tonight!"

"She wasn't acting, Leo," I said. "She really hates me."

"Freddy," he groaned, still shaking his head, "sometimes I think maybe you are a much stupider boy than I always figured. You drive this girl up Route One-o-one tonight and tomorrow your body will no doubt wash up on the rocks at Redondo."

I wasn't so sure he wasn't right. I wasn't so sure Panda wasn't prowling around the parking area now, a fire ax in each hand. As it turned out she was sitting quietly in my car. "You unspeakable beast!" she greeted me when I climbed in. It was the most restrained statement she had made all evening.

On our way up the coast we stopped at a seafood restaurant. In some of these roadside joints you can sometimes pick up a lobster loaded with ptomaine. But either Panda was immune to ptomaine, or else I was just unlucky that night.

It was while we were in the restaurant that Panda made the request that was to ruin my career. "Freddy," she said, squinting thoughtfully at me, "I wonder if you would do me a favor?"

I hesitated. I wanted to be polite, but I wasn't going to cut my throat with any knife. "Favor?" I repeated cautiously.

She nodded. "I wonder if you would stop in at the Keevan Foundation and let Dr. MacCluett type your symbiotic waveform. We may be able to get a waveshape picture of the enmity factor in its pure form. Such a study might lead to the unlocking of the riddle of the antipathy some ethnic groups instinctively hold for others. This might easily turn out to be the dawn of a new era."

Well, as long as she put it that way, I didn't see how I could refuse. I figure if there's one thing this world can use, it's the dawn of a new era.

And so that is how I happened to be at the Keevan Research Foundation early that next evening.

The famous Dr. Stanley MacCluett came as a complete surprise to me. I was expecting a stoop-shouldered old gentleman in bifocals. But he turned out to be about my age and almost as big. He had a granite jaw and brilliant blue eyes that lit up like a pinball machine whenever he glanced at Panda. He seemed to glance at Panda a lot. The good doctor opened up the proceedings that evening by giving me a rapid-fire briefing on mutuality. He went all the way back to the planarian worms and worked his way up to the primates. He explained that it was his 

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