wine bottle and we all had to scurry out of the wet. When it came time to sit down again, the spell was broken. Anyway, the luncheon was over.

When I got outside, Joey was standing there with Dugan. He was saying, "I'm afraid you haven't got much of a yarn there."

Dugan said, "I suppose so." Only he didn't seem put out. He shook hands with us cheerfully, said he hoped he'd see us again, and turned toward Broadway.

We all waved once, just to be polite, and then lost all interest. We turned on Joey to see if we could get the price of that lunch out of him, and we kidded Jinx about the lousy stories he picked up. Maybe it was because some of us felt a little self-conscious. I know I glanced over my shoulder and felt guilty when I noticed Dugan standing on the corner. He was watching us intently and adjusting his glasses with both hands.

Then I stopped haggling with Joey and turned around because—well, because it occurred to me that cameras of the Twenty-third Century could be so small you couldn't see them at that distance. All that flash and glitter couldn't be coming just from Dugan's glasses. Yes, brother, I turned around while Gray's Elegy went thrumming through my head.

It could be Belcher or Jinx or Mallison, or the little guy with the pipe, but I don't think so. I've got a pretty good idea who it is, because something suddenly occurred to me, I turned around to give Dugan a nice full-face and I waved....

Because one of those scraps of paper I thought had been blown in my window was marked very peculiarly in red: Load Only in Total Darkness. Expires Dec. 18, 2241.

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