l again she risked losing your love--and
she lost."

Blanche must be all of fifty, perhaps fifty-five, the analytical portion
of his mind noted. Old-maidish in many ways, despite her five
ex-husbands; yet so sentimental--

"It's all part of her scheme. Pretend to be the patient, long-suffering
wife and then secretly forbid me to go back to the deep levels again!
You don't know!"

The woman's tired eyes sparkled green. Her little fist cracked against
his chest. She turned half away from him.

"But I do know. I sat up with you many nights, while Janith got a few
hours of rest. You were like a baby, slobbering and whimpering in your
sleep. The days were worse. You were drunk and shouting and weeping. To
you blindness was the end."

Merle gulped. He could remember nothing of the sort. Only the accident
and awakening in the hospital to darkness.... But there was a strange
blankness, a hiatus in his memories, that ended with his hated job in
the cigar stand. He could not recall his first day there or--

Could Blanche be telling the truth?

"You--spiteful old hag!" he shouted at her, and rushed out of the
offices.

His feet pounded at the yielding softness of the walkway. The hospital
was less than two blocks distant--no need to take a travel strip--and he
needed the automatic motion of walking to steady his thoughts.

The forgotten months. Four months, or was it five months, ago, he was in
the cigar-and-news stand. That was the day when an old acquaintance from
the lower levels sold him the chance on the 80th Level's breakthrough.

That night he had begged Janith to let him rent a super mech. And she
had scoffed at his wastefulness. Yet, now that he remembered it again,
there had been a wistful note of hope in her voice.

Could she have been trying to fan his faint desire for sight into
something more powerful and consuming--so he would become again the
engineering Duggan he had been?

He had surrendered then, as he did many times afterward. Sullenly, yes,
but he had surrendered. Perhaps she knew he was not ready for sight.
When he refused to obey her, when he insisted on hiring a super
mech--then, perhaps, she would know the cure was complete.

But that was only theory. He remembered her clearly expressed hatred for
the mucking, lower-level life of a rockhound. Always his hatred for her
grew as she spoke of his work....

She had never expressed herself in that way before the accident. She had
gone with him