cal apprehension as I braced myself for what might come, with the
telenizer knowing that I was aware.

There was something I could do--should do--but my mind refused to focus.
It bogged down in a muck of unreasoning terror and could only scream
_Why? Why? Why?_

The drops of blood from the water tap increased both in size and
rapidity, as I watched. Heavy, red, marble-sized tears followed one
another from the tap, _plonk, plonk, plonk_, splashing in the tub and on
the floor. Faster and faster, and then the drip became a flow, a gush,
as though the vein of some giant creature had been slashed.

The tub filled rapidly, and blood flowed like a crimson waterfall over
the edge and across the floor toward me.

I heard a tiny howling, and looked down.

I screamed and threw the soft, brown, fuzzy, squirming puppy-thing that
had been a razor into the advancing tide of blood.

The fuzzy thing shattered when it hit the blood, and each of the
thousand pieces became another tiny puppy-thing that grew and grew,
yapping and swimming in the blood. The tide was now rising about my
shoes.

I backed away from the mirror, trembling violently. I forced myself to
slosh through the thick blood into the bedroom, groping for a bottle of
whisky on the bureau.

* * * * *

"What the hell are you doing here?" the boss asked when I opened his
office door and peeked in. "You're supposed to be in Palm Beach. Well,
damn it, come on in!"

I clung to the door firmly as I maneuvered myself through the opening.
And when I closed the door, I leaned back against it heavily.

I could see the boss--Carson Newell, managing editor of Intergalaxy News
Service--half rising from behind his big desk across the room; but he
was pretty dim and I couldn't get him to stay in one place. His voice
was clear enough, though:

"Must be mighty important to bring you back from.... Damn it, Langston,
are you drunk?"

I grinned then, and said, "Carshon. Carton. Old boy. Do you know that
telenosis therapy is no sonofabitchin' good on alcoholics?"

Carson Newell sat back down, frowning.

I stumbled to a chair by the corner of his desk and gripped the arms
tightly.

"Telenosis therapy," I repeated, "is just no--"

"Snap out of it," Newell barked. "It's no good on dumb animals, either,
and you're probably out of range by now, anyway."

He took a small bottle from his desk and tossed a yellow Anti-Alch pill
across the desk to me.