inflections on single, normally stressed syllables and matches
them. Standard 1. D. searching technique, on a case of this
kind, but it takes so long that we usually get the quarry by
other means before it pays off. Well, don’t stand there like a
dummy, Margaret. Who is he?
” ‘He,’ ” Margaret said, “is your sweetheart of the video
waves, Miss Dana Lje.”
“They’re crazy!” Wald said, staring at her.
Weinbaum came slowly out of his first shock of stunned
disbelief. “No, Thor,” he said finally. “No, it figures. If a
woman is going to go in for disguises, there are always two
she can assume outside her own sex: a young boy, and a very
old man. And Dana’s an actress; that’s no news to us.”
“Butbut why did she do it, Robin?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out right now. So we
wouldn’t get the Dirac modification by ourselves, ehl Well,
there are other ways of getting answers besides particle
physics. Margaret, do you have a pick-up order out for that
girl?”
“No,” the receptionist said. “This is one chestnut I wanted
to see you pull out for yourself. You give me the authority,
and I send the ordernot before.”
“Spiteful child. Send it, then, and glory in my gritted
teeth. Come on, Thorlet’s put the nutcracker on this
chestnut.”
As they were leaving the computer floor, Weinbaum
stopped suddenly in his tracks and began to mutter in an
almost inaudible voice.
Wald said, “What’s the matter, Robin?”
“Nothing. I keep being brought up short by those pre-
dictions. What’s the date?”
“M’m . . . June 9. Why?”
“It’s the exact date that ‘Stevens’ predicted we’d meet