ind Catherine, I'd continue looking, even though every corner I looked
into turned out to be the hiding place for another bunch of mad spooks.

My mind took another tack: Admitting that neither side could rub me out
without losing, why in heck didn't they just collect me and put me in a
cage? Dammit, if I had an organization as well oiled as either of them,
I could collect the President right out of the New White House and put
him in a cage along with the King of England, the Shah of Persia, and
the Dali Lama to make a fourth for bridge.

This was one of those questions that cannot be answered by the
application of logic, reasoning, or by applying either experience or
knowledge. I did not know, nor understand. And the only way I would ever
find out was to locate someone who was willing to tell.

Then it occurred to me that--aside from my one experience in
housebreaking--that I'd been playing according to the rules. I'm pretty
much a law-abiding citizen. Yet it did seem to me that I learned more
during those times when the rules, if not broken, at least were bent
rather sharply. So I decided to try my hand at busting a couple of
rather high-level rules.

There was a way to track down Catherine.

So I gassed up the buggy, turned the nose East, and took off like a man
with a purpose in mind. En route, I laid out my course. Along that
course there turned out to be seven Way Stations, according to the
Highway signs. Three of them were along U.S. 12 on the way from
Yellowstone to Chicago. One of them was between Chicago and Hammond,
Indiana. There was another to the south of Sandusky, Ohio, one was
somewhere south of Erie, Pa., and the last was in the vicinity of
Newark. There were a lot of the Highways themselves, leading into and
out of my main route--as well as along it.

But I ignored them all, and nobody gave me a rough time.

Eventually I walked into my apartment. It was musty, dusty, and
lonesome. Some of Catherine's things were still on the table where I'd
dropped them; they looked up at me mutely until I covered them with the
walloping pile of mail that had arrived in my long absence. I got a
bottle of beer and began to go through the mail, wastebasketing the
advertisements, piling the magazines neatly, and filing some offers of
jobs (Which reminded me that I was still an engineer and that my funds
wouldn't last indefinitely) and went on through the mail until I came to
a letter--The Letter.

_Dear Mr.