"Mary has extramural interests, too," he said. "Her intended is a basketball player in pre-Law. A fellow roughly fifteen feet tall. Mary has been gone all day. I presume that she's been visiting this legal obelisk; and I'm beginning to feel the twinges of fatherly anxiety. But tell me about Anne, Johnny."

"I met her at a concert last fall," I said, not giving a damn about the safety man and the monitor kibitzing. "Anne didn't bug at my chastity-suit the way most of the hens on campus do. This impressed me. She liked the way I talked, even though she could hear my voice only from the speaker on the chest of my suit. I liked fine the way she listened. So we had a date. Lots of dates. Said goodnight by shaking hands—Please Excuse My Glove.

"One evening we drove down to the beach at Hudson Lake. As we lay there on the sand, I pointed out for Anne the red disk of Mars. I told her about the men up there, at New Caanan and Bing City and Bitterwater, working to uncover one world while they built a new one. I told her about the mystery of the Immermann skull, and what it might mean. I pointed to the stars and named them for her. All the time, Chief, I knew that I could touch Betelgeuse or Phobos as easily as I could touch Anne.

"Anyway, we went swimming together, just like we were in Technicolor and Vista Vision. I screwed the cap on my air-filter and breathed from the reserve tank. Anne wore a bikini. I might as well have been aboard a midget submarine. After that evening, we decided not to go swimming any more; and Anne started wearing strict and conservative clothes."

"What happened today, Johnny?" McQueen asked me.

"What could happen?" I demanded. "We broke up. She's contaminated, poor girl. She's been aswarm with bacteria and yeasts and molds and miscellaneous protista ever since the obstetrician slapped her on the rump, while I'm Boy Galahad, fifty-six one-hundredths percent purer than Ivory Soap. My strength is as the strength of ten, so I told Anne at noon today that she'll have to find herself a new boy friend. She needs a guy who can eat the other half of the pizza with her, someone who can lend her his comb and breathe the air she breathes. It took me weeks to steel my soul to the prospect of kissing Anne off—there's an ironic metaphor for you, Chief—but I did it."

"I'm sorry, Johnny," McQueen said.

"I'm afraid I've diluted the antiseptic with my tears," I said. "Just singing those old formaldehyde blues."

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