the instincts of a tomcat," chuckled Hanson, "all we need do is to imagine where a tomcat would go—and go there. Ava, if you were a brazen hussy, where would you go to huss?"

Ava froze. "I'm not!" she snapped, "and I wouldn't know."

"Maculay went to Venus," said the doctor, "where reformers, theologians, and politicians have not taken all of the fun, chance, and sting out of life."

"But how are you going to get him back?"

Hanson shook his head. "I'm not," he said; "no spaceline would take me. I'm seventy, a little creaky in the arthritis, a bit leaky in the pump, and a trifle sclerosic in the arterios. I admit that I am the healthiest doddering old man on earth—but it is on earth that I shall stay."

"Then—" said Ava uncertainly. Her eyes began to widen with growing understanding and she backed away slightly.

Hanson nodded. "You're going to go get him."

"I'm not."

Hanson shook his head. "You'll be safe," he said. "At the present moment you have too many inhibitions to rouse a stir in Cliff Maculay."

Ava snorted angrily. She was still forgetting Maculay; in fact she forgot him four or five times each day. Each time she reminded herself that it was a good thing that she did not 'go' for his type of man since the two of them would never get along.

Defensively, Ava said, "I'm to go to Venus and comb the entire planet for a man on a binge?"

Doctor Hanson chuckled. "For he who knows the answer, Cliff Maculay would leave a trail a mile wide," he said. "But you'd never make the grade, Ava."

"You're quite right," she said.

Hanson grunted unintelligibly. It sounded like agreement to Ava, but was actually a grunt of disgust. The doctor was old enough to be beyond the sparring age, and he was disgusted at the sidelong mental attitude of a race that admitted that love, marriage, and a family were at the bottom of all effort—and then invented croquet, television, and chaperones to make it difficult.

Hanson looked at his nurse, and shook his head slowly. He was willing to bet his hat that Ava remembered every line in Maculay's face. And that her dislike of Maculay was as genuine as a seven 

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