approached.

"Welcome home again, Dr. Turnbull," he said warmly. "We've missed you
here at the Excelsior."

Turnbull took the hand and smiled as he shook it. "Glad to be back, Mr.
Sanders; the place looks good after a year of roughing it."

The superintendent lifted the brief case. "I brought up the mail that
accumulated while you were gone. There's not much, since we sent cards
to each return address, notifying them that you were not available and
that your mail was being held until your return."

He opened the brief case and took out seven standard pneumatic mailing
tubes and handed them to Turnbull.

Turnbull glanced at them. Three of them were from various friends of his
scattered over Earth; one was from Standard Recording Company; the
remaining three carried the return address of James M. Duckworth, Ph.
Sch., U.C.L.A., Great Los Angeles, California.

"Thanks, Mr. Sanders," said Turnbull. He was wondering why the man had
brought them up so promptly after his own arrival. Surely, having waited
a year, they would have waited until they were called for.

Sanders blinked apologetically. "Uh ... Dr. Turnbull, I wonder if ... if
any of those contain money ... checks, cash, anything like that?"

"I don't know. Why?" Turnbull asked in surprise.

Sanders looked even more apologetic. "Well, there was an attempted
robbery here about six months ago. Someone broke into your mailbox
downstairs. There was nothing in it, of course; we've been putting
everything into the vault as it came in. But the police thought it might
be someone who knew you were getting money by mail. None of the other
boxes were opened, you see, and--" He let his voice trail off as
Turnbull began opening the tubes.

None of them contained anything but correspondence. There was no sign of
anything valuable.

"Maybe they picked my box at random," Turnbull said. "They may have been
frightened off after opening the one box."

"That's very likely it," said Sanders. "The police said it seemed to be
a rather amateurish job, although whoever did it certainly succeeded in
neutralizing the alarms."

Satisfied, the building superintendent exchanged a few more pleasantries
with Turnbull and departed. Turnbull headed back toward the kitchen,
picked up his glass of sherry, and sat down in the breakfast nook to
read the letters.

The one from Standard Recording had come just a few days after he'd
left, thanking him for notifying them that he wanted to susp