Genre Other. Page - 344

he worked it to make us think him a nut. He certainly is clever. I take off my hat to him--he's a wonder!"

"And what is your idea? Where do we come in?"

"You come in by getting that solution away from Seaton and Crane, and furnishing the money to develop the stuff and to build, under my direction, such a power-plant as the world never saw before."

"Why get that particular solution? Couldn't we buy up some platinum wastes and refine them?"

"Not a chance," replied the scientist. "We have refined platinum residues for years, and never found anything like that before. It is my idea that the stuff, whatever it is, was present in some particular lot of platinum in considerable quantities as an impurity. Seaton hasn't all of it there is in the world, of course, but the chance of finding any more of it without knowing exactly what it is or how it reacts is extremely slight. Besides, we must have exclusive control. How could we make any money out of it if Crane operates a rival company and

to have? What clothing, if any, do you wish me to wear? What name would you like me to answer to?"

Mike looked at the clock on the wall. It was 3:20 PM. He counted off six hours on his fingers—9:20. He sat down on the white sofa that was almost never used and looked at the shapely nude robot. With a wry smile, he realized that he could sit and stare at it for the next six hours, or he could get up and do something. He went back to the family room, picked up the texTee, and flipped open Moby Dick, but he didn't read any more of it. Instead he turned the select dial to the bookstore and typed in "names". The titles of half a dozen books appeared including "The Name Book", "The Secret Universe of Names", and "The Baby Name Wizard". He selected the last book of the six: "Virtue Names". It took about twenty seconds for the book to download to the texTee. Looking back to the screen, Mike turned to the first page of the name book. The first name was Agape. Agape? The book said that it had something to

the New Jardeen Incident."

A frozen silence followed the last five words. Hunter thought, So that's what the little weasel was fishing for....

Rockford quietly laid down his fork. Val's face turned grim. Lyla looked up in quick alarm and said to Narf:

"Let's not--"

"Don't misunderstand me, gentlemen," Narf's loud voice went on. "I believe the commander of the Terran cruiser wouldn't have ordered it to fire upon the Verdam cruiser over a neutral world such as New Jardeen if he had been his rational self. Cold-war battle nerves. So he shot down the Verdam cruiser and its nuclear converters exploded when it fell in the center of Colony City. Force of a hydrogen bomb--forty thousand innocent people gone in a microsecond. Not the commander's fault, really--fault of the military system that failed to screen out its unstable officers."

"Yes, your lordship. But is it possible"--Sonig spoke very thoughtfully--"for a political power, which is of such a nature that i

ow long ago? He marveled at how the priestesses had managed to keep this one icon in pristine condition. He could understand why the pilgrims felt

the magic in it, even if he did not.

"Estamos refugiados en una zona de apagon." The priestess, in a high, squeaky voice, rained down nonsense from the balcony. "Nuestras casas desarraigados, arrastrando raíces profundas de concreta, fibrosas con tubos y conectores, giran y saltan a las fluctuaciones del campo de gravitacion.  La gente tienen miedo." She droned on like that, and Donal found himself scanning the crowd, idly yet thoroughly, to see if anyone unsavory might have snuck through the front gate.

There had been a small group, armed with pieces of metal no larger than their fingernails but sharpened enough to cut, and they had slipped in and managed to kill a handful of guests and Castle workers before they were hacked to bits. The memory was bitterly fresh. But no one in the group of soft, milli

Another scholar would greet "the stranger," lead him around the room, and introduce him.

One day it was Abe's turn to do the introducing. He opened the door to find his best friend, Nat Grigsby, waiting outside. Nat bowed low, from the waist. Abe bowed. His buckskin trousers, already too short, slipped up still farther, showing several inches of his bare leg. He looked so solemn that some of the girls giggled. The schoolmaster frowned and pounded on his desk. The giggling stopped.

"Master Crawford," said Abe, "this here is Mr. Grigsby. His pa just moved to these parts. He figures on coming to your school."

Andrew Crawford rose and bowed. "Welcome," he said. "Mr. Lincoln, introduce Mr. Grigsby to the other scholars."

