"Yes sir. Sort of early for phoning," came the voice.

"It's late for me. Tell the fish man we need more abalone."

"I think we still have some left in the freezer."

"Eat it yourself if you want. Just place the order for more."

"You're the boss, Doctor Smith."

"Yes, I am." Harold W. Smith turned back to the sound. Abalone. A man could come to hate the smell of it if he knew what it meant.

CHAPTER TWO

His name was Remo and the gymnasium was dark with only speckles of light coming from the ceiling-high windows where minute paint bubbles had burst shortly after workmen had applied the first layer of black. The gym, formerly the basketball court of the San Francisco Country Friends' School, had been built to catch the late afternoon sun over the Pacific, and when the owner was told by the prospective tenant that he would rent it only if the windows were blackened, he showed some surprise. He showed more when told he was never to visit the gym while the occupant was there. But the rent money was good, so the paint went on the windows the next day. And as the owner had told the man: "I'll stay away. For that kind of money, it's no concern of mine. Besides what can you do in a gym that isn't legal nowadays. Heh, heh."

So naturally, one day he hid himself in the small balcony and waited. He saw the door open and the tenant come in. A half hour later, the door opened again and the tenant was gone. Now the strange thing was that the owner heard not one sound. Not the creak of a floor, not a breath, not anything but his own heartbeat. Only the sound of the door opening and the door closing, and that was odd because the Country Friends School Gym was a natural sound conductor, a place where there was no such thing as a whisper.

The man named Remo had known someone was in the balcony because, among other things, he had begun that day working on sound and sight. Ordinarily the water pipes and the insects proved adequate. But that day there had been heavy nervous breathing in the balcony-the snorting sort of oxygen intake of overweight people. So that day Remo worked on moving in silence. It was a down day anyway, between two of the innumerable alert peaks.