"But if it were my job
I'd just light my pipe and sit here and think for a week or so. Why
don't _you_ try it?"

I got up again. "Yes, sir," I said. "I suppose it would help to have
the original telemetry data so that I could evaluate for myself what
went wrong."

"I thought you'd get to that," he said, passing me a fat file-folder.
"Here it is." He stood up, too, and led me to the door. "And other
data you might want?" he asked, now a good deal more kindly. His hand
was on my elbow.

I looked at him. "How about the phone number of the brunette out
there?" I asked without taking the stogey from my teeth.

"Sylvia? That's pretty valuable information," he said, beginning to
grin in a sleepy old fashion. "But she only dates astronauts. If you
haven't made at least three orbits, she won't even have dinner with
you."

[Illustration]

I stopped at Sylvia's desk with half an idea of asking her for a date.
"Well, Dr. Seaman," she demanded as I chewed on my pacifier. "What did
you learn?"

I thought about it. "That a lot depends on knowing where to put your
feet," I said, puffing smoke. "And my name is Mike."

She sniffed. "If you think Paul Cleary hasn't been around long enough
to catch Fred Stone trying to fake him out of position with a
meaningless test," she said, "you have another think coming!"

"He'd never have tried it," I told her, "if he'd known Cleary had you
to look after him." That got me a much louder sniff and toss of the
dark curly head, which broke up my plans to ask her to dinner.

The telemetry results had been decoded, of course, so that a mere
mortal could read them. I didn't have a pipe, which probably meant I'd
be a failure as a physicist, so I chewed cigars ragged for about three
days and did some serious thinking. When I got a result, I looked up
Shouff, Sylvia, Secy./Mgr./Dsgn., in the phone directory, and talked
to my favorite brunette.

"Mr. Cleary's office," she said.

"When would he like to see Mike Seaman?" I tried.

"Probably never," she told me. "But I suppose he'll have to. Isn't
Fred Stone going to run your errand for you?"

"I'm running Fred Stone's errands, isn't that what you really think,
Sylvia?" I asked her.

Sniff! "He can see you at eleven." Click.

Paul Cleary had his coat off and was poring over a large
black-on-white schematic when I was shown in by sniffin' Sylvia.
"Hello, Mike," he growled. "Here, Sylvia. Mike's not supposed to see
this stuff. Drag it away, h