tween McKinley and
Eisenhower rooters; the Spring concerts. The term-end exams were only a
month away when Benson and Myers finally did it, and stood solemnly,
each with a beaker in either hand and took alternate sips of the
original and the drink mixed from the syrup they had made.

"Not a bit of difference, Fred," Myers said. "We have it!"

Benson picked up the guitar and began plunking on it.

"Hey!" Myers exclaimed. "Have you been finding time to take lessons on
that thing? I never heard you play as well as that!"

* * * * *

They decided to go into business in St. Louis. It was centrally located,
and, being behind more concentric circles of radar and counter-rocket
defenses, it was in better shape than any other city in the country and
most likely to stay that way. Getting started wasn't hard; the first
banker who tasted the new drink-named Evri-Flave, at Myers'
suggestion--couldn't dig up the necessary money fast enough. Evri-Flave
hit the market with a bang and became an instant success; soon the
rainbow-tinted vending machines were everywhere, dispensing the
slender, slightly flattened bottles and devouring quarters voraciously.
In spite of high taxes and the difficulties of doing business in a
consumers' economy upon which a war-time economy had been superimposed,
both Myers and Benson were rapidly becoming wealthy. The gregarious
Myers installed himself in a luxurious apartment in the city; Benson
bought a large tract of land down the river toward Carondelet and
started building a home and landscaping the grounds.

The dreams began bothering him again, now that the urgency of getting
Evri-Flave, Inc., started had eased. They were not dreams of the men he
had killed in battle, or, except for one about a huge, hot-smelling tank
with a red star on the turret, about the war. Generally, they were about
a strange, beautiful, office-room, in which a young man in uniform
killed an older man in a plum-brown coat and a vivid blue neck-scarf.
Sometimes Benson identified himself with the killer; sometimes with the
old man who was killed.

He talked to Myers about these dreams, but beyond generalities about
delayed effects of combat fatigue and vague advice to relax, the
psychologist, now head of Sales & Promotion of Evri-Flave, Inc., could
give him no help.

The war ended three years after the new company was launched. There was
a momentary faltering of the economy, and then the wor