Harshaw controlled a seasick reflex he had not felt in decades and answered gravely, “Thank you, Mike.”

“It is I who must thank you, my brother—and if it should come to be that I am selected before you, I hope that you will find me worthy of grokking. Sharing me with Jill. You would share me with Jill? Please?”

Harshaw glanced at Jill, saw that she had kept her face serene—reflected that she probably was a rock-steady scrub nurse. “I will share you with Jill,” he said solemnly. “But, Mike, no one of us will be food today, nor any time soon. Right now I am going to show you this gun—and you wait until I say . . . and then you be very careful, because I have many things to do before I am ready to discorporate.”

“I will be careful, my brother.”

“All right.” Harshaw leaned over, grunting slightly, and opened a lower drawer of his desk. “Look in here, Mike. See the gun? I’m going to pick it up. But don’t do anything until I tell you to. Girls—get up and move away to the left; I don’t want it pointed at you. Okay. Mike, not yet.” Harshaw reached for the gun, a very elderly police special, took it out of the drawer. “Get ready, Mike. Now!”—and Harshaw did his very best to get the weapon aimed at the Man from Mars. His hand was suddenly empty. No shock, no jar, no twisting—the gun was gone and that was all.

Jubal found that he was shaking, so he stopped it. “Perfect,” he said to Mike. “You got it before I had it aimed at you. That’s utterly perfect.”

“I am happy.”

“So am I. Duke, did that get in the camera?”

“Yup. I put in fresh film cartridges. You didn’t say.”

“Good.” Harshaw sighed and found that he was very tired. “That’s all today, kids. Run along. Go swimming. You, too, Anne.”

Anne said, “Boss? You’ll tell me what the films show?”

“Want to stay and see them?”

“Oh, no! I couldn’t, not the parts I Witnessed. But I would like to know—later—whether or not they show that I’ve slipped my clutches.”

“All right.”



13

When they had gone, Harshaw started to give instructions to Duke—then instead said grumpily, “What are you looking sour about?”

“Boss, when are we going to get rid of that ghoul?”

“‘Ghoul’? Why, you provincial lout!”

“Okay, so I come from Kansas. You won’t find any cases of cannibalism in Kansas—they were all further west. I’ve got my own opinions about who is a lout and who isn’t . . . but I’m eating in the kitchen until we get rid of him.”

Harshaw said icily, “So? Don’t put yourself out. Anne can have your closing check ready in five minutes . . . and it ought not to take you more than ten minutes to pack up your comic books and your other shirt.”

Duke had been setting up a projector. He stopped and straightened up. “Oh, I didn’t mean that I was quitting.”

“It means exactly that to me, son.”

“But—I mean, what the hell? I’ve eaten in the kitchen lots of times.”

“So you have. For your own convenience, or to keep from making extra work for the girls. Or some such. You can have breakfast in bed, for all of me, if you can bribe the girls to serve it to you. But nobody who sleeps under my roof refuses to eat at my table because he doesn’t want to eat with others who eat there. I happen to be of an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman—which means I can be a real revolting son of a bitch when it suits me. And it suits me right now . . . which is to say that no ignorant, superstitious, prejudiced bumpkin is permitted to tell me who is, or is not, fit to eat at my table. If I choose to dine with publicans and sinners, that is my business. But I do not choose to break bread with Pharisees.”

Duke turned red and said slowly, “I ought to pop you one—and I would, if you were my age.”

“Don’t let that stop you, Duke. I may be tougher than you think . . . and if I’m not, the commotion will probably bring the others in. Do you think you can handle the Man from Mars?”

“Him? I could break him in two with one hand!”

“Probably . . . if you could lay a hand on him.”

“Huh?”

“You saw me try to point a pistol at him. Duke—where’s that pistol? Before you go flexing your biceps, stop and think—or whatever it is you do in place of thinking. Find that pistol. Then tell me whether or not you still think you can break Mike in two. But find the pistol first.”

Duke wrinkled his forehead, then went ahead setting up the projector. “Some sort of sleight-of-hand. The films will show it.”