first. There was a note from Tessie saying she'd gone shopping with Fitzgerald's wife, Miriam. So I'd start celebrating alone!

I punched the servomech for Scotch-on-the-rocks. As I sat sipping it I kept thinking about Maitland Browne. It wasn't just the recollection of the ride from Brookhaven. It was also the Scotch. Association.

I thought back to the night Tessie and I had gone up to Browne's to spend the evening, and Browne invited me to sit in a new plush chair. I sat all right, but promptly found that I was completely unable to rise despite the fact that I was in full possession of my faculties. He'd then taken our respective wives for a midnight 'copter ride, leaving me to escape the chair's invisible embrace if I could. I couldn't.

Luckily he'd forgotten that his liquor cabinet was within arm's reach of the chair; I'd made devastating inroads on a pinch bottle by the time they'd returned. He switched off his psionic machine but fast then, and didn't ever try to trap me in it again!

The visifone buzzed and I leaped to it, thinking of Tessie out shopping in her delicate condition—

I felt momentary relief, then startlement.

It was Fitzgerald—Fitzgerald with fair features flushed, Fitzgerald the imperturbable one stammering with excitement!

"Now, wait a second!" I said in amazement. "Calm down, for Heaven's sake! What's this about a census?"

"Well, are they taking one now?"

"By 'they' I presume you mean the Bureau of the Census of the U. S. Department of Commerce," I said, trying to slow him down, while wondering what in the name of a reversed cyclotron could have jarred him so.

He spluttered. "Who else? Well, are they?"

"Not to my knowledge. They took it only last year. Won't do it again until 1970. Why?"

"As I was trying to tell you, a fellow who said he was a census taker was just here and damn it, Jim, he wanted to know my considered ideas of natural resources, birth control, immigration, racial discrimination, UFO's and half a dozen other things. He threw the questions at me so fast I became thoroughly confused. What with me still thinking about the cosmotron, wondering if Brownie will stop riding me before I do break down, and wondering where Miriam is, I just had to slow him down so that I could piece together the answers.

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