habits lent some credibility to the theory.
A microphone on a table at his right hand was hooked to a voicewriter in his study but he used the voicewriter only for notes. When he was ready to write he used a human stenographer and watched her reactions. He was ready now. 'Front!' he shouted.
'Anne is 'front,' 'answered Dorcas. 'But I'll take it. That splash was Anne.'
'Dive in and get her. I can wait.' The little brunette cut the water; a few moments later Anne climbed out, put on a towel robe, dried her hands on it, and sat down on the other side of the table. She said nothing, nor did she make any preparations; Anne had total recall, never bothered with recording devices.
Harshaw picked up a bucket of ice cubes over which brandy had been poured, took a deep swig. 'Anne, I've got a really sick-making one. It's about a little kitten that wanders into a church on Christmas Eve to get warm. Besides being starved and frozen and lost, the kitten has - God knows why - an injured paw. All right; start: 'Snow had been falling since-'
'What pen name?'
'Mmm? better use 'Molly Wadsworth' again. This one is pretty icky. And title it The Other Manger. Start again.' He went on talking while watching her closely. When tears started to leak out of her closed eyes he smiled slightly and closed his own eyes. By the time he finished, tears were running down his cheeks as well as hers, both bathed in a catharsis of schmaltz.
'Thirty,' he announced. 'You can blow your nose. Send it off and for God's sake don't let me see it or I'll tear it up.'
'Jubal, aren't you ever ashamed?'
'No.'
'Someday I'm going to kick you right in your fat stomach for one of these.'
'I know. But I can't pimp for my sisters; they'd be too old and I never had any. Get your fanny indoors and take care of it before I change my mind.'
'Yes, boss.'
She kissed his bald spot as she passed behind his chair. Harshaw yelled, 'Front!' again and Miriam started toward him. But a loudspeaker mounted on the house behind him came to life:
'Boss!'
Harshaw uttered one word and Miriam clucked at him reprovingly. He added, 'Yes, Larry?'
The speaker answered, 'There's a dame down here at the gate who wants to see you - and she's got a corpse with her.'
Harshaw considered this for a moment. 'Is she pretty?' he said to the microphone.
'Uh? yes.'
'Then why are you sucking your thumb? Let her in.' Harshaw sat back. 'Start,' he said. 'City montage dissolving into a medium two-shot, interior. A cop is seated in a straight chair, no cap, collar open, face covered with sweat. We see only the back of the other figure, which is depthed between us and the cop. The figure raises a hand, bringing it back and almost out of the tank. He slaps the cop with a heavy, meaty sound, dubbed.' Harshaw glanced up and said, 'We'll pick up from there.' A ground car was rolling up the hill toward the house.
Jill was driving the car; a young man was seated beside her. As the car stopped near Harshaw the man jumped out at once, as if happy to divorce himself from car and contents. 'There she is, Jubal.'
'So I see. Good morning, little girl. Larry, where is this corpse?'
'In the back seat, Boss. Under a blanket.'
'But it's not a corpse,' Jill protested. 'It's? Ben said that you? I mean-' She put her head down on the controls and started to cry.
'There, my dear,' Harshaw said gently. 'Very few corpses are worth it. Dorcas - Miriam - take care of her. Give her a drink? and wash her face.'
He turned his attention to the back seat, started to lift the blanket. Jill shrugged off Miriam's proffered arm and said shrilly, 'You've got to listen! He's not dead. At least I hope not. He's? oh dear!' She started to cry again. 'I'm so dirty? and so scared!'
'Seems to be a corpse,' Harshaw said meditatively. 'Body temperature is down to air temperature, I should judge. The rigor is not typical. How long has he been dead?'
'But he's not dead! Can't we get him out of there? I had an awful time getting him in.'
'Surely. Larry, give me a hand. And quit looking so green, Larry. If you puke, you'll clean it up.' Between them they got Valentine Michael Smith out of the back seat and laid him on the grass by the pool; his body remained stiff, still huddled together. Without being told Dorcas had gone in and fetched Dr. Harshaw's stethoscope; she set it on the ground by Smith, switched it on and stepped up the gain.
Harshaw stuck the headpiece in his ears, started sounding for heart beat. 'I'm afraid you're mistaken,' he said gently to Jill. 'This one is beyond my help. Who was he?'
Jill sighed. Her face was drained of expression and she answered in a fiat voice, 'He was the Man from Mars. I
