tton again and as the plane started to
swing she looked at me defiantly as if to say I'd reverse the course
again over her dead body.

"Don't tense up," I told her. "I want a new shake of the dice myself."

"You know, Alice," Pop said reflectively, "it was the smell of my
Alamoser got to me too. I just couldn't bear it. I couldn't get away
from it because my fever had me pinned down, so there was nothing left
for me to do but go crazy. No Atla-Hi for me, just Bug-land. My mind
died, though not my memory. By the time I'd got my strength back I'd
started to be a new bugger. I didn't know no more about living than a
newborn babe, except I knew I couldn't go back--go back to murdering
and all that. My new mind knew that much though otherwise it was just a
blank. It was all very funny."

"And then I suppose," Alice cut in, her voice corrosive with sarcasm,
"you hunted up a wandering preacher, or perhaps a kindly old hermit who
lived on hot manna, and he showed you the blue sky!"

"Why no, Alice," Pop said. "I told you I don't go for religion. As it
happens, I hunted me up a couple of murderers, guys who were worse cases
then myself but who'd wanted to quit because it wasn't getting them
nowhere and who'd found, I'd heard, a way of quitting, and the three of
us had a long talk together."

"And they told you the great secret of how to live in the Deathlands
without killing," Alice continued acidly. "Drop the nonsense, Pop. It
can't be done."

"It's hard, I'll grant you," Pop said. "You have to go crazy or
something almost as bad--in fact, maybe going crazy is the easiest way.
But it can be done and, in the long run, murder is even harder."

* * * * *

I decided to interrupt this idle chatter. Since we were now definitely
headed for Atla-Hi and there was nothing to do until we got there,
unless one of us got a brainstorm about the controls, it was time to
start on the less obvious stuff I'd tabled in my mind.

"Why are you on this plane, Pop?" I asked sharply. "What do you figure
on getting out of Alice and me?--and I don't mean the free meals."

He grinned. His teeth were white and even--plates, of course. "Why,
Ray," he said, "I was just giving Alice the reason. I like to talk to
murderers, practicing murderers preferred. I need to--_have_ to talk to
'em, to keep myself straight. Otherwise I might start killing again and
I'm not up to that any more."

"Oh, so you get your kicks at s