as the
red Cadillacs, and the eight teenagers.

"I'm going to get to the bottom of this if it takes me all summer," he
said, muttering to himself.

"That's the spirit," he told himself. "Never say die."

Then, realizing he had just said it, he frowned. Perhaps it hadn't
really counted. But then again...

He was on his way down the steps when he hit the girl.

The mutual collision was not catastrophic. On the other hand, it was
not exactly minor. It fell somewhere between the two, as an
unclassifiable phenomenon of undoubted potency. Malone said, "Oog,"
with, some fervor as the girl collided with his chest and rebounded
like a handball striking a wall. Something was happening to her, but
Malone had no time to spare to notice just what. He was falling
through space, touching a concrete step once in a while, but not long
enough to make any real acquaintance with it. It seemed to take him a
long time to touch bottom, and when he had, he wondered if _touch_ was
quite the word.

_Bottom_ certainly was. He had fallen backward and landed directly on
his _glutei maximi_, obeying the law regarding equal and opposite
reaction and several other laws involving falling bodies.

His first thought was that he was now neatly balanced. His tail had
received the same treatment as his head. He wondered if a person could
get concussion of the tail bones, and had reached no definite
conclusion when, unexpectedly, his eyes focused again.

He was looking at a girl. That was all he saw at first. She had
apparently fallen just as he had, bounced once and sat down rather
hard. She was now lying flat on her back, making a sound like "rrr"
between her teeth.

Malone discovered that he was sitting undignifiedly on the steps. He
opened his mouth to say something objectionable, took another look at
the girl, and shut it with a snap. This was no ordinary girl.

He smiled at her. She shook her head and sat up, still going "rrr."
Then she stopped and said instead, "What do you think--"

"I'm sorry," Malone said in what he hoped was a charming, debonair,
and apologetic voice. It was quite a lot to get into one voice, but he
tried his very hardest. "I just didn't see--"

"You didn't?" the girl said. She took a long, slow look at him, shook
her head again, and then pulled her skirt down carefully. "If you
didn't, you must be blind," she said.

Malone noticed with hope that there was no anger in her voice. The
last thing in the world he want