ea about
me and I used it to kill him. I had to wait three months for my
opportunity. I got him so lazy he let me shave him. He bled to death the
same way as Dad."

"Hum," Pop commented after a bit, "that was a chiller, all right. I got
to remember to tell it to Bill--it was somebody killing his mother that
got _him_ started. Alice, you had about as good a justification for your
first murder as any I remember hearing."

"Yet," Alice said after another pause, with just a trace of the old
sarcasm creeping back into her voice, "I don't suppose you think I was
right to do it?"

"Right? Wrong? Who knows?" Pop said almost blusteringly. "Sure you were
justified in a whole pack of ways. Anybody'd sympathize with you. A man
often has fine justification for the first murder he commits. But as you
must know, it's not that the first murder's always so bad in itself as
that it's apt to start you on a killing spree. Your sense of values gets
shifted a tiny bit and never shifts back. But you know all that and who
am I to tell you anything, anyway? I've killed men because I didn't like
the way they spit. And may very well do it again if I don't keep
watching myself and my mind ventilated."

"Well, Pop," Alice said, "I didn't always have such dandy justification
for my killings. Last one was a moony old physicist--he fixed me the
Geiger counter I carry. A silly old geek--I don't know how he survived
so long. Maybe an exile or a runaway. You know, I often attach myself
to the elderly do-gooder type like my father was. Or like you, Pop."

Pop nodded. "It's good to know yourself," he said.

* * * * *

There was a third pause and then, although I hadn't exactly been
intending to, I said, "Alice had justification for her first murder,
personal justification that an ape would understand. I had no personal
justification at all for mine, yet I killed about a million people at a
modest estimate. You see, I was the boss of the crew that took care of
the hydrogen missile ticketed for Moscow, and when the ticket was
finally taken up I was the one to punch it. My finger on the firing
button, I mean."

I went on, "Yeah, Pop, I was one of the button-pushers. There were
really quite a few of us, of course--that's why I get such a laugh out
of stories about being or rubbing out the _one_ guy who pushed all the
buttons."

"That so?" Pop said with only mild-sounding interest. "In that case you
ought to know--"