The guide's hunched back faded through the door. Condemeign turned listlessly to the figure at the desk. It was a woman, and before his eyes focussed in the filmy light he got an odd impression of a brown, papery bundle incongruous in its chiaroscuro lacings and bulgings. "I am Miss Froon," she said. The smile that lit her face had last been seen on Madame La Farge. It had cut its teeth on sad suttees. It was thoroughly unoriginal. Condemeign sighed. The perfect servant. The timeless, obsequious recorder. Was Miss Froon, perhaps, the key to the last portal. She was distressingly unattractive, rather flat in the chest and sported an overly aseptic set of teeth that flashed. He noted the brown laths of legs that poked from under the denim shorts. Miss Froon, he decided, looked really like an underdone chicken. Miss Froon rustled the papers before her. She tapped, almost frigidly, on the glassy top of the desk. "There are a few questions, Mr. Condemeign." "Whose questions?" Miss Froon clucked. "Ours first, and then, if you wish, a few of yours." Condemeign sighed and then he almost smiled. It would be a blind of course, a subtle blind to confuse and reassure him. But then, weren't the blind always getting kicked. Wasn't someone always dropping lead nickels into the cups? "The brochure mentioned nothing about questions, Miss Froon," he said. "We do not insist upon it, Mr. Condemeign. You may answer the questions or not. Nepenthe, Inc., as you already know, has investigated your case. These are linking questions, Mr. Condemeign. They may be of use to science." So the almighty dollar had feet of clay. Even in space, between earth and moon, beyond the one hundred thousand mile limit where the state power ended and anarchy began, despite the insulation of distance and depth, quite coldly independent of even the mighty barriers of pelf, science was poking and treading about, listening and noting and breathing down his neck. Well, what of it, he thought, finally. Life was ceaseless obligation. He was beginning to realize that death might be the same. "Have you ever wanted to die before, Mr. Condemeign?" Miss Froon seemed almost penetratingly aware of the verdict in his eyes. "Often, Miss Froon." He lit a cigarette and watched her making the first notations with a pencil. "It is only in late years, however, that I have been able to afford it." Miss Froon almost blushed. When she recovered she said: "Are you afraid of death, Mr. Condemeign?" "I hope so, Miss Froon. Like a certain Cardinal of Ragusa--you have probably never heard of him--I am inclined to put a high price on existence before it ceases." He paused and settled on the edge of the desk, musing. "Yes, I rather hope so. There is little else to be afraid of." He watched her through the smoke of his cigarette, blinking, a wet stain of puny resentment and annoyance on the blotched beak. She hesitated for an instant, but the flying fingers never stopped.