orry, worry all the time, trying to keep things going."

"I bet," I said sympathetically. "You're, uh, pretty close to the
Major?"

She said stiffly: "I'm not married to him, if that's what you mean.
Though I've had my chances.... But you see how it is. Fifteen thousand
people to run a place the size of New York! It's forty men to operate
the power station, and twenty-five on the PX, and thirty on the hotel
here. And then there are the local groceries, and the Army, and the
Coast Guard, and the Air Force--though, really, that's only two
men--and--Well, you get the picture."

"I certainly do. Look, what kind of a guy _is_ the Major?"

She shrugged. "A guy."

"I mean what does he like?"

"Women, mostly," she said, her expression clouded. "Come on now. What
about it?"

I stalled. "What do you want Arthur for?"

She gave me a disgusted look. "What do you think? To relieve the
manpower shortage, naturally. There's more work than there are men.
Now if the Major could just get hold of a couple of prosthetics, like
this thing here, why, he could put them in the big installations. This
one used to be an engineer or something, Vern said."

"Well ... _like_ an engineer."

* * * * *

Amy shrugged. "So why couldn't we connect him up with the power
station? It's been done. The Major knows that--he was in the Pentagon
when they switched all the aircraft warning net over from computer to
prosthetic control. So why couldn't we do the same thing with our
power station and release forty men for other assignments? This thing
could work day, night, Sundays--what's the difference when you're just
a brain in a sardine can?"

Clatter-rattle-_bang_.

She looked startled. "Oh. I forgot he was listening."

"No deal," I said.

She said: "A hundred and fifty thousand?"

A hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I considered that for a while.
Arthur clattered warningly.

"Well," I temporized, "I'd have to be sure he was getting into good
hands--"

The typewriter thrashed wildly. The sheet of paper fluttered out of
the carriage. He'd used it up. Automatically I picked it up--it was
covered with imprecations, self-pity and threats--and started to put a
new one in.

"No," I said, bending over the typewriter, "I guess I couldn't sell
him. It just wouldn't be right--"

That was my mistake; it was the wrong time for me to say that, because
I had taken my eyes off her.

The room bent over and clouted