moron. And that one thought caused the doctors—all elderly gentlemen who had long ago given up fleshly pursuits—to blush.

The findings of the machine, which had not been wrong in five centuries, might have given pause to a more serious-minded young man, but Manning took it in his stride. He was quite willing to admit that he had only one thought at the moment and wanted no more. He was even annoyed at the doctors who kept pulling him away from that one thought in order to try to find out why he was so single-minded.

They had about decided that in some freak way a large slice of skull bone had been driven into his brain, shielding a large portion of it, when the whole matter was taken out of their hands. Otherwise they might have gone on carving up Manning until there was nothing left to withstand their skill.

The interference came, as it always does in such cases, from above. Prior to his accident, Manning Draco had been chief investigator for the Greater Solarian Insurance Company, Monopolated, presided over by J. Barnaby Cruikshank. In absence of any proof that the accident had occurred on his own time, he had remained on salary while in the hospital. All of this had been well enough while the regular investigators had been able to handle the cases that came up. But then there came a case, cutting painfully into J. Barnaby's bank account, which he knew was beyond their abilities. The President of Greater Solarian set up a shout for his chief investigator.

It was practically impossible to ignore adverse reports from a cybernetic M-R, but to J. Barnaby Cruikshank the impossible was simply an impudent affront. He put in a visicall to the President of the Federation and quickly reduced that gentleman to the psychological state of an office boy. When he finally broke the connection, the President merely passed along the same treatment to his Secretary of Internal Affairs. And so the hot, angry words of J. Barnaby were passed down along the line until finally an underling screamed the insults at the chief doctor of the Rigil Kentaurus Hospital.

Ten minutes later Manning Draco was discharged and the offending cybernetic report had vanished from the records.

Within a matter of two hours, Manning strode cheerfully into the main offices of Greater Solarian in Nyork. He grinned down at the receptionist, but her answering expression was one of relief rather than the welcome he'd expected.

"Go on in," she said wearily. "He's been 

 Prev. P 2/42 next