'Too bad,' Eric said, half to himself, deep in thought.

'Traitor! You want to be popped into the slave-labor pool?'

Eric, after pondering, said cautiously, 'I want—'

'You don't know what you want, Sweetscent; every man involved in an unhappy marriage loses the metabiological capacity to know what he does want – it's been taken away from him. You're a smelly little shell, trying to do the correct thing but never quite making it because your miserable little long-suffering heart isn't in it. Look at you now! You've managed to squirm away from me.'

'Have not.'

'—So we're no longer touching physically. Especially thigh-wise. Oh, perish thighwise from the universe. But it is hard, is it not, to do it, to squirm away in such close quarters ... here in the lounge. And yet you've managed to do it, haven't you?'

To change the subject Eric said, 'I heard on TV last night that the quatreologist with the funny beard, that Professor Wald, is back from—'

'No. He's not Virgil's guest.'

'Marm Hastings, then?'

That Taoist spellbinding nut and crank and fool? You manufacturing a joke, Sweetscent? Is that it? You suppose Virgil would tolerate a marginal fake, that—' She made an obscene upward-jerking gesture with her thumb, at the same time grinning in a show of her white, clean and very impressive clear teeth. 'Maybe,' she said, 'it's lan Norse.'

'Who's he?' He had heard the name; it had a vaguely familiar sound to it, and he knew that in asking her he was making a tactical error; still he did it: this, if anything, was his weakness in regard to women. He led where they followed – sometimes. But more than once, especially at critical times in his life, in the major junctions, he followed guilelessly where they led.

Phyllis sighed. 'lan's firm makes all those shiny sterile new very expensive artificial organs you cleverly graft into rich dying people; you mean, doctor, you're not clear as to whom you're indebted?'

'I know,' Eric said, irritably, feeling chagrin. 'With everything else on my mind I forgot momentarily; that's all.'

'Maybe it's a composer. As in the days of Kennedy; maybe it's Pablo Casals. God, he would be old. Maybe it's Beethoven. Hmm.' She pretended to ponder. 'By God, I do think he said something about that. Ludwig van somebody; is there a Ludwig van Somebodyelse other than—'

'Christ,' Eric said angrily, weary of being teased. 'Stop it.'

'Don't pull rank; you're not so great. Keeping one creepy old man alive century after century.' She giggled her low, sweet, and very intimate warm giggle of delighted mirth.

Eric said, with as much dignity as he could manage, 'I also maintain TF&D's entire work force of eighty thousand key individuals. And as a matter of fact, I can't do that from Mars, so I resent all this. I resent it very much.' You included, he thought bitterly to himself.

'What a ratio,' Phyllis said. 'One artiforg surgeon to eighty thousand patients – eighty thousand and one. But you have your team of robants to help you ... perhaps they can make do while you're absent.'

'A robant is an it that stinks,' he said, paraphrasing T. S. Eliot.

'And an artiforg surgeon,' Phyllis said, 'is an it that grovels.'

He glowered at her; she sipped her drink and showed no contrition. He could not get to her; she simply had too much psychic strength for him.

The omphalos of Wash-35, a five story brick apartment building where Virgil had lived as a boy, contained a truly modern apartment of their year 2055 with every detail of convenience which Virgil could obtain during these war years. Several blocks away lay Connecticut Avenue, and, along it, stores which Virgil remembered. Here was Gammage's, a shop at which Virgil had bought Tip Top comics and penny candy. Next to it Eric made out the familiar shape of People's Drugstore; the old man during his childhood had bought a cigarette lighter here once and chemicals for his Gilbert Number Five glass-blowing and chemistry set.

'What's the Uptown Theatre showing this week?' Harv Ackerman murmured as their ship coasted along Connecticut Avenue so that Virgil could review these treasured sights. He peered.

It was Jean Harlow in Hell's Angels, which all of them had seen at least twice. Harv groaned.

'But don't forget that lovely scene,' Phyllis reminded him, 'where Harlow says, "I think I'll go slip into something more comfortable," and then when she returns—'

'I know, I know,' Harv said irritably. 'Okay, that I like.'

The ship taxied from Connecticut Avenue onto McComb Street and soon was parking before 3039 with its black wrought-iron fence and tiny lawn. When the hatch slid back, however, Eric smelled – not the city air of a long-gone Terran capital – but the bitterly thin cold atmosphere of Mars; he could hardly get his lungs full of it and he stood gasping, feeling disorientated and sick.

'I'll have to goose them about the air machinery,' Virgil complained as he descended the ramp to the sidewalk, assisted by Jonas and Harv. It did not seem to bother him, however; he spryly hiked toward the doorway of the apartment building.

Robants in the shape of small boys hopped to their feet and one of them yelled authentically, 'Hey Virg! Where you been?'

'Had to do an errand for my mother,' Virgil cackled, his face shining with delight. 'How are ya, Earl? Hey, I got some good Chinese stamps my dad gave me; he got them at his office. There's duplicates; I'll trade you.' He fished in his pocket, halting on the porch of the building.

'Hey, you know what I have?' a second robant child shrilled. 'Some dry ice; I let Bob Rougy use my Flexie for it; you can hold it if you want.'

'I'll trade you a big-little book for it,' Virgil said as he produced his key and unlocked the front door of the building. 'How about Buck Rogers and the Doom Comet? That's real keen.'

As the rest of the party descended from the ship, Phyllis said to Eric, 'Offer the children a mint-condition 1952 Marilyn Monroe nude calendar and see what they'll give you for it. At least half a popsicle.'

As the apartment house door swung aside, a TF&D guard belatedly appeared. 'Oh, Mr Ackerman; I didn't realize you'd arrived.' The guard ushered them into the dark, carpeted hall.

'Is he here yet?' Virgil asked, with sudden apparent tension.

'Yes sir. In the apt resting. He asked not to be disturbed for several hours.' The guard, too, seemed nervous.

Halting, Virgil said, 'How large is his party?'

'Just himself, an aide, and two Secret Service men'.

'Who's for a glass of ice-cold Kool-Aid?' Virgil said reflexively over his shoulder as he led the way.

'Me, me,' Phyllis said, mimicking Virgil's enthusiastic tone. 'I want imitation fruit raspberry lime; what about you, Eric? How about gin bourbon lime or cherry Scotch vodka? Or didn't they sell those flavors back in 1935?'

To Eric, Harv said, 'I'd like a place to lie down and rest, myself. This Martian air makes me weak as a kitten.' His face had become mottled and ill-looking. 'Why doesn't he build a dome? Keep real air in here?'

'Maybe,' Eric pointed out, 'there's a purpose in this. Prevents him from retiring here for good; makes him leave after a short while.'

Coming up to them, Jonas said, 'Personally I enjoy coming to this anachronistic place, Harv. It's a fnugging museum.' Tc Eric he said, 'In all fairness, your wife does a superb job of providing artifacts for this period. Listen to that – what's it called? – that radio playing in that apt.' Dutifully they listened. It was 'Betty and Bob,' the ancient soap opera, emanating from the long-departed past. And even Eric found himself impressed; the voices seemed alive and totally real. They were here now, not mere echoes of themselves. How Kathy had achieved this he didn't know.

Steve, the huge and handsome, masculine Negro janitor of the building – or rather his robant simulacrum – appeared then, smoking his pipe and nodding cordially to them all. 'Morning, doctor. Little nip of cold we having these days. Kids be getting they sled out soonly. My own boy, Georgie, he saving for a sled, he say little while ago to me.'