offspring of a threetoed sloth?' Wait all night for a story and then not
get it, like the star legman on the Jackson Junior Highschool
_Jive-Jitterbug_. I'll never be able to hold my head up again. Say
something, say something, Weener--Ive _got_ to get this."

"We'll be able to hear the explosion from here," I remarked to console
him, for his distress was genuine.

"Oh," he groaned. "Hear the explosion. Albert, Albert ... you have a
fertile mind. Why didnt I hide myself before they told us to clear out?
Why didnt I get W R to hire a plane? Why didnt I foresee this and do any
of a hundred things? A microphone and automatic moviecamera ... Goony
Gootes, they called him, the man who missed all bets.... A captive
balloon, now.... Hay! What about a roof?"

"Trees," I objected, with a mental picture of him bursting into the
nearest house and demanding entrance to the roof.

"Bushwa. Zair's no tree in z' way of z' old box over zair--allons!"

It wasnt till he had urged me inside and up a flight of stairs that I
realized the "box" was Miss Francis' apartmenthouse. It had been a
logical choice, since its height and ugliness distinguished it even from
its unhandsome neighbors. Less than a week had gone by since I had come
here for the first time. As I followed Gootes' grasshopper leaps upward
at a more dignified pace, I reflected how strangely my circumstances had
changed.

The shoddily carpeted halls were musty and still as we climbed, except
for the unheeded squeaking of a radio someone had forgotten to turn off.
You could always tell when a radio was being listened to, for when
disregarded it sulkily gave off painfully listless noises in frustration
and loneliness.

I wasnt at all surprised to find Miss Francis among the spectators
crowded on the roof in evidence of having no more important occupation.
"I somehow expected you. Have you any new tricks?" she asked Gootes
coaxingly.

"Ecod, your worship, wot time ave I for legerdemain? Wif your elp, now,
I'd be a fine gentleman-journalist, stead of a noverworked ack."

"Ha," she said genially, busy with the toothpick, "youll find enough
respectable laboratory mechanics eager to cooperate. How long will it be
before they shoot, do you know?"

Gootes shook his head and I strained my eyes toward the grass.
Symmetrical and shimmeringly green, removed as it now was from all
connotations of danger by distance and the promise of immediate
destruction, it showed serenely be