e listening. I
didn't skip anything. It wasn't my fault."

"All right, all right."

"Wait a minute," the operator said. "Here, listen in."

The supervisor's eyes grew round.

"Can't be," he exclaimed.

"All the buildings, everything's just like it was before," the operator
said loudly to the room at large. "All of a sudden, the way they report
it."

"They're faking the reports," the supervisor grumbled irritably. "Have
to be."

"Now, no matter how much they fake, you can't rebuild all those
buildings in a couple hours," the operator argued.

"None of our business," the supervisor cautioned. "We just take the
reports. Can't criticize us for whatever the E.H.Q. ship out there's
doing."

"And everybody's got their clothes back on," the operator said loudly.

There was a sigh of regret up and down the aisle.

"Now the E's disappeared again," the operator said, "They're scanning
all over, trying to find him."

The supervisor put down his headset with resolution.

"I'm going to my office to make a report on the sloppy way this
reporting has been done. There's going to be fur flying over these skips
and jumps, and I don't want it to be our fur. Best thing is to make the
complaint first," he said to the room at large. "Now you call me if
there's any more of this bollix," he said to the operator as he left.

An hour passed while the supervisor sat in his office. He wrote
furiously, scratched out, wrote some more, tore up papers and threw them
in the vague direction of the wastebasket, started afresh to write some
more. How to report without stepping on anybody's toes?

His buzzer sounded softly to give him respite, and he looked up from a
virtually blank piece of paper to the board. The Eden operator again.

"Oh, no," he groaned. But he left his desk at once and half trotted up
the aisle.

"Now the captain of the ship says he wants Sector Chief Hayes at once,"
the operator called out. "Something very important."

"Very well," the supervisor said. "Ring him."

But Hayes didn't wait for the ring. He had been listening, red-eyed,
tired, gaunt for lack of sleep.

"Give me connection," he said to the operator as soon as the line
opened.

"Bill Hayes here, Captain," he said, as soon as he received the signal.
"What now?"

"Mrs. Gray, the Junior E's wife, has disappeared from aboard ship," the
Captain said without any preliminaries.

"What do you mean 'disappeared'?" Hayes asked. "How could she disappear