y sold me out. I'd been late
again.

And now, there she was on the psychomat screen, obviously plumping out,
and not nearly so pretty as memory had pictured her. She was staring at
me with an expression of enmity, and I was glaring back. The buzzes
became voices.

"You nit-wit!" she snapped. "You can't bury me out here. I want to go
back to New York, where there's a little life. I'm bored with you and
your golf."

"And I'm bored with you and your whole dizzy crowd."

"At least they're _alive_. You're a walking corpse. Just because you
were lucky enough to gamble yourself into the money, you think you're a
tin god."

"Well, I _don't_ think _you're_ Cleopatra! Those friends of yours--they
trail after you because you give parties and spend money--_my_ money."

"Better than spending it to knock a white walnut along a mountainside!"

"Indeed? You ought to try it, Marie." (That was her real name.) "It
might help your figure--though I doubt if anything could!"

She glared in rage and--well, that was a painful half hour. I won't give
all the details, but I was glad when the screen dissolved into
meaningless colored clouds.

"Whew!" I said, staring at Van Manderpootz, who had been reading.

"You liked it?"

"Liked it! Say, I guess I was lucky to be cleaned out. I won't regret it
from now on."

"That," said the professor grandly, "is van Manderpootz's great
contribution to human happiness. 'Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the
saddest are these: It might have been!' True no longer, my friend Dick.
Van Manderpootz has shown that the proper reading is, 'It might have
been--worse!'"

* * * * *

It was very late when I returned home, and as a result, very late when I
rose, and equally late when I got to the office. My father was
unnecessarily worked up about it, but he exaggerated when he said I'd
never been on time. He forgets the occasions when he's awakened me and
dragged me down with him. Nor was it necessary to refer so sarcastically
to my missing the _Baikal_; I reminded him of the wrecking of the liner,
and he responded very heartlessly that if I'd been aboard, the rocket
would have been late, and so would have missed colliding with the
British fruitship. It was likewise superfluous for him to mention that
when he and I had tried to snatch a few weeks of golfing in the
mountains, even the spring had been late. I had nothing to do with that.

"Dixon," he concluded, "you have