'No, doctor,' the robant declared. 'Honest injun. Mrs Sweetscent made it absolutely clear that this purchase was for her private use.' It managed to add, then, an explanation which he knew at once to be spurious. But whether it originated in the robant or with Kathy – that he could not tell, at least not immediately. 'Mrs Sweetscent,' the robant stated piously, 'is building a Pitts-39.'

'The hell she is.' He tossed the made-out check at the robant; as it strove to catch the fluttering bit of paper he continued on, toward the in-track.

A Lucky Strike package. Well, he reflected grimly, Kathy is off again. The creative urge, which can only find an outlet in spending. And always above and beyond her own salary – which, he had to admit to himself, was a bit greater than his own, alas. But in any case, why hadn't she told him? A major purchase of that sort ...

The answer, of course, was obvious. The bill itself pointed out the problem in all its depressing sobriety. He thought, Fifteen years ago I would have said – did say – that the combined incomes of Kathy and me would be enough and certainly ought to be enough to maintain any two semi-reasonable adults at any level of opulence. Even taking into account the wartime inflation.

However, it had not quite worked out that way. And he felt a deep, abiding intuition that it just never quite would.

* * *

Within the TF&D Building he dialed the hall leading to his own office, squelching the impulse to drop by Kathy's office upstairs for an immediate confrontation. Later, he decided. After work, perhaps at dinner. Lord, and he had such a full schedule ahead of him; he had no energy – and never had had in the past — for this endless squabbling.

'Morning, doctor.'

'Hi,' Eric said, nodding to fuzzy Miss Perth, his secretary; this time she had sprayed herself a shiny blue, inlaid with sparkling fragments that reflected the outer office's overhead lighting. 'Where's Himmel?' No sign of the final-stage quality-control inspector, and already he perceived reps from subsidiary outfits pulling up at the parking lot.