ghtmare! Too much science
fiction, Allan; too many comic books!

That was a wonderfully comforting thought, and he hugged it to him
contentedly. It lasted all the while he was buttoning up his shirt and
pulling on his pants, but when he reached for his shoes, it evaporated.
Ever since he had wakened, he realized, he had been occupied with
thoughts utterly incomprehensible to any thirteen-year-old; even
thinking in words that would have been so much Sanscrit to himself at
thirteen. He shook his head regretfully. The just-a-dream hypothesis
went by the deep six.

He picked up the second shoe and glared at it as though it were
responsible for his predicament. He was going to have to be careful. An
unexpected display of adult characteristics might give rise to some
questions he would find hard to answer credibly. Fortunately, he was an
only child; there would be no brothers or sisters to trip him up. Old
Mrs. Stauber, the housekeeper, wouldn't be much of a problem; even in
his normal childhood, he had bulked like an intellectual giant in
comparison to her. But his father--

Now, there the going would be tough. He knew that shrewd attorney's
mind, whetted keen on a generation of lying and reluctant witnesses.
Sooner or later, he would forget for an instant and betray himself. Then
he smiled, remembering the books he had discovered, in his late 'teens,
on his father's shelves and recalling the character of the openminded
agnostic lawyer. If he could only avoid the inevitable unmasking until
he had a plausible explanatory theory.

* * * * *

Blake Hartley was leaving the bathroom as Allan Hartley opened his door
and stepped into the hall. The lawyer was bare-armed and in slippers; at
forty-eight, there was only a faint powdering of gray in his dark hair,
and not a gray thread in his clipped mustache. The old Merry Widower,
himself, Allan thought, grinning as he remembered the white-haired but
still vigorous man from whom he'd parted at the outbreak of the War.

"'Morning, Dad," he greeted.

"'Morning, son. You're up early. Going to Sunday school?"

Now there was the advantage of a father who'd cut his first intellectual
tooth on Tom Paine and Bob Ingersoll; attendance at divine services was
on a strictly voluntary basis.

"Why, I don't think so; I want to do some reading, this morning."

"That's always a good thing to do," Blake Hartley approved. "After
breakfast, suppose you take a w