cast reluctantly from his tongue:

"No, I don't ... care much ... about playing."

"What _do_ you like to do, John?"

His string-bean of a body stiffened. "I like to study ancient history
... and I must work on my plan."

Oh Lord, that plan again!

I took a deep breath. "Tell me about it, John. It _must_ be
interesting."

He made queer clicking noises with his mouth that reminded me of a
mechanical toy being wound into motion. "The whole foundation of this
or any other culture is based on the history of all the time
dimensions, each interwoven with the other, throughout the ages. And
the holes provide a means of studying all of it first hand."

_Oh, oh_, I thought. _But you still have to eat. Remember, you still
have to eat._

"Trouble is," he went on, "there are so many holes in this universe."

"Holes?" I kept a straight face.

"Certainly. Look around you. All you see is holes. These beer bottles
are just holes surrounded by glass. The doors and windows--they're
holes in walls. The mine tunnels make a network of holes under the
desert. Caves are holes, animals live in holes, our faces have holes,
clothes have holes--millions and millions of holes!"

I winced and thought, humor him because you gotta eat, you gotta eat.

His voice trembled with emotion. "Why, they're everywhere. They're in
pots and pans, in pipes, in rocket jets, in bumpy roads. There are
buttonholes and well holes, and shoelace holes. There are doughnut
holes and stocking holes and woodpecker holes and cheese holes. Oceans
lie in holes in the earth, and rivers and canals and valleys. The
craters of the Moon are holes. Everything is--"

"But, John," I said as patiently as possible, "what have these holes
got to do with you?"

He glowered at me as if I were unworthy of such a confidence. "What
have they to do with me?" he shrilled. "I can't find the right
one--that's what!"

I closed my eyes. "Which particular hole are you looking for, John?"

He was speaking rapidly again now.

"I was hurrying back to the University with the _Zloomph_ to prove a
point of ancient history to those fools. They don't believe that
instruments which make music actually existed before the tapes! It was
dark--and some fool researcher had forgotten to set a force-field over
the hole--I fell through."

I closed my eyes. "Now wait a minute. Did you drop something, lose it
in the hole--is that why you have to find it?"

"Oh I didn't lose anything important