"Yes," Sid said, nodding. "The way you've got this musical chairs you're practically single-handedly bringing back the human race."

"And don't forget it," Luckman said. Bending, he picked up another of his cats, this one a black Manx female. "I'll take you along," he told the cat as he petted her. "I'll take maybe six or seven cats along with me," he decided. "For luck." And also, although he did not say it, for company. Nobody on the West Coast liked him; he would not have his people, his non-Bs, to say hello to him every time he ventured forth. Thinking that, he felt sad. But, he thought, after I've lived there a while I'll have it built up like New York; it won't be an emptiness haunted by the past.

Ghosts, he thought, of our life the way it was, when our population was splitting the seams of this planet, spilling over onto Luna and even Mars. Populations on the verge of migration, and then those stupid jackasses, those Red Chinese, had to use that East German invention of that ex-Nazi, that—he could not even think the words that described Bernhardt Hinkel. Too bad Hinkel isn't still alive, Luckman said to himself. I'd like to have a few minutes alone with him. With no one else watching.

The only good thing you could say about the Hinkel Radiation was that it had finally reached East Germany.

There was one person who would know whom Matt Pendleton Associates would be fronting for, Pete Garden decided as he left the apartment in San Rafael and hurried to his parked car. It's worth a trip to New Mexico, to Colonel Kitchener's town, Albuquerque. Anyhow I have to go there to pick up a record.

Two days ago he had received a letter from Joe Schilling, the world's foremost rare phonograph record dealer; a Tito Schipa disc which Pete had asked for had finally been tracked down and was waiting for him.

"Good morning, Mr. Garden," his car said as he unlocked the door with his key.