behind them. The practical advantages were undeniable. The important point, however, was that my radical suggestion did offer a less distressing alternative to bringing this into court.

The gray-fringed bald heads bobbled before me, and I knew from the higher pitch of their grunts and mutters that I was making my point. I was sweating, but then so were they.

That evening I phoned Cunningham. "You're in like Flynn," I told him. "Whether you like it or not, get those machines back and the changes made within a week. If we give them too much time to think about it they might change their minds."

I thought I caught laughter in the background, but I hadn't made a video connection. I did so at once, and there was Cunningham with a suspiciously smug smirk on his face. "Thanks, old man," he said softly.

"Wait a minute," I interrupted. "I thought you were reluctant about this idea?"

A babble of feminine voices and a background blur on the visor distracted him from my words. He turned away, then back to the screen. "Sue is on her way over to your suite to pick you up. Tonight we celebrate. My girl friends are here. Gotta go now."

The idea of a party just then was repugnant, but the thought of another cross-town ride with Sue was not. As I dressed I achieved an almost gala mood.

It persisted until I was beside Sue again, same car, same tunnel, same Spring in Brooklyn, but the Blueboids went fluttering when I identified the same smug smirk on her face that John Cunningham had betrayed a half hour ago.

"What," I demanded, "have you invented now?" She looked long into my eyes, and the amused look slowly left her. She leaned over to me.

With a perversity I was growing to hate I refused to accept this perfectly good answer. "I sold your Symptometer to the Board, but I want you to know," I told her loftily, "that I'm not subscribing to your fantastic general diagnoser."

"Nooooo?" she said softly. She kept looking up into my eyes in a way, I am told, that women have of concentrating while pretending to listen.

"It's absurd," I pointed out. "Why, he needs five years just to calibrate the thing. It has no possibilities of mass-production. And even if it did, the cost would be so outrageous that the average hospital could hire a whole staff of physicians for the price of one machine. And figure 

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