clumsy serenade and Stella reacted just as I'd hoped she would. She blushed furiously, and kept right on blushing, and I just leaned back and enjoyed it.

I took her back to her apartment, and said a friendly farewell at her door. We shook hands!

And she didn't invite me to spend the night with her, which was just as refreshing.

I rode the elevator with chiming bells and a wisp of the old man's music floating through my mind. I stepped out on the ground level, walked dreamily out the door and hailed an aircab with my pocket signal.

And just as I was about to step in, it stabbed me like the flickering knife on Cronus's screen. She was a wonderful girl, and I was falling for her, and in seven to twelve days—no, nearer five to ten days, now—she was going to be murdered.

"Something wrong?" the driver said.

I flashed my credentials. "Police Headquarters," I said. "Use the emergency altitude."

Walker was crouched in front of Cronus, perspiring, as usual, but looking infinitely more tired. No matter what time I came in, he always seemed to be there, or there was a note saying he was down in his lab in the sub-basement.

"I haven't found it again," he said.

"That's all right. We can manage with what we have."

He frowned irritably. "It's important, confound it. This is just an experimental model, and it's maddeningly inefficient. With money and research facilities, we could produce one that would really work, but we can't get that kind of support by predicting a few piddling holdups. But a murder, now—that would make someone sit up and take notice."

"Stop worrying about your dratted Cronus," I snapped. "I don't give a damn about that pile of junk. There's a girl's life to be saved."

It was unfair, but he didn't object. "Yes, of course," he said. "The girl's life—but if I can't get more information...."

"I've found the apartment," I told him, "and I've found the girl. But the man is supposed to be on Mars. It doesn't figure, but it's something to work on."

I called the Captain, and gave him my report. If he resented my bothering him at home, he didn't show it. Any wheel I could get my fingers on I set turning, and then I went 

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