* * * * *

Harry Wilson sat at his table in the Martian Club and watched the exotic
Martian dance, performed by near-nude girls. Smoke trailed up lazily
from his drooping cigarette as he watched through squinted eyes. There
was something about the dance that got under Wilson's skin.

The music rose, then fell to whispering undertones and suddenly,
unexpectedly, crashed and stopped. The girls were running from the
floor. A wave of smooth, polite applause rippled around the tables.

Wilson sighed and reached for his wine glass. He crushed the cigarette
into a tray and sipped his wine. He glanced around the room, scanning
the bobbing, painted faces of the night--the great, the near-great, the
near-enough-to-touch-the-great. Brokers and businessmen, artists and
writers and actors. There were others, too, queer night-life shadows
that no one knew much about, or that one heard too much about ... the
playboys and the ladies of family and fortune, correctly attired men,
gorgeously, sleekly attired women.

And--Harry Wilson. The waiters called him Mr. Wilson. He heard people
whispering about him asking who he was. His soul soaked it in and cried
for more. Good food, good drinks, the pastels of the walls, the soft
lights and weird, exotic music. The cold but colorful correctness of it
all.

Just two months ago he had stood outside the club, a stranger in the
city, a mechanic from a little out-of-the-way laboratory, a man who was
paid a pittance for his skill. He had stood outside and watched his
employers walk up the steps and through the magic doors. He had watched
in bitterness....

But now!

The orchestra was striking up a tune. A blonde nodded at him from a
near-by table. Solemnly, with the buzz of wine in his brain and its
hotness in his blood, he returned the nod.

Someone was speaking to him, calling him by name. He looked around, but
there was no one looking at him now. And once again, through that flow
of music, through the hum of conversation, through the buzzing of his
own brain, came the voice, cold and sharp as steel:

"Harry Wilson!"

It sent a shudder through him. He reached for the wine glass again, but
his hand stopped half-way to the stem, paused and trembled at what he
saw.

* * * * *

For there was a gray vagueness in front of him, a sort of shimmer of
nothingness, and out of that shimmer materialized a pencil.

As he watched, in st