persisted desperately. 6“All of the city was inhabited hundreds of years ago—the city was twice as big as it is now. How come?” 6 Marconi shrugged. “Dunno.” Ross collapsed. “Don’t know. You don’t know, I don’t know, nobody knows. Only thing is, I care! I’m curious. Marconi, I get—well, moody. Depressed. I get to worrying about crazy things. Ghost Town, for one. And why can’t they find a secretary for me? And am I really different from everybody else or do I just think so—and doesn’t that mean that I’m insane?” He laughed. Marconi said warmly, “Ross, you aren’t the only one; don’t ever think you are. I went through it myself. Found the answer, too. You wait, Ross.” He paused. Ross said suspiciously, “Yeah?” Marconi tapped the breast pocket with the photo of Lurline. “She’ll come along,” he said. Ross managed not to sneer in his face. “No,” he said wearily. “Look, I don’t advertise it, but I was married once. I was eighteen, it lasted for a year and I’m the one who walked out. Flat-fee settlement; it took me five years to pay off the loan, but I never regretted it.” Marconi began gravely, “Sexual incompatibility——” Ross cut him off with an impatient gesture. “In that department,” he said, “it so happens she was a genius. But——” “But?” Ross shrugged. “I must have been crazy,” he said shortly. “I kept thinking that she was half-dead, dying on the vine like the rest of Halsey’s Planet. And I must still be crazy, because I still think so.” The little man involuntarily felt his breast pocket. He said gently, “Maybe you’ve been working too hard.” “Too hard!” Ross laughed, a curious blend of true humor and self-disgust. “Well,” he admitted, “I need a change, anyhow. I might as well be on a longliner. At least I’d have my spree to look back on.” “No!” Marconi said, so violently that Ross slopped the drink he was lifting to his mouth. Ross looked hard at the little man—hard and speculatively. 7“No, then,” he said. “It was just a figure of speech, of course. But tell me something, won’t you,
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