lone muttered.

"Don't be silly," Dorothy told him. "Wally hardly knows you. He'll
call you Mr. Malone and like it."

The bartender went away, and Malone sat on his stool and thought
busily for a minute. At last he said, "If you really want to catch up
with me..."

"Yes?" Dorothy said.

"Better have a triple," Malone muttered.

Dorothy's eyebrows rose slightly.

"Because I intend to have another one," Malone added. "And even then
you'll be just a little behind."

"That sounds sort of sad, in a way," Dorothy said. "Just a little
behind. Tell me, is that a compliment or an insult?"

"Both," Malone said instantly. "And an observation, too."

Dorothy nodded. "I can see why you're a Federal cop," she said.

"Really?" Malone said. "I didn't know it showed. Why?"

"You're good at observing," she said. "Like this morning, for
instance."

"Ah," Malone said. He searched in his mind for a quotation and found
it. "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee," he
said triumphantly.

"Sounds sort of grisly," Dorothy said.

Malone shrugged. "I can't help it," he said. "That's what it says."

"Well?" Dorothy said. "Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Pluck your eye out and cast it from you?"

"Didn't have to," Malone said. "Mine eye did not offend me." He
blinked and added, "Far from it."

"I guess we'll just have to leave it unplucked," Dorothy said sadly.
"It didn't offend me, either."

"Good," Malone said, and the bartender brought drinks.

Malone picked his up and held it in the air. "I propose a toast," he
said.

Dorothy picked up her glass. "A toast?"

"An old German toast, as a matter of fact," Malone said.

He fell silent. After a few seconds Dorothy said, "Well? Go ahead."

_"Zwieback!"_ Malone said, bowed carefully to Dorothy and drained his
glass with a flourish.

7

It started a million years ago.

In that distant past, a handful of photons deep in the interior of Sol
began their random journey to the photosphere. They had been born as
ultrahard gamma radiation, and they were positively bursting with
energy, attempting to push their respective ways through the dense
nucleonic gas that had been their womb. Within millimicroseconds, they
had been swallowed up by the various particles surrounding
them--swallowed, and emitted again, as the particles met in violent
collision.

And then the process was repeated. After a thousand thousand years,
a