diver were refreshing the delegates with a clear picture of their nominee's mind.

I groaned and called Florence.

"Look," I said when she came. "That damned pet has followed the program back to the cameras from your apartment, and there he is lousing up the Convention."

"I vote Earth," she told me indifferently.

"That isn't the point, honey. I'll have to bring the diver here, and quickly."

"You do that, Sol. I'll be at home when you get rid of it."

By the time the diver picked up my thoughts and came flickering into the room through the walls, Florence had left.

I felt the diver off the back of my head, made my thoughts as kindly as possible, and went downstairs to the largest, longest bar.

The evening passed profitably because I was invited to join a threesome of crooks at cards. With the aid of the little diver, I was able to shorten the odds to a pleasant margin in my favor. But this was doing nothing about Florence. A not altogether funny remark about teleporting the cards did, however, suggest the answer.

After the transaction was over, I sent the diver off to a friend on the faculty of Luke University, where they had a long history of psi investigation and where the diver could be guaranteed to be kept busy rolling dice and such. This was easy to fix by a video call. There had been times in the past when certain services to the Extra-terrestrial Zoology and Botanical Tanks had made me discreetly popular with the faculty, and anyway they thought I was doing them a favor. They promised to keep the little diver busy for an indefinite period.

I reported to Florence, and after a certain amount of feminine shall-I-shan't-I, she came back to the Asteroid-Central.

This time I did not turn on the television-wall. I lay still. I said nothing. I hardly thought at all. And after several years compressed themselves into every minute, my own true honey, Florence, slid open the communicating door and came into the room.

She walked shyly toward me, hiding modestly within a floating nightgown as opaque as a very clear soap bubble.

I stood up, held out my arms and she came toward me, smiling—and 

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