"Anna, dearest? I shall speak very plainly, very quickly. I am a man of few words—What?"

His leathery face lost a little color. "But you are my fiancee, you know."

"Am I?" she cried. "What makes you think so? What makes you think you can talk fifteen minutes with a girl, have her fall in love with you, assume she'll go crazy waiting for you, waiting ten months—when four months have already passed without hearing from you—"

"My dear Anna," he said. "If this is a joke—"

"You're a joke." She sobbed. She broke down. "I don't know what you did to me. Only fifteen minutes. How could you have done that to me in fifteen minutes?"

He frowned. "I'm always certain of a situation before I leave it," he explained. "That is a common precaution that we men of space must take, an ordinary survival mechanism, I should say. Besides, you are a Taurus, and I am a Pisces and I computed that numerologically—"

"Bother your astrology and your numerology," she snapped.

There was silence, a long half minute of it stretching between Venus and Mars at a half-credit a second. Gramenger continued to get more and more amused.

"What do you want?" she asked. "When will you come back, if ever?"

His singed eyebrow went up in puzzlement. "I told you ten months, Anna. I meant ten months. As for what I want, please, at once, send a space-wire to your father in Oregon. Have him ship five hens and a cock by fast passenger express to the spaceport depot on Venus. Ask him also to include whatever special medicines, feeds, and instructions are necessary for the raising and nurturing of Plymouth Rocks—"

She gasped. "For heaven's sake, why?"

"Don't you want a chicken farm? I am building one on a planet I own."

A groan came over the 'phone, lasting long enough to cost Gramenger & Lewis a credit and a half.

"Dad won't send them. I know. It's hare brained. No one's ever tried to raise chickens any place except on Earth."

"That isn't the point," he said. "Send the wire."

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