of course, it won't touch on the question of
legal family, brother-in-law and the like. I don't suppose she'd
accept that."

She wouldn't. He'd seen her for only a brief time and yet he knew that
much. He was in an ambiguous position; he could make snap decisions he
was certain were right, but he had to guess at facts. He and the girl
were victims, and the police refused to help them in the only way that
would do much good. And the police had, or thought they had, official
reasons for their stand.

Luis told the counselor just exactly what he thought of that.

"It's too bad," agreed the counselor. "These things often have an
extraordinary degree of permanency if they ever get started."

If they ever got started! Luis reached out and turned off the screen.
It flickered unsteadily--the counselor was trying to call him back. He
didn't want to talk to the man; it was painful, and Borgenese had
nothing to add but platitudes, and fuel to his anger. He swung open
the panel and jerked the wiring loose and the screen went blank.

There was an object concealed in the mechanism he had exposed. It was
a neat, vicious, little retrogression gun.

* * * * *

He got it out and balanced it gingerly in his hand. Now he had
something else to work on! It was _the_ weapon, of course. It had been
used on him and then hidden behind the screen.

It was a good place to hide it. The screens never wore out or needed
adjustment, and the cleaning robots that came out of the wall never
cleaned there. The police should have found it, but they hadn't
looked. He smiled bitterly. They weren't interested in solving
crimes--merely in ameliorating the consequences.

Though the police had failed, he hadn't. It could be traced back to
the man who owned it, and that person would have information. He
turned the retro gun over slowly; it was just a gun; there were
countless others like it.

He finished dressing and dropped the gun in his pocket. He went
outside and looked across the court. He hesitated and then walked over
and knocked.

"Occupied," said the door. "But the occupant is out. No definite time
of return stated, but she will be back this evening. Is there any
message?"

"No message," he said. "I'll call back when she's home."

He hoped she wouldn't refuse to speak to him. She'd been away from
retro-therapy longer than he and possibly had developed her own
leads--very likely she was investigating some o