once more with color. "What a crazy thought! I could have sworn ...
well, never mind. But it shakes a man to learn what tricks his own mind
can play on him, all in an instant."

"What kind of tricks, Uncle Phil?"

"Oh, no you don't. If you hadn't egged me on with so many questions,
I'd have been spared a pretty nasty moment, you know that? Now let me
concentrate on driving for a change so I can get you home in time for
supper. O. K.?"

"But ... oh, O.K."

"Don't sound so disappointed, chum. It's been a pleasant drive, even if
nothing much happened."

"Yes, Uncle Phil. Even if ... nothing much happened."

* * * * *

Spring changed to summer, and summer rolled into its final days. Phil
was in a gloomy frame of mind when Timmy's eleventh birthday came
around.

He watched Timmy draw a deep breath and--without puffing out his cheeks
as a child would do--neatly blow out the eleven candles on his cake.
It was an efficient, sprayless, perfectly-controlled operation, an
operation carried out happily and in high spirits, and it depressed
Phil. The "party" itself depressed him--a child's birthday party with
no children present, unless you counted Timmy! Phil and Doc, Helen and
Jerry, and Homer, the latter gray muzzled and stiff in the joints. That
was the roster of the guests and it could almost be called the roster
of Timmy's total acquaintances. His parents, his two friends, and a dog
that at its best had never seemed bright and now was obviously half-dead
with age. The boy was not normal, had no normal life, and gave no
indication of ever being likely to take a normal role in life. He was
a "disordered personality" if one could take comfort in a tag, but the
true nature, cause and cure of his divergence from "normal" would remain
unknown so long as his parents were afraid of tampering--

"Did you make a wish, Timmy?"

"Sure, Mom."

"Helen, honey--Tim knows that wishing when you blow out the candles is
kid stuff."

"And what is he but an eleven-year-old kid?"

[Illustration]

"He's too smart to believe in wishing, honey. Smarter than his old man,
eh, Tim?"

"I'll _never_ be as smart as you, Dad."

"That's my boy! But you don't kid me." Jerry turned to Phil and Clancey,
feigning indignation. "You know what happened the other day? I brought
home an old design that I dug out of the files and wanted to look
over--a helical gravity conveyer--and when Tim saw it spread out on the
t