drifted down a few degrees so it was possible to go to bed without drowning in a pool of their own sweat.

A woman walking by the Pure Oil building suddenly saw a shimmering in the air and then a man was standing in the shadowed doorway, staring nonchalantly at her. She almost screamed, then put it down to the heat and hurried by.

Stan strolled up Michigan Boulevard to stop for a moment in front of a bookstore where a man had been staring in the window.

"All set, Fred?"

Tanner nodded. "He leaves the Prudential building in half an hour. He parks his car on the ramp below the street, in the parking lot that runs parallel to the river. It's in the far corner—a sport model." He fumbled in his pocket for a small card. "Here's the license number. The ape is easy enough to recognize. About sixty years old, sport coat, and a pork-pie hat. He's had a small office here for a couple of weeks, doing government work, so he might be carrying a briefcase. Tomorrow he goes back east."

Stan memorized the description. "Just how good is he?"

"The best they've got. Losing him will be quite a blow to the apes. Quite a blow."

Stan stood in the shadows of the bookstore for a few minutes more. He could hear every tiny noise on the street, including the rapid tick-tick-tick of his own wrist-watch.

"I better go down. Be ready to help with the body five minutes after the hour."

He turned and started up the street, to the stairs that would take him to the level below. Hundreds of cars were parked in neat, silent rows below the ramp. Overhead was the cold brilliance of hundreds of fluorescent lamps.

Light enough he thought. It wouldn't be ... sporting ... to shoot the ape scientist down in the dark.

He found the bright, two-toned sports car at the end of the ramp. Nobody was in sight. He smiled to himself and walked on past the car and then stood quietly in the shadows of a concrete pillar. He had a while to wait and disquieting thoughts swam slowly to the surface of his mind.

This city of Chicago. He had been to many cities on the planet but this was the only one that somehow ... bothered him. A city that seemed oddly, tantalizingly familiar. And there was a pressing urgency for him to see some people in 

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