time.

Tommie was glad, anyway, that his father had quit staring at the paper. Tommie stood up to receive the gentle pat on the head that he usually got from his father's big hand, but as he turned around, astonishingly enough, his father smacked him on the seat, and, through his red linen shorts, it stung.

"Will you please take those confounded atom blocks and your one-seventy I.Q. into the back yard or somewhere, so a man can have some peace?" His father tried to sound exasperated, but Tommie didn't think he really meant it.

But Tommie got on his knees and gathered the whole set to his stomach and hoped there wasn't any dirt on them to get on his white waist. Then he went out, very disappointed and even a little hurt—in fact, his eyes felt a little watery—because he thought if dad would tell him what was the trouble, he could help dad figure out something.

Mother was showing talky Mrs. Jones the new disintichute that disposed of everything that was waste—soiled clothes, dirty dishes, used silverware. Tommie wondered why they called it silver. Certainly there wasn't any silver in it, as everything was plastic now. Everything, that is, but very special things, like his red linen pants.

Mother smiled at him vaguely, and Mrs. Jones smiled too, but Mrs. Jones had a sharp, searching look in her eyes that made it seem as if she was trying to find something wrong so she could punish him. Tommie didn't care for her. She wouldn't have any right to send him into scrub his hands again.

"Come here, Tommie," she said in a high cooing voice, and made a move for him. But Tommie felt a strange, almost violent repugnance toward her. He backed away and went sideward toward the kitchen door. It opened, and he lifted his feet high to get over the sill and very nearly lost his balance doing so.

That annoyed him, too. Being a prodigy was all right if one had a body to go with it. When a boy had a ten-year-old mind it was irritating to have a three-year-old body as clumsy as the body of a baby.

He lost an orange-colored electron just outside of the door, but he let it lie there for a moment. Mrs. Jones was too close to the door. Maybe Mrs. Jones would go back into the front room where dad was worrying so much. Secretly Tommie chuckled. Dad didn't like Mrs. Jones any more than Tommie did. He'd send her home in a hurry.

Tommie set up his blocks and got some spare nuclei out of the box and 

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