e the old Pat Travis. Your luck
has to change sometime."

He clenched a fist, then left.

Travis sat for a long while in the chair. Dahlinger muttered something
very bitter about luck. Travis thought of telling him that it was not
luck that had put them so close to Mert, but a very grim and expensive
liaison with a ferociously ugly Mapping Command secretary at
Aldebaran. She had told him that there was a ship in this area. But
this news was not for Dahlinger's ears. And neither did he think it
wise to explain to Dahlinger the thing he had done for Horton some
years ago. Young Dolly was not yet ripe. Travis sighed and looked
around for a bed. To his amusement he noted a four poster in the
adjoining room. He went in and lay down.

Gradually the dullness began to wear off. There was a resiliency in
Travis unequalled, some said, by spring steel. He began to ponder ways
and means.

There was always a way. There had to be a way. Somewhere in the
customs of this planet there was a key--but he did not have the time.
Unico would be in tonight, others would be down before the week was
out. And the one to land in two days, on the _good_ day, would get the
contract.

He twisted on the bed. Luck, luck, the hell with luck. If you were
born with sense you were lucky and if a meteor fell on you, you were
unlucky, but most of the rest of it was even from there on out. So if
the legend was to continue....

He became gradually aware of the clock in the ceiling.

In the ceiling?

He stared at it. The symbols and the time meant nothing, but the clock
was embedded flat in the ceiling above the bed, facing directly down.

He pondered that for a moment. Then he exploded with laughter. By
jing, of course. They would have to know what time the baby was
conceived. So all over Mert, in thousands of homes, there were clocks
in the bedrooms, clocks in the ceilings, and wives peering anxiously
upward murmured sweetly in their husbands' ears: 4:17, darling, 4:17
and a half....

The roar of his mirth brought Dolly floundering in from the other
room. Travis sprang from the bed.

"Listen, son," he bellowed, "luck be damned! You get back to the ship.
Get Mapping Command to let you look at its files, find out everything
you can about Mert. There's a key somewhere, boy, there's an out in
there someplace, if we look hard enough. Luck! Hah! Work, boy, work,
there's a key!"

He shooed Dahlinger out of the room. The young man left dazedly, but