“I grok,” Jubal agreed, “although the picture of Becky Vesey as a Martian adept shakes me a little. Still, she was once one of the best mentalists in show business; she could give a cold reading that would scare any mark right out of his shoes—and loosen his pocketbook. Say, Stinky, if you are going to be sent away for peace and quiet while you unwind all this data, why don’t you and Maryam come home? Plenty of room for a study & bedroom suite in the new wing.”

“Perhaps we shall. Waiting still is.”

“Sweetheart,” Miriam said earnestly, “that’s a solution I would just plain love—if Mike pushes us out of the Nest.”

“If we grok to leave the Nest, you mean.”

“Same thing. As you grok.”

“You speak rightly, my dear. But when do we eat around here? I feel a most unMartian urgency inside. The service was better in the Nest.”

“You can’t expect Patty to work on your dratted old dictionary, see to it that everyone who arrives is comfortable, run errands for Mike, and still have food on the table the instant you get hungry, my love. Jubal, Stinky will never achieve priesthood—he’s a slave to his stomach.”

“Well, so am I.”

“And you girls might give Patty a hand,” her husband added.

“That sounds like a crude hint. You know we do, dear, all she will let us—and Tony will hardly allow anyone in his kitchen . . . even this kitchen.” She stood up. “Come on, Jubal, and let’s see what’s cooking. Tony will be very flattered if you visit his kitchen.”

Jubal went with her, was a bit bemused to see telekinesis used in preparing food, met Tony, who scowled until he saw who was with her, then was beamingly proud to show off his workshop—accompanied by a spate of invective in mixed English and Italian at the scoundrels who had destroyed “his” kitchen in the Nest. In the meantime a spoon, unassisted, continued to keel a big pot of spaghetti sauce.

Shortly thereafter Jubal declined to be jockeyed into a seat at the head of a long table, grabbed one elsewhere. Patty sat at one end; the head chair remained vacant . . . except for an eerie feeling which Jubal suppressed that the Man from Mars was sitting there and that everyone present but himself could see him—which was true only in some cases.

Across the table from him was Dr. Nelson.

Jubal discovered that he would have been surprised only if Dr. Nelson had not been present. He nodded and said, “Hi, Sven.”

“Hi, Doc. Share water.”

“Never thirst. What are you around here? Staff physician?”

Nelson shook his head. “Medical student.”

“So. Learning anything?”

“I’ve learned that medicine isn’t neccessary.”

“If youda ast me, I coulda told yah. Seen Van?”

“He ought to be in sometime late tonight or early tomorrow. His ship grounded today.”

“Does he always come here?” inquired Jubal.

“Call him an extension student. He can’t spend much time here.”

“Well, it will be good to see him. I haven’t laid eyes on him for a year and half, about.” Jubal picked up a conversation with the man on his right while Nelson talked with Dorcas, on his right. Jubal noticed the same tingling expectancy at the table which he had felt before, but reinforced. Yet there was still nothing he could put his finger on—just a quiet family dinner in relaxed intimacy. Once, a glass of water was passed all around the table, but, if there was ritual of words with it, they were spoken too low to carry. When it reached Jubal’s place, he took a sip and passed it along to the girl on his left—round-eyed and too awed to make chit-chat with him—and himself said in a low voice, “I offer you water.”

She managed to answer, “I thank you for water, Fa—Jubal.” That was almost the only word he got out of her. When the glass completed the circuit, reaching the vacant chair at the head of the table, there was perhaps a half inch of water in it. It raised itself, poured, and the water disappeared, then the tumbler placed itself on the cloth. Jubal decided, correctly, that he had taken part in a group ‘Sharing-Water’ of the Innermost Temple . . . and probably in his honor—although it certainly was not even slightly like the Bacchanalian revels he had thought accompanied such formal welcome of a brother. Was it because they were in strange surroundings? Or had he read into unexplicit reports what his own id wanted to find in those reports?

Or had they simply toned it down to an ascetic formality out of deference to his age and opinions?

The last seemed the most likely theory—and he found that it vexed him. Of course, he told himself, he was glad to be spared the need to refuse an invitation that he certainly did not want—and would not have relished at any age, his tastes being what they were.