[Illustration]

The children sat on two long benches made of split logs. Abe led Nat down the length of the front bench. Each girl rose and made a curtsy. Nat bowed. Each boy rose and bowed. Nat returned the bow. Abe kept saying funny things under his breath that

gates.

"What cart?" asked Bibot, roughly.

"Driven by an old hag. . . . A covered cart . . ."

"There were a dozen . . ."

"An old hag who said her son had the plague?"

"Yes . . ."

"You have not let them go?"

"MORBLEU!" said Bibot, whose purple cheeks had suddenly become white with fear.

"The cart contained the CI-DEVANT Comtesse de Tourney and her two children, all of them traitors and condemned to death." "And their driver?" muttered Bibot, as a superstitious shudder ran down his spine.

"SACRE TONNERRE," said the captain, "but it is feared that it was that accursed Englishman himself--the Scarlet Pimpernel."

CHAPTER II

DOVER: "THE FISHERMAN'S REST"

In the kitchen Sally was extremely busy--saucepans and frying-pans were standing in rows on the gigantic hearth, the huge stock-pot stood in a corner, and the jack turned with slow deliberation, and presented alternately to the glow

He hit me and threw me into the wall. I'm sorry, Greg, I shouldn't be calling you, but--"

Greg heard a man shouting in the background, then a commotion. The phone went dead. He felt sick and helpless, like a kid who had just been spun on a merry-go-round at breakneck speed until he flew off. And the dizziness would not soon go away.

Greg wanted to call the police, but what would he tell them? And why did she call him instead of 911? He would call her back. No, he couldn't--he didn't have her number.

Then he felt something on his leg. The ice cream was melting beneath the chocolate shell, and it had collapsed under its own weight, and fallen onto the bed of napkins in his lap.

Still dazed, he sat for a full minute studying the ice cream as it dripped down the sides of the cone onto his hand and arm. Gradually the streams of white turned to pink, then to red-- running down Cynthia's face! A cold chill ripped through his body, and jolted him back to reality. He dropped the cone onto t

ht, the only light was derived from theglaring, flaring oil-lamps, hung above the doors of the morearistocratic mansions; just allowing space for the passers-by tobecome visible, before they again disappeared into the darkness,where it was no uncommon thing for robbers to be in waiting fortheir prey.

The traditions of those bygone times, even to the smallest socialparticular, enable one to understand more clearly thecircumstances which contributed to the formation of character.The daily life into which people are born, and into which theyare absorbed before they are well aware, forms chains which onlyone in a hundred has moral strength enough to despise, and tobreak when the right time comes--when an inward necessity forindependent individual action arises, which is superior to alloutward conventionalities. Therefore, it is well to know whatwere the chains of daily domestic habit, which were the naturalleading strings of our forefathers before they learnt to goalone.

The picturesqueness

"Running this project is my business, not yours; and if there's any one thing in the entire universe it does not need, it's a female exhibitionist. Besides your obvious qualifications to be one of the Eves in case of Ultimate Contingency...." he broke off and stared at her, his contemptuous gaze traveling slowly, dissectingly, from her toes to the topmost wave of her hair-do.

"Forty-two, twenty, forty?" he sneered.

"You flatter me." Her glare was an almost tangible force; her voice was controlled fury.

"Thirty-nine, twenty-two, thirty-five. Five seven. One thirty-five. If any of it's any of your business, which it isn't. You should be discussing brains and ability, not vital statistics."

"Brains? You? No, I'll take that back. As a Prime, you have got a brain--one that really works. What do you think you're good for on this project? What can you do?"

"I can do anything any man ever born can do, and do it better!"

"Okay. Compute a Gunther

his right hand launched it against the charioteer, and struck him at the same moment from his seat and from existence! Phaeton, with his hair on fire, fell headlong, like a shooting star which marks the heavens with its brightness as it falls, and Eridanus, the great river, received him and cooled his burning frame. The Italian Naiads reared a tomb for him, and inscribed these words upon the stone:

"Driver of Phoebus' chariot Phaeton, Struck by Jove's thunder, rests beneath this stone. He could not rule his father's car of fire, Yet was it much so nobly to aspire"

[Footnote: See Proverbial Expressions]

His sisters, the Heliades, as they lamented his fate, were turned into poplar trees, on the banks of the river, and their tears